Then Cheryl's husband was here again, in front of her, explaining, explaining, explaining why the divorce was the best thing that could've happened to her. Roy looked up, wiped away crocodile tears and said it was for the best. She'd be happier this way. Look, here was something for her. Roy opened a door and there was a shiny new Schwinn bike. Streamers on the handle grips, training wheels in the back and a helmet -a pink one-to protect her noggin.
Cheryl gave up. You win, you win. Take the goddamn boat, take your goddamn girlfriend. Just let me go, let me go in peace. She inhaled through her nose to let comforting death into her lungs.
"There!" Amelia Sachs cried.
She and Bell ran forward over the pedestrian walkway toward the thick cluster of bushes and trees on the edge of the Hudson River. A man stood on a rotting pier, which had apparently been a dock years ago before access to the river had been filled in. This area was overgrown, filled with trash and stank of stagnant water.
A man in chinos and a white shirt was holding a rope that arced over a small rusting crane. The other end disappeared below the surface.
"Hey," Bell called, "you!"
He had brown hair, yes, but the outfit was different. No beard, either. And his eyebrows didn't seem that thick. Sachs couldn't see if the fingers of his left hand were fused together.
Still, what did that mean?
The Conjurer could be a man, could be a woman.
The Conjurer could be invisible.
As they jogged closer he looked up in apparent relief. "Here!" he cried. "Help me! Over here! There's a woman in the water!" Bell and Sachs left Kara beside the overpass and sprinted through the brush surrounding the brackish pond. "Don't trust him," she called breathlessly to Bell as they ran.
'Tm with you there, Amelia."
The man pulled harder and feet and then legs in tan slacks emerged, fol
lowed by a woman's body. She was wrapped in chains. Dh, the poor thing! Sachs thought. Please let her be alive. They closed the distance fast, Bell calling on his handy-talkie for backup and medics. Several other people who were on the east side of the pedestrian bridge were gathering, alarmed at what was going on. "Help me! I can't pull her up alone!" the rescuer called to Bell and Sachs. His voice was a gasp, out of breath from the effort. "This man, he tied her up and pushed her into the water. He tried to kill her!"
Sachs drew her weapon and trained it on the man.
"Hey, what're you doing?" he asked in shock. 'Tm trying to save her!"
He glanced down at a cell phone on his belt. "I'm the one called nine-oneone."
She still couldn't see his left hand; it was enclosed by his right.
"Keep your hands on that rope, sir," she said. "Keep' em where I can see them." "I didn't do anything!" He was wheezing-an odd sound. Maybe it
wasn't exertion but asthma. Staying clear of her line of fire, Bell grabbed the crane and swung it toward the muddy shore. When the woman was in arm's reach he tugged her toward him, as the man holding the rope let out slack until she was lying on the ground. She lay on the grass, limp and cyanotic. The detective pulled the tape off her mouth, unhooked the chains and began to give her CPR.
Sachs called to the dozen people gathered nearby, drawn by the commotion, "Is anybody a doctor?"
No one answered. She glanced back at the victim and saw her stirring.... Then she began choking and spitting out water. Yes! They'd gotten to her in time. In a minute she'd be able to confirm the man's identity. Then she looked past the scene and noticed a wad of shiny navy-blue cloth. She caught sight of a zipper and sleeve. It could be the jogging jacket he'd quick-changed out of.
The man's eyes followed hers and he saw it too.
Was there a reaction, a faint wince? She thought so but couldn't tell for sure.
"Sir," she called firmly, "until we get things sorted out here, I'm going to
put some cuffs on you. I want your hands-" Suddenly a man's panicked voice shouted, "Yo, lady, look out! That guy
in the jogging suit-to yo right! He got a gun!" People screamed and dropped to the ground and Sachs crouched, spin
ning to her right, squinting for a target. "Roland, look out!" Bell too dropped to the ground, beside the woman, and looked in the
same direction as Sachs, his Sig in his hand.
But Sachs saw nobody in a jogging suit.
Oh, no, she thought. No! Furious with herself, she understood what had
happened-he'd mimicked the voice himself. Ventriloquism. She turned back fast to see a brilliant fireball explode from the rescuer's hand. It hovered in the air, blinding her.
"Amelia!" Bell called. "I can't see anything! Where is he?"
"I don't-"
A fast series of gunshots sounded from where the Conjurer had been standing. The onlookers fled in panic as Sachs aimed at the sound of the shooting. Bell did too. They both squinted for targets but the killer was gone by the time her vision returned; she found herself aiming at a cloud of faint smoke-from more of the explosive squibs.
Then, to the east, she saw the Conjurer on the other side of the parkway. He started up the middle of the street but saw an RMP speeding his way, its lights and sirens frantic, and he leaped up the wide stairway that led to the college and vanished into the crafts fair, like a copperhead disappearing into tall grass.
Chapter Seventeen
They were everywhere....
Dozens of police.
All searching for him.
Gasping from the sprint, his lungs stinging, the muscles in his side on
fire, Malerick leaned against the cool limestone of one of the college's classroom buildings.
In front of him a fair spread out over the large plaza, which was jammed with people. He looked behind him, west, the direction he'd come from. Already the police had cut off that entrance. On the north and south sides of the square were tall concrete buildings. The windows were sealed and there were no doors. His only exit was east, on the other side of a football-fieldsize expanse of booths and dense crowds.
He made his way in that direction. But he didn't dare run.
Because illusionists know that fast attracts attention.
Slow makes you invisible.
He glanced at the goods for sale, nodded in pleasure at a guitarist's performance, laughed at a balloon-tying clown. He did what everyone else did. Because unique attracts attention.
Similar makes you invisible.
Easing east. Wondering how the police had located him. Of course he'd
expected they'd find the drowned body of the woman lawyer sometime today. But they'd moved too fast-it was as if they'd anticipated that he'd kid
nap someone in that part of the city, maybe even at the riding academy itself. How?
Farther east.
Past the booths, past the concession stand, past a Dixieland band on a
red, white and blue draped stage. Ahead of him was the exit-the east stairway leading from the square down to Broadway. Only another fifty feet to freedom, forty.
Thirty...
But then he saw flashing lights. They seemed nearly as bright as the
burst from the flash cotton he'd used to escape from the redheaded officer. The lights were atop four squad cars that squealed to a stop beside the stairway. A half-dozen uniformed officers jumped out. They scanned the stairs and remained with their cars. Meanwhile other officers, in plain clothes, were arriving. They now climbed the stairs and merged into the crowd, looking over the men at the fair.
Now surrounded, Malerick turned and headed back toward the center
of the festival. The plain-clothed officers were slowly moving westward. They were stopping men in their fifties who were clean shaven, wearing light shirts and tan slacks. Exactly like him. But they were also stopping fifty-year-olds who were bearded and were wearing other clothes. Which meant they knew about his quick-change techniques. Then he saw what he'd been dreading: The policewoman with the steely eyes and fiery red hair, who'd tried to arrest him at the pond, appeared at the top of the stairs at the west end of the fair. She plunged into the crowd. Malerick turned aside, lowering his head and studying some very bad
ceramic sculpture.
What to do? he thought desperately. He had one remaining quickchange outfit left, under what he now wore. But after that, there was no backup.
The redheaded officer spotted someone who was built and dressed similarly to him. She examined the man closely. Then she turned away and continued to scan the crowd.
The trim, brown-haired cop who'd been giving Cheryl Marston CPR now crested the stairs and joined the policewoman in the crowd. They conferred for a few moments. Another woman was with him-she didn't seem like a cop. She had brilliant blue eyes and short reddish-purple hair and was
quite thin. She looked over the crowd and whispered something to the woman officer, who headed off in a different direction. The short-haired girl stayed with the male cop and they began to work their way through the crowd.
Malerick knew he'd be spotted sooner or later. He had to get out of the fair now, before even more cops arrived. Walking to the row of Porta Potties, he stepped inside the fiberglass box and executed a change. In thirty seconds he stepped out again, politely holding the door open for a middleaged woman, who hesitated and turned away, deciding to wait for a john whose prior user wasn't a ponytailed biker with a beer gut, wearing a Pennzoil cap, a greasy long-sleeved denim Harley-Davidson shirt and dirty black jeans.
He picked up a newspaper and rolled it up, gripping it in his left hand to obscure his fingers, then moved toward the east side of the fair again, checking out stained glass, mugs and bowls, handmade toys, crystals, CDs. One cop looked right at him but the glance was brief and he turned away.
Malerick now returned to the eastern edge of the fair.
The stairway that led down to Broadway was about thirty yards wide and
the uniformed police had managed to close off much of it. They were now stopping all adult men and women who left the fair and asking for IDs. He saw the detective and the purple-haired girl nearby, next to the concession stand. She was whispering to him. Had she noticed him? Malerick was swept by a burst of uncontrollable fury. He'd planned the performance so carefully-every routine, every trick choreographed to lead up to tomorrow's finale. This weekend was supposed to be the most perfect illusion ever performed. And it was all crumbling around him. He thought of how disappointed his mentor would be. He thought of letting down his revered audience.... He found his hand, holding a small oil painting of the Statue of Liberty, beginning to shake.
This is not acceptable! he raged.
He put the picture down and turned.
But he stopped fast, giving a sharp gasp.
The red-haired policewoman stood only a few feet from him, looking
away. He quickly turned his attention to a case of jewelry and asked the vendor, in a thick Brooklyn accent, how much a pair of earrings cost.
From the comer of his eye he could see the policewoman glance at him but she paid him no mind and a moment later made a call on her radio. "Five Eight Eight Five. Requesting a landline patch to Lincoln Rhyme."
A moment later: 'We're at the fair, Rhyme. He has to be here.... He couldn't've gotten out before they sealed the exits. We'll find him. If we have to frisk everybody we'll find him."
Malerick eased into the crowd. What were his options? Misdirection-that seemed to be the only answer. Something to distract
the police and give him just five seconds to slip through the line and disappear among the pedestrians on Broadway.
But what would misdirect them long enough to let him escape?
He didn't have any more squibs to simulate gunshots. Set a booth on fire? But that wouldn't cause the sort of panic he now needed.
Anger and fear seized him again.
But then he heard his mentor's voice from years ago, after the boy had
made a mistake onstage and nearly ruined one of the man's routines. The demonic, bearded illusionist had pulled the youngster aside after the performance. Close to tears, the boy had gazed down at the floor as the man asked, 'What is illusion?"
"Science and logic" had been Malerick's instant response. (The mentor had drummed a hundred answers like this one into his assistants' souls.)
"Science and logic, yes. If there's a mishap-because of you or your assistant or God Himself-you use science and logic to take charge instantly. Not one second should pass between the mistake and your reaction. Be bold. Read your audience. Turn disaster into applause."
