Charles Grady and the state's attorney general himself had decided to delay the man's trial in order to include additional charges against the bigot-attempted murder of his own lawyer, conspiracy to commit murder and felony murder. It wouldn't be an easy case-linking Constable to Barnes and the other conspirators in the Patriot Assembly-but if anyone could bring in convictions Grady was the man to do it. He was also going for the death penalty against Arthur Loesser for the murder of Patrol Officer Larry Burke, whose body had been found in an alley on the Upper West Side. Lon Sellitto was presently at the officer's full-dress funeral in Queens. Amelia Sachs now walked through the doorway, looking frazzled after an
all-day meeting with lawyers arranged through the Patrolmen's Benevolent Association about her possible suspension. She was supposed to have been back hours ago and, glancing at her face, Rhyme deduced that the results of the session were not good.
He himself had some news-about his meeting with Jaynene and what had happened after that-and had tried to reach her but had been unable to. Now, though, there was no time to brief her because another visitor appeared.
Thorn ushered Edward Kadesky into the room. "Mr. Rhyme," he said, nodding. He'd forgotten Sachs's name but he gave her a second nod in greeting. He shook Roland Bell's hand. "1 got your message. It said there's something more about the case."
Rhyme nodded. "This morning 1 did some digging, looking into a few loose ends."
"What loose ends?" Sachs asked.
"Ends 1 didn't know were loose. Unknown loose ends."
She frowned. The producer too looked troubled. "Weir's assistantLoesser. He hasn't escaped, has he?"
"No, no. He's still in detention."
The doorbell rang. Thorn vanished and a moment later Kara stepped through the doorway into the room. She looked around, ruming her short hair, which had lost its purple sheen and was now ruddy as a freckle. "Hi," she said to the group, blinking in surprise when she saw Kadesky.
"Can 1 get anybody anything?" Thorn asked.
"Maybe if you could leave us for a minute, Thorn. Please."
The aide glanced at Rhyme and, hearing the firm, troubled tone in his voice, nodded and left the room. The criminalist said to Kara, "Thanks for coming by. I just need to follow up on a few things about the case."
"Sure," she said.
Loose ends...
Rhyme explained, "I want to know a few more details about the night that the Conjurer drove the ambulance bomb into the circus." The young woman nodded, flicking her black fingernails against one an
other. "Anything I can do to help, I'd be glad to." "The show was scheduled to start at eight, wasn't it?" Rhyme asked
Kadesky.
"That's right."
"You weren't back from your dinner and radio interview yet when
Loesser parked the ambulance in the doorway?"
"No, I wasn't."
Rhyme turned to Kara. "But you were there?"
"Yeah. I saw the ambulance drive in. 1 didn't think anything about it at the time."
"Where did Loesser park, exactly?"
"It was under the box seat scaffolding," she said.
"Not under the expensive seats though?" Rhyme asked Kadesky.
"No," the man said.
"So it was near the main fire exit-the one most people would use in an evacuation."
"That's right."
Bell asked, "Lincoln, what're you getting at?"
"What I'm getting at is Loesser parked the ambulance so that it would do the most damage and yet still give a few people in the box seats a chance to escape. How did he know exactly where to park it?"
"I don't know," the producer responded. "He probably checked it out ahead of time and saw it was the best location-I mean, best from his point of view. Worst for us."
"He might've checked it out earlier," Rhyme mused. "But he also would be reluctant to be seen doing reconnaissance around the circus-since we had officers stationed there."
"True."
"So, isn't it possible that someone on the inside might've told him to
park there?" "Inside?" Kadesky asked, frowning. "Are you saying somebody was help
ing him? No, none of my people would do that."
"Rhyme," Sachs said, "what are you getting at?"
He ignored her and turned again to Kara. "I asked you to go to the tent
to find Mr. Kadesky about when?"
"I guess it was about seven-fifteen."
"And you were in the box seat area?" She nodded and he continued,
"Near the exit row?" The woman looked around the room awkwardly. "I guess. Yeah, I was."
She looked at Sachs. "Why's he asking me all this? What's going on?" Rhyme answered, "I'm asking because I remembered something you told us, Kara. About people who're involved in an illusionist's act. There's the assistant-the person that we know is working with the illusionist. Then there's the volunteer from the audience. Then there's someone else: the confederate. Those're people who are actually working with the magician but seem to have nothing to do with him. They pretend to be stagehands or volunteers."
Kadesky said, "Right, lots of magicians use confederates."
Rhyme turned to Kara and said sharply, "Which is what you've been all along, haven't you?"
"What's that?" Bell asked, his drawl more pronounced in his surprise. The young woman gasped, shaking her head.
"She's been working with Loesser from the beginning," Rhyme said to Sachs.
"
N!"
Kdky
.d"H?" o. a es sm. er.
Rhyme continued, "She needs money badly and Loesser paid her fifty
thousand to help him."
Desperate, Kara said, "But Loesser and 1 never even met before today!" "You didn't need to see him in person. Balzac was the intermediary. He was in on it too."
"Kara?" Sachs whispered. "No.1 don't believe it. She wouldn't do that!" 'Wouldn't she? What do you know about her? Do you even know her real name?" "I..." Sachs's troubled eyes turned toward the young woman. "No," she
whispered. "She never told me." Tearfully the young woman shook her head. Finally she said, "Amelia, I'm so sorry.... But you don't understand.... Mr. Balzac and Weir were friends. They performed together for years and he was devastated when Weir died in the fire. Loesser told Mr. Balzac what he was going to do and they forced me to help him. But, you have to believe me, I didn't know they were going to hurt anybody. Mr. Balzac said it was just an extortion thing to get even with Mr. Kadesky. By the time I realized Loesser was killing people it was too late. They said if I didn't keep helping him he was going to give my name to the police. I'd go to jail forever. Mr. Balzac would too...." She wiped her face. "I couldn't do that to him."
"To your revered mentor," Rhyme said bitterly.
With a look of panic in her brilliant blue eyes the young woman shoved her way through Sachs and Kadesky and leaped for the door.
"Stop her, Roland!" Rhyme shouted.
Bell sprinted forward and tackled her. They tumbled into the comer of the room. She was strong but Bell managed to cuff her. He rose, panting from the effort, and pulled his Motorola off his belt, calling in for a prisoner transfer down to detention.
Looking disgusted, he put the radio away and read Kara her rights. Rhyme sighed. "I tried to tell you earlier, Sachs. I couldn't get through on the phone. I wish it weren't true. But there you have it. She and Balzac were with Loesser all along. They gulled us like we were their audience."
Chapter Fifty-one
Whispering, the policewoman said, "I just... 1 don't see how she did it." Rhyme said to Bell, "She manipulated the evidence, lied to us, planted
fake clues.... Roland, go over to the whiteboards. I'll show you."
"Kam planted evidence?" Sachs asked, astonished.
"Oh, you bet she did. And she did a damn good job too. From the first scene, even before you found her. You told me that she gave you that sign to meet her in the coffee shop. They set it up from the beginning." Bell was at the whiteboards and as he pointed out items of evidence
Rhyme would explain how Kara had tricked them.
A moment later Thorn called, "There's an officer here."
"Show 'em in," Rhyme said.
A policewoman walked through the doorway and joined Sachs, Bell and
Kadesky, surveying them through stylish glasses with a look of curiosity on her face. She nodded to Rhyme, and in a Hispanic accent, asked Bell, "You called for prisoner transport, Detective?"
Bell nodded to the comer of the room. "She's over there. I Mirandized
her." The woman glanced toward the comer of the room at Kara's prone form and said, "Okay, I'll take her downtown." She hesitated. "But I got a question first." "Question?" Rhyme asked, frowning.
'What're you talking about, Officer?" Bell asked.
Ignoring the detective, the officer sized up Kadesky. "Could I see some identification, sir?"
"Me?" the producer asked.
"Yessir. I'll need to see your driver's license."
"You want my ID again? I did that the other day."
"Sir, please."
Huffily the man reached into his hip pocket and withdrew his wallet. Except that it wasn't his.
He stared at a battered zebra-skin billfold. 'Wait, I... I don't know what this is."
"It's not yours?" the cop asked.
"No," he said, troubled. He began patting his pockets. "I don't know-" "See, that's what I was afraid of," the policewoman said. 'Tm sorry, sir. You're under arrest for pickpocketing. You have the right to remain silent-" "This is bullshit," Kadesky muttered. "There's some mistake." He opened up the wallet and stared at it for a moment. Then he barked an astonished laugh, held up the driver's license for everyone to see. It was Kara's.
There was a handwritten note inside. It dropped out. He picked it up. "It says, 'Gotcha,'" Kadesky said, narrowing his eyes and studying the policewoman closely, then the driver's license. 'Wait, is this you?"
The "officer" laughed and removed the glasses then her cop cap and the brunette wig beneath it, revealing the short reddish hair once again. With a towel that Roland Bell, now chuckling hard, handed her she wiped the dark-complexion makeup off her face and peeled away the thick eyebrows and the fake red nails covering the black glossy ones. She then took her wallet back from the hands of the astonished Edward Kadesky and handed him his, which she'd dipped when she'd plowed into him and Sachs in her "escape" toward the door.
Sachs was shaking her head, too astonished to react. She and Kadesky were both staring at the body lying on the floor.
The young illusionist walked into the comer and lifted the device, a lightweight frame in the shape of a person lying on her stomach. Short reddish-purple hair covered the head portion, and the body wore clothing that resembled the jeans and windbreaker Kara'd been in when Bell had cuffed her. The arms of the outfit ended in what turned out to be latex hands, hooked together with Bell's handcuffs, which Kara had escaped from and then relatched on the phony wrists.
"It's a feke," Rhyme now announced to the room, nodding at the frame. "A phony Kara."
When Sachs and the others had turned away-misdirected by Rhyme toward the chart-Kara had escaped from the cuffs, unfurled the body frame and then silently slipped out the door to do the quick change in the hallway.
She now folded up the device, which compressed into a little package the size of a small pillow-she'd had it hidden under her jacket when she'd arrived. The dummy wouldn't have passed close examination but in the shadows, with an unsuspecting, misdirected audience, no one had noticed it wasn't the girl.
Kadeskywas shaking his head. "You did the whole escape and the quick
change in less than a minute?"
"Forty seconds."
"How?"
"You saw the effect," Kara said to him. "Think I'll keep the method to
myself." "So the point of this is, I assume," said Kadesky cynically, "that you want
an audition?" Kara hesitated and Rhyme shot a prodding glance toward the young
woman.
"No, the point is, this was the audition. I want a job:'
Kadesky studied her closely. "It was one trick. You have others?" "Plenty."
"How many changes've you done in one show?"
"Forty-two changes. Thirty characters. During a thirty-minute routine:' "Forty-two setups in half an hour?" the producer asked, eyebrows raised. "Yep."
