The Vanished Man Read Online Free PDF

ground or floor.
     
     
She began the search now, looking for discarded or dropped objects, rolling for trace, taking electrostatic prints of shoeprints and digital photos. The photo team would make a comprehensive still and video record of the scene but getting those images took time and Rhyme always insisted on having some photographic record available instantly.
     
     
"Officer?" Sellitto called.
     
     
She glanced back.
     
     
"Just wondering.... Since we don't know where this asshole got to, you want some backup in there?" "Nope," she said, silently thanking him for reminding her that there was a missing murderer last seen nearby. Another of Lincoln Rhyme's crime scene aphorisms: search well but watch your back. She tapped the butt of her Glock to remind herself exactly where it was in case she needed to draw fast-the holster rode slightly higher when she wore the Tyvek jumpsuit and continued the search.
     
     
"Okay, got something," she told Rhyme a moment later. "In the lobby. About ten feet away from the victim. Piece of black cloth. Silk. I mean, it appears to be silk. It's on top of a part of the vic's flute so it has to be his or hers."
     
     
"Interesting," Rhyme mused. 'Wonder what that's about."
     
     
The lobby yielded nothing else and she entered the performance space
     
     
itself, her hand continuing to stray to the butt of her Glock. She relaxed momentarily, seeing that there was in fact absolutely no hiding place where a perp could be, no secret doorways or exits. But as she started on the grid here she felt a growing sense of discomfort.
     
     
Spooky...
     
     
"Rhyme, this is strange...."
     
     
"I can't hear you, Sachs."
     
     
She realized that in her uneasiness she'd been whispering. "There's burned string tied around the chairs that're lying on the ground. Fuses too, it looks like. I smell nitrate and sulfur residue. The repartings said he fired a round. But it's not the smell of smokeless powder. It's something else. Ah, okay.... It's a little gray firecracker. Maybe that was the gunshot they heard.... Hold on. There's something else-under a chair. It's a small green circuit board with a speaker attached to it." "'Small'?" Rhyme asked caustically. "A foot is small compared with an acre. An acre's small compared with a hundred acres, Sachs."
     
     
"Sorry. Measures about two inches by five."
     
     
"That'd be big compared with a dime, now, wouldn't it?"
     
     
Got the message, thank you very much, she replied silently.
     
     
She bagged everything, then left by the second door-the fire door and electrostaticked and photographed the footprints she found there. Finally, she took control samples to compare against the trace found on the
     
     
victim and where the unsub had walked. "Got everything, Rhyme. I'll be back in a half hour."
     
     
"And the trapdoors, the secret passages everybody's talking about?" "I can't find any."
     
     
"All right, come on home, Sachs."
     
     
She returned to the lobby and let Photo and Latents take over the scene.
     
     
She found Franciscovich and Ausonio by the doorway. "You find the janitor?" she asked. "I need to look at his shoes."
     
     
Ausonio shook her head. "He told the guard he had to take his wife to
     
     
work. I left a message with maintenance for him to call." Her partner said solemnly, "Hey, Officer, we were talking, Nancy and me? And we don't want this scumbag to get away. If there's anything more we can do, you know, to follow up, let us know." Sachs understood exactly how they felt. "I'll see what I can do," she told
     
     
them. Sellitto's radio crackled and he took the call. Listened for a moment. "It's the Hardy Boys. They've finished interviewing the wits and're in the main lobby." Sachs, Sellitto and the two patrolwomen returned to the front of the school. There they joined Bedding and Saul, one of them tall, one short, one with freckles, one with a clear complexion. These were detectives from the Big Building who