The Vanished Man by Jeffery Deaver Read Free Book Online Page A

changing channels and volume like a poltergeist.
     
     
There! Who needed better evidence than this that her vibrant mother, her real mother remained within the injured shell of a body and could someday escape.
     
     
But the next day Kara had found the woman staring at her daughter suspiciously, asking why she was there and what she wanted. If this was about the electric bill for twenty-two dollars and fifteen cents she'd paid it and had the canceled check for proof. Since the pecan-sandy/remote-control performance there'd been no encores.
     
     
Kara now touched her mother's arm, warm, wrinkle-free, baby pink. Sensing what she always did here on her daily visits: the numbing trilogy of wishing that the woman would mercifully die, wishing that she'd come back to her vibrant life-and wishing that Kara herself could escape from the terrible burden of wanting both of those irreconcilable choices.
     
     
A glance at her watch. Late for work, as always. Mr. Balzac would not be happy. Saturday was their busiest day. She drained the coffee cup, pitched it out and walked into the hallway.
     
     
A large black woman in a white uniform lifted a hand in greeting. "Kara! How long you been here?" A broad smile in a broad face.
     
     
"Twenty minutes."
     
     
"I would've come by and visited," Jaynene said. "She still awake?" "No. She was out when 1 got here."
     
     
"Oh, I'm sony."
     
     
'Was she talking before?" Kara asked.
     
     
"Yep. Just little things. Couldn't tell if she was with us or not. Seemed like it.... This is some gorgeous day, hm? Sephie and me, we're gonna take her walking in the courtyard later if she's awake. She likes it. She always does better after that."
     
     
I've gotta get to work," Kara told the nurse. "Hey, I'm doing a show tomorrow. At the store. Remember where it is?"
     
     
"Sure do. What time?"
     
     
"Four. Come on by."
     
     
'Tm off early tomorrow. I'll be there. We'll drink some more of those peach margaritas after. Like last time."
     
     
"That'll work," Kara replied. "Hey, bring Pete."
     
     
The woman scowled. "Girl, nothing personal, but th' only way that man'll see you on Sunday is if you're playing the halftime show for the Knicks or the Lakers an' it's on network 1V."
     
     
Kara said, "From your mouth to God's ear."
     
     
Chapter Five
     
     
One hundred years ago a moderately successful financier might've called this place home.
     
     
Or the owner of a small haberdashery in the luxurious shopping neighborhood of Fourteenth Street. Or possibly a politician connected with Tammany Hall, savvy in the timeless art of growing rich through public office. The present owner of the Central Park West town house, however, didn't know, or care, about its provenance. Nor would the Victorian furnishings or subdued fin de siecle objets d'art that had once graced these rooms appeal to Lincoln Rhyme at all. He enjoyed what surrounded him now: a disarray of sturdy tables, swivel stools, computers, scientific devices-a density gradient rack, a gas chromatograph/mass spectrometer, microscopes, plastic boxes in myriad colors, beakers, jars, thermometers, propane tanks, goggles, latched black or gray cases of odd shapes, which suggested they contained esoteric musical instruments.
     
     
And wires.
     
     
Wires and cables everywhere, covering much of the limited square
     
     
footage of the room, some tidily coiled and connecting adjacent pieces of machinery, some disappearing through ragged holes shamefully cut into the hard-earned smoothness of century-old plaster-and-Lath walls.
     
     
Lincoln Rhyme himself was largely wireless now. Advances in infrared and radio technology had linked a microphone on his wheelchair--and on
     
     
his bed upstairs-to environmental control units and computers. He drove his Storm Arrow with his left ring finger on an MKIV touchpad but all the other commands, from phone calls to email to slapping the image from his compound microscope onto computer monitors,