"Exactly. You don't see phenolphthalein much anymore. But you can do the same thing with thymolphthalein indicator and sodium hydroxide."

"Can you buy this stuff anyplace in particular?"

"Hm," Kincaid considered. "Well… Just a minute, honey. Daddy's on the phone… No, it's okay. All cakes look lopsided when they're in the oven. I'll be there soon… Lincoln? What I was going to say was that it's a great idea in theory but when I was in the bureau there were never any perps or spies who actually used disappearing ink. It's more of a novelty, you know. Entertainers'd use it."

Entertainment, Rhyme thought grimly, looking at the board on which were taped the pictures of poor Svetlana Rasnikov. "Where would our doer find ink like that?"

"Most likely toy stores or magic shops."

Interesting…

"Okay, well, that's helpful, Parker."

"Come and visit sometime," Sachs called. "And bring the kids."

Rhyme grimaced at the invitation. He whispered to Sachs, "And why don't you invite all their friends too. The whole school…"

Laughing, she shushed him.

After he disconnected the call Rhyme said grumpily, "The more we learn, the less we know."

Bedding and Saul called in and reported that Svetlana seemed to be well liked at the music school and had no enemies there. Her part-time job wasn't likely to have produced any stalkers either; she led sing-alongs at kids' birthday parties.

A package arrived from the medical examiner's office. Inside was a plastic evidence bag containing the old handcuffs the victim had been restrained with. They were unopened, as Rhyme had ordered. He'd told the M. E. to compress the victim's hands to remove them since drilling out the locks could destroy valuable trace.

"Never seen anything like this," Cooper said, holding them up, "outside of a movie."

Rhyme agreed. They were antique, heavy and made of unevenly forged iron.

Cooper brushed and tapped all around the lock mechanisms but he found no significant trace. The fact they were antique, though, was encouraging because it would limit the sources they might've come from. Rhyme told Cooper to photograph the cuffs and print out pictures to show to dealers.

Sellitto received another phone call. He listened for a moment then, looking bewildered, said, "Impossible… You're sure?… Yeah, okay. Thanks."

Hanging up, the detective glanced at Rhyme. "I don't get it."

"What's that?" Rhyme asked, in no mood for any more mysteries.

"That was the administrator of the music school. There is no janitor."

"But the patrol officers saw him," Sachs pointed out.

"The cleaning staff doesn't work on Saturday. Only weekday evenings. And none of 'em look like the guy the respondings saw."

No janitor?

Sellitto looked through his notes. "He was right outside the second door, sweeping up. He -"

"Oh, goddamn," Rhyme snapped. "It was him!" A glance at the detective. "The janitor looked completely different from the perp, right?"

Sellitto consulted his notebook. "He was in his sixties, bald, no beard, wearing gray coveralls."

"Gray coveralls!" Rhyme shouted.

"Yeah."

"That's the silk fiber. It was a costume."

"What're you talking about?" Cooper asked.

"Our unsub killed the student. When he was surprised by the respondings he blinded them with the flash and ran into the performance space, set up the fuses and the digital recorder to make them think he was still inside, changed into the janitor outfit and ran out the second door."

"But he didn't just strip off throwaway sweats like some chain-snatcher on the A train. Linc," the rotund policeman pointed out. "How the hell could he've done it? He was out of sight for, what, sixty seconds?"

"Fine. If you have an explanation that doesn't involve divine intervention I'm willing to listen."

"Come on. There's no fucking way."

"No way?" Rhyme mused cynically as he wheeled closer to the whiteboard on which Thom had taped the printouts of the digital photos Sachs had taken of the footprints. "Then how 'bout some evidence?" He examined the perp's footprints and then the ones that she'd lifted in the corridor near where the janitor had been.

"Shoes," he announced.

"They're the same?" the detective asked.

"Yep," Sachs said, walking to the board. "Ecco, size ten."

"Christ," Sellitto muttered.

Rhyme asked, "Okay, what do we have? A perp in his early fifties, medium build, medium height and beardless, two deformed fingers, probably has a record 'cause he's hiding his prints – and that's all we goddamn know." But then Rhyme frowned.

"No," he muttered darkly, "that's not all we know. There's something else. He had a change of clothes with him, murder weapons… He's an organized offender." He glanced at Sellitto and added, "He's going to do this again."

Sachs nodded her grim agreement.

Rhyme gazed at Thom's flowing lettering on the evidence whiteboards and he wondered: What ties this all together?

The black silk, the makeup, the costume change, the disguises, the flashes and the pyrotechnics. The disappearing ink.

Rhyme said slowly, "I'm thinking that our boy's got some magic training."

Sachs nodded. "Makes sense."

Sellitto nodded. "Okay. Maybe. But whatta we do now?"

"Seems obvious to me," Rhyme said. "Find our own."

"Our own what?" Sellitto asked.

"Magician of course."

• • •

"Do it again."

She'd done it eight times so far.

"Again?"

The man nodded.

And so Kara did it again.

The Triple Handkerchief Release – developed by the famous magician and teacher Harlan Tarbell – is a sure-fire audience-pleaser. It involves separating three different-colored silks that seem hopelessly knotted together. It's a hard trick to perform smoothly but Kara felt good about how it'd gone. David Balzac didn't, however. "Your coins were talking." He sighed – harsh criticism, meaning that an illusion or trick was clumsy and obvious. The heavyset older man with a white mane of hair and tobacco-stained goatee shook his head in exasperation. He removed his thick glasses, rubbed his eyes and replaced the specs.

"I think it was smooth," she protested. "It seemed smooth to me."

"But you weren't the audience. I was. Now again." They stood on a small stage in the back of Smoke & Mirrors, the store that Balzac had bought after he'd retired from the international magic and illusion circuit ten years ago. The grungy place sold magic supplies, rented costumes and props and presented free, amateur magic shows for customers and locals. A year and a half ago Kara, doing freelance editing for Self magazine, had finally worked up her courage to get up on stage – Balzac's reputation had intimidated her for months. The aging magician had watched her act and called her into his office afterward. The Great Balzac himself had told her in his gruff but silky voice that she had potential. She could be a great illusionist – with the proper training – and proposed that she come work in the shop; he'd be her mentor and teacher.

Kara had moved to New York from the Midwest years before and was savvy about city life; she knew immediately what "mentor" might entail, especially when he was a quadruple divorcee and she was an attractive woman forty years younger than he. But Balzac was a renowned magician – he'd been a regular on Johnny Carson and had been a headliner in Las Vegas for years. He'd toured the world dozens of times and knew virtually every major illusionist alive. Illusion was her passion and this was a chance of a lifetime. She accepted on the spot.

At the first session her guard was up and she was ready to repel boarders. The lesson indeed turned out to be upsetting to her – though for an entirely different reason. He tore her to shreds.