Christ, Rhyme thought, this one perp was bad enough, with his skills at quick change, escape and illusionism. Working with assistants would make him a hundred times more dangerous.

"Mark it down, Thom," he barked. Then: "Let's look at what you found in the alley – where Burke collared him."

The first item was the officer's handcuffs.

"He got out of them in seconds. Had to've had a key," Sachs said. To the dismay of cops around the country most handcuffs can be opened with generic keys, available from law-enforcement supply houses for a few dollars. Rhyme wheeled over to the examination table and studied them carefully. "Turn them over… Hold them up… He might've used a key, true, but I see fresh scratches in the hole. I'd say it was picked…"

"But Burke would've frisked him," Sachs pointed out. "Where'd he get a pick?"

Kara offered, "Could've been hidden anywhere. His hair, his mouth."

"Mouth?"

Rhyme mused. "Hit the cuffs with the ALS, Mel."

Cooper donned goggles and shone an alternative light source on the cuffs. "Yep, we've got some tiny smears and dots around the keyhole." This meant, Rhyme explained to Kara, the presence of bodily fluid, saliva most likely.

"Houdini did that all the time. Sometimes he'd let somebody from the audience check his mouth out. Then just before he did the escape his wife'd kiss him – he said it was for luck but she was really passing a key from her mouth to his."

"But he'd be cuffed behind his back," Sellitto said. "How could he even reach his mouth?"

"Oh," Kara said with a laugh. "Any escapist can get cuffed hands in front of his body in three or four seconds."

Cooper tested the saliva traces. Some individuals secrete antibodies into all bodily fluids, which lets investigators determine blood type. The Conjurer, though, turned out not to be a secretor.

Sachs had also found a very tiny piece of serrated-edge metal.

"Yeah, it's his too," Kara said. "Another escapist tool. A razor saw. It's probably what he used to cut through those plastic bands on his ankles."

"Would that've been in his mouth too? Wouldn't it be too dangerous?"

"Oh, a lot of us hide needles and razor blades in our mouths as part of the acts. With practice it's pretty safe."

Examining the last of the trace from the alley scene, they found more bits of latex and traces of the makeup, identical to what they'd seen earlier. More Tack-Pure oil as well.

"At the riverside, Sachs, when he went into the river? You find anything?"

"Just skid marks in the mud." She pinned up the digital photos that Cooper had printed out from his computer. "Some helpful citizen managed to screw up the scene," she explained. "But I spent a half hour going through the muck. I'm pretty sure he didn't drop any evidence or bail out."

Sellitto asked Bell, "What about the vic, the Marston woman? She have anything to say?"

The Tarheel detective gave a summary of his interview with her.

An attorney, Rhyme considered. Why pick her? What the hell was the Conjurer's pattern with the victims? Musician, makeup artist and attorney.

Bell added, "She's divorced. Husband's out in California. Wasn't the friendliest divorce in the world but I don't reckon he's involved. I had LAPD make some calls and he was accounted for today. And there's no NCIC or VICAP sheet on him."

Cheryl Marston had described the Conjurer as slim, strong, bearded, scars on neck and chest. "Oh, and she confirmed his fingers were deformed, like we'd thought. Fused together, she said. He was hush about the neighborhood he lives in and he picked the alias 'John.' Now there's a clever boy for you."

Useless, Rhyme assessed.

Bell then explained how he'd picked her up and what had happened afterward.

Rhyme asked Kara, "Anything sound familiar?"

"He could've hypnotized a pigeon or gull, pitched it at the horse then used some kind of gimmick to keep the horse agitated."

"What kind of gimmick?" Rhyme asked. "You know any manufacturers?"

"No, that's probably homemade too. Magicians used to use electrodes or prods to get lions to roar on cue, things like that. But animal-rights activists'd never let you get away with that now."

Bell continued, describing what had happened when Marston and the Conjurer had gone to have coffee.

"One thing she said that was odd: it was like he could read her mind." Bell described what Marston had told him about the Conjurer's knowing so much about her.

"Body reading," Kara said. "He'd say something and then watch her close, check out her reactions. That'd tell him a lot about her. Coming on to somebody like that's called 'selling them the medicine.' A really good mentalist can find out all kinds of things just by having an innocent conversation with you."

"Then when she was gettin' comfortable with him he drugged her and took her to the pond. Dunked her upside down."

"It was a variation of the Water Torture Cell routine," Kara explained. "Houdini. One of his most famous."

"And his escape from the pond?" Rhyme asked Sachs.

"At first I wasn't sure it was him – he'd done a quick change," she said. "His clothes were different and" – a glance at Kara – "his eyebrows too. I couldn't get a look at his hand, to see the fingers. But he distracted me, used ventriloquism. I was looking right at his face – I never saw his lips move."

Kara said, "I'll bet he picked words that didn't have any b's or m's or p's. Probably no f's or v's either."

"You're right. I think it was something like, 'Yo, look out, on your right, that guy in the jogging suit's got a gun.' Perfect black dialect." She grimaced. "I looked away – the same direction he looked, like everybody else. Then he set off that flash cotton and I got blinded. He fired the squibs and I thought he was shooting. He got me cold."

Rhyme saw the disgust in her face. Amelia Sachs reserved her worst anger for herself.

Kara, though, said, "Don't take it too hard. Hearing's the easiest sensation to fool. We don't use sound illusions much in shows. They're cheap shots."

Sachs shrugged this reassurance off and continued, "While Roland and I were still blinded from the flash he took off and disappeared, slipped into the crafts fair." Another grimace. "And then I saw him fifteen minutes later – this biker, wearing a Harley shirt. I mean, for God's sake, he was right there in front of me."

"Man," Kara said, shaking her head, "his coins definitely don't talk."

"What's that?" Rhyme asked. "Coins?"

"Oh, an expression magicians use. Literally it means you can't hear any clinking when you do coin tricks but we use it in general when somebody's really good. We'd also say he's got 'tight tricks.'"

Walking to the whiteboard reserved for the magician profile, she picked up the marker and added to it, commenting, "So, he does close-in and mentalism and even ventriloquism. And animal tricks. We knew he does lock-picking – from the second murder – but now we know he's an escapist too. What kind of magic doesn't he do?"

As Rhyme leaned his head back, watching her write, Thom brought a large envelope into the room.

He handed it to Bell. "For you."

"Whatsis?" the Tarheel detective asked, pulling the contents out and reading them. He nodded slowly as he read. "This's the report on the follow-up search at Grady's office. The one you asked Peretti to run. You mind taking a gander, Lincoln?"

The curt note on top read: LR – As requested. – VP.

Rhyme read through the details of the report, Thom flipping the page for him with every stern nod. The CS techs had completed a thorough inventory of the secretary's office and had identified and mapped out all the footprints in the room, exactly as Rhyme had asked. He read this carefully several times, closing his eyes and picturing the scene.