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

makeup,” Rhyme said, recalling a case in which he’d placed a killer at the scene after the man wrote obscene messages on thevictim’s mirror with a touch-up stick, smears of which were found on his sleeve. Running the case, he’d made a study of cosmetics.
    “Hers?” Cooper asked Sachs.
    “No,” the policewoman answered. “I took swabs of her skin. She wasn’t wearing any.”
    “Well, put it on the board. We’ll see if it means anything.”
    Turning to the rope, the murder weapon, Mel Cooper looked up from his slump over a porcelain examining board. “It’s a white sheath of rope around a black core. They’re both braided silk—real light and thin—which is why it doesn’t look any thicker than a normal rope even though it’s really two put together.”
    “What’s the point of that? Does the core make it stronger?” Rhyme asked. “Easier to untie? Harder to untie? What?”
    “No idea.”
    “It’s getting mysteriouser,” Sachs said with a dramatic flair that Rhyme would have found irritating if he hadn’t agreed with her.
    “Yup,” he confirmed, disconcerted. “That’s a new one to me. Let’s keep going. I want something familiar, something we can use. ”
    “And the knot?”
    “Tied by an expert but I don’t recognize it,” Cooper said.
    “Get a picture of it to the bureau. And . . . don’t we know somebody at the Maritime Museum?”
    “They’ve helped us with knots a few times,” Sachs said. “I’ll upload a picture to them too.”
    A call came in from Tobe Geller at the ComputerCrimes Unit at New York’s FBI headquarters. “This is fun, Lincoln.”
    “Glad we’re keeping you amused,” Rhyme murmured. “Anything helpful you might be able to tell us about our toy? ”
    Geller, a curly-haired young man, was impervious to Rhyme’s edge, especially since there was a computer product involved. “It’s a digital audio recorder. Fascinating little thing. Your unsub recorded something on it, stored the sounds on a hard drive then programmed it to play back after some delay. We don’t know what the sound was—he built in a wiping program so that it destroyed the data.”
    “It was his voice,” Rhyme muttered. “When he said he had a hostage it was just a recording. Like the chairs. It was to make us think he was still in the room.”
    “That makes sense. It had a special speaker—small but excellent bass and midtone range. It’d mimic a human voice pretty well.”
    “There’s nothing left on the disk?”
    “Nope. Gone for good.”
    “Damn. I wanted a voiceprint.”
    “Sorry. It’s gone.”
    Rhyme sighed in frustration and rolled back to the examination trays; it was left to Sachs to tell Geller how much they appreciated the help.
    The team then examined the victim’s wristwatch, which had been shattered for reasons none of them could figure out. It yielded no evidence except the time it was broken. Perps occasionally broke watches or clocks at crime scenes after they’d set them to the wrong time to mislead investigators. But this wasstopped at close to the actual time of death. What should they make of that?
    Mysteriouser . . .
    As the aide wrote their observations on the whiteboard Rhyme looked over the bag containing the sign-in book. “The missing name in the book.” He mused, “Nine people signed but there’re only eight names in the log. . . . I think we need an expert here.” Rhyme ordered into the microphone, “Command, telephone. Call Kincaid comma Parker.”

Chapter Six
    On the screen the display showed a 703 area code, Virginia, then the number being dialed.
    A ring. A young girl’s voice said, “Kincaid residence.”
    “Uhm, yes. Is Parker there? Your father, I mean.”
    “Who’s calling?”
    “Lincoln Rhyme. In New York.”
    “Hold on, please.”
    A moment later the laid-back voice of one of the country’s preeminent document examiners came on the line. “Hey, Lincoln. Been a month or two, hasn’t it?”
    “Busy time,”