More people were entering the theater now. She wondered if there'd be many here today, though it didn't really make any difference to her. She loved the story about Robert-Houdin, who walked out onstage one night to find three people in the theater. He presented the same show as if the house were full-except the finale was slightly different; he invited the audience to his home for dinner afterward.

She was confident of her routine-Mr. Balzac had her practice, even for these small shows, for weeks. And now, during the last few minutes before curtain time, she didn't think about her tricks but gazed at the audience, enjoying this momentary peace of mind. She supposed she had no right to feel this comfortable.

There were a lot of reasons why she shouldn't be so content: her mother's worsening condition. The growing money problems. Her slow progress in Mr. Balzac's eyes. The brunch-in-bed guy who'd left three weeks ago today, promising he'd call her. Definitely. I promise.

But the Vanished Boyfriend trick, like Evaporating Money and the Wasting Mother, couldn't touch her here. Not when she was onstage.

Nothing mattered to her except the challenge of materializing a certain look in the faces of the audience. Kara could see it so clearly: the mouth faintly smiling, the eyes opening wide with surprise, the eyebrows narrowing, asking the most compelling question in every illusionist show: How do they do that?

In close-in magic there are sleight-of-hand gestures known as takes and puts.

You create the effect of transforming an object from one thing to another by subtly taking away the original and putting a second in its place, though the effect the audience sees is of one object becoming something else. And that's exactly what Kara's philosophy of performing was: taking her audience's sadness or boredom or anger and putting in its place happiness, fascination, serenity-transforming them into people with exhilaration in their hearts, however momentary that might be.

Just about starting time. She peeked out through the curtain again.

Most of the chairs were filled, she was surprised to see. On nice days like this, the attendance was usually quite small. She was pleased when Jaynene from the nursing home arrived, her huge figure blocking the back doorway momentarily.

Several other nurses from Stuyvesant Manor were with her. They walked farther inside and found seats. A few of Kara's other friends too, from the magazine and her apartment building on Greenwich Street.

Then just after 4:00 the back curtain opened wide and one final member of the audience entered-someone she never in a million years would have expected to come see her show.

"It's accessible," Lincoln Rhyme commented wryly, driving his glossy Storm Arrow to a spot halfway down the aisle in Smoke & Mirrors and parking. "No ADA suits today."

An hour ago he'd surprised Sachs and Thom by suggesting they drive down to the store in his van-the ramp-equipped Rollx-to see Kara's performance.

Then he'd added, "Though it's a shame to waste a beautiful spring afternoon indoors."

When they'd stared at him-even before the accident he'd rarely spent a beautiful spring afternoon outside-he'd said, "I'm kidding. Could you get the van please, Thom."

"A 'please' no less," the aide had said.

As he looked around the shabby theater he noticed a heavyset black woman glance at him. She rose slowly and joined them, sitting next to Sachs, shaking her hand and nodding to Rhyme. She asked him if they were the police officers Kara'd told her about. He said yes and introductions were made.

Her name turned out to be Jaynene and she was a nurse working at the aging care facility where Kara's mother lived.

The woman glanced knowingly at Rhyme, who'd cast her a wry look at this description, and said, "Whoops. D'I really say that? Meant to say 'old folks home.'"

"I'm a graduate of a 'TIMC,'" the criminalist said.

The woman furrowed her brow and finally shook her head. "That's a new one on me."

Thom said, "Traumatic Incident Mitigation Center."

Rhyme said, "I called it the Gimp Inn."

"But he's deliberately provocative," Thom added.

"I've worked spinal units. We always liked the patients best who gave us crap. The quiet, cheerful ones scared us."

Because, Rhyme reflected, they were the ones who had friends slip a hundred Seconal into their drinks. Or who, if they had the use of a hand, poured water onto the pilot lights of their stoves and turned the gas up high.

A four-burner death, it was called.

Jaynene asked Rhyme, "You C4?"

"That's it."

"Off the ventilator. Good for you."

"Is Kara's mother here?" Sachs asked, looking around.

Jaynene frowned briefly and said, "Well, no."

"Does she ever come to see her?"

The woman said cautiously, "Her mother's not really involved with Kara's career."

Rhyme said, "Kara told me she's sick. Is she doing better?"

"A bit, yes," the woman said.

There was a story behind this, Rhyme sensed, but the woman's tone said that it wasn't for the nurse to go into confidential matters with strangers.

Then the lights dimmed and the crowd fell silent.

A white-haired man climbed up onstage. Despite the age and the signs of hard living-a drinker's nose and tobacco-stained beard-his eyes were keen, his posture erect and he floated to center stage with a performer's presence. He stood next to the only prop on the platform-a wooden cutout of a Roman column. The surroundings were shabby but the man wore a well-tailored suit, as if he had some rule that whenever you were up onstage you looked the best for your audience.

Ah, Rhyme deduced, the infamous mentor, David Balzac. He didn't identify himself but looked out over the audience for a moment, his eyes settling on Rhyme's for longer than most others'. Whatever he was thinking, though, remained hidden and he looked away. "Today, ladies and gentlemen, I'm pleased to present one of my most promising students. Kara has been studying with me for over a year now. She's going to treat you to some of the more esoteric illusions in the history of our profession-and some of my own as well as some of hers. Don't be surprised"-A demonic look that seemed directed at Rhyme himself-"or shocked at anything you see today. And now, ladies and gentlemen . . . I give you . . . Kara."

Rhyme had decided to pass this hour by being a scientist. He'd enjoy the challenge of spotting the methods of her illusions, noting how she did the tricks, how cards and coins were palmed and where her quick-change costumes were concealed. Kara was still several points ahead in this game of Catch the Moves, which she undoubtedly didn't know they were playing.

The young woman walked out onstage, wearing a tight black bodysuit with a cutout in the shape of a crescent moon on her chest, under a shimmery, see-through drape, like a translucent Roman toga. He'd never thought of Kara as attractive, much less sexy, but the clinging outfit was very sensuous. She moved like a dancer, swift and smooth. There was a long pause while she examined the audience slowly. It seemed that she looked at each person. The tension began to build.

Finally: "Change," she said in a theatrical voice. "Change. . . . How it fascinates us. Alchemy-changing lead and tin into gold. . . ." She held up a silver coin. Closed it in her palm and opened it an instant later to reveal a gold coin, which she flung into the air; it turned into a shower of gold confetti.

Applause from the audience and murmurs of pleasure. "Night . . ." The houselights suddenly dimmed to blackness and a moment later-no more than a few seconds-came back up. ". . . becoming day." Kara was now dressed in a similar, clinging outfit, except that it was golden and the cutout pattern on the front was a starburst.

Rhyme had to laugh at the speed of the quick change.

"Life . . ." A red rose appeared in her hand. ". . . becoming death . . ." She cupped the rose in her hands and it changed to a dried yellowish flower. ". . . becoming life." A bouquet of fresh flowers had somehow replaced the dead stalk. She tossed them to a delighted woman in the audience. Rhyme heard a surprised whisper: "They're real!"

Kara lowered her hands to her sides and looked out over the audience again with a serious expression on her face. "There's a book," she said, her voice filling the room. "A book written thousands of years ago by the Roman writer Ovid. The book is called Metamorphoses. Like 'metamorphosis'-when a caterpillar becomes a . . ." She opened her hand and a butterfly flew out and disappeared backstage.

Rhyme had taken four years of Latin. He recalled struggling to translate portions of Ovid's book for class. He remembered that it was a series of fourteen or fifteen short myths in poetic form. What was Kara up to? Lecturing about classical literature to an audience of lawyer moms and kids thinking about their Xboxes and Nintendos (though he noticed that her tight costume held the attention of every teenage boy in the audience).

She continued, "Metamorphoses. . . . It's a book about change. About people becoming other people, animals, trees, inanimate objects. Some of Ovid's stories are tragic, some enthralling but all of them have one thing in common." A pause and then she said in a loud voice, "Magic!" With a burst of light and a cloud of smoke she vanished.

For the next forty minutes Kara captivated the audience with a series of illusions and sleight-of-hand tricks based on a few of the poems in the book. As for catching her moves, Rhyme gave up on that completely. True, he was lost in the drama of her stories. But even when he pulled himself back from her spell and concentrated on her hands he couldn't spot her method once. After a long ovation and an encore, during which she quick-changed into a tiny elderly woman and back again ("Young to old . . . old to young"), she left the stage. Five minutes later Kara emerged in jeans and a white blouse and stepped into the audience to say hello to friends.

A shop clerk laid out a table of jug wine, coffee and soda, cookies.

"No scotch?" Rhyme asked, looking over the cheap spread.

"Sorry, sir," the bearded young man replied.

Sachs, armed with wine, nodded at Kara, who joined them. "Hey, this is great. I never thought I'd see you guys here."

"What can I say?" Sachs offered. "Fantastic."

"Excellent," Rhyme said to her then turned back to the bar. "Maybe there's some whisky in the back, Thom."

Thom nodded at Rhyme and said to Kara, "Can you transform dispositions?" He took two glasses of Chardonnay, slipped a straw in one and held it out for his boss. "This or nothing, Lincoln."

He took a sip then said, "I liked the young-old ending. Didn't expect it. I was worried you were going to become a butterfly at the end. Cliche, you know."

"You were supposed to be worried. With me, expect the unexpected. Sleight of mind, remember?"

"Kara," Sachs said, "you have to try out for the Cirque Fantastique." The woman laughed but said nothing.

"No, I'm serious-this was professional quality," Sachs insisted.

Rhyme could tell that Kara didn't want to pursue the issue. She said lightly, "I'm right on schedule. There's no hurry. A lot of people make the mistake of jumping too fast."

"Let's get some food," Thom suggested. "I'm starving. Jaynene, you come too."

The large woman said she'd love to and suggested a new place near the Jefferson Market at Sixth and Tenth.

Kara demurred, though, saying that she had to stay and work on some of the routines she'd slipped up on during the performance. "Girl, no way," the nurse said, frowning. "You gotta work?"

"It'll only be a couple of hours. That friend of Mr. Balzac's doing some private show tonight and he's going to close up the store early to go watch it." Kara hugged Sachs and said goodbye. They exchanged phone numbers, each promising they'd be in touch.

Rhyme thanked her again for her help in the Weir case. "We couldn't've caught him without you."

"We'll come see you in Las Vegas," Thom called.

Rhyme started to pilot the Storm Arrow toward the front of the store. As he did he glanced to his left and saw Balzac's still eyes watching him from the back room. The illusionist then turned to Kara as she joined him. Immediately, in his presence, she was a very different woman, timid and self-conscious.

Metamorphosis, Rhyme thought, and he watched Balzac slowly push the door closed, shutting out the rest of the world from the sorcerer and his apprentice.

Chapter Thirty-five.

"I'm gonna say it again. You can have a lawyer, you want one."

"I understand that," Erick Weir muttered in his breathy whisper.

They were in Lon Sellitto's office at One Police Plaza. It was a small room, mostly gray, decorated with-as the detective himself might've put it in a report-"one infant picture, one male child picture, one adult female picture, one scenic lake picture of indeterminate locale, one plant-dead."

Sellitto had interviewed hundreds of suspects in this office. The only difference between them and the present suspect was that Weir was double-shackled to the gray chair across the desk. And an armed patrol officer stood behind him.

"You understand?"

"I said I did," Weir announced.

And so the interview began.

Unlike Rhyme, who specialized in forensics, Detective First-Grade Lon Sellitto was a full-service cop. He was a detective in the real sense of the word. He "detected" the truth, using all the resources that the NYPD and fellow agencies had to offer, as well as his own street smarts and tenacity. It was the best job in the world, he often said. The work called on you to be an actor, a politician, a chess player and sometimes a gunslinger and tackle.

And one of the best parts was the game of interrogation, getting suspects to confess or reveal the names of associates and the location of loot or victims' bodies.

But it was clear from the beginning that this prick wasn't giving up a dustball of information.

"Now, Erick, what do you know about the Patriot Assembly?"

"Like I said, only what I read about them," Weir replied, scratching his chin on his shoulder as best he could. "You want to undo these cuffs just for a minute?"

"No, I don't. You only read about the Assembly?"

"That's right." Weir coughed for a moment.

"Where?"

"Time magazine, I think."

"And you're educated, you speak good. I wouldn't guess you go along with their philosophy."

"Of course not." He wheezed, "They seem like rabid bigots to me."

"So if you don't believe in their politics then the only reason to kill Charles Grady for them is for money. Which you admitted at Rhyme's. So I'd like to know exactly who hired you."

"Oh, I wasn't going to kill him," the prisoner whispered. "You misunderstood me."

"What's to misunderstand? You broke into his apartment with a loaded weapon."

"Look, I like challenges. Seeing if I can break into places nobody else can. I'd never hurt anybody." This was delivered half to Sellitto and half to a battered video camera aimed at his face.

"Say, how was the meatloaf? Or did you have the roast turkey?"

"The what?"

"In Bedford Junction. At the Riverside Inn. I'd say you had the turkey, and Constable's boys had the meatloaf and the steak and the daily special. Which one did Jeddy have?"

"Who? Oh, that man you asked me about? Barnes. You're talking about that receipt, right?" Weir said, wheezing. "The truth is I just found that. I needed to write something down and I grabbed a scrap of paper."