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?"