The Vanished Man

by Jeffery Deaver

Ah, yes, his revered audience.

  Double-handcuffed, looking bewildered and diminished, Weir wore a gray businessman's suit. The wig he'd worn last night was gone; his real hair was thick, long and dark blond. In the daylight Rhyme could better see the scarring above his collar; it looked quite severe.

  "How'd you find me?" the man asked in his wheezing voice. "I led you to . . ."

  "To the Cirque Fantastique? You did." When Rhyme had out-thought a perp his mood improved considerably and he was pleased to chat. "You mean you misdirected us there. See, I was looking over the evidence and I got to thinking that the whole case seemed a bit too easy."

  "Easy?" He coughed briefly.

  "In crime scene work there're two types of evidence. There're the clues that are inadvertently left by the perp and then there are planted clues, ones that are intentionally left to mislead us.

  "After everyone ran off to look for gas bombs at the circus I got this sense that some of the clues had been planted. They seemed obvious--the shoes you left at the second victim's apartment had dog hairs and dirt and trace that led to Central Park. It occurred to me that a smart perp might've ground the dirt and hairs into the shoes and left them at the scene so we'd find them and think about the dog knoll next to the circus. And all the talk of fire when you came to see me last night." He glanced toward Kara. "Verbal misdirection, right, Kara?"

  Weir's troubled eyes looked the young woman up and down.

  "Yep," she said, pouring sugar in her coffee.

  "But I tried to kill you," Weir wheezed. "If I'd told you those things to lead you off I'd need you to be alive."

  Rhyme laughed. "You didn't try to kill me at all. You never intended to. You wanted to make it look that way to give what you told me credibility. The first thing you did after you set the fire in my bedroom was to run outside and call nine-one-one from a pay phone. I checked with dispatch. The man who called said he could see the flames from the phone kiosk. Except that it was around the corner. You can't see my room from there. Thom checked on that, by the way. Thank you, Thom," Rhyme called to the aide, who happened to be passing the doorway at that moment.

  "Nada," came the harried reply.

  Weir closed his eyes, shaking his head as he realized the depth of his mistake.

  Rhyme squinted, staring at the evidence board. "All of the victims had jobs or interests reflecting performers in the circus--the musician, makeup artist, horseback riding. And the murder techniques were magic tricks too. But if your motive really was to destroy Kadesky you would've led us away from Cirque Fantastique, not toward it. That meant you were leading us away from something else. What? I looked at the evidence again. At the third scene, by the river, we surprised you--you didn't have time to pick up your jacket with the press pass and hotel key card in the pocket, which meant that those couldn't've been planted clues. They had some legitimate connection to what you were really up to.

  "The hotel card key was from one of three hotels--one of them was the Lanham Arms--Detective Bell thought it sounded familiar and checked his logbook. It turned out that he had coffee with Charles Grady in the lobby bar to talk about the security detail for his family a week ago. Roland told me that the Lanham was right next door to Grady's apartment. Then the press pass? I called the reporter you stole it from. He was covering the Andrew Constable trial and had interviewed Charles Grady several times. . . . We found some brass shavings and assumed the worst, that they were from a bomb timer. But they might've just come from a key or a tool."

  Sachs took up the narrative. "Then The New York Times page we found in your car in the river? It had an article about the circus, yes. But there was also an article about Constable's trial."

  A nod toward the evidence board.

  Militia Murder Plot

  Trial Opens Monday

  Rhyme continued, "The restaurant check too. You should've thrown that out."

  "What check?" Weir asked, frowning.

  "Also in your jacket. From two Saturdays ago."

  "But that weekend I was--" He stopped speaking abruptly.

  "Out of town, you were going to say?" Sachs asked. "Yeah, we know. The check was from a restaurant in Bedford Junction."

  "I don't know what you're talking about."

  "A trooper in Canton Falls investigating the Patriot Assembly group called on my phone, asking for Roland," Rhyme said. "I recognized the area code from the caller ID--it was the same as the number of the restaurant on the check."

  Weir's eyes grew still and Rhyme continued, "Bedford Junction turns out to be the town next to Canton Falls, which's where Constable lives."

  "Who's this Constable you keep talking about?" he asked quickly. But Rhyme could see telltale signs of recognition in his face.

  Sellitto took over. "Was Barnes one of the people you had lunch with? Jeddy Barnes?"

  "I don't know who you mean."

  "You know the Patriot Assembly though?"

  "Just what I've read about in the paper."

  "We don't believe you," Sellitto said.

  "Believe what you like," Weir snapped. Rhyme could see the fierce anger in the eyes, the anger that Dobyns had predicted. After a pause he asked, "How'd you find out my real name?"

  No one answered but Weir's eyes settled on the latest additions about him on the evidence chart. His face grew dark as he gasped, "Somebody betrayed me, didn't they? They told you about the fire and Kadesky. Who was it?" A vicious smile as he glanced from Sachs to Kara and finally settled on Rhyme. "Was it John Keating? He told you that I called him, didn't he? Spineless shit. He never stood up to me. Art Loesser too, right? They're all fucking Judases. I'll remember them. I always remember the people who betray me." He had a coughing fit. When it ended Weir was looking across the room. "Kara. . . . Is that what he said your name is? And who are you?"

  "I'm an illusionist," she said defiantly.

  "One of us," Weir mocked, looking her up and down. "A girl illusionist. And you're, what? A consultant or something? Maybe after I'm released I'll come visit. Maybe I'll vanish you."

  Sachs snapped, "Oh, you ain't getting released in this lifetime, Weir."

  The Conjurer's gasping laugh was chilly. "Then how about when I escape? Walls are, after all, just an illusion."

  "I don't think escape's much of an option either," Sellitto added.

  Rhyme said, "Well, I answered your 'how,' Weir. Or whatever you're calling yourself. How 'bout if you answer my 'why'? We thought it was revenge against Kadesky. But then it turns out you're after Grady. What are you? Some kind of hit-man illusionist?"

  "Revenge?" Weir asked, furious. "What the fuck good is revenge? Will it take the scars away and fix my lungs? Will it bring my wife back? . . . You don't fucking understand! The only thing in my life, the only thing that's ever meant anything to me is performing. Illusion, magic. My mentor groomed me for the profession all my life. The fire took that away from me. I don't have the strength to perform. My hand's deformed. My voice is ruined. Who'd come to see me? I can't do the one thing that God gave me talent for. If the only way I can perform is to break the law, then that's what I'll do."

  Phantom of the Opera syndrome . . .

  He glanced at Rhyme's body again. "How did you feel after your accident, thinking you'd never be a cop again?"

  Rhyme was silent. But the killer's words hit home. How had he felt? The same anger that fueled Erick Weir, yes. And, true, after the accident the concepts of right and wrong vanished completely. Why not be a criminal? he'd thought in the madness of fury and depression. I can find evidence better than any human being on the face of the earth. That means I can also manipulate it. I could commit the perfect crime. . . .

  In the end, of course, thanks to people like Terry Dobyns and other doctors and fellow cops and his own soul, those thoughts had faded. But, yes, he did know exactly what Weir was talking about. Though even at the bleakest and angriest moments he never considered taking another life--except, of course, his own.

  "So you sold your talen
ts like a mercenary?"

  Weir seemed to realize that he'd lost control for a moment and had said too much. He refused to say anything else.

  Sachs's anger got the better of her and she stepped to the whiteboard and ripped down several pictures of the first two victims. Shoving them into Weir's face, she raged, "You killed these people just for diversion? That's all they meant to you."

  Weir held her eye, blase. Then he looked around and laughed. "You really think you can keep me in prison? Do you know that, for a challenge, Harry Houdini was stripped naked and put in death row in Washington, D.C. He escaped from his cell so fast that he had time to open all the doors on the cellblock and switch the condemned prisoners to each other's cells--before the challenge panel got back from lunch."

  Sellitto said, "Yeah, well that was a long time ago. We're a little more sophisticated than that now." To Rhyme and Sachs he said, "I'll take him downtown, see if he wants to share a little more with us."

  But as they started for the doorway Rhyme said, "Hold on." His eyes were on the evidence chart.

  "What?" Sellitto asked.

  "When he got away from Larry Burke after the crafts fair he slipped the cuffs."

  "Right."

  "We found saliva, remember? Take a look in his mouth. See if he's got a pick or key hidden there."

  Weir said, "I don't. Really."

  Sellitto pulled on the latex gloves that Mel Cooper offered. "Open up. You bite me and I'll vanish your balls. Got it? One bite, no balls."

  "Understood." The Conjurer opened his mouth and Sellitto shined his flashlight into it, fished around a bit. "Nothing."

  Rhyme said, "There's another place we ought to check too."

  Sellitto grunted. "I'll make sure they do that downtown, Linc. Some things I do not do for the money they pay me."

  As the detective led Weir toward the door Kara said, "Wait. Check his teeth. Wiggle them. Especially the molars."

  Weir stiffened as Sellitto approached. "You can't do that."

  "Open up," the big detective snapped. "Oh, and the balls comment still applies."

  The Conjurer sighed. "Right top molar. Right on my side, I mean."

  Sellitto glanced at Rhyme then reached in and gently pulled. His hand emerged with a fake tooth. Inside was a small piece of bent metal. He dumped it on an examining board and replaced the tooth.

  The detective said, "It's pretty small. He can actually use that?"

  Kara examined it. "Oh, he could open a pair of regulation handcuffs in about four seconds with that."

  "You're too much, Weir. Come on."

  Rhyme thought of something. "Oh, Lon?" The detective glanced his way. "You have a feeling when he helped us find the pick in his tooth that might've been a little misdirection?"

  Kara nodded. "You're right."

  Weir looked disgusted as Sellitto searched again. This time the detective checked every tooth. He found a second lock pick in a similar fake tooth on the lower left jaw.

  "I'm gonna make sure they put you someplace real special," the detective said ominously. He then called another officer into the room and had him shackle Weir's feet with two sets of cuffs.

  "I can't walk this way," Weir complained in a wheeze.

  "Baby steps," Sellitto said coldly. "Take baby steps."

  Chapter Thirty-three

  The man got the message at a diner on Route 244, which because he didn't have a phone in his trailer--didn't want one, didn't trust 'em--is where he took and made all his calls.

  Sometimes a few days went by before he picked up the messages but because he was expecting an important call today he'd hurried--to the extent he ever hurried--to Elma's Diner right after Bible school.

  Hobbs Wentworth was a bear-sized man with a thin red beard around his face and a fringe of curly hair, lighter than his beard. The word "career" was one that nobody in Canton Falls, New York, had ever associated with Hobbs, which wasn't to say that he didn't work like an ox. He'd give a man his money's worth, as long as the job was out of doors, didn't require too much calculating and his employer was a white Christian.

  Hobbs was married to a quiet, dusty woman named Cindy, who spent most of her time homeschooling, cooking, sewing and visiting with women friends who did the same. Hobbs himself spent most of his time working and hunting and spending evenings with men friends, drinking and arguing (though most of these "arguments" should be called "agreements" since he and his buddies were all extremely like-minded).

  A lifelong resident of Canton Falls, he liked it here. There was plenty of good hunting land, virtually none of it posted. People were solid and good-natured and knew their heads from their rumps ("like-minded" applied to almost everyone in Canton Falls). Hobbs had lots of opportunities to do the things he enjoyed. Like teaching Sunday school, of all things. An eighth-grade graduate with a stolen mortarboard but no learning to show for it, Hobbs had never in the Lord's universe thought anybody'd want him to teach.

  But he had a flair for kids' Sunday school, it turned out. He didn't do prayer sessions or counseling or any Jesus-Loves-Me-This-I-Know singing. . . . Nope, all he did was tell Bible stories to the youngsters. But he was an instant hit--thanks largely to his refusal to stick to the party line. For instance, in his account, instead of Jesus' feeding the crowds with two fish and five loaves, Hobbs reported how the Son of God went bow hunting and killed a deer from a hundred yards away and gutted and dressed it in the town square himself and he fed the people that way. (To illustrate the story Hobbs brought his compound Clearwater MX Flex to the classroom and, chunk, sent a tempered-tip arrow three inches into a cinder-block wall, to the delight of the kids.)

  Having finished one of those classes now, he walked inside Elma's. The waitress walked up to him. "Hey, Hobbs. Pie?"

  "Naw, make it a Vernors and a cheese omelette. Extra Kraft. Hey, d'I get a phone--"

  Before he could finish she handed him a slip of paper. On it were the words: Call me--JB.

  She asked, "That Jeddy? Sounded like him. Since the police've been 'round, those troopers, I mean, I ain't see him 't'all."

  He ignored her question and said only, "Hold that order for a minute." As he went to the pay phone, fishing hard for coins in his jeans, his mind went right back to a lunch he'd had two weeks ago at the Riverside Inn over in Bedford Junction. It'd been him and Frank Stemple and Jeddy Barnes from Canton Falls and a man named Erick Weir, who Barnes later took to calling Magic Man, because he was, of all things, a professional conjurer.

  Barnes had puffed up Hobbs's day ten times by smiling and standing up when Hobbs arrived, saying to Weir, "Here, sir, meet the best shot we got in the county. Not to mention bow hunter. And a damn sharp operator too."

  Hobbs had sat over the fancy food at the fancy restaurant, proud but nervous too (he'd never before even dreamed about eating at the Riverside), poking his fork into the daily special and listening as Barnes and Stemple told him how they'd met Weir. He was sort of like a mercenary soldier, which Hobbs knew all about, being a subscriber to Soldier of Fortune. Hobbs noticed the scars on the man's neck and the deformed fingers, wondering what kind of fight he'd been in that'd cause that kind of damage. Napalm, maybe.

  Barnes had been reluctant to even meet with Weir at first, of course, thinking entrapment. But Magic Man had put him right at ease by telling them to watch the news on one particular day. The lead story was about the murder of a Mexican gardener--an illegal immigrant--working for a rich family in a town nearby. Weir brought Barnes the dead man's wallet. A trophy, like a buck's antlers.

  Weir had been right up front. He'd told them that he'd picked the Mexican because of Barnes's views on immigrants but he personally didn't believe in their extreme causes--his interest was only in making money with his very special talents. Which suited everybody just fine. Over lunch, Magic Man Weir had laid out his plan about Charles Grady then he shook their hands and left. A few days ago Barnes and Stemple had shipped off the skippy, girl-lovin' Reverend Swensen to New York with instructions
to kill Grady on Saturday night. And he'd bobbled the job as predicted.

  Hobbs was supposed to "stay on call," Mr. Weir had said. "In case he was needed."

  And apparently now he was. He punched in the number of the cell phone Barnes used, the account in someone else's name, and heard an abrupt "Yeah?"

  "S'me."

  Because of the state police all over the county looking for Barnes they'd agreed to keep all conversations over the phone to a minimum.

  Barnes said, "You gotta do what we talked about at lunch."

  "Uh-huh. Go to the lake."

  "Right."

  "Go to the lake and take the fishing gear with me?" Hobbs said.

  "That's right."

  "Yessir. When?"

  "Now. Right away."

  "Then I will."

  Barnes hung up abruptly and Hobbs changed his omelette to a coffee and a bacon and egg sandwich, extra Kraft, to go. When Jeddy Barnes said now, right away, now and right away was how you did whatever you were supposed to do.

  When the food was ready he pushed outside, fired up his pickup and drove fast onto the highway. He had one stop to make--his trailer. Then he'd pick up the old junker Dodge registered to somebody who didn't exist and speed down to the "lake," which didn't mean any kind of lake at all; it meant a particular place in New York City.

  Just like the "fishing gear" he was supposed to take with him sure didn't mean a rod and reel either.

  *

  Back in the Tombs.

  On one side of the floor-bolted table sat a grim-faced Joe Roth, Andrew Constable's pudgy lawyer.

  Charles Grady was on the other side, flanked by his second, Roland Bell. Amelia Sachs stood; the pungent interview room, with its jaundiced, milky windows, gave her a renewed sense of claustrophobia, which had been receding only slowly after the terrible panic at the Cirque Fantastique. She fidgeted and rocked her weight back and forth.

  The door opened and Constable's guard led the prisoner into the room, recuffed his hands in front of him. Then he swung the door closed and returned to the corridor.

  "It didn't work" was the first thing Grady said to him. A calm voice, oddly dispassionate, Sachs thought, considering that his family had nearly been wiped out.

  "What didn't . . . ?" Constable began. "Is this about that fool Ralph Swensen?"

  "No, this is about Erick Weir," Grady said.