The Vanished Man

by Jeffery Deaver

  "But then, once you got involved in the case yourself, it changed color. It became black and white. Whether you were prosecuting or defending, the gray disappeared. Your side was one hundred percent good. The other side was one hundred percent evil. Right or wrong. My professor said you have to guard against that. You have to keep reminding yourself that cases were really gray."

  Bell noticed an orderly. The young Latino seemed harmless but the detective nodded to Wilson, who stopped him and checked his badge nonetheless. He gave an okay sign to Bell.

  Chrissy'd been in an operating room for fifteen minutes. Why couldn't somebody come out and at least give them some progress?

  Grady continued, "But you know, Roland, all these months since we found out about that conspiracy in Canton Falls I kept seeing the Constable case as black and white. I never once considered it gray. I went after him with everything I had." A sad laugh. He looked up the hall again, the grim smile fading. "Where the hell's that doctor?"

  Lowered his head again.

  "But maybe if I'd seen more gray, maybe if I hadn't gone after him so hard, if I'd compromised more, he might not've hired Weir. He might not've . . ." He nodded toward where his daughter was at the moment. He choked and cried silently for a moment.

  Bell said, "I'm thinking your professor was wrong, Charles. At least about people like Constable. Anybody who'd do what he's done, well, there is no gray with people like that."

  Grady wiped his face.

  "Your boys, Roland. They ever been in the hospital?"

  Visiting their mother toward the end was the detective's first thought. But Bell didn't say anything about that. "Off and on. Nothing serious--fixin' up whatever a softball can do to a forehead or a little finger. Or a shortstop running you down armed with a softball."

  "Well," Grady said, "it takes your breath away." Another look up the empty hall. "Takes it clean away."

  A few minutes later the detective was aware of motion in the corridor. A doctor wearing green scrubs noticed Grady and walked slowly toward them. Bell could read nothing on his face.

  "Charles," the detective said softly.

  But, though his head was down, Grady was already watching the man's approach.

  "Black and white," he whispered. "Lord." He rose to meet the doctor.

  *

  Gazing out the window at the evening sky, Lincoln Rhyme heard his phone ring.

  "Command, answer phone."

  Click.

  "Yes?"

  "Lincoln? It's Roland."

  Mel Cooper turned gravely to look at him. They knew Bell was at the hospital with Christine Grady and her family.

  "What's the word?"

  "She's all right."

  Cooper closed his eyes momentarily and if ever a Protestant came close to blessing himself this was the moment. Rhyme too felt a surge of relief.

  "No poison?"

  "Nothing. It was just candy. Not a lick of toxin anywhere."

  "So that was misdirection too," the criminalist mused.

  "Seems to be."

  "But what the hell does it mean?" Rhyme asked in a faint voice, the question directed not so much to Bell but to himself.

  The detective offered, "For my money, Weir pointing us to Grady? I'm thinking that means he's still going to try something else to spring Constable from detention. He's in the courthouse somewhere."

  "You on your way to the safehouse?"

  "Yup. Whole family. We'll sit it out there till you catch this fella."

  Till?

  How about if?

  They hung up and Rhyme turned from the window and wheeled back to the evidence chart.

  The hand is quicker than the eye.

  Except that it's not.

  What did master illusionist Erick Weir have in mind?

  Feeling his neck muscles tense to the point of cramping, he gazed out the window as he considered the enigma they were facing:

  Hobbs Wentworth, the hit man, was dead and Grady and his family were safe. Constable had clearly been preparing to escape from the interview room at the Tombs but there'd been no overt attempt by Weir to actually spring him. So it appeared that Weir's plans were falling apart.

  But Rhyme couldn't accept that obvious conclusion. With the supposed attempt on Christine Grady he'd taken their attention away from downtown and Rhyme now leaned toward Bell's conclusion that there was soon going to be another attempt to rescue Constable.

  Or there was something else going on--maybe an attempt to kill Constable to keep him from testifying.

  The frustration seared him. Rhyme had long ago accepted that with his condition he would never physically capture a perp. But the compensation was the sinewy strength of a clever mind. Sitting motionless in his chair or bed, he could at least outthink the criminals he pursued.

  Except that with Erick Weir, the Conjurer, he couldn't. This was a man whose soul was devoted to deception.

  Rhyme considered if there was anything else to be done to find answers to the impossible questions raised by the case.

  Sachs, Sellitto and ESU were scouring the detention center and courts. Kara was at the Cirque Fantastique awaiting Kadesky. Thom was placing calls to Keating and Loesser, the killer's former assistants, to see if the man had contacted them in the past day or if they'd happened to remember something else that could be helpful. A Physical Evidence Response Team, on loan from the FBI, was searching the scene of the office building where Hobbs Wentworth had shot himself, and technicians in Washington were still analyzing the fiber and fake-blood paint found by Sachs at the detention center.

  What else could Rhyme do to find out what Weir had in mind?

  Only one thing.

  He decided to try something he hadn't done for years.

  Rhyme himself began to walk some grids. This search started at the bloody escape scene in the detention center and took him through winding corridors, lit with algae-green fluorescence. Around corners banged dull from years of careening supply carts and pallets. Into closets and furnace rooms. Trying to follow the footsteps--and discern the thoughts--of Erick Weir.

  The walk was, of course, conducted with his eyes closed and took place exclusively in his mind. Still, it seemed appropriate that he should engage in a hot pursuit that was wholly imaginary when the prey he sought was a vanished man.

  *

  The stoplight changed to green and Malerick accelerated slowly.

  He was thinking about Andrew Constable, a conjurer in his own right, to hear Jeddy Barnes tell it. Like a mentalist Constable could size up a man in seconds and assume a countenance that would put him instantly at ease. Speaking humorously, intelligently, with understanding. Taking rational, sympathetic positions.

  Selling the medicine to the gullible.

  Of which there were plenty, of course. You'd think that people would tip to the nonsense that groups like the Patriot Assembly spewed. But as the great impresario of Malerick's own art, P. T. Barnum, noted, there's a sucker born every minute.

  As he picked his way through the Sunday evening traffic Malerick was amused to think of Constable's utter bewilderment at the moment. Part of the plan for the prisoner's escape required Constable to incapacitate his lawyer. Two weeks ago, in the restaurant in Bedford Junction, Jeddy Barnes had said to him, "Well, Mr. Weir, the thing is, Roth's Jewish. Andrew'll enjoy hurting him pretty good."

  "Makes no difference to me," Malerick had replied. "He can kill him if he wants to. That won't affect my plan. I just want him taken care of. Out of the way."

  Barnes had nodded. "Suspect that'll be good news to Mr. Constable."

  He could imagine the growing dismay and panic within Constable as he sat over the cooling body of his lawyer, waiting for Weir to arrive with guns and disguises to sneak him out of the building--an event that, of course, was never going to happen.

  The jail door would open and a dozen guards would haul the man back to his cell. The trial would go on and Andrew Constable--as confused as Barnes and Wentworth and everyone e
lse in his Neanderthal clan in upstate New York--would never know how they'd been used.

  As he waited at another stoplight he wondered how the other misdirection of his was unfolding. The Poisoned Little Girl routine (melodramatic, Malerick had assessed, if not an outright cliche, but he'd learned from years of performing that audiences do much better with the obvious). Not the best misdirection in the world, of course; he wasn't sure they'd discover the syringe in the Lanham. Nor could he be certain the girl or anyone else would eat the candy. But Rhyme and his people were so good that he guessed there was a chance they would leap to the horrifying conclusion that this was another attempt on the life of the prosecutor and his family. Then they'd find there was no poison in the candy after all.

  What would they make of that?

  Was there other tainted candy?

  Or was this misdirection--to lead them away from Manhattan Detention, where Malerick might be planning some other way to break Constable out?

  In short, the police too would be floating in a soup of confusion, having no idea what was actually going on.

  Well, what's been going on for the past two days, Revered Audience, is a sublime performance featuring the perfect combination of physical and psychological misdirection.

  Physical--by directing the attention of the police toward both Charles Grady's apartment and the detention center.

  Psychological--by shifting suspicion away from what Malerick was really doing and toward the very credible motive that Lincoln Rhyme proudly believed he'd figured out: the hired killing of Grady and the orchestration of Andrew Constable's escape. Once the police had deduced that, their minds stopped looking for any other explanation as to what he was really up to.

  Which had absolutely nothing to do with the Constable case. All of the clues he'd left so obviously--the illusionist-trick attacks on the first three victims, who represented aspects of the circus, the shoe with the dog hairs and dirt ground into it leading to Central Park, the references to the fire in Ohio and the connection with the Cirque Fantastique . . . all of those had convinced the police that his intent couldn't really be revenge against Kadesky because that, as Lincoln Rhyme had told him, was too obvious. He had to be up to something else.

  But he wasn't.

  Now, dressed in a medical technician's uniform, he eased the ambulance he was driving through the service entrance of the tent housing the World Renowned Internationally Heralded Critically Acclaimed Cirque Fantastique.

  He parked under the box seats scaffolding, climbed out and locked the door. None of the stagehands, police or the many security guards paid any attention to him or the ambulance. After the bomb scare earlier in the day, it was perfectly normal for an emergency vehicle to be parked here--perfectly natural, an illusionist would note.

  Look, Revered Audience, here is your illusionist, center stage yet completely invisible.

  He's the Vanished Man, present but unseen.

  No one even glanced at the vehicle, which wasn't an ordinary ambulance at all, but a feke. In place of medical equipment it now held a dozen plastic drums containing a total of seven hundred gallons of gasoline, attached to a simple detonation device, which would soon spark the liquid to life, sending the deadly flood erupting into the bleachers, into the canvas, into the audience of more than two thousand people.

  Among whom would be Edward Kadesky.

  See, Mr. Rhyme, when we talked before? My words were just patter. Kadesky and the Cirque Fantastique destroyed my life and my love and I'm going to destroy him. Revenge is what this is all about.

  Ignored by everyone, the illusionist now walked casually out of the tent and into Central Park. He'd change out of the medical worker's uniform and into a new disguise and would return under cover of night, becoming, for a change, a member of the audience himself and finding a good vantage spot to enjoy the finale of his show.

  Chapter Forty-four Families, clusters of friends, couples, children were slowly entering the tent, finding their seats, filling in the bleachers and box seats, slowly changing from individuals into that creature called an audience, the whole becoming very different from the parts.

  Metamorphoses . . .

  Kara turned away from the sight and stopped a security guard. "I've been waiting for a while. You have any idea when Mr. Kadesky'll be back? It's really important."

  No, he didn't know and neither did the two other people she asked.

  Another glance at her watch. She felt heartsick. An image came to her of her mother, lying in the Stuyve sant home, looking around the room, pierced with clarity and wondering where her daughter was. Kara wanted to cry in frustration at being trapped here. Knowing that she had to stay, do what she could to stop Weir, yet wanting so desperately to be at her mother's side.

  She turned back to the brightly lit interior of the huge circus tent. Performers waited in the wings, getting ready for the opening act, wearing their eerie commedia dell'arte masks. The kids in the audience were wearing the face gear too, overpriced souvenirs from the stands outside. Pug and hooked noses, beaks. They gazed around, mostly excited and giddy. But some were uneasy, she could see. The masks and otherworldly decorations probably made the circus seem to them like a scene from a horror movie. Kara loved performing for children but she knew that you had to be careful; their reality was different from adults' and an illusionist could easily destroy youngsters' shaky sense of comfort. She only did funny illusions in her young children's shows and would often gather the kids around her afterward and tip the gaff.

  Looking at all the magic around her, feeling the excitement, the anticipation. . . . Her palms were sweating as if she herself were about to go on. Oh, what she wouldn't give to be standing in the prep tent right now. Content, confident, yet wired, feeling the accelerating heartbeat of anticipation as the clock ticked toward showtime. There was no sensation like that in the world.

  She laughed sadly to herself. Well, here she'd made it to Cirque Fantastique.

  But as an errand girl.

  She wondered now, Am I good enough? Despite what David Balzac said, sometimes she believed she was. At least as good as, say, Harry Houdini during his early shows--the only escapism at those had been the audience members who snuck out of the halls, bored or embarrassed to watch him flub simple sleights. Robert-Houdin was so uncomfortable in his initial performances that he ended up offering the audience clockwork automatons like a windup Turk who played chess.

  But as she gazed backstage, at the hundreds of performers who'd been in the business since childhood, Balzac's firm voice looped through her mind: Not yet, not yet, not yet . . . She heard these words with disappointment yet comfort. He was right, she decided with finality. He was the expert, she was the apprentice. She had to have confidence in him. A year or two. The wait would be worth it.

  Besides, there was her mother. . . .

  Who was maybe sitting up in bed right now, chatting with Jaynene, wondering where her daughter was--the daughter who'd abandoned her on the one night when she should've been there.

  Kadesky's assistant, Katherine Tunney, appeared at the top of the stairs and gestured toward her.

  Was Kadesky here? Please. . . .

  But the woman said, "He just called. He had a radio interview after dinner and he's running late. He'll be here soon. That's his box in the front. Why don't you wait there?"

  Kara nodded and, discouraged, walked to the seat Katherine indicated, sat down and gazed back at the tent. She saw that the magic transformation was finally complete; every seat was filled. The children, the men, the women were now an audience.

  Thud.

  Kara jumped as a loud, hollow drum resonated through the tent.

  The lights went down, extinguished completely, plunging them into a darkness broken only by the red exit lights.

  Thud.

  The crowd was instantly silent.

  Thud . . . thud . . . thud.

  The drumbeat sounded slowly. You could feel it in your chest.

  Thud . . . th
ud . . .

  A brilliant spotlight shot into the center of the ring, illuminating the actor playing Arlecchino, dressed in his black-and-white-checkered bodysuit, wearing his matching half mask. Holding a long scepter high in the air, he looked around mischievously.

  Thud.

  He stepped forward and began to march around the ring as a procession of performers appeared behind him: other commedia dell'arte characters, as well as spirits, fairies, princesses and princes, wizards. Some walking, some dancing, some cartwheeling slowly as if under water, some on high stilts stepping more gracefully than most people stroll down the sidewalk, some riding in chariots or carts decorated with tulle and feathers and lace and tiny glowing lights.

  Everyone moving in perfect time to the drum.

  Thud . . . thud . . .

  Faces masked, faces painted white or black or silver or gold, faces dotted with glitter. Hands juggling glowing balls, hands carrying orbs or flares or candles or lanterns, hands scattering confetti like glittering snow.

  Solemn, regal, playful, grotesque.

  Thud . . .

  Both medieval and futuristic, the parade was hypnotic. And its message was unmistakable: whatever existed outside the tent was invalid here. You could forget everything you'd learned about life, about human nature, about the laws of physics themselves. Your heart was now beating not to its own rhythm but in time to the crisp drum, and your soul was no longer yours; it had been captured by this unearthly parade making its deliberate way into the world of illusion.

  Chapter Forty-five

  We come now to the finale of our show, Revered Audience.

  It's time to present our most celebrated--and controversial--illusion. A variation on the infamous Burning Mirror.

  During our show this weekend you've seen the performances of illusions created by such masters as Harry Houdini and P. T. Selbit and Howard Thurston. But not even they would attempt an act like the Burning Mirror.

  Our performer, trapped in a likeness of hell, surrounded by flames that close in inexorably--and the only route for escape, a tiny doorway protected by a wall of fire.

  Though, of course, the door might not be an escape route at all.

  Maybe it's just an illusion.

  I have to warn you, Revered Audience, that the most recent attempt to perform this trick resulted in tragedy.