Jeffery Deaver - The Vanished Man

"Well, there was."

She stepped to the doorway, called down the hall for Lon Sellitto to join them.

He ambled inside, sniffing his jacket and wrinkling his nose. "A two-hundred-forty-fucking-dollar suit. History. Shit. What, Officer?"

"I'm going to interview the witness, Lieutenant. You have your tape recorder?"

"Sure." He took it out of his pocket and handed it to her. "There's a wit?"

Rhyme said, "Forget witnesses, Sachs. You know how unreliable they are. Stick with the evidence."

"No, we'll get something good. I'll make sure we do."

A glance at the doorway. "Well, who the hell is it?"

"You," she said, pulling a chair close to the bed.

"Me? Ridiculous."

"No. Not ridiculous."

"Forget it. Walk the grid again. You missed things. You searched way too fast. If you were a rookie -"

"I'm not a rookie. I know how to search a scene fast and I know when it's time to stop searching and go on to more productive things." She examined Sellitto's small recorder, checked the tape, and clicked it on.

"This is NYPD Patrol Officer Amelia Sachs, Badge Five Eight Eight Five, interviewing Lincoln Rhyme, witness in a ten-twenty-four assault and ten-twenty-nine arson at three-four-five Central Park West. The date is Saturday, April twentieth." She set the recorder on the table near Rhyme.

Who glanced at the unit as if it were a snake.

"Now," she said. "Description."

"I told Lon -"

"Tell me ."

A sarcastic look at the ceiling. "He was medium-built, male, approximately fifty to fifty-five years of age, wearing a police officer's uniform. No beard this time. Scar tissue and discoloration on his neck and on his chest."

"His blouse was open? You could see his chest?"

"Excuse me," he said with bright sarcasm. "Scar tissue at the base of his neck presumably continuing down to his chest. Little and ring fingers of his left hand were fused together. He had… appeared to have brown eyes."

"Good, Rhyme," she said. "We didn't have his eye color before."

"And we may not now if he's wearing contacts," he snapped, feeling he'd scored a point here. "I could probably remember better with something to help." He looked toward Thom.

"Something to help?"

"I assume you have an unincinerated bottle of Macallan somewhere in the kitchen."

"Later," Sachs said. "Let's keep a clear head."

"But -"

Worrying her scalp with a nail, she continued, "Now. I want to go through everything that happened. What did he say?"

"I can't remember very much," he said impatiently. "It was mostly crazy ramblings. And I was hardly in the mood to pay attention."

"Maybe they sounded crazy to you. But I'll bet there was something we could use."

"Sachs," he said sardonically, "do you think I might've been a little spooked and confused? I mean, just a little distracted maybe?"

She touched his shoulder, a place where he could feel the contact. "I know you don't trust witnesses. But sometimes they do see things… This's my specialty, Rhyme."

Amelia Sachs, the people cop.

"I'll walk you through it. Just like you walk me through the grid. We'll find something important."

She rose, walked to the door and called, "Kara?"

Yes, he distrusted witnesses, even those who had good vantage points and weren't part of the action itself. Anyone involved in the actual crime – especially a victim of violence – was totally unreliable. Even now, thinking about the killer's visit, all Rhyme could see was a random series of incidents – the Conjurer behind him, standing over him, lighting the fire. The razor blades. The smell of the scotch, the boiling smoke. He didn't even have a sense of the chronology of the killer's visit.

Memory, as Kara had said, is only an illusion.

A moment later the young woman appeared. "Are you all right, Lincoln?"

"Fine," he muttered.

Sachs was explaining that she wanted Kara to listen; she might recognize something the killer had said that could be helpful to them. The policewoman sat down again and pulled her chair close. "Let's go back there, Rhyme. Tell us what happened. Just in general terms."

He hesitated, glanced at the tape recorder. Then he began to recount the events as he remembered them. The Conjurer appearing, admitting he'd stolen the uniform then killed the officer, telling Rhyme about the officer's body.

The weather's warm…

He then said, "It was like he was pretending he was performing a show and I was a fellow performer." Hearing the man's odd rambling in his mind, Rhyme said, "I do remember one thing. He's got asthma. Or at least he sounded winded. He was gasping for breath a lot, whispering."

"Good," Sachs said. "I'd forgotten he sounded that way at the pond after the Marston assault. What else did he say?"

Rhyme looked at the dark ceiling of the small guest room. Shaking his head.

"That's about it. He was either burning me or threatening to slice me up… Oh, did you find any razor blades when you searched the room?"

"No."

"Well, there. This's what I'm talking about – evidence. I know he threw a blade in my sweatpants. The doctors didn't find it. It must've fallen out. See, that's the sort of thing you should be looking for."

"It was probably never in your pants," Kara said. "I know the illusion. He palmed the blade."

"Well, my point is that you don't tend to listen to people real close when they're torturing you."

"Come on, Rhyme, go on back there. It's earlier this evening. Kara and I're getting dinner. You've been looking over evidence. Thom's brought you upstairs. You were tired, right?"

"No," the criminalist said, "I wasn't tired. But he brought me up there anyway."

"Imagine you weren't too happy about that."

"No, I wasn't."

"So you're up in the room."

Picturing the lights, the silhouette of the birds. Thom, closing the door.

"It's quiet -" Sachs began.

"No, it's not quiet at all. There's that goddamn circus across the street. Anyway, I set the alarm -"

"For what time?"

"I don't know. An hour. What difference does it make?"

"One detail can give birth to two others."

A scowl. "Where'd that come from, a fortune cookie?"

She smiled. "Made it up. But it sounds good, don't you think? Use it in the new edition of your book."

"I don't write books about witnesses," Rhyme said. "I write them about evidence." Feeling victorious again with this comeback.

"Now, how do you tell he's here at first? Did you hear anything?"

"No, I felt a draft. I thought it was the air-conditioning at first. But it was him. He was blowing on my neck and cheek."

"Just to – Why?"

"To scare me, I guess. It worked, by the way." Rhyme closed his eyes. Then he nodded as a few memories came back. "I tried to call Lon on the phone. But he" – a glance at Kara. "He caught my move. He threatened to kill me – no, he threatened to blind me – if I tried to call for help. I thought he was going to. But – it was odd – he seemed impressed. He complimented me on my misdirection…" His voice faded as his memory trailed off into dimness.

"How did he get in?"

"He walked in with the officer who brought the evidence from the Grady hit."

"Shit," Sellitto said. "From now on we check IDs – everybody who walks through the friggin' door. I mean, everybody ."

"He's talking about misdirection," Sachs continued. "He's complimented you. What else is he saying?"

"I don't know," Rhyme muttered. "Nothing."

"Nothing at all?" she asked, her voice a whisper.

"I. Don't. Know." Lincoln Rhyme was furious. At Sachs because she was pushing him. Because she wouldn't let him have a drink to numb the terror.