Jeffery Deaver - The Vanished Man

"It's earlier their time," Rhyme pointed out, glancing at the clock. "Dig up the speakerphone, Thom."

"No, after everything tonight you need some rest."

"Just two phone calls. Then beddy-bye. Promise."

The aide debated.

"Please and thank-you?"

Thom nodded and vanished. A moment later he returned with the phone, plugged it in, set the unit close to Rhyme on the bedside table. "Ten minutes and I'm pulling the main circuit breaker," the aide said with enough threat in his voice to make Rhyme believe he'd do it.

"Fair enough."

Sellitto finished his sandwich and dialed the number of the first assistant on Cooper's list. The recorded voice of Arthur Loesser's wife answered and told them that the family wasn't home but please leave a message. Sellitto did so then he dialed the other assistant.

John Keating answered on the first ring and Sellitto explained they were in the middle of an investigation and had some questions for him. A pause then a man's nervous voice rattled out of the tiny speaker. "Uhm, what's this about? This's the New York City police?"

"That's right."

"Okay. I guess it's okay."

Sellitto asked, "You used to work for a man named Erick Weir, didn't you?"

Silence for a moment. Then the man launched into a staccato reply. "Mr. Weir? Well, uh-huh. I did. Why?" The voice was edgy and high. He sounded as if he'd just had a dozen cups of coffee.

"Do you happen to know where he might be?"

"I mean, why are you asking me about him?"

"We'd like to talk to him as part of a criminal investigation."

"Oh, my God… About what? What do you want to talk to him about?"

"We just have some general questions," Sellitto said. "Have you had any contact with him lately?"

There was a pause. This was the part where the nervous man would either spill all or run for the hills, Rhyme knew.

"Sir?" Sellitto asked.

"That's funny, okay. You asking me, I mean about him." The words clattered like marbles on metal. "Here it is. I'll tell you. I hadn't heard from Mr. Weir for years. I thought he was dead. There was this fire in Ohio, the last job we were working. He got burned. Real bad. He disappeared and we all thought he was dead. But then maybe six or seven weeks ago he called."

"From where?" Rhyme asked.

"I don't know. He didn't say. I didn't ask. It doesn't occur to anyone to ask where somebody's calling from. Not the first thing. You just don't think about that. Do you ever ask that?"

Rhyme asked, "What did he want?"

"Okay, okay. He wanted to know if I still kept up with anybody at the circus where the fire happened. The Hasbro circus. But that was Ohio. It was three years ago. And Hasbro's not even in business anymore. After the fire the owner folded it and it became a different show. Why would I keep up with anybody there? Here I am in Reno. I said I didn't. And he got all ippity, you know."

Rhyme frowned again.

Sachs tried, "Angry?"

"Oh, hell-ooooh. Yeah, I'll say."

"Go on," Rhyme said, struggling against impatience. "Tell us what else he said."

"That was it. That was all. What I just told you. I mean, there were little things. Oh, he got his digs in like he always did. The claws. Just like old times… You know what he did when he called?"

"What was that?" Rhyme encouraged.

"All he said was, 'It's Erick.' Not 'Hello.' Not 'Oh, John, how are you? Remember me?' No. 'It's Erick.' I hadn't talked to him since the fire. And what does he say? 'It's Erick.' All these years since I got away from him, working so hard to get away… and then it's like I haven't gotten away at all. I know I hadn't done anything wrong. And here he's making it sound like something's all my fault. It's like you take an order from a customer and then when you bring the food they claim it's not what they ordered. But everybody knows what happened – they changed their mind and they're making it sound like you got it wrong. Like it's your fault and you're the one who gets in trouble."

Sachs continued, "Can you tell us anything about him in general? Other friends, places he liked to go, hobbies."

"Sure," came the snappy voice. "All of the above: illusion."

"What?" Rhyme asked.

"That was his friends, places he liked to go to, hobbies. You get what I'm saying? There was nothing else. He was like totally absorbed in the profession."

Sachs tried again. "Well, what about his attitude toward people? His outlook? How he thought about things?"

A long pause. "Fifty minutes, twice a week for three years I've been trying to figure him out and I can't. For three years. And he still hurts me. I -" Keating broke into a harsh, eerie laugh. "You catch that? I said 'hurts.' I meant to say 'haunts.' He still haunts me. How's that for Freudian? I'll have something to share next Monday at nine A. M., won't I? He still haunts me and I don't have a clue what his fucking outlook is."

Rhyme could see everyone on the team was growing frustrated with the man's rambling. He said, "We heard his wife was killed in the fire. Do you know anything about her family?"

"Marie? No, they'd only gotten married a week or two before the fire. They were really in love. We thought she'd calm him down. Make him haunt us less. We were hoping that. But we never got to know her."

"Can you give us the names of anybody who might know something about him?"

"Art Loesser was first assistant. I was second. We were his boys. They called us 'Erick's boys.' Everybody did."

Rhyme said, "We have a call in to Loesser. Anyone else?"

"The only one I can think of is the manager of the Hasbro circus at the time. Edward Kadesky's his name. He's a producer in Chicago now, I think."

Sellitto got the spelling of the man's name. Then asked, "Did Weir ever call back?"

"No. But he didn't need to. Five minutes and he got the claws in. Hurting and haunting."

It's Erick…

"Look, I should go. I have to iron my uniform. I'm working the Sunday morning shift. It's a busy one."

After they hung up, Sachs walked to the speakerphone to hit the disconnect button. "Brother," she muttered.

"Needs more meds," Sellitto observed.

"Well, at least we've got a lead," Rhyme said. "Track down that Kadesky."

Mel Cooper disappeared for a few minutes and when he returned he had a printout of a database of theatrical companies. Kadesky Productions had its office on South Wells Street in the Windy City. Sellitto placed a call and, not surprisingly, being late Saturday night, got the answering service. He left a message.

Sellitto said, "Okay – Weir's messed up his assistant's life. He's unstable. He's injured people in the audience and now he's a pattern doer. But what's making him tick?"

Sachs looked up at this. "Let's give Terry a call."

Terry Dobyns was an NYPD psychologist. There were several on the force but Dobyns was the sole behavioral profiler, a skill he'd learned and honed at the FBI in Quantico, Virginia. Thanks to the press and popular fiction the public hears a lot about psychological profiling and it can be valuable – but only, Rhyme felt, in a limited type of crime. Generally there's nothing mysterious about the workings of a perp's mind. But in cases where the motive is a mystery and his next target is hard to anticipate, profiling can be valuable. It helps investigators find informants or individuals who might know the suspect, anticipate his next move, set up decoys in appropriate neighborhoods, run stakeouts and look for similar crimes in the past.

Sellitto thumbed through an NYPD directory of phone numbers and placed a call to Dobyns at home.

"Terry."

"Lon. You've got speakerphone echo. Let me deduce that Lincoln 's there too."

"Yep," Rhyme confirmed. He had a fondness for Dobyns, the first person he saw when he awakened after his spinal cord accident. Rhyme recalled that the man loved touch football, opera and the mysteries of the human mind in roughly the same degrees – and all passionately.