Jeffery Deaver - The Vanished Man

And Malerick had nodded, offering a thoughtful expression; he knew enough never to condescend to either an audience or fellow performers. "Well, I don't mind killing them," he'd explained. "But wouldn't it make more sense to leave them alive unless they're a risk – like a risk they could identify me? Or, say, the little girl goes for the phone to call the police? Probably there are some of your people who'd object to killing women and children."

"Well, it's your plan, Mr. Weir," Barnes had said. "We'll go with what you think." Though the idea of temperance seemed to leave him vaguely dissatisfied.

Now Malerick stopped outside Grady's living room and hung a fake NYPD badge around his neck, the one he'd flashed at the cops near the Cirque Fantastique when he'd sent them home for the day. He glanced in a flea-market mirror whose surface needed to be recoated.

Yes, he was in role, looking just like a detective here to protect a prosecutor against whom vicious death threats had been made.

A deep breath. No butterflies.

And now, Revered Audience, lights up, curtain up.

The real show is about to begin…

Hands held naturally at his sides, Malerick turned the corner of the corridor and strode into the living room.

"Hey, how's it going?" the man in the gray suit asked, startling Luis Martinez, the quiet, bulky detective working for Roland Bell.

The guard was sitting on the couch in front of the TV, a Sunday New York Times in his lap. "Man, surprised me." He nodded a greeting, glanced at the newcomer's badge and ID and then scanned his face. "You the relief?"

"That's right."

"How'd you get in? They give you a key?"

"Got one downtown." He was speaking in a throaty whisper, like he had a cold.

"Lucky you," Luis muttered. "We've gotta share one. Pain in the ass."

"Where's Mr. Grady?"

"In the kitchen. With his wife and Chrissy. How come you're early?"

"I dunno," the man replied. "I'm just the hired help. This's the time they told me."

"Story of our lives, huh?" Luis said. He frowned. "I don't think I know you."

"Name's Joe David," the man said. "Usually work over in Brooklyn."

Luis nodded. "Yeah, that's where I cut my teeth, the Seventy."

"This is my first rotation here. Bodyguard detail, I mean."

A loud commercial came on the TV.

"Sorry," Luis said. "I missed that. Your first rotation, you said?"

"Right."

The big detective said, "Okay, how 'bout your last too?" Luis dropped the newspaper and leaped up from the couch, drawing his Glock smoothly and pointing it at the man he knew was Erick Weir. Normally placid, Luis now shouted into his microphone, "He's here! He got in – in the living room!"

Two other officers who'd been waiting in the kitchen – Detective Bell and that fat lieutenant, Lon Sellitto – shoved through another doorway, both with astonished looks on their faces. They grabbed Weir's arms and pulled a silenced pistol from his belt.

"Down, now, now, now!" Sellitto shouted in a raw, edgy voice, his gun pressed into the man's face. And what an expression was on it! Luis thought. He'd seen a lot of surprised perps over the years. But this guy took the prize. He was gasping, couldn't speak. But Luis supposed he wasn't any more surprised than the cops were.

"Where the hell d'he come from?" Sellitto asked breathlessly. Bell only shook his head in dismay.

As Luis double-cuffed Weir roughly, Sellitto leaned close to the perp. "You alone? You got backup outside?"

"No."

"Don't bullshit us!"

"My arms, you're hurting my arms!" Weir gasped.

"Anybody else with you?"

"No, no, I swear."

Bell was calling the others on his handy-talkie. "Heaven help me – he got inside… I don't know how."

Two uniformed officers assigned to the Saving the Witness's Ass Team hurried into the apartment from the hallway, where they'd been hiding near the elevator.

"Looks like he jimmied the window on this floor," one of them said. "You know, the window at the fire escape."

Bell glanced at Weir and he understood. "The ledge from the Lanham? You jumped?"

Weir said nothing but that had to be the answer. They'd stationed officers in the alley between the Lanham and Grady's building and on the roofs of both structures too. But it had never occurred to them he'd walk along the ledge and leap over the air shaft.

Bell asked the officers, "And no sign of anybody else?"

"Nope. Looks like he was solo."

Sellitto donned latex gloves and patted him down. The search yielded burglary tools and various props and magic supplies. The oddest were the fake fingertips, glued on tightly. Sellitto pulled them off and deposited them in a plastic evidence bag. If the situation weren't so unnerving – that a hired killer had actually gotten into the apartment of the family they were protecting – the image of the ten finger pads in a bag would've been comical.

They looked over their prey as Sellitto continued to search him. Weir was muscular and in excellent shape, despite the fact that the fire had caused some serious damage – the scarring was quite extensive.

"Any ID?" Bell asked.

Sellitto shook his head. "F.A.O. Schwarz." Meaning low-quality fake NYPD badge and ID card. Not much better than toys.

Weir glanced toward the kitchen, which he could see was empty. He frowned.

"Oh, the Gradys aren't here," Bell said, as if it were obvious.

The man closed his eyes and rested his head on the threadbare carpet. "How? How did you figure it out?"

Sellitto supplied an answer of sorts. "Well, guess what? There's somebody who'd love to answer that question for you. Come on, we're going for a ride."

• • •

Looking over the shackled killer standing in the doorway of the lab, Lincoln Rhyme said, "Welcome back."

"But… the fire." Dismayed, the man looked toward the stairway that led up to the bedroom.

"Sorry we ruined your performance," Rhyme said coldly. "I guess you couldn't quite escape from me after all, could you, Weir?"

He turned his gaze back to the criminalist and hissed, "That's not my name anymore."

"You changed it?"

Weir shook his head. "Not legally. But Weir's who I used to be. I go by something else now."

Rhyme recalled psychologist Terry Dobyns's observation that the fire had "murdered" Weir's old persona and he'd become somebody else.

The killer now looked over Rhyme's body. "You understand that, don't you? You'd like to forget the past and become somebody else too, I'd imagine."

"What are you calling yourself?"

"That's between me and my audience."

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 outthought 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?"