Jeffery Deaver - The Vanished Man

The large woman said she'd love to and suggested a new place near the Jefferson Market at Sixth and Tenth.

Kara demurred, though, saying that she had to stay and work on some of the routines she'd slipped up on during the performance. "Girl, no way," the nurse said, frowning. "You gotta work?"

"It'll only be a couple of hours. That friend of Mr. Balzac's doing some private show tonight and he's going to close up the store early to go watch it." Kara hugged Sachs and said goodbye. They exchanged phone numbers, each promising they'd be in touch.

Rhyme thanked her again for her help in the Weir case. "We couldn't've caught him without you."

"We'll come see you in Las Vegas," Thom called.

Rhyme started to pilot the Storm Arrow toward the front of the store. As he did he glanced to his left and saw Balzac's still eyes watching him from the back room. The illusionist then turned to Kara as she joined him. Immediately, in his presence, she was a very different woman, timid and self-conscious.

Metamorphosis , Rhyme thought, and he watched Balzac slowly push the door closed, shutting out the rest of the world from the sorcerer and his apprentice.

"I'm gonna say it again. You can have a lawyer, you want one."

"I understand that," Erick Weir muttered in his breathy whisper.

They were in Lon Sellitto's office at One Police Plaza. It was a small room, mostly gray, decorated with – as the detective himself might've put it in a report – "one infant picture, one male child picture, one adult female picture, one scenic lake picture of indeterminate locale, one plant – dead."

Sellitto had interviewed hundreds of suspects in this office. The only difference between them and the present suspect was that Weir was double-shackled to the gray chair across the desk. And an armed patrol officer stood behind him.

"You understand?"

"I said I did," Weir announced.

And so the interview began.

Unlike Rhyme, who specialized in forensics, Detective First-Grade Lon Sellitto was a full-service cop. He was a detective in the real sense of the word. He "detected" the truth, using all the resources that the NYPD and fellow agencies had to offer, as well as his own street smarts and tenacity. It was the best job in the world, he often said. The work called on you to be an actor, a politician, a chess player and sometimes a gunslinger and tackle.

And one of the best parts was the game of interrogation, getting suspects to confess or reveal the names of associates and the location of loot or victims' bodies.

But it was clear from the beginning that this prick wasn't giving up a dustball of information.

"Now, Erick, what do you know about the Patriot Assembly?"

"Like I said, only what I read about them," Weir replied, scratching his chin on his shoulder as best he could. "You want to undo these cuffs just for a minute?"

"No, I don't. You only read about the Assembly?"

"That's right." Weir coughed for a moment.

"Where?"

" Time magazine, I think."

"And you're educated, you speak good. I wouldn't guess you go along with their philosophy."

"Of course not." He wheezed, "They seem like rabid bigots to me."

"So if you don't believe in their politics then the only reason to kill Charles Grady for them is for money. Which you admitted at Rhyme's. So I'd like to know exactly who hired you."

"Oh, I wasn't going to kill him," the prisoner whispered. "You misunderstood me."

"What's to misunderstand? You broke into his apartment with a loaded weapon."

"Look, I like challenges. Seeing if I can break into places nobody else can. I'd never hurt anybody." This was delivered half to Sellitto and half to a battered video camera aimed at his face.

"Say, how was the meatloaf? Or did you have the roast turkey?"

"The what?"

"In Bedford Junction. At the Riverside Inn. I'd say you had the turkey, and Constable's boys had the meatloaf and the steak and the daily special. Which one did Jeddy have?"

"Who? Oh, that man you asked me about? Barnes. You're talking about that receipt, right?" Weir said, wheezing. "The truth is I just found that. I needed to write something down and I grabbed a scrap of paper."

The truth? Sellitto reflected. Right. "You just needed to write something down?"

Struggling for breath, Weir nodded.

"Where were you?" persisted an increasingly bored Lon Sellitto. "When you needed this paper?"

"I don't know. A Starbucks."

"Which one?"

Weir squinted. "Don't remember."

Criminals had started to cite Starbucks a lot lately when offering up alibis. Sellitto decided it was because there were so many of the coffee outlets and they all looked alike – criminals could credibly sound confused about which one they'd been in at a particular time.

"Why was it blank?" Sellitto continued.

"What was blank?"

"The back of the receipt. If you'd taken it to write something down why didn't you write on it?"

"Oh. I don't think I could find a pen."

"They have pens at Starbucks. People charge things a lot there. They need pens to sign their credit card vouchers."

"The clerk was busy. I didn't want to bother her."

"What was it you wanted to write down?"

"Uhm," came the breathy wheeze, "movie show time."

"Where's Larry Burke's body?"

"Who?"

"The police officer who arrested you on Eighty-eighth Street. You told Lincoln Rhyme last night that you killed him and the body was on the West Side somewhere."

"I was just trying to make him think I was going to attack the circus, lead him off. Feeding him false information."

"And when you admitted killing the other victims? That was false information too?"

"Exactly. I didn't kill anybody. Somebody else did and tried to pin it on me."

Ah, the oldest defense in the book. The lamest. The most embarrassing.

Though one that, of course, did sometimes work, Sellitto knew – depending on the gullibility of the jury.

"Who wanted to frame you?"

"I don't know. But somebody who knows me, obviously."

"Because they'd have access to your clothes and fibers and hairs and things, to plant at the scenes."

"Exactly."

"Good. Then it'd be a short list. Give me some names."

Weir closed his eyes. "Nothing's coming to me." His head slumped. "It's really frustrating."

Sellitto couldn't've put it better himself.

A tedious half hour of this game passed. Finally the detective just gave up. He was angry, thinking that he'd be going home soon to his girlfriend and the dinner she was making – turkey, ironically, just like what'd been on the lunch menu at the Riverside Inn in Bedford Junction – but that Officer Larry Burke would never be returning to his wife. He dropped the façade of the friendly but persistent interrogator and muttered, "I want you out of my sight."

Sellitto and the other officers drove the prisoner two blocks to the Manhattan Detention Center for booking on murder, attempt, assault and arson charges. The detective warned the DOC officers about the man's skills at escaping and they assured him that Weir would be placed in Special Detention, a virtually escape-proof facility.

"Oh, Detective Sellitto," Weir called in a throaty whisper.

The detective turned.

"I swear to God I didn't do it," he gasped, his voice echoing with what sounded like genuine remorse. "Maybe after I get some rest I'll remember some things that'll help you find the real killer. I really do want to help."

• • •

Downstairs in the Tombs the two officers, both with a firm grip on the prisoner's arms, let him shuffle his way to the booking station.

Doesn't look so scary to me , Department of Corrections Officer Linda Welles thought. He was strong, she could tell, but not like some of the beasts they'd processed here, those kids from Alphabet City or Harlem with perfect bodies that even huge quantities of crack and smack and malt liquor couldn't soften.