Jeffery Deaver - The Vanished Man

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 safe house?"

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

The frustration scared 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 else 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 cliché, 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.