Jeffery Deaver - The Vanished Man

Sellitto rolled his eyes at Bell.

But insubordination in the ranks wasn't going to dampen Rhyme's enthusiasm. "Logic, I was saying. Kara had told us about pointing your audience's attention toward where you don't want them to look."

The best illusionists'll rig the trick so well that they'll point directly at their method, directly at what they're really going to do. But you won't believe them. You'll look in the opposite direction. When that happens, you've had it. You've lost and they've won.

"That's what you did. And I have to say it was a brilliant idea. Not a compliment I give very often, is it, Sachs?… You wanted revenge against Kadesky for the fire that ruined your life. And so you created a routine that'd let you do it and get away afterward – just like you'd create an illusion for the stage, with layers of misdirections." Rhyme squinted in consideration. He said, "The first misdirection: You 'forced' – Kara told us that's the word illusionists use, right?"

The killer said nothing.

"I'm sure that's what she said. First, you forced the thought on us that you were going to destroy the circus for revenge. But I didn't believe it – too obvious. And our suspicion led to misdirection two: you planted the newspaper article about Grady, the restaurant receipt, the press pass and the hotel key to make us conclude you were going to kill him… Oh, the jogging jacket by the Hudson River? You were going to leave that at the scene intentionally, weren't you? That was planted evidence you wanted us to find."

The Conjurer nodded. "I was, yes. But it worked out better because your officers surprised me and it looked more natural for me to leave the jacket when I escaped."

"Now, at that point," the criminalist continued, "we think you're a hired assassin, using illusion to get close to Charles Grady and kill him… We've figured you out. There go our suspicions… To an extent. "

The Conjurer managed a faint smile. "'An extent,'" he wheezed. "See when you use misdirection to trick people – smart people – they continue to be suspicious."

"So you hit us with misdirection number three. To keep us focused away from the circus you made us think that you got arrested intentionally to get inside the detention center not to kill Grady but to break Constable out of jail. By then we'd forgotten completely about the circus and Kadesky. But in fact you didn't care a bit about either Constable or Grady."

"They were props, misdirections to fool you," he admitted.

"The Patriot Assembly, they're not going to be too happy about that," Sellitto muttered.

A nod at the shackles. "I'd say that's the least of my worries, wouldn't you?"

Knowing what he did about Constable and the others in the Assembly, Rhyme wasn't too sure.

Bell nodded at the Conjurer and asked Rhyme, "But why'd he go to the trouble to set up Constable and plan the fake escape?"

Sellitto answered, "Obviously – to, you know, misdirect us away from the circus so he'd have an easier time getting the bomb there."

"Actually, no, Lon," Rhyme said slowly. "There was another reason."

At these words, or perhaps at the cryptic tone in Rhyme's voice, the killer turned toward the criminalist, who could see caution in his eyes – real caution, if not fear – for the first time that night.

Gotcha , Rhyme thought.

He said, "See, there was a fourth misdirection."

"Four?" Sellitto said.

"That's right… He's not Erick Weir," Rhyme announced with what even he had to admit was excessive dramatics.

With a sigh, the killer eased back against a chair leg, eyes closing.

"Not Weir?" Sellitto asked.

"That," Rhyme continued, "was the whole point of what he did this weekend. He wanted revenge against Kadesky and the Hasbro circus – the Cirque Fantastique now. Well, it's easy to get revenge if you don't care about escaping. But" – a nod toward the Conjurer – "he wanted to get away, stay out of prison, keep performing. So he did an identity quick change. He became Erick Weir, got himself arrested this afternoon, fingerprinted and then escaped."

Sellitto nodded. "So after he killed Kadesky and burned down the circus everybody'd be looking for Weir and not for who he really is." A frown.

"And who the hell is he?"

"Arthur Loesser, Weir's protégé."

The killer gasped softly as the last shred of anonymity – and hope for escape – vanished.

"But Loesser called us," Sellitto pointed out. "He was out west. In Nevada."

"No, he wasn't. I checked the phone records. The call came up 'No caller ID' on my phone because he placed it through a prepaid long-distance account. He was calling from a pay phone on West Eighty-seventh Street. He doesn't have a wife. The message on his voice mail in Vegas was fake."

"Just like he called the other assistant, Keating, and pretended to be Weir, right?" Sellitto asked.

"Yep. Asking about the Ohio fire, sounding weird and threatening. To back up what we thought: that Weir was in New York to get revenge against Kadesky. He had to leave a trail that Weir'd resurfaced. Like ordering the Darby handcuffs in Weir's name. The gun he bought too."

Rhyme looked over the killer. "How's the voice?" he asked sardonically. "The lungs feel better now?"

"You know they're fine," Loesser snapped. The whisper and wheezing were gone.

There was no damage to his lungs. It was just another ruse to make them believe he was Weir.

Rhyme nodded toward the bedroom. "I saw some designs for promotional posters in there. I assume you drew them. The name on them was 'Malerick.' That's you now, right?"

The killer nodded. "What I told you before is true – I hated my old name, I hate anything about me from before the fire. It was too hard to be reminded of those times. Malerick's how I think of myself now… How did you catch on?"

"After they sealed the corridor in detention you used your shirt and wiped the floor and the cuffs," Rhyme explained. "But when I thought about that I couldn't figure out why. To clean up the blood? That didn't make sense. No, the only answer I could come up with was that you wanted to get rid of your fingerprints. But you'd just been printed; why would you be worried about leaving them in the corridor?" Rhyme gave a shrug, suggesting that the answer was painfully obvious.

"Because your real prints were different from the ones on the card that'd just been rolled and filed."

"How the fuck d'he manage that?" Sellitto asked.

"Amelia found traces of fresh ink at the scene. That was from his being printed tonight. The trace wasn't important in itself but what was significant was that it matched the ink we found in his gym bag at the Marston assault. That meant he'd come in contact with fingerprint ink before today. I guessed that he stole a blank fingerprint card and printed it at home with the real Erick Weir's prints. He used that adhesive wax to hide it in his jacket lining tonight – we were looking for weapons and keys, not pieces of cardboard – and then after they rolled his prints he distracted the technicians and swapped the cards. Probably flushed the new one or threw it out."

Loesser grimaced in anger, a confirmation of Rhyme's deduction.

"DOC sent over the card they had on file and Mel processed it. The rolled prints were Weir's but the latents were Loesser's. He was in the APIS database from when he was arrested with Weir on those reckless endangerment charges in New Jersey. We checked the DOC officer's Glock too. She took that with her and he didn't get a chance to wipe it down. Those prints came back a match for Loesser too. Oh, and we got a partial from the razor knife blade." Rhyme glanced at the small bandage on Loesser's temple. "You forgot to take that with you."