The Vanished Man (Lincoln Rhyme 5)

"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.

Chapter Thirty-five "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 victim's 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 meat loaf? 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 meat loaf 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."