The Vanished Man (Lincoln Rhyme 5)

"Not like those masks in Mission Impossible, hm? Put 'em on, pull 'em off."

"No, real appliances aren't like that at all."

"The fingers too." Rhyme nodded at the killer's left hand.

To make the fusing of the fingers credible they'd been bound together with a bandage then covered in thick latex. As a result the two digits were wrinkled, limp and virtually white but, of course, they were otherwise normal. Sachs examined them. "I was just asking Rhyme why you didn't uncover them at the street fair--since we were looking for a man with a deformed left hand." But the two digits had their own appearance of deformity and would've given him away.

Rhyme looked the killer over and said, "Pretty close to a perfect crime: a perp who made certain that we charged somebody else. We'd know Weir was guilty, we'd have positive ID. But then he'd disappear. Loesser would go on with his life and the escapee--Weir--would be gone forever. The Vanished Man."

And even though Loesser had picked the victims yesterday to misdirect the police, not out of any deep psychological urge, nonetheless Terry Dobyns's ultimate diagnosis fit perfectly--seeking revenge for the fire that had destroyed a loved one. The difference was that the tragedy hadn't been Weir's loss of his career and the death of his wife; it had been Loesser's loss of his mentor, Weir himself.

"But there's one problem," Sellitto pointed out. "All he did by swapping the print cards was make sure we'd go after the real Weir. Why would he do that to his mentor?"

Rhyme said, "Why do you think I made those strapping young officers carry me up the stairs into this extremely in accessible place, Lon?" He looked around the room. "I wanted to walk the grid myself--oh, excuse me, I should say roll the grid." He now wheeled through the room expertly, using the touchpad controller. He stopped by the fireplace and glanced up. "I think I've found our perp, Lon." He looked up at the mantel, on which sat an inlaid box and a candle. "That's Erick Weir, right? His ashes."

Loesser said softly, "That's right. He knew he didn't have much time left. He wanted to get out of the burn unit in Ohio and go back to his house in Vegas before he died. I snuck him out one night and drove him home. He lived another few weeks after we got there. I bribed a night-shift operator at a mortuary to cremate him."

"And the fingerprints?" Rhyme asked. "You rolled his prints after he died? Had stamps made so you could do the fake fingerprint card?"

A nod.

"So you've been planning this for years?"

Passionately Loesser said, "Yes! His death--it's like a burn that doesn't stop hurting."

Bell asked, "You risked all of this for revenge? For your boss?"

"Boss? He was more than my boss," Loesser spat out madly. "You don't understand. I think about my father a couple times a year--and he's still alive. I think about Mr. Weir every hour of the day. Ever since he came into the shop in Vegas where I was performing. . . . Young Houdini, that was me. . . . I was fourteen then. What a day that was! He told me he was going to give me the vision to be great. On my fifteenth birthday I ran away from home to travel with him." His voice wavered for a moment and fell silent. He continued, "Mr. Weir may've beat me and screamed at me and made my life hell sometimes but he saw what was inside me. He cared for me. He taught me how to be an illusionist. . . ." A cloud filled the man's face. "And then he was taken away from me. Because of Kadesky. He and that fucking business of his killed Mr. Weir. . . . And me too. Arthur Loesser died in that fire." He looked at the box and on his face there was an expression of sorrow and hope and such odd love that Rhyme felt a chill crawl down his neck until it disappeared into his numb body.

Loesser looked back to Rhyme and gave a cold laugh. "Well, you may've caught me. But Mr. Weir and I won. You didn't stop us in time. The circus is gone, Kadesky's gone. And if he isn't dead himself, his career's over."

"Ah, yes, the Cirque Fantastique, the fire." Rhyme shook his head gravely. Then he added, "Still . . ."

Loesser frowned, sweeping the room with his eyes, trying to nab Rhyme's meaning. "What? What're you saying?"

"Think back a little. Earlier tonight. You're in Central Park, watching the flames, the smoke, the destruction, listening to the screams. . . . You figure you better leave--we'll be looking for you soon. You're on your way back here. Someone--a young woman, an Asian woman in a jogging suit--bumps into you. You exchange a few words about what's going on. You go your separate ways."

"What the hell're you talking about?" Loesser snapped.

"Check the back of your watchband," Rhyme said.

With a clink of the cuffs he turned his wrist ove

r. On the band was a small black disk. Sachs peeled it off. "GPS tracker. We used that to follow you here. Weren't you a little surprised that we just showed up aknockin' on your door?"

"But who--? Wait! It was that illusionist, that girl! Kara! I didn't recognize her."

Rhyme said wryly, "Well, that is the whole point of illusion now, isn't it? We spotted you in the park but we were afraid you'd get away. You do have a tendency to do that, you know. And we assumed you'd take a complicated route back to where you were staying. So I asked Kara to do a little disguise of her own. She's good, that woman. Hardly recognized her myself. When she bumped into you she taped the sensor to your watch."

Sachs continued, "We might've been able to take you down on the street but you've been just a little too good at escaping. Anyway, we wanted to find your hidey-hole."

"But that means you knew before the fire!"

"Oh," Rhyme said dismissively, "your ambulance? The Bomb Squad found it and rendered it safe in about sixty seconds. They drove it off and replaced it with another one so you wouldn't think we'd caught on. We knew you'd want to watch the fire. We got as many undercover officers as we could into the park, looking for a male about your build who'd watch the fire but then who'd leave not long after it started. A couple of them saw you and we had Kara nail you with the chip. And presto--" Rhyme smiled at his choice of word. "Here we are."

"But the fire . . . I saw it!"

Rhyme said to Sachs, "See what I keep saying about evidence versus witnesses? He saw the fire; therefore it had to be real." To Loesser he said, "But it wasn't real now, was it?"