He lit a candle and settled into the couch. He kept his eyes fixed on the flame. Tonight, he knew that it would shudder, that he would receive a message. Staring, sitting forward, bathed in the contentment of vengeance com
pleted, rocking back and forth hypnotically, breathing slowly.
The candle flickered. Yes!
Speak to me.
Flicker again....
And indeed only a moment later it did.
But the shuddering wasn't a message from the supernatural spirit of a loved one long gone but solely from the gust of cool April evening air that filled the room when the half dozen police officers in riot gear broke the door in with a battering ram. They flung the gasping illusionist to the floor, where one of them-the red-haired policewoman he recalled from Lincoln Rhyme's apartment-seated a pistol against the back of his head and gave a steady recitation of his rights.
Chapter Forty-seven
Their arms trembling against the weight of both Lincoln Rhyme and his Storm Arrow wheelchair, two sweating ESU officers carried their burden up the stairs into the building and deposited the criminalist in the lobby. He then took over and maneuvered his chair into the Conjurer's apartment, where he parked next to Amelia Sachs.
While their fellow Emergency Service officers cleared the rooms, Rhyme watched as Bell and Sellitto carefully searched the astonished killer. Rhyme had suggested they borrow a doctor from the Medical Examiner's office to help in the search. He arrived a moment later and did as requested. It turned out to be a good idea; the M.D. found several slits cut into the man's skin-they looked like small scars but could be pulled open. Inside were tiny metal tools.
"X-ray him at the detention infirmary," Rhyme said. "Hell, wait, do an MRI. Every square inch."
When the Conjurer was triple cuffed and double shackled, two officers pulled the man into a sitting position on the floor. The criminalist was examining a bedroom in which was a huge collection of magician's props and tools. The masks, fake hands and latex appliances made the place eerie, sure, but Rhyme sensed mostly loneliness, seeing these objects stored here for the killer's horrific purposes when they were meant to be part of a show to entertain thousands of people.
"How?" the Conjurer whispered.
Rhyme noted the look of astonishment. Dismay too. The criminalist relished the sensation. All hunters will tell you that the actual search for their quarry is the best part of the game. But no hunter can be truly great unless he feels peak pleasure when he finally brings down his prey.
"How did you figure it out?" the man repeated in his asthmatic wheeze. "That your point was to hit the circus?" Rhyme glanced at Sachs.
She said, "There wasn't a lot of evidence but it suggested-" "'Suggested,' Sachs? I'd say it screamed,"
"Suggested," she continued, unfazed by his interjection, "what you were really going to do. In the closet-the one in the basement of the Criminal Courts building-we found the bag with your change of clothes in it, the fake wound."
"You found the bag?"
She continued, "There was some dried red paint on the shoes and your suit. And carpet fibers."
"I thought the paint was fake blood." Rhyme shook his head, angry with himself. "It was logical to make that assumption but I should've considered other sources. It turned out that the FBI's paint database identified it as Jenkin Manufacturing automotive paint. The shade is an orange-red that's used exclusively for emergency vehicles. That particular formula is sold in small cans-for touch-ups. The fibers were automotive too--they were from heavy-duty commercial carpet installed in GMC ambulances up until eight years ago."
Sachs: "So Lincoln deduced that you'd bought or stolen an old ambulance recently and fixed it up. It might've been for an escape or for another attempt on Charles Grady's life. But then he remembered the bits of brass-what if they actually were from a timer, like we'd thought originally? And since you'd used gas on the handkerchief in Lincoln's apartment, well, that meant that, possibly, you were going to hide a gas bomb in a fake ambulance."
Rhyme offered, "Then I simply used logic-"
"He played a hunch is what he's sayin'," Bell chided.
"Hunches," Rhyme snapped, "are nonsense. Logic isn't. Logic is the backbone of science, and criminalistics is pure science."
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 1 have to say it was a brilliant idea. Not a compliment 1 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.
'Tm sure that's what she said. First, you forced the thought on us that
you were going to destroy the circus for revenge. But 1 didn't believe ittoo 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 1 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.
Chapter Forty-eight
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 protege."
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. 1 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 myoId name, 1 hate anything about me from before the fire. It was too hard to be reminded of those times. Malerick's how 1 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 1 thought about that I couldn't figure out why. To clean up the blood? That didn't make sense. No, the only answer 1 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. 1 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 AF1S 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."
"I couldn't find it," the killer snapped. "I didn't have time to look." "But," Sellitto pointed out to Rhyme, "he'd be younger than Weir."
"He is younger than Weir." He nodded toward Loesser's face. "The
wrinkles're just latex appliances. Like the scars-they're all fake. Weir was born in 1950. Loesser's twenty years younger so he had to age." Then he muttered, "Oh, I missed that one. Should've thought better. Those bits of latex covered with makeup that Amelia found at the scenes? I assumed they were from those finger pads he was wearing. But that wouldn't make sense. Nobody'd wear makeup on his fingers. It would come off. No, it was from the other appliances." Rhyme examined the killer's cheeks and brow. "The latex must be uncomfortable."
"You get used to it."
"Sachs, let's see what he really looks like."
With some difficulty she peeled off the beard and patches of wrinkles
