As Luis double-cuffed Weir roughly, Sellitto leaned close to the perp. "You alone? You got backup outside?"

"No."

"Don't bullshit us!"

"My arms, you're hurting my arms!" Weir gasped.

"Anybody else with you?"

"No, no, I swear."

Bell was calling the others on his handy-talkie. "Heaven help me-he got inside. . . . I don't know how."

Two uniformed officers assigned to the Saving the Witness's Ass Team hurried into the apartment from the hallway, where they'd been hiding near the elevator.

"Looks like he jimmied the window on this floor," one of them said. "You know, the window at the fire escape."

Bell glanced at Weir and he understood. "The ledge from the Lanham? You jumped?"

Weir said nothing but that had to be the answer. They'd stationed officers in the alley between the Lanham and Grady's building and on the roofs of both structures too. But it had never occurred to them he'd walk along the ledge and leap over the air shaft.

Bell asked the officers, "And no sign of anybody else?"

"Nope. Looks like he was solo."

Sellitto donned latex gloves and patted him down. The search yielded burglary tools and various props and magic supplies. The oddest were the fake fingertips, glued on tightly. Sellitto pulled them off and deposited them in a plastic evidence bag. If the situation weren't so unnerving-that a hired killer had actually gotten into the apartment of the family they were protecting-the image of the ten finger pads in a bag would've been comical.

They looked over their prey as Sellitto continued to search him. Weir was muscular and in excellent shape, despite the fact that the fire had caused some serious damage-the scarring was quite extensive.

"Any ID?" Bell asked.

Sellitto shook his head. "F.A.O. Schwarz." Meaning low-quality fake NYPD badge and ID card. Not much better than toys.

Weir glanced toward the kitchen, which he could see was empty. He frowned.

"Oh, the Gradys aren't here," Bell said, as if it were obvious.

The man closed his eyes and rested his head on the threadbare carpet. "How? How did you figure it out?"

Sellitto supplied an answer of sorts. "Well, guess what? There's somebody who'd love to answer that question for you. Come on, we're going for a ride."

Looking over the shackled killer standing in the doorway of the lab, Lincoln Rhyme said, "Welcome back."

"But . . . the fire." Dismayed, the man looked toward the stairway that led up to the bedroom.

"Sorry we ruined your performance," Rhyme said coldly. "I guess you couldn't quite escape from me after all, could you, Weir?"

He turned his gaze back to the criminalist and hissed, "That's not my name anymore."

"You changed it?"

Weir shook his head. "Not legally. But Weir's who I used to be. I go by something else now."

Rhyme recalled psychologist Terry Dobyns's observation that the fire had "murdered" Weir's old persona and he'd become somebody else.

The killer now looked over Rhyme's body. "You understand that, don't you? You'd like to forget the past and become somebody else too, I'd imagine."

"What are you calling yourself?"

"That's between me and my audience."

Ah, yes, his revered audience.

Double-handcuffed, looking bewildered and diminished, Weir wore a gray businessman's suit. The wig he'd worn last night was gone; his real hair was thick, long and dark blond. In the daylight Rhyme could better see the scarring above his collar; it looked quite severe.

"How'd you find me?" the man asked in his wheezing voice. "I led you to . . ."

"To the Cirque Fantastique? You did." When Rhyme had outthought a perp his mood improved considerably and he was pleased to chat. "You mean you misdirected us there. See, I was looking over the evidence and I got to thinking that the whole case seemed a bit too easy."

"Easy?" He coughed briefly.

"In crime-scene work there're two types of evidence. There're the clues that are inadvertently left by the perp and then there are planted clues, ones that are intentionally left to mislead us."

"After everyone ran off to look for gas bombs at the circus I got this sense that some of the clues had been planted. They seemed obvious-the shoes you left at the second victim's apartment had dog hairs and dirt and trace that led to Central Park. It occurred to me that a smart perp might've ground the dirt and hairs into the shoes and left them at the scene so we'd find them and think about the dog knoll next to the circus. And all the talk of fire when you came to see me last night." He glanced toward Kara. "Verbal misdirection, right, Kara?"

Weir's troubled eyes looked the young woman up and down.

"Yep," she said, pouring sugar in her coffee.

"But I tried to kill you," Weir wheezed. "If I'd told you those things to lead you off I'd need you to be alive."

Rhyme laughed. "You didn't try to kill me at all. You never intended to. You wanted to make it look that way to give what you told me credibility. The first thing you did after you set the fire in my bedroom was to run outside and call nine-one-one from a pay phone. I checked with dispatch. The man who called said he could see the flames from the phone kiosk. Except that it was around the corner. You can't see my room from there. Thom checked on that, by the way. Thank you, Thom," Rhyme called to the aide, who happened to be passing the doorway at that moment.

"Nada," came the harried reply.

Weir closed his eyes, shaking his head as he realized the depth of his mistake.

Rhyme squinted, staring at the evidence board. "All of the victims had jobs or interests reflecting performers in the circus-the musician, makeup artist, horseback riding. And the murder techniques were magic tricks too. But if your motive really was to destroy Kadesky you would've led us away from Cirque Fantastique, not toward it. That meant you were leading us away from something else. What? I looked at the evidence again. At the third scene, by the river, we surprised you-you didn't have time to pick up your jacket with the press pass and hotel key card in the pocket, which meant that those couldn't've been planted clues. They had some legitimate connection to what you were really up to."

"The hotel card key was from one of three hotels-one of them was the Lanham Arms-Detective Bell thought it sounded familiar and checked his logbook. It turned out that he had coffee with Charles Grady in the lobby bar to talk about the security detail for his family a week ago. Roland told me that the Lanham was right next door to Grady's apartment. Then the press pass? I called the reporter you stole it from. He was covering the Andrew Constable trial and had interviewed Charles Grady several times. . . . We found some brass shavings and assumed the worst, that they were from a bomb timer. But they might've just come from a key or a tool."

Sachs took up the narrative. "Then The New York Times page we found in your car in the river? It had an article about the circus, yes. But there was also an article about Constable's trial."

A nod toward the evidence board.

MILITIA MURDER PLOT TRIAL OPENS MONDAY.

Rhyme continued, "The restaurant check too. You should've thrown that out."

"What check?" Weir asked, frowning.

"Also in your jacket. From two Saturdays ago."

"But that weekend I was-" He stopped speaking abruptly.

"Out of town, you were going to say?" Sachs asked. "Yeah, we know. The check was from a restaurant in Bedford Junction."

"I don't know what you're talking about."

"A trooper in Canton Falls investigating the Patriot Assembly group called on my phone, asking for Roland," Rhyme said. "I recognized the area code from the caller-ID-it was the same as the number of the restaurant on the check."

Weir's eyes grew still and Rhyme continued, "Bedford Junction turns out to be the town next to Canton Falls, which's where Constable lives."

"Who's this Constable you keep talking about?" he asked quickly. But Rhyme could see telltale signs of recognition in his face.

Sellitto took over. "Was Barnes one of the people you had lunch with? Jeddy Barnes?"

"I don't know who you mean."

"You know the Patriot Assembly though?"

"Just what I've read about in the paper."

"We don't believe you," Sellitto said.

"Believe what you like," Weir snapped. Rhyme could see the fierce anger in the eyes, the anger that Dobyns had predicted. After a pause he asked, "How'd you find out my real name?"

No one answered but Weir's eyes settled on the latest additions about him on the evidence chart. His face grew dark as he gasped, "Somebody betrayed me, didn't they? They told you about the fire and Kadesky. Who was it?" A vicious smile as he glanced from Sachs to Kara and finally settled on Rhyme. "Was it John Keating? He told you that I called him, didn't he? Spineless shit. He never stood up to me. Art Loesser too, right? They're all fucking Judases. I'll remember them. I always remember the people who betray me." He had a coughing fit. When it ended Weir was looking across the room. "Kara. . . . Is that what he said your name is? And who are you?"

"I'm an illusionist," she said defiantly.

"One of us," Weir mocked, looking her up and down. "A girl illusionist. And you're, what? A consultant or something? Maybe after I'm released I'll come visit. Maybe I'll vanish you."

Sachs snapped, "Oh, you ain't getting released in this lifetime, Weir."

The Conjurer's gasping laugh was chilly. "Then how about when I escape? Walls are, after all, just an illusion."

"I don't think escape's much of an option either," Sellitto added.

Rhyme said, "Well, I answered your 'how,' Weir. Or whatever you're calling yourself. How 'bout if you answer my 'why'? We thought it was revenge against Kadesky. But then it turns out you're after Grady. What are you? Some kind of hit-man illusionist?"

"Revenge?" Weir asked, furious. "What the fuck good is revenge? Will it take the scars away and fix my lungs? Will it bring my wife back? . . . You don't fucking understand! The only thing in my life, the only thing that's ever meant anything to me is performing. Illusion, magic. My mentor groomed me for the profession all my life. The fire took that away from me. I don't have the strength to perform. My hand's deformed. My voice is ruined. Who'd come to see me? I can't do the one thing that God gave me talent for. If the only way I can perform is to break the law, then that's what I'll do."

Phantom of the Opera syndrome . . .

He glanced at Rhyme's body again. "How did you feel after your accident, thinking you'd never be a cop again?"

Rhyme was silent. But the killer's words hit home. How had he felt? The same anger that fueled Erick Weir, yes. And, true, after the accident the concepts of right and wrong vanished completely. Why not be a criminal? he'd thought in the madness of fury and depression. I can find evidence better than any human being on the face of the earth. That means I can also manipulate it. I could commit the perfect crime. . . .

In the end, of course, thanks to people like Terry Dobyns and other doctors and fellow cops and his own soul, those thoughts had faded. But, yes, he did know exactly what Weir was talking about. Though even at the bleakest and angriest moments he never considered taking another life-except, of course, his own.

"So you sold your talents like a mercenary?"

Weir seemed to realize that he'd lost control for a moment and had said too much. He refused to say anything else.

Sachs's anger got the better of her and she stepped to the whiteboard and ripped down several pictures of the first two victims. Shoving them into Weir's face, she raged, "You killed these people just for diversion? That's all they meant to you."

Weir held her eye, blase. Then he looked around and laughed. "You really think you can keep me in prison? Do you know that, for a challenge, Harry Houdini was stripped naked and put in death row in Washington D.C. He escaped from his cell so fast that he had time to open all the doors on the cellblock and switch the condemned prisoners to each other's cells-before the challenge panel got back from lunch."

Sellitto said, "Yeah, well that was a long time ago. We're a little more sophisticated than that now." To Rhyme and Sachs he said, "I'll take him downtown, see if he wants to share a little more with us."

But as they started for the doorway Rhyme said, "Hold on." His eyes were on the evidence chart.

"What?" Sellitto asked.

"When he got away from Larry Burke after the crafts fair he slipped the cuffs."

"Right."

"We found saliva, remember? Take a look in his mouth. See if he's got a pick or key hidden there."

Weir said, "I don't. Really."

Sellitto pulled on the latex gloves that Mel Cooper offered. "Open up. You bite me and I'll vanish your balls. Got it? One bite, no balls."

"Understood." The Conjurer opened his mouth and Sellitto shined his flashlight into it, fished around a bit. "Nothing."

Rhyme said, "There's another place we ought to check too."

Sellitto grunted. "I'll make sure they do that downtown, Linc. Some things I do not do for the money they pay me."

As the detective led Weir toward the door Kara said, "Wait. Check his teeth. Wiggle them. Especially the molars."

Weir stiffened as Sellitto approached. "You can't do that."

"Open up," the big detective snapped. "Oh, and the balls comment still applies."

The Conjurer sighed. "Right top molar. Right on my side, I mean."

Sellitto glanced at Rhyme then reached in and gently pulled. His hand emerged with a fake tooth. Inside was a small piece of bent metal. He dumped it on an examining board and replaced the tooth.

The detective said, "It's pretty small. He can actually use that?"

Kara examined it. "Oh, he could open a pair of regulation handcuffs in about four seconds with that."

"You're too much, Weir. Come on."

Rhyme thought of something. "Oh, Lon?" The detective glanced his way. "You have a feeling when he helped us find the pick in his tooth that might've been a little misdirection?"