"Do a presumptive blood test. That'll be dispositive."

She sped back to the doorway.

"What's going . . . ?" one of the techs asked but he fell silent as he watched her dig frantically through the suitcases.

Sachs grabbed the Kastle-Meyer catalytic blood kit then returned to the corridor and took a swab from the wall. She treated this with phenolph-thalein and a moment later she had the answer. "I don't know what it is but it's definitely not blood." She glanced down at the ruddy smears on the floor. This, however, looked real. She tested a sample and it showed positive. Then she noticed a bloody razor knife blade in the corner. "Christ, Rhyme he faked the shooting. Cut himself somewhere to bleed for real and fool the guards."

"Call security."

Sachs yelled, "It's an escape-have the exits sealed!"

The detective jogged into the hallway and stared at the floor. Linda Welles joined him, her eyes wide. The momentary relief that she hadn't in fact been involved in a man's death faded fast as she realized the far-worse implications of what had happened. "No! He was there. His eyes were open. He looked dead."

Her voice was high, frantic. "I mean, his head . . . it was all bloody. I could see . . . I could see the wound!"

You could see the illusion of a wound, Sachs thought bitterly.

The detective called out, "They've notified the guards at all the exits. But, Christ, this isn't a lock-down corridor. As soon as we closed the doors here he could've stood up and wandered anywhere. He's probably stealing a car right now or on the subway to Queens."

Amelia Sachs began giving orders. Whatever the detective's rank he was so shaken by the escape that he didn't question her authority. "Get an escape bulletin out now," she said. "All agencies in the metro area. Federal and state. Don't forget MTA. The name is Erick Weir. White male. Early fifties. You've got the mug shot."

"What's he wearing?" the detective asked Welles and her partner, who both struggled to remember. They gave a rough description.

Sachs was thinking, though, that it hardly mattered. He'd be in different clothing now. She gazed down the four tentacles of dim corridors she could see from here and observed silhouettes of dozens of people. Guards, janitors, cops . . .

Or maybe the Conjurer, disguised as one of them.

But for the moment she left the issue of pursuit in others' hands and turned back to her own area of expertise: the crime scene, whose search was supposed to be a brief formality but had now become a matter of life and death.

Chapter Thirty-seven.

Making his way cautiously through the basement of the Manhattan Detention Center, Malerick was reflecting on his escape, offering silent patter to his revered audience.

Let me share with you a trick of the illusionist's trade.

To truly fool people it's not enough to misdirect them during the illusion. This is because when confronted with a phenomenon that defies logic the human brain continues to replay the scene afterward to try to understand what happened. We illusionists call this "reconstruction," and unless we set up our trick cleverly enough an intelligent, suspicious audience will be fooled only briefly and will figure out our method after the routine is over.

So how do we trick audiences like this?

We use the most implausible method we can-either one absurdly simple or overwhelmingly complex.

An example: one famous illusionist appears to push an entire peacock feather through a handkerchief. Audiences rarely can figure out what kind of sleight of hand he uses to make it seem that the feather actually penetrates the cloth.

What's the method? It does penetrate the cloth. There's a hole in the handkerchief! The audience considers this method at first but then invariably decides that it's too simple for such a great performer. They'd rather think he's doing something far more elaborate.

Another: an illusionist met some friends for dinner at a restaurant and was asked to show them a few tricks. He declined at first but finally agreed.

He took a spare tablecloth, held it up in front of a table of two lovers dining nearby and vanished the couple and their table in one second. The friends were astonished. How could he have done it? They never guessed that, supposing that he'd probably be invited to perform, the illusionist had arranged with the maitre d' to have a prepared, collapsible table on hand and hired an actor and actress to play the couple. When he'd held up the cloth they'd disappeared on cue.

In reconstructing what they'd seen, the diners rejected the actual answer as too improbable for such an apparently impromptu performance.

And this is what occurred with the illusion you just witnessed, one I call the Shot Prisoner.

Reconstruction. Many illusionists forget about this psychological process. But Malerick never did. And he'd considered it carefully when planning his escape in the detention center. The officers escorting him down the corridor to the lockup believed they saw a prisoner slip his cuffs, grab a gun and end up shot dead right in front of them.

There was shock, there was dismay, there was horror.

But even at such peak moments the mind does what it must and before the smoke dissipated the officers were analyzing the events and considering options and courses of action. Like any audience they engaged in reconstruction and, knowing that Erick Weir was a skilled illusionist, undoubtedly wondered if the shooting had been faked.

But their ears had heard a real gun fire a real bullet.

Their eyes had seen a head explode under the impact and, a moment later, a limp body in the pose of death and blood, brain, bone and glazed eyes.

The reconstruction resulted in a conclusion that it was far too implausible for a man to go to such elaborate lengths to fake the shooting. So, confident he was dead, they'd left him alone, unshackled, in the corridor while they went off to make their frantic radio or phone calls.

And my method, Revered Audience?

As they'd walked down the corridor Malerick had peeled off the bandage on his hip and removed a universal handcuff key from a tiny slit in his skin. Once out of the cuffs he hit the woman guard in the face, the other in the throat and pulled her gun from her holster. A struggle . . . and finally he'd aimed the gun behind his head and pulled the trigger. At the same time he tapped the firing circuit of the tiny squib taped to a shaved portion of his scalp under his long hair, blowing up a small bladder of fake blood, bits of gray rubber and fragments of beef bone. To add to the credibility of the act he'd used a razor knife blade-hidden in his hip with the key-to cut his scalp, an area of the body that bleeds profusely but with little pain.

Then he'd lain like a discarded rag doll, breathing as shallowly as he could.

His eyes remained open because he'd filled them with viscous eye-drops that produced a milky appearance and allowed him not to blink.

Fuck me, look what I did! Oh, fuck! Help him, somebody!

Ah, but Officer Welles, it was too late to help me.

I was dead as a roadside deer.

He headed now through winding corridors in the interconnected basements of the government buildings here until he came to the supply closet where he'd stashed his new disguise several days ago. Inside the small room he stripped and then hid the wound appliance, his old clothes and shoes behind some boxes. Donning his new outfit and applying some makeup, he was in role in less than ten seconds.

A glance out the door. The corridor was empty. He stepped outside and hurried for the stairway. It was nearly time for the finale.

"It was an out," Kara said.

The young woman had been whisked back to Rhyme's townhouse from Stuyvesant Manor a few moments ago.

"An out?" the criminalist asked. "What's that?"

"It means an alternative plan. All good illusionists have one or two backups for every routine. If you screw up or the audience catches your moves, you have an escape plan to save the trick. He must've figured there was a chance he'd get caught so he rigged an out to let him get away."

"How'd he do it?"

"Explosive squib behind a blood bladder hidden in his hair. The shot? It might've been a fake gun," she suggested. "Most catch-the-bullet tricks use fekes, phony guns. They have a second barrel. Or they're real guns, loaded with blanks. He might've switched guns with the officer taking him to his cell."

"I doubt it," Rhyme said, looking at Sellitto.

The rumpled cop agreed. "Yeah, I don't see how he could've switched a service piece. Or unloaded it and reloaded it with funny slugs."

Kara said, "Well, he could've just pretended to shoot himself. Played with the angle of sight."

"What about the eyes?" Rhyme asked. "The wits said his eyes were open. He never blinked. And they looked glazed."

"There're dozens of dead-man fekes and gimmicks. He might've used eye-drops that lubricate the surface. You can keep them open for ten or fifteen minutes. And there're self-lubricating contact lenses too. They have a glazed look, like you're a zombie."

Zombies and fake blood . . . Christ, what a mess. "How'd he get through the goddamn metal detector?"

"They weren't in the lockdown area yet," Sellitto explained. "That's what they were on their way to."

Rhyme sighed. Then he snapped, "Where the hell's the evidence?" Looking from the door to Mel Cooper, as if the slim technician could make the delivery from the detention center materialize on command. It turned out that there were two crime scenes downtown: one was the corridor where the phony shooting had occurred. The other scene was in the basement of the courthouse-a janitor's closet. One of the search teams had found the fake wound appliance, clothes and some other things hidden in a bag there.

Thom answered the ringing door chime and a moment later Roland Bell hurried into the laboratory. "Can't believe it," he said breathlessly, his hair a sweaty mop on his forehead. "It's confirmed? He's rabbited?"

"Sure has," Rhyme muttered darkly. "ESU's scouring the place. Amelia's down there too. But they haven't found any leads."

Bell drawled, "He might be heading for the hills but I'm thinking it's time to get Charles and his family into a safe house until we find out what's what."

Sellitto said, "Absolutely."

The detective pulled out his cell phone and placed a call. "Luis? It's Roland. Listen here, Weir's escaped. . . . No, no, he wasn't dead at all. Faked it. I want Grady and his family in a safe house till that boy's caught. I'm sending a . . . What?"

At the sound of this single, shocked word, everyone's attention swiveled to Bell. "Who's with him? . . . By himself? What're you telling me?"

Rhyme was looking at Bell's face, the dark, cryptic frown in the otherwise comfortingly lackadaisical visage. Once again, as had happened so often on this case, Rhyme had a sense that events that seemed unforeseeable but had in fact been planned a long time ago were beginning to unfold.

Bell turned to Sellitto. "Luis said you called and had the baby-sitting team stand down."

"Called who?"

"Called Grady's house. You told Luis to send everybody but him home."

"Why would I do that?" Sellitto asked. "Fuck, he did it again. Just like sending the guards at the circus home."

Bell said to the team, "It gets worse-Grady's on his way downtown by himself to meet with Constable about some plea-bargain deal." Into the phone he said, "Keep the family together, Luis. And call the others on the team. Get 'em back right now. Don't let anybody into the apartment less you know 'em. I'll try and find Charles." He hung up and dialed another number. He listened into the receiver for a long moment. "No answer." He left a message: "Charles, this is Roland. Weir's escaped and we don't know where he'd be or what he's getting up to. As soon as you hear this, get next to an armed officer you know personally and then call me."

He gave his number and then made another call, to Bo Haumann, head of Emergency Services. He alerted him that Grady was on his way to the detention center, unprotected.

The man with two guns hung up and shook his head. "Missed this one by a mile." He stared at the evidence charts. "So, what is this boy up to?"

"One thing I know," Rhyme said. "He's not leaving town. He's enjoying this."

The only thing in my life, the only thing that's ever meant anything to me is performing. Illusion, magic. . . .

"Thank you, sir. Thank you."

The guard hesitated slightly at these gentle words as he ushered the man who'd spoken them-Andrew Constable-into the interview room atop the Tombs in lower Manhattan.

The prisoner smiled like a preacher thanking his parishioners for tithes.

The guard uncuffed Constable's hands from behind his back and then recuffed them in front.

"Is Mr. Roth here yet, sir?"

"Siddown, shutup."

"Sure thing." Constable sat.

"Shutup."

Did that too.

The guard left and, alone in the room, the prisoner gazed out the greasy window at the city. He was a country boy through and through but he still appreciated New York. He'd felt stunned and angry beyond words at September 11. If he and the Patriot Assembly had had their way, the incident never would have happened because the people who wished to do harm to the American way of life would have been rooted out and exposed. Hard questions . . .

A moment later the heavy metal door opened and the guard let Joseph Roth into the room.

"Hi, Joe. Grady's agreed to negotiate?"

"Yeah. Should be here in about ten minutes, I'd guess. He's going to need something substantive from you, though, Andrew."

"Oh, hell get it." The man sighed. "And I've found out more since I talked to you last. I'll tell you, Joseph, I'm heartsick about what's happening up in Canton Falls. And it's been going on, right under my nose, for a year or so. That story Grady kept harping on-about killing those troopers? I thought it was nonsense. But, nope, there were some folk actually planning that."

"You have names?"

Constable said, "You bet I have names. Friends of mine. Good friends. Used to be, at least. That lunch at the Riverside Inn? Some of them did hire that man Weir to kill Grady. I've got names, dates, places, phone numbers. And there's more coming. There're a lot of Patriots're going to cooperate to the hilt. Don't worry."

"Good," Roth said, looking relieved. "Grady'll be tough to deal with at first. That's his style. But I think things're going to work out."

"Thanks, Joe." Constable sized up his attorney. "I'm glad I hired you."

"I have to tell you, Andrew, I was little surprised at first, you hiring a lawyer that was Jewish. You know, with what I heard about you."

"But then you got to know me."

"Then I got to know you."

"That reminds me, Joe, I've been meaning to ask. When's Passover?"

"What?"

"That holiday of yours. When is it?"

"About a month ago. Remember that night I left early?"