"Right. And arsenic in the barrel of the syringe."

Bell said, "So he injected poison into some sweets."

"Sounds like it. Ask the Gradys if anybody's sent them any candy lately."

Bell relayed the question to the prosecutor and his wife and they shook their heads, dismayed to even hear the question.

"No, we don't keep candy in the house," the prosecutor's wife said.

The criminalist then asked Bell, "You said he surprised you by getting into Grady's apartment itself this afternoon."

"Yup. We thought we'd nail him in the lobby, the basement or the roof. We never expected him to get in the front door."

"After he broke in, where did he go?"

"He just showed up in the living room. Shook us all up."

"So he might've had time to leave some candy in the kitchen."

"No, couldn't've been in the kitchen," Bell explained. "Lon and I were in there."

"What other rooms could he have gotten into?"

Bell posed the question to Grady and his wife.

"What's going on, Roland?" the prosecutor asked.

"Lincoln just found some more evidence and's thinking that Weir might've tried to get some poison into your house. It looks like it was in some candy. We're not sure he did but-"

"Candy?" From a soft, high voice behind them.

Bell, the Gradys and two of the other cops on protection detail turned to see the prosecutor's daughter staring at the detective, eyes wide with fear.

"Chrissy?" her mother asked. "What is it?"

"Candy?" the girl whispered again.

A foil wrapper fell from her hand and she began to sob.

Hands sweating, Bell looked at the passersby on the sidewalk in front of Charles Grady's apartment.

Dozens of people.

Was one of them Weir?

Or somebody else from that goddamn Patriot Assembly?

The ambulance rolled up and two techs jumped out. But before they got through the front door the detective carefully examined their IDs.

"What's all this about?" one of them asked, offended.

Bell ignored him and checked out the cars on the street, the passersby, the windows in the buildings nearby. When it was safe he gave a whistle and Luis Martinez, the quiet bodyguard, hustled the girl out and into the ambulance, accompanied by her mother.

Chrissy wasn't showing symptoms of poisoning yet though she was pale and shook from fearful crying. The girl had eaten a peppermint patty that had mysteriously appeared in her piano room. This was beyond evil to Bell-hurting children and, though he'd been suckered in by Constable's smooth talk momentarily, this incident clarified the complete depravity of people like those in the Patriot Assembly.

Differences between cultures? Between races? No, sir. There's only one difference. There's good and decency on the one side and evil on the other.

If the girl died Bell would make it his personal quest to see that both Weir and Constable received the punishment that corresponded to what he'd done to Chrissy-lethal injection.

"Don't you worry, honey," he now said to her as one of the medics took her blood pressure. "You're going to be just fine."

The response to this was the girl's silent sobbing. He glanced at Chrissy's mother, on whose face was a look of tenderness that couldn't quite hide a fury exponentially greater than Bell's.

The detective radioed to Central and was patched through to Emergency Services at the hospital they were careening toward at the moment. He said to the supervisor, "We're gonna be at the admission dock in two minutes. Now listen here-I want that area and a route to a poison-control center cleared of people. I don't want a soul around less they're wearing a picture ID badge."

"Well, Detective, we can't do that," the woman said. "That's a very busy section of the hospital."

"I'm gonna be muley on this one, ma'am."

"You're going to be what?"

"Stubborn. There's an armed perpetrator who's after this little girl and her family. And if I do see anybody in our line of sight without a badge, they're gonna get handcuffed and in a pretty impatient way."

"This's an emergency room in a city hospital, Detective," the woman responded testily. "Do you know how many people I'm looking at right now?"

"No, ma'am, I do not. But imagine lookin' at every one of 'em on their bellies and hog-tied. Which is what they're gonna be if they're not gone by the time we get there. And, by the by, that's looking to be all of two minutes from right now."

Chapter Forty-three.

"Cases change color."

Charles Grady sat hunched forward in an orange plastic chair in a room off the Urgent Care waiting area, staring at the green linoleum, scuffed by thousands of despairing feet.

"Criminal cases, I mean."

Roland Bell sat next to him. Luis's vigilant form filled one doorway and nearby, at the entrance to a busy hallway, was another of Bell's SWAT officers, Graham Wilson, a handsome, intense detective with keen, stern eyes and a talent for spotting people packing weapons as if he had X-ray vision.

Grady's wife had accompanied Chrissy into the ER itself, along with Luis and another protection-team officer.

"I had a law school professor one time," Grady continued, still as wood. "He'd been a prosecutor and then a judge. He told us once in class that in all his years of practicing law he'd never seen a black-and-white case come through the door. They were all different shades of gray. There was pretty damn dark gray and there was damn light gray. But they were all gray."

Bell glanced up the corridor, toward the impromptu waiting room that the duty nurse had made for the injured skateboarders and bicyclists. As Bell had insisted, this portion of the hospital had been cleared.

"But then, once you got involved in the case yourself, it changed color. It became black and white. Whether you were prosecuting or defending, the gray disappeared. Your side was one hundred percent good. The other side was one hundred percent evil. Right or wrong. My professor said you have to guard against that. You have to keep reminding yourself that cases were really gray."

Bell noticed an orderly. The young Latino seemed harmless but the detective nodded to Wilson, who stopped him and checked his badge nonetheless. He gave an okay sign to Bell.

Chrissy'd been in an operating room for fifteen minutes. Why couldn't somebody come out and at least give them some progress?

Grady continued, "But you know, Roland, all these months since we found out about that conspiracy in Canton Falls I kept seeing the Constable case as black and white. I never once considered it gray. I went after him with everything I had." A sad laugh. He looked up the hall again, the grim smile fading. "Where the hell's that doctor?"

Lowered his head again.

"But maybe if I'd seen more gray, maybe if I hadn't gone after him so hard, if I'd compromised more, he might not've hired Weir. He might not've . . ." He nodded toward where his daughter was at the moment. He choked and cried silently for a moment.

Bell said, "I'm thinking your professor was wrong, Charles. At least about people like Constable. Anybody who'd do what he's done, well, there is no gray with people like that."

Grady wiped his face.

"Your boys, Roland. They ever been in the hospital?"

Visiting their mother toward the end was the detective's first thought. But Bell didn't say anything about that. "Off and on. Nothing serious-fixin' up whatever a softball can do to a forehead or a little finger. Or a shortstop running you down armed with a softball."

"Well," Grady said, "it takes your breath away." Another look up the empty hall. "Takes it clean away."

A few minutes later the detective was aware of motion in the corridor. A doctor wearing green scrubs noticed Grady and walked slowly toward them. Bell could read nothing on his face.

"Charles," the detective said softly.

But, though his head was down, Grady was already watching the man's approach.

"Black and white," he whispered. "Lord." He rose to meet the doctor.

Gazing out the window at the evening sky, Lincoln Rhyme heard his phone ring.

"Command, answer phone." Click. "Yes?"

"Lincoln? It's Roland."

Mel Cooper turned gravely to look at him. They knew Bell was at the hospital with Christine Grady and her family. "What's the word?"

"She's all right."

Cooper closed his eyes momentarily and if ever a Protestant came close to blessing himself this was the moment. Rhyme too felt a surge of relief. "No poison?"

"Nothing. It was just candy. Not a lick of toxin anywhere."

"So that was misdirection too," the criminalist mused.

"Seems to be."

"But what the hell does it mean?" Rhyme asked in a faint voice, the question directed not so much to Bell but to himself.

The detective offered, "For my money, Weir pointing us to Grady? I'm thinking that means he's still going to try something else to spring Constable from detention. He's in the courthouse somewhere."

"You on your way to the safe house?"

"Yup. Whole family. We'll sit it out there till you catch this fella."

Till?

How about if?

They hung up and Rhyme turned from the window and wheeled back to the evidence chart.

The hand is quicker than the eye. Except that it's not.

What did master illusionist Erick Weir have in mind? Feeling his neck muscles tense to the point of cramping, he gazed out the window as he considered the enigma they were facing: Hobbs Wentworth, the hit-man, was dead and Grady and his family were safe.

Constable had clearly been preparing to escape from the interview room at the Tombs but there'd been no overt attempt by Weir to actually spring him. So it appeared that Weir's plans were falling apart.

But Rhyme couldn't accept that obvious conclusion. With the supposed attempt on Christine Grady he'd taken their attention away from downtown and Rhyme now leaned toward Bell's conclusion that there was soon going to be another attempt to rescue Constable.

Or was there something else going on-maybe an attempt to kill Constable to keep him from testifying.

The frustration scared him. Rhyme had long ago accepted that with his condition he would never physically capture a perp. But the compensation was the sinewy strength of a clever mind. Sitting motionless in his chair or bed, he could at least outthink the criminals he pursued.

Except that with Erick Weir, the Conjurer, he couldn't. This was a man whose soul was devoted to deception.

Rhyme considered if there was anything else to be done to find answers to the impossible questions raised by the case.

Sachs, Sellitto and ESU were scouring the detention center and courts. Kara was at the Cirque Fantastique awaiting Kadesky. Thom was placing calls to Keating and Loesser, the killer's former assistants, to see if the man had contacted them in the past day or if they'd happened to remember something else that could be helpful. A Physical Evidence Response Team, on loan from the FBI, was searching the scene of the office building where Hobbs Wentworth had shot himself, and technicians in Washington were still analyzing the fiber and fake-blood paint found by Sachs at the detention center.

What else could Rhyme do to find out what Weir had in mind?

Only one thing.

He decided to try something he hadn't done for years.

Rhyme himself began to walk some grids. This search started at the bloody escape scene in the detention center and took him through winding corridors, lit with algae-green fluorescence. Around corners banged dull from years of careening supply carts and pallets. Into closets and furnace rooms. Trying to follow the footsteps-and discern the thoughts-of Erick Weir.

The walk was, of course, conducted with his eyes closed and took place exclusively in his mind. Still, it seemed appropriate that he should engage in a hot pursuit that was wholly imaginary when the prey he sought was a vanished man.

The stoplight changed to green and Malerick accelerated slowly.

He was thinking about Andrew Constable, a conjurer in his own right, to hear Jeddy Barnes tell it. Like a mentalist Constable could size up a man in seconds and assume a countenance that would put him instantly at ease. Speaking humorously, intelligently, with understanding. Taking rational, sympathetic positions.

Selling the medicine to the gullible.

Of which there were plenty, of course. You'd think that people would tip to the nonsense that groups like the Patriot Assembly spewed. But as the great impresario of Malerick's own art, P. T. Barnum, noted, there's a sucker born every minute.

As he picked his way through the Sunday evening traffic Malerick was amused to think of Constable's utter bewilderment at the moment. Part of the plan for the prisoner's escape required Constable to incapacitate his lawyer. Two weeks ago, in the restaurant in Bedford Junction, Jeddy Barnes had said to him, "Well, Mr. Weir, the thing is, Roth's Jewish. Andrew'll enjoy hurting him pretty good."