The Vanished Man

full-service cop. He was a detective in the real sense of the word. He “detected” the truth, using all the resources that the NYPD and fellow agencies had to offer, as well as hisown street-smarts and tenacity. It was the best job in the world, he often said. The work called on you to be an actor, a politician, a chess player and sometimes a gunslinger and tackle.
    And one of the best parts was the game of interrogation, getting suspects to confess or reveal the names of associates and the location of loot or victim’s bodies.
    But it was clear from the beginning that this prick wasn’t giving up a dustball of information.
    “Now, Erick, what do you know about the Patriot Assembly?”
    “Like I said, only what I read about them,” Weir replied, scratching his chin on his shoulder as best he could. “You want to undo these cuffs just for a minute?”
    “No, I don’t. You only read about the Assembly?”
    “That’s right.” Weir coughed for a moment.
    “Where?”
    “ Time magazine, I think.”
    “And you’re educated, you speak good. I wouldn’t guess you go along with their philosophy.”
    “Of course not.” He wheezed, “They seem like rabid bigots to me.”
    “So if you don’t believe in their politics then the only reason to kill Charles Grady for them is for money. Which you admitted at Rhyme’s. So I’d like to know exactly who hired you.”
    “Oh, I wasn’t going to kill him,” the prisoner whispered. “You misunderstood me.”
    “What’s to misunderstand? You broke into his apartment with a loaded weapon.”
    “Look, I like challenges. Seeing if I can break intoplaces nobody else can. I’d never hurt anybody.” This was delivered half to Sellitto and half to a battered video camera aimed at his face.
    “Say, how was the meat loaf? Or did you have the roast turkey?”
    “The what?”
    “In Bedford Junction. At the Riverside Inn. I’d say you had the turkey, and Constable’s boys had the meat loaf and the steak and the daily special. Which one did Jeddy have?”
    “Who? Oh, that man you asked me about? Barnes. You’re talking about that receipt, right?” Weir said, wheezing. “The truth is I just found that. I needed to write something down and I grabbed a scrap of paper.”
    The truth? Sellitto reflected. Right. “You just needed to write something down?”
    Struggling for breath, Weir nodded.
    “Where were you?” persisted an increasingly bored Lon Sellitto. “When you needed this paper?”
    “I don’t know. A Starbucks.”
    “Which one?”
    Weir squinted. “Don’t remember.”
    Criminals had started to cite Starbucks a lot lately when offering up alibis. Sellitto decided it was because there were so many of the coffee outlets and they all looked alike—criminals could credibly sound confused about which one they’d been in at a particular time.
    “Why was it blank?” Sellitto continued.
    “What was blank?”
    “The back of the receipt. If you’d taken it to write something down why didn’t you write on it?”
    “Oh. I don’t think I could find a pen.”
    “They have pens at Starbucks. People charge things a lot there. They need pens to sign their credit card vouchers.”
    “The clerk was busy. I didn’t want to bother her.”
    “What was it you wanted to write down?”
    “Uhm,” came the breathy wheeze, “movie show time.”
    “Where’s Larry Burke’s body?”
    “Who?”
    “The police officer who arrested you on Eighty-eighth Street. You told Lincoln Rhyme last night that you killed him and the body was on the West Side somewhere.”
    “I was just trying to make him think I was going to attack the circus, lead him off. Feeding him false information.”
    “And when you admitted killing the other victims? That was false information too?”
    “Exactly. I didn’t kill anybody. Somebody else did and tried to pin it on me.”
    Ah, the oldest defense in the book. The lamest. The most embarrassing.
    Though one that, of course, did sometimes work, Sellitto knew—depending on the gullibility of the jury.
    “Who wanted to frame you?”
    “I don’t know. But somebody who knows me, obviously.”
    “Because they’d have access to your clothes and fibers and hairs and things, to plant at the scenes.”
    “Exactly.”
    “Good. Then it’d be a short list. Give me some names.”
    Weir closed his eyes. “Nothing’s coming to me.” His head slumped. “It’s really frustrating.”
    Sellitto couldn’t’ve put it better himself.
    A