The Vanished Man

Mozart Sonatina, one of her favorites. She didn’t think her playing was all that good, though. She was distracted by the police in their apartment. The men and women were all very nice and talked cheerfully about Star Wars or Harry Potter or Xbox games with big smiles on their faces. But Chrissy knew they weren’t really smiling at all; they were only doing it to make her feel comfortable. But all the fake grins really did was make her more scared.
    Because, even though they didn’t say it, the fact that the police were here meant that somebody was trying to hurt her daddy. She wasn’t worried about somebody trying to hurt her. What scared her was that some bad man would take her daddy away from her. She wished he’d stop doing the court job he had. Once, she’d worked up her courage and asked him.
    But he’d said to her, “How much do you like playing the yanno, honey?”
    “Lots.”
    “Well, that’s how much I like doing my job.”
    “Oh. Okay,” she’d said. Even though it wasn’t okay at all. Because playing music didn’t make people hate you and want to kill you. She now squinted harder and concentrated. Flubbed a passage once and then tried again.
    And now, she’d learned, they were going to have to go live someplace else for a while. Just a day or two, her mom’d said. But what if it was for longer than that? What if they had to cancel the Suzuki party? Upset, she gave up playing, closed the music book and started to put it in her book bag.
    Hey, look at this!
    Resting on the music stand was a York peppermint patty. Not a little one but a full sizer, the kind they sell at the checkout stands at Food Emporium. She wondered who’d left it. Her mother didn’t like anybody to eat in the yanno room and Chrissy was never allowed to have candy or anything sticky when she was playing.
    Maybe it’d been her daddy. She knew he felt bad for her because of all the policemen around and because she hadn’t been able to go to her recital last night at the Neighborhood School.
    That was it—this was a secret treat from her father.
    Chrissy glanced behind her, through the crack in the door. She saw people walking back and forth. Heard the calm voice of that nice policeman from North Carolina, who had two boys she was going to meet someday. Her mother brought a suitcase out ofthe bedroom. She had her unhappy face on and was saying, “This is crazy. Why can’t you find him? He’s one man. There’re hundreds of you. I don’t understand it.”
    Chrissy sat back, opened up the foil covering and slowly ate the candy. When she was finished she carefully examined her fingers. Yep, there was chocolate on them. She’d go to the bathroom and wash them off. And while she was there she’d flush the wrapper down the toilet so her mother wouldn’t find out. That was called “disposing of the evidence,” which she’d learned from that CSI television program her parents wouldn’t let her watch, even though she managed to, every once in a while.
    •   •   •
    Roland Bell had returned safely with Charles Grady to the apartment, where the family was now packing up to go to an NYPD safehouse in the Murray Hill area of town. He’d pulled the shades down and told the family to stay away from the windows. He could see that this fueled their uneasiness. But his job wasn’t to coddle psyches. It was to keep a very clever killer from taking their lives.
    His cell phone rang. It was Rhyme. “Everything secure there?” the criminalist asked.
    “Tight as a bed baby,” Bell replied.
    “Constable’s in a secure cell.”
    “And we know his guards, right?” Bell asked.
    “Amelia said Weir might be good but he’s not good enough to turn himself into two Shaquille O’Neal look-alikes.”
    “Got it. How’s the lawyer?”
    “Roth? He’ll live. Was a bad beating though.I’m . . .” Rhyme stopped talking as someone else in the room began speaking. Bell believed he heard the soft voice of Mel Cooper.
    He then resumed speaking to Bell. “I’m still going through what Amelia found at the scenes in the detention center. Don’t have any specific leads yet. But we’ve got something else I wanted to mention. Bedding and Saul finally tracked down which room at the Lanham Arms the key card belonged to.”
    “Who was it registered to?”
    “Fake name and address,” Rhyme explained. “But the desk clerk said the guest fit Weir’s description perfectly. CS didn’t get much but they found a discarded