The Vanished Man

syringe behind the dresser. We don’t know whether Weir left it or not but I’m going on the assumption he did. Mel found traces of chocolate and sucrose on the needle.”
    “Sucrose—that’s sugar?”
    “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 thesupervisor, “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