Jeffery Deaver - The Coffin Dancer

The tech ran the sample through the gas chromatograph/mass spectrometer. This machine isolated elements in compounds and identified them. It could analyze samples as small as a millionth of a gram and, once it had determined what they were, could run the information through a database to determine, in many cases, brand names.

Cooper examined the results. “You’re right, Lincoln. It’s RDX. Also oil. And this is weird – starch…”

“Starch!” Rhyme cried. “That’s what I smelled. It’s guar flour…”

Cooper laughed as those very words popped up on the computer screen. “How’d you know?”

“Because it’s military dynamite.”

“But there’s no nitroglycerine,” Cooper protested. The active ingredient in dynamite.

“No, no, it’s not real dynamite,” Rhyme said. “It’s a mixture of RDX, TNT, motor oil, and the guar flour. You don’t see it very often.”

“Military, huh?” Sellitto said. “Points to Hansen.”

“That it does.”

The tech mounted samples on his compound ’scope’s stage.

The images appeared simultaneously on Rhyme’s computer screen. Bits of fiber, wires, scraps, splinters, dust.

He was reminded of a similar image from years ago, though in circumstances very different. Looking through a heavy brass kaleidoscope he’d bought as a birthday present for a friend. Claire Trilling, beautiful and stylish. Rhyme had found the kaleidoscope in a store in SoHo. The two of them had spent an evening sharing a bottle of merlot and trying to guess what kind of exotic crystals or gemstones were making the astonishing images in the eyepiece. Finally, Claire, nearly as scientifically curious as Rhyme, had unscrewed the bottom of the tube and emptied the contents onto a table. They’d laughed. The objects were nothing more than scraps of metal, wood shavings, a broken paper clip, torn shreds from the Yellow Pages, thumbtacks.

Rhyme pushed those memories aside and concentrated on the objects he was seeing on the screen: A fragment of waxed manila paper – what the military dynamite had been wrapped in. Fibers – rayon and cotton – from the detonating cord the Dancer had tied around the dynamite, which would crumble too easily to mold around the cord. A fragment of aluminum and a tiny colored wire – from the electric blasting cap. More wire and an eraser-size piece of carbon from the battery.

“The timer,” Rhyme called. “I want to see the timer.”

Cooper lifted a small plastic bag from the table.

Inside was the still, cold heart of the bomb.

It was in nearly perfect shape, surprising Rhyme. Ah, your first slipup, he thought, speaking silently to the Dancer. Most bombers will pack explosives around the detonating system to destroy clues. But here the Dancer had accidentally placed the timer behind a thick steel lip in the metal housing that held the bomb. The lip had protected the timer from the blast.

Rhyme’s neck stung as he strained forward, looking at the bent clock face.

Cooper scrutinized the device. I’ve got the model number and manufacturer.”

“Run everything through ERC.”

The FBI’s Explosives Reference Collection was the most extensive database on explosive devices in the world. It included information on all bombs reported in the United States as well as actual physical evidence from many of them. Certain items in the collection were antiques, dating back to the 1920s.

Cooper typed on his computer keyboard. Five seconds later his modem whistled and crackled.

A few moments later the results of the request came back.

“Not good,” the bald man said, grimacing slightly, about as emotional as the technician ever got. “No specific profiles match this particular bomb.”

Nearly all bombers fall into a pattern when they make their devices – they learn a technique and stick pretty close to it. (Given the nature of their product it’s a good idea not to experiment too much.) If the parts of the Dancer’s bomb matched an earlier IED in, say, Florida or California, the team might be able to pick up additional clues from those bomb sites that could lead them to the man’s whereabouts. The rule of thumb is that if two bombs share at least four points of construction – soldered leads instead of taped, for instance, or analog versus digital timers – they were probably made by the same person or under his tutelage. The Dancer’s bomb several years ago in Wall Street was different from this one. But, Rhyme knew, this one was intended to serve a different purpose. That bomb was planted to hamper a crime scene investigation; this one, to blow a large airplane out of the sky. And if Rhyme knew anything about the Coffin Dancer, it was that he tailored his tools to the job.

“Gets worse?” Rhyme asked, reading Cooper’s face as the tech stared at the computer screen.

“The timer.”

Rhyme sighed. He understood. “How many billions and billions in production?”

“The Daiwana Corporation in Seoul sold a hundred and forty-two thousand of them last year. To retail stores, OEMs, and licensees. There’s no coding on them to tell where they were shipped.”

“Great. Just great.”

Cooper continued to read the screen. “Hm. The folks at ERC say they’re very interested in the device and hope we’ll add it to their database.”

“Oh, our number one priority,” Rhyme grumbled.

His shoulder muscles suddenly cramped and he had to lean back into the headrest of the wheelchair. He breathed deeply for a few minutes until the nearly unbearable pain subsided, then vanished. Sachs, the only one who noticed, stepped forward, but Rhyme shook his head toward her, said, “How many wires you make out, Mel?”

“Just two, it looks like.”

“Multichannel or fiber optic?”

“Nope. Just average-ordinary bell wire.”

“No shunts?”

“None.”

A shunt is a separate wire that completes the connection if a battery or timer wire is cut in an attempt to render the bomb safe. All sophisticated bombs have shunting mechanisms.

“Well,” Sellitto said, “that’s good news, isn’t it? Means he’s getting careless.”

But Rhyme believed just the opposite. “Don’t think so, Lon. The only point of a shunt is to make rendering safe tougher. Not having a shunt means he was confident enough the bomb wouldn’t be found and would blow up just like he’d planned – in the air.”

“This thing,” Dellray asked contemptuously, looking over the bomb components. “What kind of people’d our boy have to rub shoulders with to make something like this? I got good CIs knowing ’bout bomb suppliers.”

Fred Dellray too had learned more about bombs than he’d ever intended. His longtime partner and friend, Toby Doolittle, had been on the ground floor of the Oklahoma City federal building several years ago. He’d been killed instantly in the fertilizer bomb explosion.

But Rhyme shook his head. “It’s all off-the-shelf stuff, Fred. Except for the explosives and the detonator cord. Hansen probably supplied them. Hell, the Dancer could’ve gotten everything he needed at Radio Shack.”

“What?” Sachs asked, surprised.

“Oh, yeah,” Cooper said, adding, “we call it the Bomber’s Store.”

Rhyme wheeled along the table over to a piece of steel housing twisted like crumpled paper, stared at it for a long moment.

Then he backed up and looked at the ceiling. “But why plant it outside?” he pondered. “Percey said there were always lots of people around. And doesn’t the pilot walk around the plane before they take off, look at the wheels and things?”

“I think so,” Sellitto said.

“Why didn’t Ed Carney or his copilot see it?”

“Because,” Sachs said suddenly, “the Dancer couldn’t put the bomb on board until he knew for sure who was going to be in the plane.”