Jeffery Deaver - The Coffin Dancer

A brunette in her thirties wearing a wrinkled blue dress stepped out of an office and put her arm around Sally Anne’s shoulders. The older woman squeezed the younger’s hand. “Lauren, you okay?”

Lauren, her puffy face a mask of shock, asked Sachs, “Do they know what happened yet?”

“We’re just starting the investigation… Now, Mr. Talbot?”

Sally Anne wiped tears then glanced toward an office in the corner. Sachs walked to the doorway. Inside was a bearish man with a stubbled chin and tangle of uncombed black-and-gray hair. He was poring over computer printouts, breathing heavily. He looked up, a dismal expression on his face. He’d been crying too, it seemed.

“I’m Officer Sachs,” she said. “I’m with the NYPD.”

He nodded. “You have him yet?” he asked, looking out the window as if he expected to see Ed Carney’s ghost float past. He turned back to her. “The killer?”

“We’re following up on several leads.” Amelia Sachs, second-generation cop, had the art of evasion down cold.

Lauren appeared in Talbot’s doorway. “I can’t believe he’s gone,” she gasped, an edgy panic in her voice. “Who’d do something like that? Who?” As a patrol officer – a beat cop – Sachs had delivered her share of bad news to loved ones. She never got used to the despair she heard in the voices of surviving friends and family.

“Lauren.” Sally Anne took her colleague’s arm. “Lauren, go on home.”

“No! I don’t want to go home. I want to know who the hell did it? Oh, Ed…”

Stepping farther into Talbot’s office, Sachs said, “I need your help. It looks like the killer mounted the bomb outside the plane underneath the cockpit. We have to find out where.”

“Outside?” Talbot was frowning. “How?”

“Magnetized and glued. The glue wasn’t completely set before the blast so it had to’ve been not long before takeoff.”

Talbot nodded. “Whatever I can do. Sure.”

She tapped the walkie-talkie on her hip. “I’m going to go on-line with my boss. He’s in Manhattan. We’re going to ask you some questions.” Hooked up the Motorola, headset, and stalk mike.

“Okay, Rhyme, I’m here. Can you hear me?”

Though they were on an areawide Special Ops frequency and should have been ten-fiveing and K’ing, according to Communications Department procedures, Sachs and Rhyme rarely bothered with radioese. And they didn’t now. His voice grumbled through the earphone, bouncing off who knew how many satellites. “Got it. Took you long enough.”

Don’t push it, Rhyme.

She asked Talbot, “Where was the plane before it took off? Say, an hour, hour and a quarter?”

“In the hangar,” Talbot said.

“You think he could’ve gotten to the plane there? After the – what do you call it? When the pilot inspects the plane?”

“The walkaround. I suppose it’s possible.”

“But there were people around all the time,” Lauren said. The crying fit was over and she’d wiped her face. She was calmer now and determination had replaced despair in her eyes.

“Who are you, please?”

“Lauren Simmons.”

“Lauren’s our assistant operations manager,” Talbot said. “She works for me.”

Lauren continued. “We’d been working with Stu – our chief mechanic, our former chief mechanic – to outfit the aircraft, working round the clock. We would’ve seen anybody near the plane.”

“So,” she said, “he mounted the bomb after the plane left the hangar.”

“Chronology!” Rhyme’s voice crackled through the headset. “Where was it from the moment it left the hangar until takeoff?”

When she relayed this question Talbot and Lauren led her into a conference room. It was filled with charts and scheduling boards, hundreds of books and notebooks and stacks of papers. Lauren unrolled a large map of the airport. It contained a thousand numbers and symbols Sachs didn’t understand, though the buildings and roadways were clearly outlined.

“No plane moves an inch,” Talbot explained in a gruff baritone, “unless Ground Control gives the okay. Charlie Juliet was -”

“What? Charlie…?”

“The number of the plane. We refer to planes by the last two letters on the registration number. See on the fuselage? CJ. So we called it Charlie Juliet. It was parked in the hangar here…” He tapped the map. “We finished loading -”

“When?” Rhyme called; so loud she wouldn’t have been surprised if Talbot had heard. “We need times! Exact times.”

The logbook in Charlie Juliet ’d been burned to a cinder and the time-stamped FAA tape hadn’t been transcribed yet. But Lauren examined the company’s internal records. “Tower gave ’em push-back clearance at seven-sixteen. And they reported wheels up at seven-thirty.”

Rhyme had heard. “Fourteen minutes. Ask them if the plane was ever both out of sight and stopped during that time.”

Sachs did and Lauren answered, “Probably there.” She pointed.

A narrow portion of taxiway about two hundred feet long. The row of hangars hid it from the rest of the airport. It ended at a T intersection.

Lauren said, “Oh, and it’s an ATC No Vis area.”

“That’s right,” Talbot said, as if this were significant.

“Translation!” Rhyme called.

“Meaning?” Sachs asked.

“Out of visibility from Air Traffic Control,” Lauren answered. “A blind spot.”

“Yes!” came the voice through her earphone. “Okay, Sachs. Seal and search. Release the hangar.”

To Talbot she said, “We’re not going to bother with the hangar. I’m releasing it. But I want to seal off that taxiway. Can you call the tower? Have them divert traffic?”

“I can ,” he said doubtfully. “They aren’t going to like it.”

She said, “If there’s any problem have them call Thomas Perkins. He’s head of the FBI’s Manhattan office. He’ll clear it with FAA HQ.”

“FAA? In Washington?” Lauren asked.

“That’s the one.”

Talbot gave a faint smile. “Well, okay.”

Sachs started for the main door then paused, looking out at the busy airport. “Oh, I’ve got a car,” she called to Talbot. “Is there anything special you do when you drive around an airport?”

“Yeah,” he said, “try not to run into any airplanes.”

Hour 3 of 45

I’M HERE, RHYME,” SHE ANNOUNCED.

Sachs climbed out of the RRV wagon and pulled latex gloves on her hands and wound rubber bands around her shoes – to make certain her footprints wouldn’t be confused with the perp’s, as Rhyme had taught her.

“And where, Sachs,” he asked, “is here?”

“At the intersection of taxiways. Between a row of hangars. It’s where Carney’s plane would’ve stopped.”

Sachs glanced uneasily at a line of trees in the distance. It was an overcast, dank day. Another storm was threatening. She felt exposed. The Dancer might be here now – maybe he’d returned to destroy evidence he’d left behind, maybe to kill a cop and slow down the investigation. Like the bomb in Wall Street a few years ago, the one that killed Rhyme’s techs.

Shoot first…

Damn it, Rhyme, you’re spooking me! Why’re you acting like this guy walks through walls and spits poison?

Sachs took the PoliLight box and a large suitcase from the back of the RRV. She opened the suitcase. Inside were a hundred tools of the trade: screwdrivers, wrenches, hammers, wire cutters, knives, friction ridge collection equipment, ninhydrin, tweezers, brushes, tongs, scissors, flex-claw pickups, a gunshot residue kit, pencils, plastic and paper bags, evidence collection tape…