Jeffery Deaver - The Coffin Dancer

Staring out the window, face burning with shame. “After he fired and missed, I’d’ve had at least three seconds to fire – I knew he was shooting bolt action. I could’ve lost a whole clip at him. But I tongued dirt. Then I didn’t have the balls to get up again because I knew he’d rechambered.”

Sellitto scoffed. “What? You’re worried ’cause you didn’t stand up, without cover, and give a sniper a nice fat target? Come on, Officer… And, hey, wait a minute; you had your service weapon?”

“Yeah, I -”

“Three hundred yards with a Glock nine? In your dreams.”

“I might not have hit him but I could’ve parked enough nearby to keep him pinned down. So he wouldn’t’ve got that last shot in and hit Jerry. Oh, hell.” She clenched her hands, looked at her index-finger nail again. It was dark with blood. She scratched harder.

The brilliant red reminded her of the dust cloud of blood rising around Jerry Banks and so she scratched harder still.

“Officer, I wouldn’t lose any sleep over that one.”

How could she explain? What was eating at her now was more complex than the detective knew. Rhyme was the best criminalist in New York, maybe in the country. Sachs aspired, but she’d never match him at that. But shooting – like driving fast – was one of her gifts. She could outshoot most of the men and women on the force, either-handed. She’d prop dimes up on the fifty-yard range and shoot for the glare, making presents of the bent coins for her goddaughter and her friends. She could have saved Jerry. Hell, she might even have hit the son of a bitch.

She was furious with herself, furious with Percey for putting her in this position.

And furious with Rhyme too.

The door swung open and Percey appeared. With a cold look at Sachs she asked Hale to join them. He disappeared into the room and a few minutes later it was Hale who opened the door and said, “He’d like everyone back inside.”

Sachs found them this way: Percey was sitting next to Rhyme in a battered old armchair. She had this ridiculous image of them as a married couple.

“We’re compromising,” Rhyme announced. “Brit and Percey’ll go to Dellray’s safe house. They’ll have somebody else do the repairs on the plane. Whether we find the Dancer or not, though, I’ve agreed to let her make the flight tomorrow night.”

“And if I just arrest her?” Sachs said heatedly. “Take her to detention?”

She’d thought Rhyme would explode at this – she was ready for it – but he said reasonably, “I thought about that, Sachs. And I don’t believe it’s a good idea. There’d be more exposure – court, detention, transport. The Dancer’d have more of a chance to get them.”

Amelia Sachs hesitated then gave in, nodded. He was right; he usually was. But right or not, he’d have things his way. She was his assistant, nothing more. An employee. That’s all she was to him.

Rhyme continued. “Here’s what I’ve got in mind. We’re going to set a trap. I’ll need your help, Lon.”

“Talk to me.”

“Percey and Hale’ll go to the safe house. But I want to make it look like they’re going someplace else. We’ll make a big deal out of it. Very visible. I’d pick one of the precincts, pretend they’re going into the lockup there for security. We’ll put out a transmission or two on citywide, unscrambled, that we’re closing the street in front of the station house for security and transporting all booked suspects down to detention to keep the facility clear. If we’re lucky the Dancer’ll be listening on a scanner. If not, the media’ll pick it up and he might hear about it that way.”

“How ’bout the Twentieth?” Sellitto suggested.

The Twentieth Precinct, on the Upper West Side, was only a few blocks from Lincoln Rhyme’s town house. He knew many of the officers there.

“Okay, good.”

Sachs then noticed some uneasiness in Sellitto’s eyes. He leaned forward toward Rhyme’s chair, sweat dripping down his broad, creased forehead. In a voice only Rhyme and Sachs could hear, he whispered, “You’re sure about this, Lincoln. I mean, you thought about it?”

Rhyme’s eyes swiveled toward Percey. A look passed between the two of them. Sachs didn’t know what it meant. She knew only that she didn’t like it.

“Yes,” Rhyme said. “I’m sure.”

Though to Sachs he didn’t seem very sure at all.

Hour 6 of 45

“LOTS OF TRACE, I SEE.”

Rhyme looked approvingly at the plastic bags Sachs had brought back from the airport crime scenes.

Trace evidence was Rhyme’s favorite – the bits and pieces, sometimes microscopic, left by perps at crime scenes, or picked up there by them unwittingly. It was trace evidence that even the cleverest of perps didn’t think to alter or plant and it was trace that even the most industrious couldn’t dispose of altogether.

“The first bag, Sachs? Where did it come from?”

She flipped angrily through her notes.

What was eating at her? he wondered. Something was wrong, Rhyme could see. Maybe it had to do with her anger at Percey Clay, maybe her concern for Jerry Banks. But maybe not. He could tell from the cool glances that she didn’t want to talk about it. Which was fine with him. The Dancer had to be caught. It was their only priority at the moment.

“This’s from the hangar where the Dancer waited for the plane.” She held up two of the bags. She nodded at three others. “This’s from the sniper’s nest. This’s from the painting van. This’s from the catering van.”

“Thom… Thom!” Rhyme shouted, startling everyone in the room.

The aide appeared in the doorway. He asked a belabored “Yes? I’m trying to fix some food here, Lincoln.”

“Food?” Rhyme asked, exasperated. “We don’t need to eat. We need more charts. Write: ‘CS-Two. Hangar.’ Yes, ‘CS-Two. Hangar.’ That’s good. Then another one. ‘CS-Three.’ That’s where he fired from. His grassy knoll.”

“I should write that? ‘Grassy Knoll’?”

“Of course not. It’s a joke. I do have a sense of humor, you know. Write: ‘CS-Three. Sniper’s Nest.’ Now, let’s look at the hangar first. What do you have?”

“Bits of glass,” Cooper said, spilling the contents out on a porcelain tray like a diamond merchant. Sachs added, “And some vacuumed trace, a few fibers from the windowsill. No FR.”

Friction ridge prints, she meant. Finger or palm.

“He’s too careful with prints,” Sellitto said glumly.

“No, that’s encouraging ,” Rhyme said, irritated – as he often was – that no one else drew conclusions as quickly as he could.

“Why?” the detective asked.

“He’s careful because he’s on file somewhere! So when we do find a print we’ll stand a good chance of ID’ing him. Okay, okay, cotton glove prints, they’re no help… No boot prints because he scattered gravel on the hangar floor. He’s a smart one. But if he were stupid, nobody’d need us, right? Now, what does the glass tell us?”

“What could it tell us,” Sachs asked shortly, “except he broke in the window to get into the hangar?”

“I wonder,” Rhyme said. “Let’s look at it.”

Mel Cooper mounted several shards on a slide and placed it under the lens of the compound ’scope at low magnification. He clicked the video camera on to send the image to Rhyme’s computer.

Rhyme motored back to it. He instructed, “Command mode.” Hearing his voice, the computer dutifully slipped a menu onto the glowing screen. He couldn’t control the microscope itself but he could capture the image on the computer screen and manipulate it – magnify or shrink it, for instance. “Cursor left. Double click.”