Jeffery Deaver - The Coffin Dancer

“No. I found it that way. It’s propped open with a chair, looks like.”

Why? Rhyme wondered. Why’d he do that? He thought furiously.

“That smell, it’s stronger. Smokey.”

The woman’s a distraction! Rhyme thought suddenly. He left the door open to make sure the entry team would focus on it.

Oh, no, not again!

“Sachs! That’s fuse you’re smelling. A time-delay fuse. There’s another bomb! Get out now! He left the refrigerator door open to lure us inside.”

“What?”

“It’s a fuse! He’s set a bomb. You’ve got seconds. Get out! Run!”

“I can get the tape. On her mouth.”

“Get the fuck out!”

“I can get it…”

Rhyme heard a rustle, a faint gasp, and seconds later, the ringing bang of the explosion, like a sledgehammer on a boiler.

It stunned his ear.

“No!” he cried. “Oh, no!”

He glanced at Sellitto, who was staring at Rhyme’s horrified face. “What happened, what happened?” the detective was calling.

A moment later Rhyme could hear through the earpiece a man’s voice, panicky, shouting, “We’ve got a fire. Second floor. The walls’re gone. They’re gone… We got injuries… Oh, God. What happened to her? Look at the blood. All the blood! We need help. Second floor! Second floor…”

Stephen Kall walked a circle around the Twentieth Precinct on the Upper West Side.

The station house wasn’t far from Central Park and he caught a glimpse of the trees. The cross street the precinct house was located on was guarded, but security wasn’t too bad. There were three cops in front of the low building, looking around nervously. But there were none on the east side of the station house, where a thick steel grille covered the windows. He guessed that this was the lockup.

Stephen continued around the corner and then walked south to the next cross street. There were no blue sawhorses closing off this street, but there were guards – two more cops. They eyed every car and pedestrian that passed. He studied the building briefly then continued yet another block south and circled around the west side of the precinct. He slipped through a deserted alley, took his binoculars from his backpack, and gazed at the station house.

Can you use this, Soldier?

Sir, yes, I can, sir.

In a parking lot beside the station house was a gas pump. An officer was filling his squad car with gas. It never occurred to Stephen that police cars wouldn’t buy their gas at Amoco or Shell stations.

For a long moment he gazed at the pump through his small, heavy Leica binoculars, then put them back into the bag and hurried west, conscious, as always, of people on the lookout for him.

Hour 12 of 45

“SACHS!” RHYME CRIED AGAIN.

Damnit, what was she thinking of? How could she be so careless?

“What happened?” Sellitto asked again. “What’s going on?”

What happened to her?

“A bomb in the Horowitz apartment,” Rhyme said hopelessly. “Sachs was inside when it went off. Call them. Find out what happened. On the speaker-phone.”

All the blood…

An interminable three minutes later Sellitto was patched through to Dellray.

“Fred,” Rhyme shouted, “how is she?”

A harrowing pause before he answered.

“Ain’t good, Lincoln. We’re just gettin’ the fire out now. It was an AP of some kind. Shit. We shoulda looked first. Fuck.”

Antipersonnel booby traps were usually plastic explosive or TNT and often contained shrapnel or ball bearings – to inflict the most damage they could.

Dellray continued. “Took a coupla walls down and burned mosta the place out.” A pause. “I have to tell you, Lincoln. We… found…” Dellray’s voice – usually so steady – now waffled uneasily.

“What?” Rhyme demanded.

“Some body parts… A hand. Part of an arm.”

Rhyme closed his eyes and felt a horror he hadn’t felt in years. An icy stab through his insentient body. His breath came out in a low hiss.

“ Lincoln -” Sellitto began.

“We’re still searching,” Dellray continued. “She might not be dead. We’ll find her. Get her to the hospital. We’ll do everything we can. You know we will.”

Sachs, why the hell did you do it? Why did I let you?

I should never -

Then a crackle sounded in his ear. A pop as loud as a firecracker. “Could somebody… I mean, Jesus, could somebody get this off me?”

“Sachs?” Rhyme called into the microphone. He was sure the voice was hers. Then it sounded like she was choking and retching.

“Uck,” she said. “Oh, boy… This’s gross.”

“Are you all right?” He turned to the speaker-phone. “Fred, where is she?”

“Is that you, Rhyme?” she asked. “I can’t hear anything. Somebody talk to me!”

“ Lincoln,” Dellray called. “We got her! She’s A-okay. She’s all right.”

“Amelia?”

He heard Dellray shouting for medics. Rhyme, whose body hadn’t shivered for some years, noted that his left ring finger was trembling fiercely.

Dellray came back on. “She can’t hear too good, Lincoln. What happened was… looks like what happened was it was the woman’s body we saw. Horowitz. Sachs pulled it out of the fridge just ’fore the bang. The corpse took mosta the blast.”

Sellitto said, “I see that look, Lincoln. Give her a break.”

But he didn’t.

In a fierce growl he said, “What the hell were you thinking of, Sachs? I told you it was a bomb. You should’ve known it was a bomb and bailed out.”

“Rhyme, is that you?”

She was faking. He knew she was.

“Sachs -”

“I had to get the tape, Rhyme. Are you there? I can’t hear you. It was plastic packing tape. We need to get one of his prints. You said so yourself.”

“Honestly,” he snapped, “you’re impossible.”

“Hello? Hello-o? Can’t hear a word you’re saying.”

“Sachs, don’t give me any crap.”

“I’m going to check something, Rhyme.”

There was silence for a moment.

“Sachs?… Sachs, you there? What the hell…?”

“Rhyme, listen – I just hit the tape with the PoliLight. And guess what? There’s a partial on it! I’ve got one of the Dancer’s prints!”

That stopped him for a moment but he soon resumed his tirade again. He was well into his lecture before he realized that he was reading the riot act to an empty line.

She was sooty and had a stunned look about her.

“No dressing-down, Rhyme. It was stupid but I didn’t think about it. I just moved.”

“What happened?” he asked. His stern visage had fallen away momentarily, he was so happy to see her alive.

“I was halfway inside. I saw the AP charge behind the door and didn’t think I could make it out in time. I grabbed the woman’s body out of the fridge. I was going to pull her to the kitchen window. It blew before I got halfway there.”

Mel Cooper looked over the bag of evidence Sachs handed him. He examined the soot and fragments from the bomb. “M forty-five charge. TNT, with a rocker switch and forty-five-second fuse delay. The entry team knocked it over when they rammed the door; that ignited the fuse. There’s graphite, so it’s newer-formulation TNT. Very powerful, very bad.”

“Fucker,” Sellitto spat out. “Time delay… He wanted to make sure as many people got into the room as possible ’fore it blew.”

Rhyme asked, “Anything traceable?”

“Off-the-shelf military. Won’t lead us anywhere except -”

“To the asshole gave it to him,” Sellitto muttered. “Phillip Hansen.” The detective’s phone rang and he took the call, lowered his head as he listened, nodding.