Jeffery Deaver - The Coffin Dancer

“Thank you,” he said finally, shut off the phone.

“What?” Sachs asked.

The detective’s eyes were closed.

Rhyme knew it was about Jerry Banks.

“Lon?”

“It’s Jerry.” The detective looked up. Sighed. “He’ll live. But he lost his arm. They couldn’t save it. Too much damage.”

“Oh, no,” Rhyme whispered. “Can I talk to him?”

“No,” the detective said. “He’s asleep.”

Rhyme thought of the young man, pictured him saying the wrong thing at the wrong time, poking at his cowlick, rubbing a razor cut on his smooth, pink chin. “I’m sorry, Lon.”

The detective shook his head, much the same way Rhyme deflected bouquets of sympathy. “We got other things to worry about.”

Yes, they did.

Rhyme noticed the plastic packing tape – the gag the Dancer had used. He could see, as could Sachs, a faint lipstick mark on the adhesive side.

Sachs was staring at the evidence, but it wasn’t a clinical look. Not a scientist’s gaze. She was troubled.

“Sachs?” he asked.

“Why’d he do that?”

“The bomb?”

She shook her head. “Why’d he put her in the refrigerator?” She lifted a finger to her mouth and chewed a nail. On her ten fingers, only one nail – the little finger of her left hand – was long and shapely. The others were chewed. Some were brown with dried blood.

The criminalist answered, “I think it was because he wanted to distract us so we wouldn’t focus on the bomb. A body in a refrigerator – that got our attention.”

“I don’t mean that,” she answered. “COD was suffocation. He put her in there alive. Why? Is he a sadist or something?”

Rhyme answered, “No, the Dancer’s not a sadist. He can’t afford to be. His only urge is to complete the job, and he’s got enough willpower to keep his other lusts under control. Why’d he suffocate her when he could have used a knife or rope?… I’m not exactly sure but it could be good for us.”

“How’s that?”

“Maybe there was something about her that he hated and he wanted to kill her in the most unpleasant way he could.”

“Yeah, but why’s that good for us?” Sellitto asked.

“Because” – it was Sachs who answered – “it means maybe he’s losing his cool. He’s getting careless.”

“Exactly,” Rhyme called, proud of Sachs for making the connection. But she didn’t notice his smile of approval. Her eyes dipped closed momentarily and she shook her head, probably replaying the image of the dead woman’s horrified eyes. People thought criminalists were cold (how often had Rhyme’s wife leveled that charge at him?), but in fact the best ones had a heartbreaking empathy for the victims of the scenes they searched. Sachs was one of these.

“Sachs,” Rhyme whispered gently, “the print?”

She looked at him.

“You found a print, you said. We have to move fast.”

Sachs nodded. “It’s a partial.” She held up the plastic bag.

“Could it be hers?”

“No, I printed her. Took a while to find her hands. But the print definitely isn’t hers.”

“Mel,” Rhyme said.

The tech put the bit of packing tape in a SuperGlue frame and heated some glue. Immediately a tiny portion of the print became evident.

Cooper shook his head. “I don’t believe it,” he muttered.

“What?”

“He wiped the tape, the Dancer. He must’ve known he touched it without a glove on. There’s only a bit of one partial left.”

Like Rhyme, Cooper was a member of the International Association for Identification. They were experts at identifying people from fingerprints, DNA, and odontology – dental remains. But this particular print – like the one on the metal lip of the bomb – was beyond their power. If any experts could find and classify a print, it would be the two of them. But not this one.

“Shoot it and mount it,” Rhyme muttered. “Up on the wall.” They’d go through the motions because it was what you had to do in this business. But he was very frustrated. Sachs had nearly died for nothing.

Edmond Locard, the famous French criminalist, developed a principle named after him. He said that in every encounter between criminal and victim there is an exchange of evidence. It might be microscopic, but a transfer does take place. Yet it seemed to Rhyme that if anyone could disprove Locard’s Principle, it was the ghost they called the Coffin Dancer.

Sellitto, seeing the frustration on Rhyme’s face, said, “We’ve got the trap at the station house. If we’re lucky we’ll get him.”

“Let’s hope. We could use some goddamn luck.”

He closed his eyes, rested his head in the pillow. A moment later he heard Thom saying, “It’s nearly eleven. Time for bed.”

At times it’s easy to neglect the body, to forget we even have bodies – times like these, when lives are at stake and we have to step out of our physical beings and keep working, working, working. We have to go far beyond our normal limitations. But Lincoln Rhyme had a body that wouldn’t tolerate neglect. Bedsores could lead to sepsis and blood poisoning. Fluid in the lungs, to pneumonia. Didn’t catheterize the bladder? Didn’t massage the bowels to encourage a movement? Spenco boots too tight? Dysreflexia was the consequence and that could mean a stroke. Exhaustion alone could bring on an attack.

Too many ways to die…

“You’re going to bed,” Thom said.

“I have to -”

“Sleep. You have to sleep.”

Rhyme acquiesced. He was very tired.

“All right, Thom. All right.” He wheeled toward the elevator. “One thing.” He looked back. “Could you come up in a few minutes, Sachs?”

She nodded, watching the tiny elevator door swing shut.

She found him in the Clinitron.

Sachs had waited ten minutes to give him time to take care of bedtime functions – Thom had applied the catheter and brushed his boss’s teeth. She knew Rhyme talked tough – he had a crip’s disregard for modesty. But she knew too that there were certain personal routines he didn’t want her to witness.

She used the time to take a shower in the downstairs bathroom, dressed in clean clothes – hers – which Thom happened to have in the laundry room in the basement.

The lights were dim. Rhyme was rubbing his head against the pillow like a bear scratching his back on a tree. The Clinitron was the most comfortable bed in the world. Weighing a half ton, it was a massive slab containing glass beads through which flowed heated air.

“Ah, Sachs, you did good today. You out-thought him.”

Except thanks to me Jerry Banks lost his arm.

And I let the Dancer get away.

She walked to his bar and poured a glass of Macallan, lifted an eyebrow.

“Sure,” he said. “Mother’s milk, the dew of nepenthe…”

She kicked her issue shoes off, pulled up her blouse to look at the bruise.

“Ouch,” Rhyme said.

The bruise was the shape of Missouri and dark as an eggplant.

“I don’t like bombs,” she said. “Never been that close to one. And I don’t like them.”

Sachs opened her purse, found and swallowed three aspirin dry (a trick arthritics learn early). She walked to the window. There were the peregrines. Beautiful birds. They weren’t large. Fourteen, sixteen inches. Tiny for a dog. But for a bird… utterly intimidating. Their beaks were like the claws on a creature from one of those Alien movies.

“You all right, Sachs? Tell me true?”

“I’m okay.”

She returned to the chair, sipped more of the smokey liquor.

“You want to stay tonight?” he asked.

On occasion she’d spend the night here. Sometimes on the couch, sometimes in bed next to him. Maybe it was the fluidized air of the Clinitron, maybe it was the simple act of lying next to another human being – she didn’t know the reason – but she never slept better than when she slept here. She hadn’t enjoyed being close to another man since her most recent boyfriend, Nick. She and Rhyme would lie together and talk. She’d tell him about cars, about her pistol matches, about her mother and her goddaughter. About her father’s full life and sad, protracted death. She’d ante up far more personal information than he. But that was all right. She loved listening to him say whatever he wanted to. His mind was astonishing. He’d tell her about old New York, about Mafia hits the rest of the world had never heard about, about crime scenes so clean they seemed hopeless until the searchers found the single bit of dust, the fingernail, the dot of spit, the hair or fiber that revealed who the perp was or where he lived – well, revealed these facts to Rhyme , not necessarily anyone else. No, his mind never stopped. She knew that before the injury he’d roam the streets of New York looking for samples of soil or glass or plants or rocks – anything that might help him solve cases. It was as if that restlessness had moved from his useless legs into his mind, which roamed the city – in his imagination – well into the night.