Jeffery Deaver - The Coffin Dancer

“Why’d he do that?” she gasped.

“To slow us down. He knows we’ll look for a wounded agent before we start after him.”

He’s right, she thought, but we’re not looking fast enough!

“How long’s the corridor?”

She sighed, looked down it. “About fifty feet, give or take, and the blood trail covers the whole thing.”

“Any footprints in the blood?”

“Dozens. They go everywhere. Wait… There’s a service elevator. I didn’t see it at first. That’s where the trail leads! He must be inside. We have to -”

“No, Sachs, wait. That’s too obvious.”

“We have to get the elevator door open. I’m calling the Fire Department for somebody with a Halligan tool or an elevator key. They can -”

Calmly Rhyme said, “Listen to me. Do the drops leading to the elevator look like teardrops? With the tails pointing in different directions?”

“He’s got to be in the elevator! There’re smears on the door. He’s dying, Rhyme! Will you listen to me!”

“Teardrops, Sachs?” he asked soothingly. “Do they look like tadpoles?”

She looked down. They did. Perfect tadpoles, with the tails pointing in a dozen different directions.

“Yeah, Rhyme. They do.”

“Backtrack until those stop.”

This was crazy. Innelman was bleeding out in the elevator shaft. She gazed at the metal door for a moment, thought about ignoring Rhyme, but then trotted back down the corridor.

To the place where they stopped.

“Here, Rhyme. They stop here.”

“It’s at a closet or door?”

“Yes, how’d you know?”

“And it’s bolted from the outside?”

“That’s right.”

How the hell does he do it?

“So the search team’d see the bolt and pass it by – the Dancer couldn’t very well bolt himself inside. Well, Innelman’s in there. Open the door, Sachs. Use the pliers on the handle, not the knob itself. There’s a chance we can lift a print. And Sachs?”

“Yes?”

“I don’t think he left a bomb. He hardly had time. But whatever shape the agent’s in, and it won’t be good, ignore him for a minute and look for any traps first.”

“Okay.”

“Promise?”

“Yes.”

Pliers out… unbolt the latch… twist the knob.

Glock up. Apply poundage. Now!

The door flew outward.

But there was no bomb or other trap. Just the pale, blood-slicked body of John Innelman, unconscious, tumbling to her feet.

She barked a soft scream. “He’s here. Need medics! He’s cut bad.”

Sachs bent over him. Two EMS techs and more agents ran up, Dellray with them, grim faced.

“What’d he do to you, John? Oh, man.” The lanky agent stood back while the medics went to work. They cut off much of his clothing and examined the stab wounds. Innelman’s eyes were half open, glazed.

“Is he…?” Dellray asked.

“Alive, just barely.”

The medics slapped pads on the slashes, put a tourniquet on his leg and arm, and then ran a plasma line. “Get him in the bus. We gotta move. I mean, move!”

They placed the agent on a gurney and hurried down the corridor, Dellray with him, head down, muttering to himself and squeezing his dead cigarette between his fingers.

“Could he talk?” Rhyme asked. “Any clue where the Dancer went?”

“No. He was unconscious. I don’t know if they can save him. Jesus.”

“Don’t get raided, Sachs. We’ve got a crime scene to analyze. We have to find out where the Dancer is, if he’s still around. Go back to the storeroom. See if there are exterior doors or windows.”

As she walked to it she asked, “How’d you know about the closet?”

“Because of the direction of the drops. He shoved Innelman inside and soaked a rag in the cop’s blood. He walked to the elevator, swinging the rag. The drops were moving in different directions when they fell. So they had a teardrop appearance. And since he tried leading us to the elevator, we should look in the opposite direction for his escape route. The storeroom. Are you there?”

“Yes.”

“Describe it.”

“There’s a window looking out on the alley. Looks like he started to open it. But it’s puttied shut. No doors.” She looked out the window. “I can’t see any of the trooper’s positions, though. I don’t know what tipped him.”

“ You can’t see any of the troopers,” Rhyme said cynically. “He could. Now, walk the grid and let’s see what we find.”

She searched the scene carefully, walking the grid, then vacuumed for trace and carefully bagged the filters.

“What do you see? Anything?”

She shone her light on the walls and she found two mismatched blocks. A tight squeeze, but someone limber could have fit through there.

“Got his exit route, Rhyme. He went through the wall. Some loose concrete blocks.”

“Don’t open it. Get SWAT there.”

She called several agents down to the room and they pulled the blocks out, sweeping the inner chamber with flashlights mounted on the barrels of their H &K submachine guns.

“Clear,” one agent called. Sachs drew her weapon and slipped into the cool, dank space.

It was a narrow declining ramp filled with rubble, leading through a hole in the foundation. Water dripped. She was careful to step on large chunks of concrete and leave the damp earth untouched.

“What do you see, Sachs? Tell me!”

She waved the PoliLight wand over the places where the Dancer would logically have gripped with his hands and stepped with his feet. “Whoa, Rhyme.”

“What?”

“Fingerprints. Fresh latents… Wait. But here’re the glove prints too. In blood. From holding the rag. I don’t get it. It’s like a cave… Maybe he took the gloves off for some reason. Maybe he thought he was safe in the tunnel.”

Then she looked down and shone the eerie glow of yellow-green light at her feet. “Oh.”

“What?”

“They’re not his prints. He’s with somebody else.”

“Somebody else? How do you know?”

“There’s another set of footprints too. They’re both fresh. One bigger than the other. They go off in the same direction, running. Jesus, Rhyme.”

“What’s the matter?”

“It means he’s got a partner.”

“Come on, Sachs. The glass is half full.” Rhyme added cheerfully, “It means we’ll have twice as much evidence to help us track him down.”

“I was thinking,” she said darkly, “that it meant he’d be twice as dangerous.”

“What’ve you got?” Lincoln Rhyme asked.

Sachs had returned to his town house and she and Mel Cooper were looking over the evidence collected at the scene. Sachs and SWAT had followed the footsteps into a Con Ed access tunnel, where they lost track of both the Dancer and his companion. It looked as if the men had climbed to the street and escaped through a manhole.

She gave Cooper the print she’d found in the entrance to the tunnel. He scanned it into the computer and sent it off to the feds for an AFIS search.

Then she held up two electrostatic prints for Rhyme to examine. “These’re the footprints in the tunnel. This one’s the Dancer’s.” She lifted one of the prints – transparent, like an X ray. “It matches a print in the shrink’s office he broke into on the first floor.”

“Wearing average ordinary factory shoes,” Rhyme said.

“You’d think he’d be in combat boots,” Sellitto muttered.

“No, those’d be too obvious. Work shoes have rubber soles for gripping and steel caps in the toes. They’re as good as boots if you don’t need ankle support Hold the other one closer, Sachs.”

The smaller shoes were very worn at the heel and the ball of the foot. There was a large hole in the right shoe and through it you could see a lattice of skin wrinkles.