Jeffery Deaver - The Coffin Dancer

“No socks. Could be his friend’s homeless.”

“Why’s he got somebody with him?” Cooper asked.

“Don’t know,” Sellitto said. “Word is he always works alone. He uses people but he doesn’t trust them.”

Just what I’ve been accused of, Rhyme thought. He said, “And leaving fingerprints at the scene? This guy’s no pro. He must have something the Dancer needs.”

“A way out of the building, for one thing,” Sachs suggested.

“That could be it.”

“And’s probably dead now,” she suggested.

Probably, Rhyme agreed silently.

“The prints,” Cooper said. “They’re pretty small. I’d guess size eight male.”

The size of the sole doesn’t necessarily correspond to shoe size and provides even less insight into the stature of the person wearing them, but it was reasonable to conclude the Dancer’s partner had a slight build.

Turning to the trace evidence, Cooper mounted samples onto a slide and slipped it under the compound ’scope. He patched the image through to Rhyme’s computer.

“Command mode, cursor left,” Rhyme ordered into his microphone. “Stop. Double click.” He examined the computer monitor. “More of the mortar from the cinder block. Dirt and dust… Where’d you get this, Sachs?”

“I scraped it from around the cinder blocks and vacuumed the floor of the tunnel. I also found a nest behind some boxes where it looked like somebody’d been hiding.”

“Good. Okay, Mel, gas it. There’s a lot of stuff here I don’t recognize.”

The chromatograph rumbled, separating the compounds, and sent the resulting vapors to the spectrometer for identification. Cooper examined the screen.

He exhaled a surprised breath. “I’m surprised his friend’s able to walk at all.”

“Little more specific there, Mel.”

“He’s a drugstore, Lincoln. We’ve got secobarbital, phenobarbital, Dexedrine, amobarbital, meprobamate, chlordiazepoxide, diazepam.”

“Jesus,” Sellitto muttered. “Reds, dexies, blue devils…”

Cooper continued, “Lactose and sucrose too. Calcium, vitamins, enzymes consistent with dairy products.”

“Baby formula,” Rhyme muttered. “Dealers use it to cut drugs.”

“So the Dancer’s got himself a cluckhead for a sidekick. Go figure.”

Sachs said, “All those doctors’ offices there… This guy must’ve been boosting pills.”

“Log on to FINEST,” Rhyme said. “Get a list of every drugstore cowboy they’ve got.”

Sellitto laughed. “It’s gonna be big as the White Pages, Lincoln.”

“Nobody says it’s easy, Lon.”

But before he could make the call, Cooper received an E-mail. “Don’t bother.”

“Huh?”

“The AFIS report on the fingerprints?” The tech tapped the screen. “Whoever the guy is, he doesn’t have a record in New York City or State or NCIC.”

“Hell!” Rhyme snapped. He felt cursed. Couldn’t it be just a little easier? He muttered, “Any other trace?”

“Something here,” Cooper said. “A bit of blue tile, grouted on the back, attached to what looks like concrete.”

“Let’s see it.”

Cooper mounted the specimen onto the ’scope’s stage.

His neck quivering, almost breaking into a spasm, Rhyme leaned forward and studied it carefully. “Okay. Old mosaic tile. Porcelain, crackle finish, lead based. Sixty, seventy years old, I’d guess.” But he could make no cunning deductions from the sample. “Anything else?” he muttered.

“Some hairs.” Cooper mounted them to do a visual. He bent over the ’scope.

Rhyme too examined the thin shafts.

“Animal,” he announced.

“More cats?” Sachs asked.

“Let’s see,” Cooper said, head down.

But these hairs weren’t feline. They were rodent. “Rat,” Rhyme announced. “ Rattus norvegicus. Your basic sewer rat.”

“Keep going. What’s in that bag, Sachs?” Rhyme asked like a hungry boy looking over chocolates in a candy store display case. “No, no. There. Yes, that one.”

Inside the evidence bag was a square of paper towel smeared with a faint brown stain.

“I found that on the cinder block, the one he moved. I think it was on his hands. There were no prints but the pattern could’ve been made by a palm.”

“Why do you think that?”

“Because I rubbed my hand in some dirt and pushed on another cinder block. The mark was the same.”

That’s my Amelia, he thought. For an instant his thoughts returned to last night – the two of them lying in bed together. He pushed the thought away.

“What is it, Mel?”

“Looks like it’s grease. Impregnated with dust, dirt, fragments of wood, bits of organic material. Animal flesh, I think. All very old. And look there in the upper corner.”

Rhyme examined some silvery flecks on his computer screen. “Metal. Ground or shaved off of something. Gas it. Let’s find out for certain.”

Cooper did.

“Petrochemical,” he answered. “Crudely refined, no additives… There’s iron with traces of manganese, silicon, and carbon.”

“Wait,” Rhyme called. “Any other elements – chromium, cobalt, copper, nickel, tungsten?”

“No.”

Rhyme gazed at the ceiling. “The metal? It’s old steel, made from pig iron in a Bessemer furnace. If it were modern it’d have some of those other materials in it.”

“And here’s something else. Coal tar.”

“Creosote!” Rhyme cried. “I’ve got it. The Dancer’s first big mistake. His partner’s a walking road map.”

“To where?” Sachs asked.

“To the subway. That grease is old, the steel’s from old fixtures and tie spikes, the creosote’s from the ties. Oh, and the fragment of tile is from a mosaic. A lot of the old stations were tiled – they had pictures of something that related to the neighborhood.”

Sachs said, “Sure – the Astor Place station’s got mosaics of the animals that John Jacob Astor traded.”

“Grouted porcelain tile. So that’s what the Dancer wanted him for. A place to hide out. The Dancer’s friend’s probably a homeless druggie living in an abandoned siding or tunnel or station somewhere.”

Rhyme realized that everyone was looking at a man’s shadow in the doorway. He stopped speaking.

“Dellray?” Sellitto said uncertainly.

The dark, somber face of Fred Dellray was focused out the window.

“What is it?” Rhyme asked.

“Innelman’s what it is. They stitched him up. Three hundred stitches they gave him. But it was too late. Lost too much blood. He just died.”

“I’m sorry,” Sachs said.

The agent lifted his hands, long sticklike fingers raised like spikes.

Everyone in the room knew about Dellray’s longtime partner – the one killed in the Oklahoma City federal building bombing. And Rhyme thought too of Tony Panelli – ’napped downtown a few days ago. Probably dead by now, the only clue to his whereabouts the grains of curious sand.

And now another of Dellray’s friends was gone.

The agent paced in a threatening lope.

“You know why he got cut, don’t you – Innelman?”

Everyone knew; no one answered.

“A diversion. That’s the only reason in the world. To keep us off the scent. Can you believe that? A fuckin’ diversion.” He stopped pacing abruptly. He looked at Rhyme with his frightening black eyes. “You got any leads at all, Lincoln?”

“Not much.” He explained about the Dancer’s homeless friend, the drugs, the hidey-hole in the subway. Somewhere.

“That’s it?”

“Afraid so. But we still have some more evidence to look at.”

“Evidence,” Dellray whispered contemptuously. He walked to the door, paused. “A distraction. That’s no fucking reason for a good man to die. No reason at all.”