Jeffery Deaver - The Coffin Dancer

“That’s a good point,” Sellitto conceded.

“It’ll also throw him off stride.”

“How so?” Perkins asked.

“He’s debating right now too, you know.”

“He is?”

“Oh, you bet,” Rhyme said. “He’s trying to figure out what we’re going to do. If we decide to keep them where they are, he’ll do one thing. If we move them – which I think is what he’s guessing we’ll do – he’ll try for a transport hit. And however good security is on the road, it’s always worse than fixed premises. No, we have to keep them where they are and be prepared for the next attempt. Anticipate it and be ready to move in. The last time -”

“The last time, an agent got killed.”

Rhyme snapped back to the SAC, “If Innelman had had a backup, it would’ve gone different.”

Perkins of the perfect suit was a self-protecting bureaucrat but he was reasonable. He nodded his concession.

But am I right? Rhyme wondered.

What is the Dancer thinking? Do I really know?

Oh, I can look over a silent bedroom or filthy alleyway and read perfectly the story that turned it into a crime scene. I can see, in the Rorschach of blood pasted to carpet and tile, how close the victim came to escaping or how little chance he had and what kind of death he died. I can look at the dust the killer leaves behind and know immediately where he comes from.

I can answer who, I can answer why.

But what’s the Dancer going to do?

That I can guess at but I can’t say for certain.

A figure appeared in the doorway, one of the officers from the front door. He handed Thom an envelope and stepped back to his guard post.

“What’s that?” Rhyme eyed it carefully. He wasn’t expecting any lab reports and he was all too conscious of the Dancer’s predilection for bombs. The package was no more than a sheet of paper thick, however, and was from the FBI.

Thom opened it and read.

“It’s from PERT. They tracked down a sand expert.”

Rhyme explained to Perkins, “It’s not for this case. It’s about that agent who disappeared the other night.”

“Tony?” the SAC asked. “We haven’t had a single lead so far.”

Rhyme glanced at the report.

Substance submitted for analysis is not technically sand. It is coral rubble from reef formations and contains spicules, cross sections of marine worm tubes, gastropod shells and foraminifers. Most likely source is the northern Caribbean: Cuba, the Bahamas.

Caribbean… Interesting. Well, he’d have to put the evidence on hold for the time being. After the Dancer was bagged and tagged he and Sachs would get back -

His headset crinkled.

“Rhyme, you there?” Sachs’s voice snapped.

“Yes! Where are you, Sachs? What do you have?”

“We’re outside an old subway station near City Hall. All boarded up. S &S says there’s somebody inside. At least one, maybe two.”

“Okay, Sachs,” he said, heart racing at the thought they might be close to the Dancer. “Report back.” Then he looked up at Sellitto and Perkins. “Looks like we may not have to decide about moving them from the safe house after all.”

“They found him?” the detective asked.

But the criminalist – a scientist foremost – refused to give voice to his hopes. Afraid he might jinx the operation – well, jinx Sachs , he was thinking. He muttered, “Let’s keep our fingers crossed.”

Silently the ESU troops surrounded the subway station.

This was probably the place where the Dancer’s new partner lived, Amelia Sachs concluded. S &S had found several locals who’d reported a druggie selling pills out of the place. He was a slightly built man – in line with a size-eight shoe.

The station was, almost literally, a hole in the wall, supplanted years ago by the fancier City Hall stop a few blocks away.

The 32-E team went into position, while S &S began to set up their microphones and infrareds, and other officers cleared the street of traffic and the homeless men sitting on curbs or in doorways.

The commander moved Sachs away from the main entrance, out of the line of fire. They gave her the demeaning job of guarding a subway exit that had been barred and padlocked for years. She actually wondered if Rhyme had cut a deal with Haumann to keep her safe. Her anger from last night, in abeyance in their search for the Dancer, now bubbled up again.

Sachs nodded toward the rusty lock. “Hmm. He probably won’t be getting out this way,” she offered brightly.

“Gotta guard all entrances,” the masked ESU officer muttered, missing or ignoring her sarcasm, and returned to his comrades.

Rain fell around her, a chill rain, dropping straight down from a dirty gray sky, tapping loudly on the refuse banked in front of the bars.

Was the Dancer inside? If so, there’d be a firefight. Absolutely. She couldn’t imagine he’d give it up without a violent struggle.

And it infuriated her that she wouldn’t be part of it.

You’re a slick dick when you’ve got a rifle and a quarter mile of protection, she thought to the killer. But tell me, asshole, how’re you with a handgun at close range? How’d you like to face me down? On her mantel at home were a dozen trophies of gold-plated shooters aiming pistols. (The gilt figures were all men, which for some reason tickled Amelia Sachs immensely.)

She stepped farther down the stairs, to the iron bars, then flattened against the wall.

Sachs, the criminalist, examined the squalid spot carefully, smelling garbage, rot, urine, the salty smell of the subway. She examined the bars and the chain and padlock. She peered inside the dim tunnel and could see nothing, hear nothing.

Where is he?

And what are the cops and agents doing? What’s the delay?

She heard the answer a moment later in her earphone: they were waiting for backup. Haumann had decided to call in another twenty ESU officers and the second 32-E team.

No, no, no, she thought. That was all wrong! All the Dancer has to do is take one peek outside and see that not a single car or taxi or pedestrian is going by and he’ll know instantly there’s a tactical operation under way. There’ll be a bloodbath… Don’t they get it?

Sachs left the crime scene kit at the foot of the stairs and climbed back to street level. A few doors away was a drugstore. She went inside. She bought two large cans of butane and borrowed the storekeeper’s awning rod – a five-foot-long piece of steel.

Back at the gated subway exit, Sachs slipped the awning rod through one of the chain links that was partially sawn through, and twisted until the chain was taut. She pulled on a Nomex glove and emptied the contents of the butane cans on the metal, watching it grow frosty from the freezing gas. (Amelia Sachs hadn’t walked a beat along the Deuce – Forty-second Street at Times Square – for nothing; she knew enough about breaking and entering to take up a second line of work.)

When the second can was empty she gripped the rod in both hands and began to twist. The icy gas had made the metal very brittle. With a soft snap the link cracked in half. She caught the chain before it fell to the ground and set it quietly in a pile of leaves.

The hinges were wet with rainwater but she spit on them for good measure to keep them from squeaking and pushed inside, sweeping her Glock from its holster, thinking: I missed you at three hundred yards. I won’t at thirty.

Rhyme wouldn’t have approved of this, of course, but Rhyme didn’t know. She thought momentarily about him, about last night, lying in his bed. But the image of his face vanished quickly. Like driving at a hundred and fifty miles an hour, her mission now left no time for ruing the disaster of her personal life.