Jeffery Deaver - The Coffin Dancer

“Well,” she said, “at least we’ve got a witness.”

And regretted immediately that she’d said that.

“Witness?” Rhyme spat out. “A witness? I don’t need witnesses. I need evidence! Well, get him down here anyway. Let’s hear what he has to say. But, Sachs, I want that station swept like you’ve never swept a scene before. You hear me? Are you there, Sachs? Do you hear me?”

Hour 25 of 45

“AND WHAT DO WE HAVE HERE?” Rhyme asked, giving a soft puff into the Storm Arrow control straw to scoot forward.

“An itsy piece of garbage,” offered Fred Dellray, cleaned up and back in uniform – if you could call an Irish green suit a uniform. “Uh, uh, uh. Don’t say a word. Not till we ask fo’ it.” He turned his alarming stare on Jodie.

“You fooled me!”

“Quiet, you little skel.”

Rhyme wasn’t pleased that Dellray had gone out on his own, but that was the nature of undercover work, and even if the criminalist didn’t understand it exactly he couldn’t dispute that – as the agent’s skills just proved – it could get results.

Besides, he’d saved Amelia Sachs’s hide.

She’d be here soon. The medics had taken her to the emergency room for a rib X ray. She was bruised from the fall down the stairs, but nothing was broken. He’d been dismayed to learn that his talk the other night had had no effect; she’d gone into the subway after the Dancer alone.

Damn it, he thought, she’s as pigheaded as me.

“I wasn’t going to hurt anybody,” Jodie protested.

“Hard o’ hearing? I said don’t say a word.”

“I didn’t know who she was!”

“No,” Dellray said, “that pretty silver badge of hers didn’t give nuthin’ away.” Then remembered he didn’t want to hear from the man.

Sellitto walked up close and bent over Jodie. “Tell us some more about your friend.”

“I’m not his friend. He kidnapped me. I was in that building on Thirty-fifth because -”

“Because you were boosting pills. We know, we know.”

Jodie blinked. “How’d you -”

“But we don’t care about that. Not yet, at least. Keep going.”

“I thought he was a cop but then he said he was there to kill some people. I thought he was going to kill me too. He needed to escape so he told me to stand still and I did, and this cop or somebody came to the door and he stabbed him -”

“And killed him,” Dellray spat out.

Jodie sighed and looked miserable. “I didn’t know he was going to kill him. I thought he was just going to knock him out or something.”

“Well, asshole,” Dellray spat out, “he did kill him. Killed him dead as a rock.”

Sellitto looked over the evidence bags from the subway, containing scuzzy porn magazines, hundreds of pills, clothes. A new cellular phone. A stack of money. He turned his attention back to Jodie. “Keep going.”

“He said he’d pay me to get him out of there and I led him through this tunnel to the subway. How’d you find me, man?” He looked at Dellray.

“ ’Cause you were skipping ‘long the street hawking your be-bops to everybody you came across. I even knew your name. Jee-sus, you are a mutt. I oughta squeeze your neck till you’re blue.”

“You can’t hurt me,” he said, struggling to be defiant. “I have rights.”

“Who hired him?” Sellitto asked Jodie. “He mention the name Hansen?”

“He didn’t say.” Jodie’s voice quavered. “Look, I only agreed to help him ’cause I knew he’d kill me if I didn’t. I wasn’t going to do it.” He turned to Dellray. “He wanted me to get you to help. But soon as he left I wanted you to leave. I was going to the police and telling them. I was. He’s a scary guy. I’m afraid of him!”

“Fred?” Rhyme asked.

“Yeah, yeah,” the agent conceded, “he did have a change of tune. Wanted me gone. Didn’t say anything about going to the police, though.”

“Where’s he going? What were you supposed to do?”

“I was supposed to go through the trash bins in front of that town house and watch the cars. He told me to look for a man and a woman getting into a car and leaving. I was supposed to tell him what kind of car. I was going to call on that phone there. Then he was going to follow.”

“You were right, Lincoln,” Sellitto said. “About keeping them in the safe house. He’s going for a transport hit.”

Jodie continued, “I was going to come to you -”

“Man, you’re useless when you lie. Don’t you have any dignity?”

“Look, I was going to,” he said, calmer now. He smiled. “I figured there was a reward.”

Rhyme glanced at the greedy eyes and tended to believe him. He looked at Sellitto, who nodded in agreement.

“You cooperate now,” Sellitto grumbled, “and we might just keep your ass out of jail. I don’t know about money. Maybe.”

“I’ve never hurt anybody. I wouldn’t. I -”

“Cool that tongue,” Dellray said. “We all together on that?”

Jodie rolled his eyes.

“Together?” the agent whispered maliciously.

“Yeah, yeah, yeah.”

Sellitto said, “We’ve got to move fast here. When were you supposed to be at the town house?”

“At twelve-thirty.”

They had fifty minutes left.

“What kind of car’s he driving?”

“I don’t know.”

“What’s he look like?”

“In his early, mid-thirties, I guess. Not tall. But he was strong. Man, he had muscles. Crew-cut black hair. Round face. Look, I’ll do one of those drawings… The police sketch thing.”

“Did he give you a name? Anything? Where he’s from?”

“I don’t know. He has kind of a southern accent. Oh, and one thing – he said he wears gloves all the time because he’s got a record.”

Rhyme asked, “Where and for what?”

“I don’t know where. But it’s for manslaughter. He said he killed this guy in his town. When he was a teenager.”

“What else?” Dellray barked.

“Look,” Jodie said, crossing his arms and looking up at the agent, “I’ve done some bad shit but I’ve never hurt anybody in my life. This guy kidnaps me and he’s got all these guns and is one crazy fucked-up guy and I was scared to death. I think you woulda done the same thing I did. So I’m not putting up with this crap anymore. You want to arrest me, do it and, like, take me to detention. But I’m not gonna say anything else. Okay?”

Dellray’s gangly face suddenly broke into a grin. “Well, the rock cracks.”

Amelia Sachs appeared in the doorway and she walked in, glancing at Jodie.

“Tell them!” he said. “I didn’t hurt you. Tell ’em.”

She looked at him the way you’d look at a wad of used chewing gum. “He was going to brain me with a Louisville Slugger.”

“Not so, not so!”

“You okay, Sachs?”

“Another bruise is all. On my back. Bookends.”

Sellitto, Sachs, and Dellray huddled with Rhyme, who told Sachs what Jodie’d reported.

The detective asked Rhyme in a whisper, “We believe him?”

“Little skel,” Dellray muttered. “But I gotta say I think he’s telling the God-ugly truth.”

Sachs nodded too. “I guess. But I think we have to keep him on a tight leash, whatever we do.”

Sellitto agreed. “Oh, we’ll keep him close.”

Rhyme reluctantly agreed too. It seemed impossible to get ahead of the Dancer without this man’s help. He’d been adamant about keeping Percey and Hale in the safe house but in fact he hadn’t known that the Dancer was going for a transport hit. He was only leaning toward that conclusion. He might easily have decided to move Percey and Hale and they might have been killed as they drove to the new safe house.