Jeffery Deaver - The Coffin Dancer

“What’s the matter?” Thom asked.

“Nothing. Why?”

“You’re not complaining about anything. No grousing means something’s wrong.”

“Ha. Very funny,” Rhyme grumbled.

After a sitting transfer to get him in bed, some bodily functions taken care of, Rhyme was now leaning back into his luxurious down pillow. Thom had slipped the voice recognition headset over his head and, despite his fatigue, Rhyme himself had gone through the steps of talking to the computer and having it patch into the Special Ops frequency.

This system was an amazing invention. Yes, he’d downplayed it to Sellitto and Banks. Yes, he’d groused. But the device, more than any other of his aids, made him feel differently about himself. For years he’d been resigned to never leading a life that approached normal. Yet with this machine and software he did feel normal.

He rolled his head in a circle and let it ease back into the pillow.

Waiting. Trying not to think of the debacle with Sachs last night…

Motion nearby. The falcon strutted into view. Rhyme saw a flash of white breast, then the bird turned his blue-gray back to Rhyme and looked out over Central Park. It was the male. The tiercel, he remembered Percey Clay telling him. Smaller and less ruthless than the female. He remembered something else about peregrines. They’d come back from the dead. Not too many years ago the entire population in eastern North America grew sterile from chemical pesticides and the birds nearly became extinct. Only through captive breeding efforts and control of pesticides had the creatures thrived.

Back from the dead…

The radio clattered. It was Amelia Sachs calling in. She sounded tense as she told him that everything was set up at the safe house.

“We’re all on the top floor with Jodie,” she said. “Wait… Here’s the truck.”

An armored 4X4 with mirrored windows, filled with four officers from the tactical team, was being used as the bait. It would be followed by a single unmarked van, containing – apparently – two plumbing supply contractors. In fact they were 32-E troopers in street clothes. In the back of the van were four others.

“The decoys’re downstairs. Okay… okay.”

They were using two officers from Haumann’s unit for decoys.

Sachs said, “Here they go.”

Rhyme was pretty sure that given the Dancer’s new plans, he wouldn’t try a sniper shot from the street. Still, he found himself holding his breath.

“On the run…”

A click as the radio went dead.

Another click. Static. Sellitto broadcast, “They made it. Looks good. Starting to drive. The tail cars’re ready.”

“All right,” Rhyme said. “Jodie’s there?”

“Right here. In the safe house with us.”

“Tell him to make the call.”

“Okay, Linc. Here we go.”

The radio clicked off.

Waiting.

To see if this time the Dancer had faltered. To see if this time Rhyme had out-thought the cold brilliance of the man’s mind.

Waiting.

Stephen’s cell phone brayed. He flipped it open.

“ ’Lo.”

“Hi. It’s me. It’s -”

“I know,” Stephen said. “Don’t use names.”

“Right, sure.” Jodie sounded nervous as a cornered ’coon. A pause, then the little man said, “Well, I’m here.”

“Good. You got that Negro to help you?”

“Uhm, yeah. He’s here.”

“And where are you? Exactly?”

“Across the street from that town house. Man, there’re a lot of cops. But nobody’s paying any attention to me. There’s a van just pulled up a minute ago. One of those four-by-fours. A big one. A Yukon. It’s blue and it’s easy to spot.” In his discomfort he was rambling. “It’s really, really neat. It has mirrored windows.”

“That means they’re bulletproof.”

“Oh. Really. It’s neat how you know all this stuff.”

You’re going to die, Stephen said to him silently.

“This man and a woman just ran out of the alley with, like, ten cops. I’m sure it’s them.”

“Not decoys?”

“Well, they didn’t look like cops and they were looking pretty freaked out. Are you on Lexington?”

“Yeah.”

“In a car?” Jodie asked.

“Of course in a car,” Stephen said. “I stole some little shit Jap thing. I’m going to follow them. Then wait till they get to some deserted area and do it.”

“How?”

“How what?”

“How’re you going to do it? Like a grenade or a machine gun?”

Stephen thought, Wouldn’t you like to know?

He said, “I’m not sure. It depends.”

“You see ’em?” Jodie asked, sounding uncomfortable.

“I see them,” Stephen said. “I’m behind them. I’m pulling into traffic now.”

“A Jap car, huh?” Jodie said. “Like a Toyota or something?”

Why, you little asshole traitor, Stephen thought bitterly, stung deeply by the betrayal even though he’d known it was probably inevitable.

Stephen was in fact watching the Yukon and backup vans speed past him. He wasn’t, however, in any Japanese car, shitty or otherwise. He wasn’t in any car at all. Wearing the fireman’s uniform he’d just stolen, he was standing on the street corner exactly one hundred feet from the safe house, watching the real version of the events Jodie was fictionalizing. He knew they were decoys in the Yukon. He knew the Wife and the Friend were still in the safe house.

Stephen picked up the gray remote-det transmitter. It looked like a walkie-talkie but had no speaker or microphone. He set the frequency to the bomb in Jodie’s phone and armed the device.

“Stand by,” he said to Jodie.

“Heh,” Jodie laughed. “Will do, sir.”

Lincoln Rhyme, just a spectator now, a voyeur.

Listening through his headset. Praying that he was right.

“Where’s the van?” Rhyme heard Sellitto ask.

Two blocks away,” Haumann said. “We’re on it It’s moving slowly up Lex. Getting near traffic. He… wait.” A long pause.

“What?”

“We’ve got a couple cars, a Nissan, a Subaru. An Accord too, but that’s got three people in it. The Nissan’s getting close to the van. That might be it. Can’t see inside.”

Lincoln Rhyme closed his eyes. He felt his left ring finger, his only extant digit, flick nervously on the comforter covering the bed.

“Hello?” Stephen said into the phone.

“Yeah,” Jodie responded. “I’m still here.”

“Directly across from the safe house?”

“That’s right.”

Stephen was looking at the building. No Jodie, no Negro.

“I want to say something to you.”

“What’s that?” the little man asked.

Stephen remembered the electric sizzle as his knee touched the man’s.

I can’t do it…

Soldier…

Stephen gripped the remote-det box in his left hand. He said, “Listen carefully.”

“I’m listening. I -”

Stephen pushed the transmit button.

The explosion was astonishingly loud. Louder than even Stephen expected. It rattled panes and sent a million pigeons reeling into the sky. Stephen saw the glass and wood from the top floor of the safe house go spraying into the alley beside the building.

Which was even better than he had hoped. He’d expected Jodie to be near the safe house. Maybe in a police van in front. Maybe in the alley. But he couldn’t believe his good fortune that Jodie’d actually been inside. It was perfect!

He wondered who else had died in the blast.

Lincoln the Worm, he prayed.

The redheaded cop?

He looked over the safe house and saw the smoke curling from the top window.

Now, just a few more minutes, until the rest of his team joined him.