Jeffery Deaver - The Coffin Dancer

He finally looked at Percey. “What are you doing here? You’re supposed to be on Long Island.”

“I want to talk to you.”

He said nothing at first, then, “Give me a drink, at least.”

Percey glanced at Sachs and stepped forward to the shelf, poured herself and Rhyme both glasses. Sachs glared at her and she noticed, didn’t respond.

“Here’s a classy lady,” Rhyme said. “I kill her partner and she still shares a drink with me. You didn’t do that, Sachs.”

“Oh, Rhyme, you can be such an asshole,” Sachs spat out. “Where’s Mel?”

“Sent him home. Nothing more to do… We’re bundling her up and shipping her off to Long Island, where she’ll be safe.”

“What?” Sachs asked.

“Doing what we should’ve done at the beginning. Hit me again.”

Percey began to. Sachs said, “He’s had enough.”

“Don’t listen to her,” Rhyme blurted. “She’s mad at me. I don’t do what she wants and so she gets mad.”

Oh, thank you, Rhyme. Let’s air linen in public, why don’t we? She turned her beautiful, cold eyes on him. He didn’t even notice; he was gazing at Percey Clay.

Who said, “You made a deal with me. The next thing I know there’re two agents about to take me off to Long Island. I thought I could trust you.”

“But if you trust me, you’ll die.”

“It was a risk,” Percey said. “You told us there was a chance he’d get into the safe house.”

“Sure, but you didn’t know that I figured it out.”

“You… what?”

Sachs frowned, listened.

Rhyme continued, “I figured out he was going to hit the safe house. I figured out he was in a fireman’s uniform. I fucking figured out he’d use a cutting charge on the back door. I’ll bet it was an Accuracy Systems Five Twenty or Five Twenty-one with an Instadet firing system. Am I right?”

“I -”

“Am I right?”

“A Five Twenty-one,” Sachs said.

“See? I figured all that out. I knew it five minutes before he got in. It’s just that I couldn’t fucking call anyone and tell them! I couldn’t… pick up… the fucking phone and tell anybody what was going to happen. And your friend died. Because of me.”

Sachs felt pity for him and it was sour. She was torn apart by his pain, yet she didn’t have a clue what she might say to comfort him.

There was moisture on his chin. Thom stepped forward with a tissue, but he waved the aide away with a furious nod of his handsome jaw. He nodded toward the computer. “Oh, I got cocky. I got to thinking I was pretty normal. Driving around like a race car driver in the Storm Arrow, flipping on lights and changing CDs… What bullshit!” He closed his eyes and pressed his head back in the pillow.

A sharp laugh, surprising everyone, filled the room.

Percey Clay poured some more scotch into her glass. Then a little more for Rhyme too. “There’s bullshit here, that’s for sure. But it’s only what I’m hearing from you.”

Rhyme opened his eyes, glaring.

Percey laughed again.

“Don’t,” Rhyme warned ambiguously.

“Oh, please,” she muttered dismissingly. “Don’t what?”

Sachs watched Percey’s eyes narrow. “What’re you saying?” Percey began. “That somebody’s dead because of… technical failure?”

Sachs realized that Rhyme had been expecting her to say something else. He was caught off guard. After a moment he said, “Yes. That’s exactly what I’m saying. If I’d been able to pick up the phone -”

She cut him off. “And, what? That gives you the right to have a goddamn tantrum? To renege on your promises?” She tossed back her liquor and gave an exasperated sigh. “Oh, for God’s sake… Do you have any idea what I do for a living?”

To her astonishment Sachs saw that Rhyme was calm now. He started to speak but Percey cut him off. “Think about this.” Her drawl was back. “I sit in a little aluminum tube going four hundred knots an hour, six miles above the ground. It’s sixty below zero outside and the winds are a hundred miles an hour. I’m not even talking about lightning, wind shear, and ice. Jesus Christ, I’m only alive because of machines.” Another laugh. “How’s that different from you?”

“You don’t understand,” he said snippily.

“You’re not answering my question. How?” she demanded, unrelenting. “How’s it different?”

“You can walk around, you can pick up the phone -”

“I can walk around? I’m at fifty thousand feet. I open that door and my blood boils in seconds.”

For the first time since she’d known him, Sachs thought, Rhyme’s met his match. He’s speechless.

Percey continued, “I’m sorry, Detective, but I don’t see a lick of difference between us. We’re products of twentieth-century science. Goddamn it, if I had wings I’d be flying on my own. But I don’t and never will. To do what we have to do, both of us… we rely. ”

“Okay…” He grinned devilishly.

Come on, Rhyme, Sachs thought. Let her have it! How badly Sachs wanted him to win, to boot this woman off to Long Island, have done with her forever.

The criminalist said, “But if I screw up, people die.”

“Oh? And what happens if my deicer fails? What happens if my yaw damper goes? What if a pigeon flies into my pilot tube on an ILS approach? I… am… dead. Flameouts, hydraulic failures, mechanics who forget to replace bum circuit breakers… Redundant systems fail. In your case they might get a chance to recover from their gunshots. But my aircraft hits the ground at three hundred miles an hour, there ain’t nothing left.”

Rhyme seemed completely sober now. His eyes were swiveling around the room as if looking for an infallible bit of evidence to refute Percey’s argument.

“Now,” Percey said evenly, “I understand Amelia here has some evidence she found back at the safe house. My suggestion is you start looking at it and stop this asshole once and for all. Because I am on my way to Mamaroneck right now to finish repairing my aircraft and then I’m flying that job tonight. Now, I’ll ask you point-blank: You going to let me go to the airport, like you agreed? Or do I have to call my lawyer?”

He was still speechless.

A moment passed.

Sachs jumped when Rhyme called in his booming baritone, “Thom! Thom! Get in here.”

The aide peered around the doorway suspiciously.

“I’ve made a mess here. Look, I knocked my glass over. And my hair’s mussed. Would you mind straightening up a little? Please?”

“Are you fooling with us, Lincoln?” he asked dubiously.

“And Mel Cooper? Could you call him, Lon? He must have taken me seriously. I was kidding. He’s such a goddamn scientist. No sense of humor. We’ll need him back here.”

Amelia Sachs wanted to flee. To bolt out of here, get into her car, and tear up the roads in New Jersey or Nassau County at 120 miles an hour. She couldn’t stand to be in the same room with this woman a moment longer.

“All right, Percey,” Rhyme said, “take Detective Bell with you and we’ll make sure plenty of Bo’s troopers are with you too. Get up to your airport. Do what you have to do.”

“Thank you, Lincoln.” She nodded, and offered a smile.

Just enough of one to make Amelia Sachs wonder if part of Percey Clay’s speech wasn’t meant for Sachs’s benefit too, to make clear who the undisputed winner in this contest was. Well, some sports Sachs believed she was doomed to lose. Champion shooter, decorated cop, a demon of a driver, and pretty good criminalist, Sachs nonetheless possessed an unjacketed heart. Her father had sensed this about her; he’d been a romantic too. After she’d gone through a bad affair some years ago he’d said to her, “They oughta make body armor for the soul, Amie. They oughta do that.”