Jeffery Deaver - The Coffin Dancer

Percey looked back at the engine.

“So?” Sachs persisted. “A jack?”

“It’ll bend the outer housing.”

“Not if you put it there.” Sachs pointed to a structural member connecting the engine to the support that went to the fuselage.

Percey studied the fitting. “I don’t have a jack. Not one small enough to fit.”

“I do. I’ll get it.”

Sachs stepped outside to the RRV and returned with the accordion jack. She climbed up on the scaffolding, her knees protesting the effort.

“Try right there.” She touched the base of the engine. “That’s I-beam steel.”

As Percey positioned the jack, Sachs admired the intricacies of the engine. “How much horsepower?”

Percey laughed. “We don’t rate in horsepower. We rate in pounds of thrust. These’re Garrett TFE Seven Three Ones. They give up about thirty-five hundred pounds each.”

“Incredible.” Sachs laughed. “Brother.” She hooked the handle into the jack, then felt the familiar resistance as she started turning the crank. “I’ve never been this close to a turbine engine,” she said. “Was always a dream of mine to take a jet car out to the salt flats.”

“This isn’t a pure turbine. There aren’t many of those left anymore. Just the Concorde. Military jets, of course. These’re turbofans. Like the airliners. Look in the front – see those blades? That’s nothing more than a fixed-pitch propeller. Pure jets are inefficient at low altitudes. These’re about forty percent more fuel efficient.”

Sachs breathed hard as she struggled to turn the jack handle. Percey put her shoulder against the ring again and shoved. The part didn’t seem large but it was very heavy.

“You know cars, huh?” Percey asked, also gasping.

“My father. He loved them. We’d spend the afternoon taking ’em apart and putting ’em back together. When he wasn’t walking a beat.”

“A beat?”

“He was a cop too.”

“And you got the mechanic bug?” Percey asked.

“Naw, I got the speed bug. And when you get that you better get the suspension bug and the transmission bug and the engine bug or you ain’t going anywhere fast.”

Percey asked, “You ever driven an aircraft?”

“ ‘Driven’?” Sachs smiled at the word. “No. But maybe I’ll think about it, knowing you’ve got that much oomph under the hood.”

She cranked some more, her muscles aching. The ring groaned slightly and scraped as it rose into its fittings.

“I don’t know,” Percey said uncertainly.

“Almost there!”

With a loud metallic clang the ring popped on to the mounts perfectly. Percey’s squat face broke into a faint smile.

“You torque ’em?” Sachs asked, fitting bolts into the slots on the ring and looking for a wrench.

“Yeah,” Percey said. “The poundage I use is ‘Till there’s no way in hell they’ll come loose.’ ”

Sachs tightened the bolts down with a ratcheting socket. The clicking of the tool took her back to high school, cool Saturday afternoons with her father. The smells of gasoline, of fall air, of meaty casseroles cooking in the kitchen of their Brooklyn attached house.

Percey checked Sachs’s handiwork then said, "I'll do the rest.” She started reconnecting wires and electronic components. Sachs was mystified but fascinated. Percey paused. She added a soft “Thanks.” A few moments later: “What’re you doing here?”

“We found some other materials we think might be from the bomb, but Lincoln didn’t know if it was part of the plane or not. Bits of beige latex, circuit board? Sound familiar?”

Percey shrugged. “There’re thousands of gaskets in a Lear. They could be latex, I don’t have any idea. And circuit boards? There’re probably another thousand of them.” She nodded to a corner, toward a closet and workbench. “The boards are special orders, depending on the component. But there should be a good stock of gaskets over there. Take samples of whatever you need.”

Sachs walked over to the bench, began slipping all the beige-colored bits of rubber she could find into an evidence bag.

Without glancing at Sachs, Percey said, “I thought you were here to arrest me. Haul me back to jail.”

I ought to, the policewoman thought. But she said, “Just collecting exemplars.” Then, after a moment: “What other work needs to be done? On the plane?”

“Just recalibration. Then a run-up to check the power settings. I have to take a look at the window too, the one Ron replaced. You don’t want to lose a window at four hundred miles an hour. Could you hand me that hex set? No, the metric one.”

“I lost one at a hundred once,” Sachs said, passing over the tools.

“A what?”

“A window. A perp I was chasing had a shotgun. Double-ought buckshot. I ducked in time. But it blew the windshield clean out… I’ll tell you, I caught a few bugs in my teeth before I collared him.”

“And I thought I lived an adventurous life,” Percey said.

“Most of it’s dull. They pay you for the five percent that’s adrenaline.”

“I hear that,” Percey said. She hooked up a laptop computer to components in the engine itself. She typed on the keyboard, read the screen. Without looking down she asked, “So, what is it?”

Eyes on the computer, the numbers flicking past, Sachs asked, “What do you mean?”

“This, uhm, tension. Between us. You and me.”

“You nearly got a friend of mine killed.”

Percey shook her head. She said reasonably, “That’s not it. There’re risks in your job. You decide if you’re going to assume them or not. Jerry Banks wasn’t a rookie. It’s something else – I felt it before Jerry got shot. When I first saw you, in Lincoln Rhyme’s room.”

Sachs said nothing. She lifted the jack out of the engine compartment and set it on a table, absently wound it closed.

Three pieces of metal slipped into place around the engine and Percey applied her screwdriver like a conductor’s baton. Her hands were truly magic. Finally she said, “It’s about him, isn’t it?”

“Who?”

“You know who I mean. Lincoln Rhyme.”

“You think I’m jealous?” Sachs laughed.

“Yes, I do.”

“Ridiculous.”

“It’s more than just work between you. I think you’re in love with him.”

“Of course I’m not. That’s crazy.”

Percey offered a telling glance and then carefully twined excess wire into a bundle and nestled it into a cutout in the engine compartment. “Whatever you saw is just respect for his talent, that’s all.” She lifted a grease-stained hand toward herself. “Come on, Amelia, look at me. I’d make a lousy lover. I’m short, I’m bossy, I’m not good looking.”

“You’re -” Sachs began.

Percey interrupted. “The ugly duckling story? You know, the bird that everybody thought was ugly until it turned out to be a swan? I read that a million times when I was little. But I never turned into a swan. Maybe I learned to fly like one,” she said with a cool smile, “but it isn’t the same. Besides,” Percey continued, “I’m a widow. I just lost my husband. I’m not the least interested in anyone else.”

“I’m sorry,” Sachs began slowly, feeling unwillingly drawn into this conversation, “but I’ve got to say… well, you don’t really seem to be in mourning.”

“Why? Because I’m trying my hardest to keep my company going?”

“No, there’s more than that,” Sachs replied cautiously. “Isn’t there?”

Percey examined Sachs’s face. “Ed and I were incredibly close. We were husband and wife and friends and business partners… And yes, he was seeing someone else.”

Sachs’s eyes swiveled toward the Hudson Air office.