Jeffery Deaver - The Coffin Dancer

Sellitto uttered an optimistic “The third time we’re baiting him. This should be it.”

Lincoln Rhyme didn’t believe that was a rule of law enforcement, but he said, “Let’s hope.”

Sitting in a stolen car not far from Jodie’s subway station, Stephen Kall watched a government-issue sedan pull up.

Jodie and two uniformed cops climbed out, scanning the rooftops. Jodie ran inside and, five minutes later, escaped back to the car with two bundles under his arm.

Stephen could see no backup, no tail cars. What he’d heard on the tap was accurate. They pulled into traffic and he started after them, thinking there was no place in the world like Manhattan for following and not being seen. He couldn’t be doing this in Iowa or Virginia.

The unmarked car drove fast, but Stephen was a good driver too and he stayed with it as they made their way uptown. The sedan slowed when they got to Central Park West and drove past a town house in the Seventies. There were two men in front of it, wearing street clothes, but they were obviously cops. A signal – probably “All clear” – passed between them and the driver of the unmarked sedan.

So that’s it. That’s Lincoln the Worm’s house.

The car continued north. Stephen did too for a little ways, then parked suddenly and climbed out, hurrying into the trees with the guitar case. He knew there’d be some surveillance around the apartment and he moved quietly.

Like a deer, Soldier.

Yes, sir.

He vanished into a stand of brush and crawled back toward the town house, finding a good nest on a stony ledge under a budding lilac tree. He opened the case. The car containing Jodie, now going south, screeched up to the town house. Standard evasive practice, Stephen recognized – it had made an abrupt U-turn in heavy traffic and sped back here.

He was watching the two cops climb out of the sedan, look around, and escort a very scared Jodie along the sidewalk.

Stephen flipped the covers off the telescope and took careful aim on the traitor’s back.

Suddenly a black car drove past and Jodie spooked. His eyes went wide and he pulled away from the cops, running into the alley beside the town house.

His escorts spun around, hands on their weapons, staring at the car that had startled him. They looked at the quartet of Latino girls inside and realized it was just a false alarm. The cops laughed. One of them called to Jodie.

But Stephen wasn’t interested in the little man right now. He couldn’t get both the Worm and Jodie, and Lincoln was the one he had to kill now. He could taste it. It was a hunger, a need as great as scrubbing his hands.

To shoot the face in the window, to kill the worm.

Have to have to have to have to…

He was looking through the telescope, scanning the building’s windows. And there he was. Lincoln the Worm!

A shiver rippled through Stephen’s entire body.

Like the electricity he felt when his leg rubbed against Jodie’s… only a thousand times greater. He actually gasped in excitement.

For some reason Stephen wasn’t the least surprised to see that the Worm was crippled. In fact, this was how he knew the handsome man in a fancy motorized wheelchair was Lincoln. Because Stephen believed it would take an extraordinary man to catch him. Someone who wasn’t distracted by everyday life. Someone whose essence was his mind.

Worms could crawl over Lincoln all day long and he’d never even feel them. They could crawl into his skin and he’d never know. He was immune. And Stephen hated him all the more for his invulnerability.

So the face in the window during the Alexandria, Virginia, hit… it hadn’t been Lincoln.

Or had it?

Stop thinking about it! Stop! The worms’ll get you if you don’t.

The explosive rounds were in the clip. He chambered one, and scanned the room again.

Lincoln the Worm was speaking to someone Stephen couldn’t see. The room, on the first floor, seemed to be a laboratory. He saw a computer screen and some other equipment.

Stephen wrapped the sling around him, spot-welded the rifle butt to his cheek. It was a cool, damp evening. The air was heavy; it would sustain the explosive bullet easily. There was no need to correct; the target was only eighty yards away. Safety off, breathe, breathe…

Go for a head shot. It would be easy from here.

Breathe…

In, out, in, out.

He looked through the reticles, centered them on Lincoln the Worm’s ear as he stared at the computer screen.

The pressure on the trigger began to build.

Breathe. Like sex, like coming, like touching firm skin…

Harder.

Harder…

Then Stephen saw it.

Very faint – a slight unevenness on Lincoln the Worm’s sleeve. But not a wrinkle. It was a distortion.

He relaxed his trigger finger and studied the image through the telescope for a moment. Stephen clicked to a higher resolution on the Redfield telescope. He looked at the type on the computer screen. The letters were backwards.

A mirror! He was sighting on a mirror.

It was another trap!

Stephen closed his eyes. He’d almost given his position away. Cringey now. Smothering in worms, choking on worms. He looked around him. He knew there must be a dozen search-and-surveillance troopers in the park with Big Ears microphones just waiting to pinpoint the gunshot. They’d sight on him with M-16s mounted with Starlight scopes and nail him in a cross fire.

Green-lighted to kill. No surrender pitch.

Quickly but in absolute silence he removed the telescope with shaking hands and replaced it and the gun in the guitar case. Fighting down the nausea, the cringe.

Soldier…

Sir, go away, sir.

Soldier, what are you -

Sir, fuck you, sir!

Stephen slipped through the trees to a path and walked casually around the meadow, heading east.

Oh, yes, he was now even more certain than before that he had to kill Lincoln. A new plan. He needed an hour or two, to think, to consider what he was going to do.

He turned suddenly off the path, paused in the bushes for a long moment, listening, looking around him. They’d been worried he’d be suspicious if he noticed that the park was deserted, so they hadn’t closed the entrances.

That was their mistake.

Stephen saw a group of men about his age – yuppies, from the look of them, dressed in sweats or jogging outfits. They were carrying racquetball cases and backpacks and headed for the Upper East Side, talking loudly as they walked. Their hair glistened from the showers they’d just had at a nearby athletic club.

Stephen waited until they were just past, then fell in behind them, as if he were a part of the group. Offered one of them a big smile. Walking briskly, swinging the guitar case jauntily, he followed them toward the tunnel that led to the East Side.

Hour 34 of 45

DUSK SURROUNDED THEM.

Percey Clay, once again in the left-hand seat of the Learjet, saw the cusp of light that was Chicago in front of them.

Chicago Center cleared them down to twelve thousand feet.

“Starting descent,” she announced, easing back on the throttles. “ATIS.”

Brad clicked his radio to the automated airport information system and repeated out loud what the recorded voice told him. “Chicago information, Whiskey. Clear and forever. Wind two five oh at three. Temperature fifty-nine degrees. Altimeter thirty point one one.”

Brad set the altimeter as Percey said into her microphone, “Chicago Approach, this is Lear Niner Five Foxtrot Bravo. With you inbound at twelve thousand. Heading two eight zero.”

“Evening, Foxtrot Bravo. Descend and maintain one zero thousand. Expect vectors runway twenty-seven right.”