Jeffery Deaver - The Coffin Dancer

The Model 40 was in a Fender bass guitar case. He lifted this out of the back of the van and set it with the backpack on the garage floor. He considered what to do about the van. Stephen had never touched any part of the vehicle without wearing gloves and there was nothing inside that would give away his identity. The Dodge itself was stolen and he’d removed both the dash VIN and the secret VINs. He’d made the license plates himself. He’d planned on abandoning it sooner or later and could finish the job without the vehicle. He decided to leave it now. He covered the boxy Dodge with a blue Wolf car tarp, slipped his k-bar knife into the tires, flattening them, to make it look like the van had been there for months. He left the garage through the elevator to the building.

Outside, he slipped into the crowd. But there were police everywhere. His skin started to crawl. It felt wormy, moist. He stepped up to a phone booth and pretended to make a call, lowered his head to the metal plate of the phone, felt the sweat prickle on his forehead, under his arms. Thinking, They’re everywhere. Looking for him, looking at him. From cars. From the street.

From windows…

The memory came back again…

The face in the window.

He took a deep breath.

The face in the window…

It had happened recently. Stephen’d been hired for a hit in Washington, D.C. The job was to kill a congressional aide selling classified military arms information to – Stephen assumed – a competitor of the man who’d hired Stephen. The aide had been understandably paranoid and kept a safe house in Alexandria, Virginia. Stephen had learned where it was and finally managed to get close enough for a pistol shot – although it would be a tricky one.

One chance, one shot…

Stephen had waited for four hours, and when the victim arrived and darted toward his town house Stephen had managed to fire a single shot. Hit him, he believed, but the man had fallen out of sight in a courtyard.

Listen to me, boy. You listening?

Sir, yessir.

You track down every wounded target and finish the job. You follow the blood spoor to hell and back, you have to.

Well -

No well about it. You confirm every kill. You understand me? This’s not an option.

Yessir.

Stephen had climbed over the brick wall into the man’s courtyard. He found the aide’s body sprawled on the cobblestones, beside a goat-head fountain. The shot had been fatal after all.

But something odd had happened. Something that sent a shiver through him and very few things in life had ever made him shiver. Maybe it was just a fluke, the way the aide had fallen or the way the bullet hit him. But it appeared that someone had carefully untucked the victim’s bloody shirt and pulled it up to see the tiny entrance wound above the man’s sternum.

Stephen had spun around, looking for whoever had done this. But, no, there was no one nearby.

Or so he thought at first.

Then Stephen happened to look across the courtyard. There was an old carriage house, its windows smeared and dirty, lit from behind with failing sunset light. In one of those windows he saw – or imagined he saw – a face looking out at him. He couldn’t see the man – or woman – clearly. But whoever it was didn’t seem particularly scared. They hadn’t ducked or tried to run.

A witness, you left a witness, Soldier!

Sir, I will eliminate the possibility of identification immediately, sir.

But when he kicked in the door of the carriage house he found it was empty.

Evacuate, Soldier…

The face in the window …

Stephen had stood in the empty building, overlooking the courtyard of the aide’s town house, lit with bold western sunlight, and turned around and around in slow, manic circles.

Who was it? What had he been doing? Or was it just Stephen’s imagination? The way his stepfather used to see snipers in the hawk nests of West Virginia oak trees.

The face in the window had gazed at him the way his stepfather would look at him sometimes, studying him, inspecting. Stephen, remembering what young Stephen had often thought: Did I fuck up? Did I do good? What’s he thinking about me?

Finally he couldn’t wait any longer and he’d headed back to his hotel in Washington.

Stephen had been shot at and beaten and stabbed. But nothing had shaken him as much as that incident in Alexandria. He’d never once been troubled by the faces of his victims, dead or alive. But the face in the window was like a worm crawling up his leg.

Cringey…

Which was exactly what he felt now, seeing the lines of officers moving toward him from both directions on Lexington. Cars were honking, drivers were angry. But the police paid no mind; they continued their dogged search. It was just a matter of minutes until they spotted him – an athletic white man by himself, carrying a guitar case that might easily contain the best sniper rifle God put on this earth.

His eyes went to the black, grimy windows overlooking the street.

He prayed he wouldn’t see a face looking out.

Soldier, the fuck you talking about?

Sir, I-

Reconnoiter, Soldier.

Sir, yessir.

A burnt, bitter smell came to him.

He turned around and found he was standing outside a Starbucks. He walked in and while he pretended to read the menu in fact he surveyed the customers.

At a table by herself a large woman sat in one of the flimsy, uncomfortable chairs. She was reading a magazine and nursing a tall cup of tea. She was in her early thirties, dumpy, with a broad face and a thick nose. Starbucks, he free-associated… Seattle… dyke?

But, no, he didn’t think so. She pored over the Vogue in her hands with envy, not lust.

Stephen bought a cup of Celestial Seasonings tea, chamomile. He picked up the container and started to walk toward a seat at the window. Stephen was just passing the woman’s table when the cup slipped from his hand and dropped onto the chair opposite her, spraying the hot tea all over the floor. She slid back in surprise, looking up at the horrified expression on Stephen’s face.

“Oh, my goodness,” he whispered, “I am sooo sorry.” He lunged for a handful of napkins. “Tell me I didn’t get any on you. Please!”

Percey Clay pulled away from the young detective who held her pinned to the floor.

Ed’s mother, Joan Carney, lay a few feet away, her face frozen in shock and bewilderment.

Brit Hale was up against the wall, covered by two strong cops. It looked as if they were arresting him.

“I’m sorry, ma’am, Mrs. Clay,” one cop said. “We -”

“What’s going on?” Hale seemed mystified. Unlike Ed and Ron Talbot and Percey herself, Hale had never been military, never come close to combat. He was fearless – he always wore long sleeves instead of a pilots’ traditional short-sleeve white shirt to hide the leathery burn scars on his arms from the time a few years ago he’d climbed into a flaming Cessna 150 to rescue a pilot and passenger. But the idea of malice and crime – intentional harm – was wholly alien to him.

“We got a call from the task force,” the detective explained. “They think the man who killed Mr. Carney has been back. Probably to come after you two. Mr. Rhyme thinks the killer was the one driving that black van you saw today.”

“Well, we have those men to guard us,” Percey snapped, tossing her head to the cops who’d arrived earlier.

“Jesus,” Hale muttered, looking outside. “There must be twenty cops out there.”

“Away from the window, please, sir,” the detective said firmly. “He could be on a rooftop. The site’s not secure yet.”

Percey heard footsteps running up the stairs. “The roof?” she asked sourly. “Maybe he’s tunneling into the basement.” She put her arm around Mrs. Carney. “You all right, Mother?”