The Coffin Dancer

chapter twenty-six

Hour 26 of 45

WAITING.

Rhyme was now alone in his bed upstairs, listening into the Special Ops frequency. He was dead tired. It was noon on Sunday and he’d had virtually no sleep. And he was exhausted from the most arduous effort of all – of trying to out-think the Dancer. It was taking its toll on his body.

Cooper was downstairs in the lab, running tests to confirm Rhyme’s conclusions about the Dancer’s latest tactic. Everyone else was at the safe house, Amelia Sachs too. Once Rhyme, Sellitto, and Dellray had decided how to counter what they believed would be the Dancer’s next effort to kill Percey Clay and Brit Hale, Thom had checked Rhyme’s blood pressure and asserted his virtual parental authority and ordered his boss into bed, no arguments, reasonable or otherwise, accepted. They’d ridden up in the elevator, Rhyme oddly silent, uneasy, wondering if he’d guessed right again.

“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.

The telephone rang and Rhyme ordered the computer to shut off the radio and answer the phone.

“Yes,” he said.

“Lincoln.” It was Lon Sellitto. “I’m landline,” he said, referring to the phone. “Want to keep Special Ops free for the chase.”

“Okay. Go ahead.”

“He blew the bomb.”

“I know.” Rhyme had heard it; the safe house was more than two miles from his bedroom, but his windows had rattled and the peregrines outside his window had taken off and flown a slow circle, angry at the disturbance.

“Everybody okay?”

“The mutt’s freaking out, Jodie. But ’side from that everything’s okay. ’Cept for the feds’re looking at more damage to the safe house than they’d planned on. Already bitching about it.”

“Tell ’em we’ll pay our taxes early this year.”

What had tipped Rhyme to the cell phone bomb had been tiny fingernails of polystyrene that Sachs had found in the trace at the subway station. That and more residue of plastic explosive, a slightly different formula from that of the AP bomb in Sheila Horowitz’s apartment. Rhyme had simply matched the polystyrene fragments to the phone the Dancer’d given to Jodie and realized that somebody had unscrewed the casing.

Why? Rhyme had wondered. There was only one logical reason that he could see and so he’d called the bomb squad down at the Sixth Precinct. Two detectives had rendered the phone safe, removed the large wad of plastic explosive and the firing circuit from the phone, then mounted a much smaller bit of explosive and the same circuit in an oil drum near one of the windows, pointed into the alley like a mortar. They’d filled the room with bomb blankets and stepped into the corridor, handing the harmless phone back to Jodie, who held it with shaking hands, demanding that they prove to him all the explosive had been taken out.

Rhyme had guessed that the Dancer’s tactic was to use the bomb to divert attention away from the van and give him a better chance to assault it. The killer had also probably guessed that Jodie would turn and, when he made the call, that the little man would be close to the cops who were mounting the operation. If he took out the leaders the Dancer would have an even better chance of success.

Deception…

There was no perp Rhyme hated more than the Coffin Dancer, no one he wanted more to run to ground and skewer through his hot heart. Still, Rhyme was a criminalist before anything else and he had a secret admiration for the man’s brilliance.

Sellitto explained, “We’ve got two tail cars behind the Nissan. We’re going to -”

There was a long pause.

“Stupid,” Sellitto muttered.

“What?”

“Oh, nothing. It’s just nobody called Central. We’ve got fire trucks coming in. Nobody called to tell ’em to ignore the reports of the blast.”

Rhyme had forgotten about that too.

Sellitto continued. “Just got word. The decoy van’s turning east, Linc. The Nissan’s following. Maybe forty yards behind the van. It’s about four blocks to the parking lot by the FDR.”

“Okay, Lon. Is Amelia there? I want to talk to her.”

“Jesus,” he heard someone call in the background. Bo Haumann, Rhyme thought. “We got fire trucks all over the place here.”

“Didn’t somebody…?” another voice began to ask, then faded.

No, somebody didn’t, Rhyme thought. You can’t think of -

“Have to call you back, Lincoln,” Sellitto said. “We gotta do something. There’re fire trucks up on the goddamn sidewalks.”

“I’ll call Amelia myself,” Rhyme said.

Sellitto hung up.

The room darkened, curtains drawn.

Percey Clay was afraid.

Thinking of her haggard, the falcon, captured by the snare, flapping her muscular wings. The talons and beak slicing the air like honed blades, the mad screech. But the most horrifying of all to Percey, the bird’s frightened eyes. Denied her sky, the bird was lost in terror. Vulnerable.

Percey felt the same. She detested it here in the safe house. Closed in. Looking at – hating – the foolish pictures on the wall. Crap from Woolworth or JCPenney. The limp rug. The cheap water basin and pitcher. A ratty pink chenille bedspread, a dozen threads pulled out in long loops from a particular corner; maybe a mob informant had sat there, tugging compulsively on the pink knobby cloth.

Another sip from the flask. Rhyme had told her about the trap. That the Dancer would be following the van he believed Percey and Hale were in. They’d stop his car and arrest or kill him. Her sacrifice was now going to pay off. In ten minutes they’d have him, the man who’d killed Ed. The man who’d changed her life forever.

She trusted Lincoln Rhyme, and believed him. But she believed him the same way she believed Air Traffic Control when they reported no wind shear and you suddenly found your aircraft dropping at three thousand feet a minute when you were only two thousand feet in the air.

Percey tossed her flask on the bed, stood up and paced. She wanted to be flying, where it was safe, where she had control. Roland Bell had ordered her lights out, had ordered her to stay locked in her room. Everyone was upstairs on the top floor. She’d heard the bang of the explosion. She’d been expecting it. But she hadn’t been expecting the fear that it brought. Unbearable. She’d have given anything to look out the window.

She walked to the door, unlocked it, stepped into the corridor.

It too was dark. Like night… All the stars of evening.

She smelled a pungent chemical scent. From whatever had made the bang, she guessed. The hallway was deserted. There was slight motion at the end of the hall. A shadow from the stairwell. She looked at it. It wasn’t repeated.

Brit Hale’s room was only ten feet away. She wanted badly to talk to him, but she didn’t want him to see her this way, pale, hands shaking. Eyes watering in fear… My God, she’d pulled a seven three seven out of a wing-ice nosedive more calmly than this: looking into that dark corridor.

She stepped back into her room.

Did she hear footsteps?

She closed the door, returned to the bed.

More footsteps.

“Command mode,” Lincoln Rhyme instructed. The box dutifully came up on-screen.

He heard a faint siren in the distance.

And it was then that Rhyme realized his mistake.

Fire trucks…

No! I didn’t think about that.

But the Dancer did. Of course! He’d have stolen a fireman’s or medic’s uniform and was strolling into the safe house at this moment!

“Oh, no,” he muttered. “No! How could I be so far off?”

And the computer heard the last word of Rhyme’s sentence and dutifully shut off his communications program.

“No!” Rhyme cried. “No!”

But the system couldn’t understand his loud, frantic voice and with a silent flash the message came up, Do you really want to shut off your computer?

“No,” he whispered desperately.

For a moment nothing happened, but the system didn’t shut down. A message popped up. What would you like to do now?

“Thom!” he shouted. “Somebody… please. Mel!”

But the door was closed; there was no response from downstairs.

Rhyme’s left ring finger twitched dramatically. At one time he’d had a mechanical ECU controller and he could use his one working finger to dial the phone. The computer system had replaced that and he now had to use the dictation program to call the safe house and tell them that the Dancer was on his way there, dressed as a fireman or rescue worker.

“Command mode,” he said into the microphone. Fighting to stay calm.

I did not understand what you just said. Please try again.

Where was the Dancer now? Was he inside already? Was he just about to shoot Percey Clay or Brit Hale?

Or Amelia Sachs?

“Thom! Mel!”

I did not understand…

Why wasn’t I thinking better?

“Command mode,” he said breathlessly, trying to master the panic.

The command mode message box popped up. The cursor arrow sat at the top of the screen and, a continent away, at the bottom, was the communications program icon.

“Cursor down,” he gasped.

Nothing happened.

“Cursor down,” he called, louder.

The message came back: I did not understand what you just said. Please try again.

“Oh, goddamn…”

I did not understand…

Softer, forcing himself to speak in a normal tone, he said, “Cursor down.”

The glowing white arrow began its leisurely trip down the screen.

We’ve still got time, he told himself. And it wasn’t as though the people in the safe house were unprotected or unarmed.

“Cursor left,” he gasped.

I did not understand…

“Oh, come on!”

I did not understand…

“Cursor up… cursor left.”

The cursor moved like a snail over the screen until it came to the icon.

Calm, calm…

“Cursor stop. Double click.”

Dutifully, an icon of a walkie-talkie popped up on the screen.

He pictured the faceless Dancer moving up behind Percey Clay with a knife or garrote.

In as calm a voice as he could muster he ordered the cursor to the set-frequency box.

It seated itself perfectly.

“Four,” Rhyme said, pronouncing the word so very carefully.

A 4 popped up into the box. Then he said, “Eight.”

The letter A appeared in the second box.

Lord in heaven!

“Delete left.”

I did not understand…

No, no!

He thought he heard footsteps. “Hello?” he cried. “Is someone there? Thom? Mel?”

No answer except from his friend the computer, which placidly offered its contrarian response once again.

“Eight,” he said slowly.

The number appeared. His next attempt, “Three,” popped into the box without a problem.

“Point.”

The word point appeared.

Goddamn!

“Delete left.” Then, “Decimal.”

The period popped up.

“Four.”

One space left. Remember, It’s zero not oh. Sweat streaming down his face, he added the final number of the Secure Ops frequency without a glitch.

The radio clicked on.

Yes!

But before he could transmit, static clattered harshly and, with a frozen heart, he heard a man’s frantic voice crying, “Ten-thirteen, need assistance, federal protection location six.”

The safe house.

He recognized the voice as Roland Bell’s. “Two down and… Oh, Jesus, he’s still here. He’s got us, he’s hit us! We need -”

There were two gunshots. Then another. A dozen. A huge firefight. It sounded like Macy’s fireworks on the Fourth of July.

“We need -”

The transmission ended.

“Percey!” Rhyme cried. “Percey…”

On the screen came the message in simple type: I did not understand what you just said. Please try again.

A nightmare.

Stephen Kall, in ski mask and wearing the bulky fireman’s coat, lay pinned down in the corridor of the safe house, behind the body of one of the two U.S. marshals he’d just killed.

Another shot, closer, digging a piece out of the floor near his head. Fired by the detective with the thinning brown hair – the one he’d seen in the window of the safe house that morning. He crouched in a doorway, presenting a fair target, but Stephen couldn’t get a clean shot at him. The detective held automatic pistols in both his hands and was an excellent shot.

Stephen crawled forward another yard, toward one of the open doorways.

Panicked, cringey, coated with worms…

He fired again and the brown-haired detective ducked back into the room, called something on his radio, but came right back, firing coolly.

Wearing the fireman’s long, black coat – the same as thirty or forty other men and women in front of the safe house – Stephen had blown open the alley door with a cutting charge and run inside, expecting to find the interior a fiery shambles and the Wife and Friend – as well as half the other people inside – blown to pieces or badly wounded. But Lincoln the Worm had fooled him again. He’d figured out that the phone was booby-trapped. The only thing they hadn’t expected was that he’d hit the safe house again; they believed he was going for a transport hit. Still, when he burst inside he was met by the frantic fire from the two marshals. But they’d been stunned by the cutting charge and he’d managed to kill them.

Then the brown-haired detective charged around the corner firing both-handed, skimming two off Stephen’s vest, while Stephen himself danced one round off the detective’s and they fell backward simultaneously. More shooting, more near misses. The cop was almost as good a shot as he was.

A minute at the most. He had no more time than that.

He felt so wormy he wanted to cry… He’d thought his plan out as best he could. He couldn’t get any smarter than he’d been and Lincoln the Worm had still out-thought him. Was this him? The balding detective with the two guns?

Another volley from Stephen’s gun. And… damn… the brown-haired detective dove right into it, kept coming forward. Every other cop in the world would’ve run for cover. But not him. He struggled another two feet forward, then three. Stephen reloaded, fired again, crawling about the same distance toward the door of his target’s room.

You disappear into the ground, boy. You can make yourself invisible, you want to.

I want to, sir. I want to be invisible…

Another yard, almost to the doorway.

“This’s Roland Bell again!” the cop shouted into his microphone. “We need backup immediately!”

Bell . Stephen noted the name. So he’s not Lincoln the Worm.

The cop reloaded and continued to fire. A dozen shots, two dozen… Stephen could only admire his technique. This Bell would keep track of how many shots he’d fired from each gun and alternate reloading so he was never without a loaded weapon.

The cop parked a slug in the wall an inch from Stephen’s face, and Stephen returned a shot that landed just as close.

Crawling forward another two feet.

Bell glanced up and saw that Stephen had finally made it to the doorway of the darkened bedroom. Their eyes locked and, mock soldier though he was, Stephen Kall had seen enough combat to know that the string of rationality within this cop had snapped and he’d become the most dangerous thing there was – a skillful soldier with no regard for his own safety. Bell rose to his feet and started forward, firing from both guns.

That’s why they used.45s in the Pacific Theater, boy. Big slugs to stop those crazy little Japs. When they came at you they didn’t care about getting killed; they just didn’t want to get stopped.

Stephen lowered his head, tossed the one-second-delay flash bang at Bell, and closed his eyes. The grenade detonated with an astonishingly loud explosion. He heard the cop cry out and saw him stumble to his knees, hands over his face.

Stephen had guessed that because of the guards and Bell’s furious effort to stop him, either the Wife or the Friend was in this room. Stephen had also guessed that whoever it was would be hiding in the closet or under the bed.

He was wrong.

As he glanced into the doorway he saw the figure come charging at him, holding a lamp as a weapon and uttering a wail of fear and anger.

Five fast shots from Stephen’s gun. Head and chest hits, well grouped. The body spun around fast and flew backward to the floor.

Good job, Soldier.

Then more footsteps on the floor coming down the stairs. A woman’s voice. And more voices too. No time to finish Bell, no time to look for the other target.

Evacuate…

He ran to the back door and stuck his head outside, shouting for more firemen.

A half dozen of them ran up cautiously.

Stephen nodded them inside. “Gas line just blew. I’d get everybody out. Now!”

And he disappeared into the alley, then stepped into the street, dodging the Mack and Seagrave fire trucks, the ambulances, the police cars.

Shaken, yes.

But satisfied. His job was now two-thirds finished.

Amelia Sachs was the first to respond to the bang of the entry charge and the shouts.

Then Roland Bell’s voice from the first floor: “Backup! Backup! Officer down!”

And gunfire. A dozen sharp cracks, a dozen more.

She didn’t know how the Dancer’d done it and she didn’t care. She wanted only a fair glimpse of target and two seconds to sink half a clip of nine-millimeter hollow-points into him.

The light Glock in her hand, she pushed into the second-floor corridor. Behind her were Sellitto and Dellray and a young uniform, whose credentials under fire she wished she’d taken the time to learn. Jodie cowered on the floor, painfully aware he’d betrayed a very dangerous man who was armed and no more than thirty feet away.

Sachs’s knees screamed as she took the stairs fast, the arthritis again, and she winced as she leapt down the last three steps to the first floor.

In her headset she heard Bell’s repeated request for assistance.

Down the dark corridor, pistol close to the body, where it couldn’t be knocked aside (only TV cops and movie gangstas stick a gun out in front of them phallically before turning corners, or tilt a weapon on its side). Fast glance into each of the rooms she passed, crouching, below chest height, where a muzzle would be pointed.

“I’ll take the front,” Dellray called and vanished down the hallway behind her, his big Sig-Sauer in hand.

“Watch our backs,” Sachs ordered Sellitto and the uniform, caring not a bit about rank.

“Yes’m,” the young man answered. “I’m watching. Our backs.”

Puffing Sellitto was too, his head swiveling back and forth.

Static crinkled in her ear but she heard no voices. She tugged the headset off – no distractions – and continued cautiously down the corridor.

At her feet two U.S. marshals lay dead on the floor.

The smell of chemical explosive was strong and she glanced toward the back door of the safe house. It was steel but he’d blown it open with a powerful cutting charge as if it had been paper.

“Jesus, “ Sellitto said, too professional to bend down over the fallen marshals but too human not to glance in horror at their riddled bodies.

Sachs came to one room, paused at the door. Two of Haumann’s troops entered from the destroyed doorway.

“Cover,” she called and before anyone had a chance to stop her she leapt through the doorway fast.

Glock up, scanning the room.

Nothing.

No cordite smell either. There’d been no shooting here.

Back into the corridor. Heading toward the next doorway.

She pointed to herself and then into the room. The 32-E officers nodded.

Sachs spun around the doorway, ready to fire, the troopers right behind. She froze at the sight of the gun muzzle aimed at her chest.

“Lord,” Roland Bell muttered and lowered his weapon. His hair was mussed and his face was sooty. Two bullets had torn his shirt and streaked over his body armor.

Then her eyes took in the terrible sight on the floor.

“Oh, no…”

“Building’s clear,” a patrolman called from the corridor. “They saw him leave. He was wearing a fireman’s uniform. He’s gone. Lost in the crowd out front.”

Amelia Sachs, once again a criminalist and not a tactical officer, observed the blood spatter, the astringent scent of gunshot residue, the fallen chair, which might indicate a struggle and therefore would be a logical transfer point for trace evidence. The bullet casings, which she immediately noticed were from a 7.62-millimeter automatic.

She observed too the way the body had fallen, which told her that the victim had been attacking the attacker, apparently with a lamp. There were other stories the crime scene would tell and, for that reason, she knew she should help Percey Clay to her feet and lead her away from the body of her slain friend. But Sachs couldn’t do that. All she could do was watch the small woman with the squat unpretty face cradle Brit Hale’s bloody head, muttering, “Oh, no, oh, no…”

Her face was a mask, unmoving, untouched by tears.

Finally Sachs nodded to Roland Bell, who slipped his arms around Percey and led her out into the corridor, still vigilant, still clutching his own weapon.

Two hundred and thirty yards from the safe house.

Red and blue lights from the dozens of emergency vehicles flashed and tried to blind him but he was sighting through the Redfield telescope and was oblivious to anything but the reticles. He scanned back and forth over the kill zone.

Stephen had stripped off the fireman’s uniform and was dressed again as a late-blooming college student. He’d recovered the Model 40 from under the water tank, where he’d hidden it that morning. The weapon was loaded and locked. The sling was around his arm and he was ready to murder.

At the moment it wasn’t the Wife he was after.

And it wasn’t Jodie, the little faggot Judas.

He was looking for Lincoln the Worm. The man who’d out-thought him once again.

Who was he? Which of them?

Cringey.

Lincoln… Prince of Worms.

Where are you? Are you right in front of me now? In that crowd standing around the smoking building?

Was he that large lump of a cop, sweating like a hog?

The tall, thin Negro in the green suit? He looked familiar. Where had Stephen seen him before?

An unmarked car streaked up and several men in suits climbed out.

Maybe Lincoln was one of them.

The red-haired policewoman stepped outside. She was wearing latex gloves. Crime Scene, are you? Well, I treat my casings and slugs, darling, he said to her silently as the reticles of the telescope picked out a pretty target on her neck. And you’ll have to fly to Singapore before you pick up a lead to my gun.

He figured he had time to fire just one shot and then be driven into the alley by the fusillade that would follow.

Who are you?

Lincoln? Lincoln?

But he had no clue.

Then the front door swung open and Jodie appeared, stepping out the door uneasily. He looked around, squinted, shrank back against the building.

You…

The electric sizzle again. Even at this distance.

Stephen easily moved the reticles onto his chest.

Go ahead, Soldier, fire your weapon. He’s a logical target; he can identify you.

Sir, I am adjusting for tracking and windage.

Stephen upped the poundage on his trigger.

Jodie…

He betrayed you, Soldier. Take… him… out.

Sir, yes, sir. He is ice cold. He is dead meat. Sir, vultures are already hovering.

Soldier, the USMC sniper’s manual dictates that you increase poundage on the trigger of your Model 40 imperceptibly so that you are not aware of the exact moment your weapon will discharge. Is that correct, Soldier?

Sir, yes, sir.

Then why the fuck aren’t you doing it?

He squeezed harder.

Slowly, slowly…

But the gun wasn’t firing. He lifted the sights to Jodie’s head. And as it happened, Jodie’s eyes, which had been scanning the rooftops, saw him.

He’d waited too long.

Shoot, Soldier. Shoot!

A whisper of a pause…

Then he jerked the trigger like a boy on the.22 rifle range at summer camp.

Just as Jodie leapt out of the way, pushing the cops with him aside.

How the fuck d’you miss that shot, Soldier? Repeat fire!

Sir, yes, sir!

He got off two more rounds but Jodie and everyone else was under cover or crawling fast along the sidewalk and street.

And then the return fire began. First a dozen guns, then a dozen more. Mostly pistols but some H &Ks too, spewing the bullets so fast they sounded like un-muffled car engines.

Bullets were striking the elevator tower behind him, showering him with bits of brick and concrete and lead and sharp, craggy copper jackets from the slugs, cutting his forearms and the backs of his hands.

Stephen fell backward, covering his face with his hands. He felt the cuts and saw tiny drops of his blood fall on the tar paper roof.

Why did I wait? Why? I could have shot him and been gone.

Why?

The sound of a helicopter speeding toward the building. More sirens.

Evacuate, Soldier! Evacuate!

He glanced down to see Jodie scrambling to safety behind a car. Stephen threw the Model 40 into the case, slung the backpack over his shoulder, and slid down the fire escape into the alley.

The second tragedy.

Percey Clay had changed her clothes and stepped into the corridor, slumped against the strong figure of Roland Bell. He put his arm around her.

The second of three. It hadn’t been their mechanic quitting or problems with the charter. It had been the death of her dear friend.

Oh, Brit…

Imagining him, eyes wide, mouth open in a soundless shout, charge toward the terrible man. Trying to stop him, appalled that someone would actually be trying to kill him, to kill Percey. More indignant and betrayed than scared. Your life was so precise, she thought to him. Even your risks were calculated. The inverted flight at fifty feet, the tailspins, the skydiving. To spectators, it looked impossible. But you knew what you were doing and if you thought about the chance of an early death, you believed it would be from a bum linkage or a clogged fuel line or some careless student who intruded into your airspace.

The great aviation writer Ernest K. Gann wrote that fate was a hunter. Percey’d always thought he meant nature or circumstance – the fickle elements, the faulty mechanisms that conspire to send airplanes hurtling into the ground. But fate was more complicated than that. Fate was as complicated as the human mind. As complicated as evil.

Tragedies come in threes… And what would the last one be? Her death? The Company’s? Someone else’s?

Huddling against Roland Bell, she shivered with anger at the coincidence of it all. Thinking back several weeks: she and Ed and Hale, groggy from lack of sleep, standing in the glare of the hangar lights around Learjet Charlie Juliet, hoping desperately they’d win the U.S. Medical contract, shivering in the damp night as they tried to figure out how best to outfit the jet for the job.

Late, a misty night. The airport deserted and dark. Like the final scene in Casablanca.

Hearing the squeal of brakes and glancing outside.

The man lugging the huge duffle bags out of the car on the tarmac, flinging them inside, and firing up the Beechcraft. The distinctive whine of a piston engine starting.

She remembered Ed saying, incredulous, “What’s he doing? The airport’s closed.”

Fate.

That they happened to be there that night.

That Phillip Hansen had chosen that exact moment to get rid of his damaging evidence.

That Hansen was a man who would kill to keep that flight a secret.

Fate…

Then she jumped – at a knocking on the door of the safe house.

Two men stood there. Bell recognized them. They were from the NYPD Witness Protection Division. “We’re here to transport you to the Shoreham facility on Long Island, Mrs. Clay.”

“No, no,” she said. “There’s a mistake. I have to go to Mamaroneck Airport.”

“Percey,” Roland Bell said.

“I have to.”

“I don’t know about that, ma’am,” one of the officers said. “We’ve got orders to take you to Shoreham and keep you in protective confinement until a grand jury appearance on Monday.”

“No, no, no. Call Lincoln Rhyme.He knows about it.”

“Well…” One of the officers looked to the other.

“Please,” she said, “call him. He’ll tell you.”

“Actually, Mrs. Clay, it was Lincoln Rhyme who ordered you moved. If you’ll come with us, please. Don’t you worry. We’ll take good care of you, ma’am.”

chapter twenty-seven

Hour 28 of 45

“IT’S NOT PLEASANT,” THOM TOLD AMELIA SACHS.

From behind the bedroom door she heard, “I want that bottle and I want it now.”

“What’s going on?”

The handsome young man grimaced. “Oh, he can be such a prick sometimes. He got one of the patrol officers to pour him some scotch. For the pain, he said. He said he’s got a prescription for single malt. Can you believe it? Oh, he’s insufferable when he drinks.”

A howl of rage from his room.

Sachs knew the only reason he wasn’t throwing things was that he couldn’t.

She reached for the doorknob.

“You might want to wait a little,” Thom warned.

“We can’t wait.”

“Goddamnit!” Rhyme snarled. “I want that fucking bottle!”

She opened the door. Thom whispered, “Don’t say I didn’t warn you.”

Inside, Sachs paused in the doorway. Rhyme was a sight. His hair was disheveled, there was spittle on his chin, and his eyes were red.

The Macallan bottle was on the floor. He must have tried to grab it with his teeth and knocked it over.

He noticed Sachs but all he said was a brisk “Pick it up.”

“We’ve got work to do, Rhyme.”

“Pick. Up. That. Bottle.”

She did. And placed it on the shelf.

He raged, “You know what I mean! I want a drink!”

“You’ve had more than enough, sounds like.”

“Pour some whiskey in my goddamn glass. Thom! Get the hell in here… Coward.”

“Rhyme,” she snapped, “we’ve got evidence to look at.”

“Hell with the evidence.”

“How much did you drink?”

“The Dancer got inside, didn’t he? Fox in the henhouse. Fox in the henhouse.”

“I’ve got a vacuum filter full of trace, I’ve got a slug, I’ve got samples of his blood…”

“Blood? Well, that’s fair. He’s got plenty of ours.”

She snapped back, “You oughta be like a kid on his birthday, all the evidence I’ve got. Quit feeling sorry for yourself, and let’s get to work.”

He didn’t respond. As she looked at him she saw his bleary eyes focus past her on the doorway. She turned. There was Percey Clay.

Immediately, Rhyme’s eyes dropped to the floor. He fell silent.

Sure, Sachs thought. Doesn’t want to misbehave in front of his new love.

She walked into the room, looked at the mess that was Lincoln Rhyme.

“Lincoln, what’s going on?” Sellitto had accompanied Percey here, she guessed. He stepped into the room.

“Three dead, Lon. He got three more. Fox in the henhouse.”

“Lincoln,” Sachs blurted. “Stop it. You’re embarrassing yourself.”

Wrong thing to say. Rhyme slapped a bewildered gaze on his face. “I’m not embarrassed. Do I look embarrassed? Anyone? Am I embarrassed? Am I fucking embarrassed?”

“We’ve got -”

“No, we’ve got zip! It’s over with. It’s done. It’s finished. Duck ’n’ cover. We’re heading for the hills. Are you going to join us, Amelia? Suggest you do.”

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.”

Good-bye, Rhyme, she thought. Good-bye.

And his response to this tacit farewell? A minuscule glance and the gruff words “Let’s look at that evidence, Sachs. Time’s a-wasting.”

chapter twenty-eight

Hour 29 of 45

INDIVIDUATION IS THE GOAL OF THE CRIMINALIST.

It’s the process of tracing a piece of evidence back to a single source, to the exclusion of all other sources.

Lincoln Rhyme now gazed at the most individuated evidence there was: blood from the Dancer’s body. A restriction fragment length polymorphism DNA test could eliminate virtually any possibility that the blood had come from anyone else.

Yet there was little that this evidence could tell him. CODIS – the Computer-Based DNA Information System – contained profiles of some convicted felons, but it was a small database, made up primarily of sex offenders and a limited number of violent criminals. Rhyme wasn’t surprised when the search of the Dancer’s blood code came back negative.

Still, Rhyme harbored a faint pleasure that they now had a piece of the killer himself, swabbed and stuck into a test tube. For most criminalists, the perps were usually “out there”; he rarely met them face-to-face, often never saw them at all unless it was at trial. So he felt a deep stirring to be in the presence of the man who’d caused so many people, himself included, so much pain.

“What else did you find?” he asked Sachs.

She’d vacuumed Brit Hale’s room for trace but she and Cooper, donning magnifiers, had been through it all and found nothing except gunshot residue and fragments of bullets and brick and plaster from the shoot-outs.

She’d found casings from the semiautomatic pistol he’d used. His weapon was a 7.62-millimeter Beretta. It was probably old; it showed breach spread. The casings, all of which Sachs had recovered, had been dipped in cleansers to eliminate even the prints of the employees of the ammunition company – so no one could trace the purchase back to a certain shift at one of the Remington plants and then forward to a shipment that ended up in a particular location. And the Dancer had apparently loaded them with his knuckles to avoid prints. An old trick.

“Keep going,” Rhyme said to Sachs.

“Pistol slugs.”

Cooper looked over the bullets. Three flattened. And one in pretty good shape. Two were covered with Brit Hale’s black, cauterized blood.

“Scan them for prints,” Rhyme ordered.

“I did,” she said, her voice clipped.

“Try the laser.”

Cooper did.

“Nothing, Lincoln.” The tech looked at a piece of cotton in a plastic bag. He asked, “What’s that?”

Sachs said, “Oh, I got one of his rifle slugs too.”

“What?”

“He took a couple shots at Jodie. Two of them hit the wall and exploded. This one hit dirt – a bed of flowers – and didn’t go off. I found a hole in one of the geraniums and – ”

“Wait.” Cooper blinked. “That’s one of the explosive rounds?”

Sachs said, “Right, but it didn’t go off.”

He gingerly set the bag on the table and stepped back, pulling Sachs – two inches taller than he was – along with him.

“What’s the matter?”

“Explosive bullets’re very unstable. Powder grains could be smoldering right now… It could go off at any minute. A piece of shrapnel could kill you.”

“You saw the fragments of the other ones, Mel,” Rhyme said. “How’s it made?”

“It’s nasty, Lincoln,” the tech said uneasily, his bald crown dotted with sweat. “A PETN filling, smokeless powder as the primary. That makes it unstable.”

Sachs asked, “Why didn’t it go off?”

“The dirt’d be soft impact. And he makes them himself. Maybe his quality control wasn’t so good for that one.”

“He makes them himself?” Rhyme asked. “How?”

Eye fixed on the plastic bag, the tech said, “Well, the usual way is to tap a hole from the point almost through the base. Drop in a BB and some black or smokeless powder. You roll a thread of plastic and feed it inside. Then seal it up again – in his case with a ceramic nose cone. When it hits, the BB slams into the powder. That sets off the PETN.”

“Rolls the plastic?” Rhyme asked. “Between his fingers?”

“Usually.”

Rhyme looked at Sachs and for a moment the rift between them vanished. They smiled and said simultaneously, “Fingerprints!”

Mel Cooper said, “Maybe. But how’re you going to find out? You’d have to take it apart.”

“Then,” Sachs said, “we’ll take it apart.”

“No, no, no, Sachs,” Rhyme said curtly. “Not you. We’ll wait for the bomb squad.”

“We don’t have time.”

She bent over the bag, started to open it.

“Sachs, what the hell’re you trying to prove?”

“Not trying to prove anything,” she responded coolly. “I’m trying to catch the killer.”

Cooper stood by helplessly.

“Are you trying to save Jerry Banks? Well, it’s too late for that. Give him up. Get on with your job.”

“This is my job.”

“Sachs, it wasn’t your fault!” Rhyme shouted. “Forget it. Give up the dead. I’ve told you that a dozen times.”

Calmly she said, “I’ll put my vest on top of it, work from behind it.” She stripped her blouse off and ripped the Velcro straps of her American Body Armor vest. She set this up like a tent over the plastic bag containing the bullet.

Cooper said, “You’re behind the armor but your hands won’t be.”

“Bomb suits don’t have hand protection either,” she pointed out, and pulled her shooting earplugs from her pocket, screwed them into her ears. “You’ll have to shout,” she said to Cooper. “What do I do?”

No, Sachs, no, Rhyme thought.

“If you don’t tell me I’ll just cut it apart.” She picked up a forensic razor saw. The blade hovered over the bag. She paused.

Rhyme sighed, nodded to Cooper. “Tell her what to do.”

The tech swallowed. “All right. Unwrap it. But carefully. Here, put it on this towel. Don’t jar it. That’s the worst thing you can do.”

She exposed the bullet, a surprisingly tiny piece of metal with an off-white tip.

“That cone?” Cooper continued. “If the bullet goes off the cone’ll go right through the body armor and at least one or two walls. It’s Teflon-coated.”

“Okay.” She turned it aside, toward the wall.

“Sachs,” Rhyme said soothingly. “Use forceps, not your fingers.”

“It won’t make any difference if it blows, Rhyme. And I need the control.”

“Please.”

She hesitated and took the hemostat that Cooper offered her. She gripped the base of the slug.

“How do I open it up? Cut it?”

“You can’t cut through the lead,” Cooper called. “The heat from the friction’ll set off the black powder. You’ll have to work the cone off and pull the wad of plastic out.”

Sweat was rolling down her face. “Okay. With pliers?”

Cooper picked up a pair of needle-nose pliers from the worktable and walked to her side. He put them in her right hand, then retreated.

“You’ll have to grip it and twist hard. He glued it on with epoxy. That doesn’t bond well with lead, so it should just pop off. But don’t squeeze too hard. If it fractures you’ll never get it off without drilling. And that’ll set it off.”

“Hard but not too hard,” she muttered.

“Think of all those cars you worked on, Sachs,” Rhyme said.

“What?”

“Trying to get those old spark plugs out. Hard enough to unseat them, not so hard you broke the ceramic.”

She nodded absently and he didn’t know if she’d heard him. Sachs lowered her head behind the tepee of her body armor.

Rhyme saw her eyes squinting shut.

Oh, Sachs…

He never saw any motion. He just heard a very faint snap. She froze for a moment, then looked over the armor. “It came off. It’s open.”

Cooper said, “Do you see the explosive?”

She looked inside. “Yes.”

He handed her a can of light machine oil. “Drip some of this inside then tilt it. The plastic should fall out. We can’t pull it or the fingerprints’ll be ruined.”

She added the oil, then tilted the slug, open end down, toward the towel.

Nothing happened.

“Damn,” she muttered.

“Don’t -”

She shook it. Hard.

“- shake it!” Cooper shouted.

“Sachs!” Rhyme gasped.

She shook harder. “Damn it.”

“No!”

A tiny white thread fell out, followed by some grains of black powder.

“Okay,” Cooper said, exhaling. “It’s safe.”

He walked over, and using a needle probe, rolled the plastic onto a glass slide. He walked in the smooth gait of criminalists around the world – back straight, hand buoyed and carrying the sample rock steady – to the microscope. He mounted the explosive.

“Magna-Brush?” Cooper asked, referring to a fine gray fingerprint powder.

“No,” Rhyme responded. “Use gentian violet. It’s a plastic print. We just need a little contrast.”

Cooper sprayed it, then mounted the slide in the ’scope.

The image popped onto the screen of Rhyme’s computer simultaneously.

“Yes!” he shouted. “There it is.”

The whorls and bifurcations were very visible.

“You nailed it, Sachs. Good job.”

As Cooper slowly rotated the plug of explosive, Rhyme made progressive screen captures – bitmap images – and saved them on the hard drive. He then assembled them and printed out a single, two-dimensional sliver of print.

But when the tech examined it he sighed.

“What?” Rhyme asked.

“Still not enough for a match. Only a quarter inch by five-eighths. No AFIS in the world could pick up anything from this.”

“Jesus,” Rhyme spat out. All that effort… wasted.

A sudden laugh.

From Amelia Sachs. She was staring at the wall, the evidence charts. CS-1, CS-2…

“Put them together,” she said.

“What?”

“We’ve got three partials,” she explained. “They’re probably all from his index finger. Can’t you fit them together?”

Cooper looked at Rhyme. “I’ve never heard of doing that.”

Neither had Rhyme. The bulk of forensic work was analyzing evidence for presentation at trial – “forensic” means “relating to legal proceedings” – and a defense lawyer’d go to town if cops started assembling fragments of perps’ fingerprints.

But their priority was finding the Dancer, not making a case against him.

“Sure,” Rhyme said. “Do it!”

Cooper grabbed the other pictures of the Dancer’s prints from the wall and rested them on the table in front of him.

They started to work, Sachs and the tech. Cooper made photocopies of the prints, reducing two so they were all the same size. Then he and Sachs began fitting them together like a jigsaw puzzle. They were like children, trying variations, rearranging, arguing playfully. Sachs went so far as to take out a pen and connect several lines over a gap in the print.

“Cheating,” Cooper joked.

“But it fits,” she said triumphantly.

Finally they cut and pasted a print together. It represented about three-quarters of a friction ridge print, probably the right index finger.

Cooper held it up. “I have my doubts about this, Lincoln.”

But Rhyme said, “It’s art, Mel. It’s beautiful!”

“Don’t tell anyone at the identification association or they’ll drum us out.”

“Put it through AFIS. Authorize a priority search. All states.”

“Oooo,” Cooper said. “That’ll cost my annual salary.”

He scanned the print into the computer.

“It could take a half hour,” said Cooper, more realistic than pessimistic.

But it didn’t take that long at all. Five minutes later – long enough only for Rhyme to speculate whom he could con into pouring him a drink, Sachs or Cooper – the screen fluttered and a new image came up.

Your request has found… 1 match. 14 points of comparison. Statistical probability of identity: 97%.

“Oh, my God,” Sachs muttered. “We’ve got him.”

“Who is he, Mel?” Rhyme asked, softly, as if he were afraid the words would blow the fragile electrons off the computer screen.

“He’s not the Dancer anymore,” Cooper said. “He’s Stephen Robert Kall. Thirty-six. Present whereabouts unknown. LKA, fifteen years ago, an RFD number in Cumberland, West Virginia.”

Such a mundane name. Rhyme found himself experiencing an unreasonable tug of disappointment. Kall.

“Why was he on file?”

Cooper read. “What he was telling Jodie… He did twenty months for manslaughter when he was fifteen.” A faint laugh. “Apparently the Dancer didn’t bother to tell him that the victim was his stepfather.”

“Stepfather, hm?”

“Tough reading,” Cooper said, poring over the screen. “Man.”

“What?” Sachs asked.

“Notes from the police reports. Here’s what happened. Seems like there’d been a history of domestic disputes. The boy’s mother was dying of cancer and her husband – Kall’s stepfather – hit her for doing something or other. She fell and broke her arm. She died a few months later and Kall got it into his head her death was Lou’s fault.”

Cooper continued to read and he actually seemed to shiver. “Want to hear what happened?”

“Go ahead.”

“A couple months after she died Stephen and his stepfather were out hunting. The kid knocked him out, stripped him naked, and tied him to a tree in the woods. Left him there for a few days. Just wanted to scare him, his lawyer said. By the time the police got to him, well, let’s just say the infestation was pretty bad. Maggots, mostly. Lived for two days after that. Delirious.”

“Man,” Sachs whispered.

“When they found him, the boy was there, just sitting next to him, watching.” Cooper read, “ ‘The suspect surrendered without resistance. Appeared in a disoriented state. Kept repeating, “Anything can kill, anything can kill…” Taken to Cumberland Regional Mental Health Center for evaluation.’ ”

The psychological makeup didn’t interest Rhyme very much. He trusted his forensic profiling techniques far more than the behavioral law enforcers’. He knew the Dancer was a sociopath – all professional killers were – and the sorrows and traumas that made him who he was weren’t much help at the moment. He asked, “Picture?”

“No pictures in juvie.”

“Right. Hell. How ’bout military?”

“Nope. But there’s another conviction,” Cooper said. “He tried to enlist in the marines but the psych profile got him rejected. He hounded the recruiting officers in D.C. for a couple months and finally assaulted a sergeant. Pled a suspended.”

Sellitto said, “We’ll run the name through FINEST, the alias list, and NCIC.”

“Have Dellray get some people to Cumberland and start tracing him,” Rhyme ordered.

“Will do.”

Stephen Kall…

After all these years. It was like finally visiting a shrine you’d read about all your life but never seen in person.

There was a startling knock on the door. Sachs and Sellitto’s hands both twitched impulsively toward their weapons.

But the visitor was just one of the cops from downstairs. He had a large satchel. “Delivery.”

“What is it?” Rhyme asked.

“A trooper from Illinois. Said this was from DuPage County Fire and Rescue.”

“What is it?”

The cop shrugged. “He said it was shit from some truck treads. But that’s nuts. Must’ve been kidding.”

“No,” Rhyme said, “that’s exactly what it is.” He glanced at Cooper. Tire scrapings from the crash site.

The cop blinked. “You wanted that? Flown in from Chicago?”

“We’ve been waiting with bated breath.”

“Well. Life’s funny sometimes, ain’t it?”

And Lincoln Rhyme could only agree.

Professional flying is only partly about flying.

Flying is also about paperwork.

Littering the back of the van transporting Percey Clay to Mamaroneck Airport was a huge stack of books and charts and documents: NOS’s Airport/Facility Directory, the Airman’s Information Manual, the FAA’sNOTAMs – “Notices to Airmen” – and advisory circulars, and the Jeppesen “J-Aids,” the Airport and Information Directory. Thousands of pages. Mountains of information. Percey, like most pilots, knew much of it by heart. But she also wouldn’t think about driving an aircraft without going back to the original materials and studying them, literally, from the ground up.

With this information and her calculator she was filling out the two basic pre-flight documents: the navigation log and the flight plan. On the log she’d mark their altitude, calculate the course variations due to wind and the variance between true course and magnetic course, determine their ETE – estimated time en route – and come up with the Godhead number: the amount of fuel they’d need for the flight. Six cities, six different logs, dozens of checkpoints in between…

Then there was the FAA flight plan itself, on the reverse side of the navigation log. Once airborne, the copilot would activate the plan by calling the Flight Service Station at Mamaroneck, which would in turn call ahead to Chicago with Foxtrot Bravo’s estimated time of arrival. If the aircraft didn’t arrive at its destination within a half hour after ETA, it would be declared overdue and search-and-rescue procedures would start.

These were complicated documents and had to be calculated perfectly. If aircraft had unlimited fuel supplies they could rely on radio navigation and spend as much time as they wanted cruising from destination to destination at whatever altitudes they wanted. But not only was fuel expensive to begin with (and the twin Garrett turbofans burned an astonishing amount of it); it was also extremely heavy and cost a lot – in extra fuel charges – just to carry. On a long flight, especially with a number of fuel-hungry takeoffs, carrying too much gas could drastically erode the profit the Company was making on the flight. The FAA dictated that each flight have enough fuel to make it to the point of destination, plus a reserve, in the case of a night flight, of forty-five minutes’ flying time.

Fingers tapping over the calculators, Percey Clay filled in the forms in her precise handwriting. Careless about so much else in her life, she was meticulous about flying. The merest act of filling in ATIS frequencies or the magnetic heading variations gave her pleasure. She never scrimped, never estimated when accurate calculations were called for. Today, she submerged herself in the work.

Roland Bell was beside her. He was haggard and sullen. The good ole boy was long gone. She grieved for him, as much as for herself; it seemed that Brit Hale was the first witness he’d lost. She felt an unreasonable urge to touch his arm, to reassure him, as he’d done for her. But he seemed to be one of those men who, when faced with loss, disappear into themselves; any sympathy would jar. He was much like herself, she believed. Bell gazed out the window of the van, his hand frequently touching the checkered black grip of the pistol in his shoulder holster.

Just as she finished the last flight plan card, the van turned the corner and entered the airport, stopping for the armed guards, who examined their IDs and waved them through.

Percey directed them to the hangar but she noticed that the lights were still on in the office. She told the cars to stop and she climbed out, as Bell and her other bodyguards walked with her, vigilant and tense, into the main part of the office.

Ron Talbot, grease-stained and exhausted, sat in the office, wiping his sweating forehead. His face was an alarming red.

“Ron…” She hurried forward. “Are you all right?”

They embraced.

“Brit,” he said, shaking his head, gasping. “He got Brit too. Percey, you shouldn’t be here. Go someplace safe. Forget about the flight. It isn’t worth it.”

She stepped back. “What’s wrong? You sick?”

“Just tired.”

She took the cigarette out of his hand and stubbed it out. “You did the work yourself? On Foxtrot Bravo?”

“I -”

“Ron?”

“Most of it. It’s almost finished. The guy from Northeast delivered the fire extinguisher cartridge and the annular about an hour ago. I started to mount them. Just got a little tired.”

“Chest pains?”

“No, not really.”

“Ron, go home.”

“I can -”

“Ron,” she snapped, “I’ve lost two dear people in the last two days. I’m not going to lose a third… I can mount an annular. It’s a piece of cake.”

Talbot looked like he couldn’t even lift a wrench, much less a heavy combustor.

Percey asked, “Where’s Brad?” The FO for the flight.

“On his way. Be here in an hour.”

She kissed his sweaty forehead. “You get home. And lay off the weeds, for God’s sake. You crazy?”

He hugged her. “Percey, about Brit…”

She hushed him with a finger to her lips. “Home. Get some sleep. When you wake up I’ll be in Erie and we’ll have ourselves that contract. Signed, sealed, and delivered.”

He struggled to his feet, stood for a moment looking out the window at Foxtrot Bravo. His face revealed an acrid bitterness. It was the same look she’d remembered in his milky eyes when he’d told her that he’d flunked his physical and could no longer fly for a living. Talbot headed out the door.

It was time to get to work. She rolled up her sleeves, motioned Bell over to her. He lowered his head to her in a way she found charming. The same pose Ed had fallen into when she was speaking softly. She said, “I’m going to need a few hours in the hangar. Can you keep that son of a bitch off me until then?”

No down-home aphorisms, no done deals. Roland Bell, the man with two guns, nodded solemnly, his eyes moving quickly from shadow to shadow.

They had a mystery on their hands.

Cooper and Sachs had examined all the trace found in the treads of the Chicago fire trucks and police cars that had been at the scene of the Ed Carney crash. There was the useless dirt, dog shit, grass, oil, and garbage that Rhyme had expected to find. But they made one discovery that he felt was important.

He just didn’t have a clue what it meant.

The only batch of trace exhibiting indications of bomb residue were tiny fragments of a pliable beige substance. The gas chromatograph/mass spectrometer reported it was C₅H₈.

“Isoprene,” Cooper reflected.

“What’s that?” Sachs asked.

“Rubber,” Rhyme answered.

Cooper continued. “I’m also reading fatty acids. Dyes, talcum.”

“Any hardening agents?” Rhyme asked. “Clay? Magnesium carbonate? Zinc oxide?”

“None.”

“It’s soft rubber. Like latex.”

“And little fragments of rubber cement too,” Cooper added, peering at a sample in the compound microscope. “Bingo,” he said.

“Don’t tease, Mel,” Rhyme grumbled.

“Bits of soldering and tiny pieces of plastic embedded in the rubber. Circuit boards.”

“Part of the timer?” Sachs wondered aloud.

“No, that was intact,” Rhyme reminded.

He felt they were on to something here. If this was another part of the bomb, it might give them a clue as to the source of the explosive or another component.

“We have to know for sure whether this’s from the bomb or from the plane itself. Sachs, I want you to go up to the airport.”

“The -”

“Mamaroneck. Find Percey and have her give you samples of anything with latex, rubber, or circuit boards that would be in the belly of a plane like the one he was flying. Near the seat of the explosion. And, Mel, send the info off to the Bureau’s Explosives Reference Collection and check Army CID – maybe there’s a latex waterproof coating of some kind the army uses for explosives. Maybe we can trace it that way.”

Cooper began typing the request on his computer, but Rhyme noticed Sachs wasn’t pleased with her assignment.

“You want me to go talk to her?” she asked. “To Percey?”

“Yes. That’s what I’m saying.”

“Okay.” She sighed. “All right.”

“And don’t give her any crap like you’ve been doing. We need her cooperation.”

Rhyme didn’t have a clue why she pulled on her vest so angrily and stalked out the door without saying good-bye.

chapter twenty-nine

Hour 31 of 45

AT MAMARONECK AIRPORT AMELIA SACHS saw Roland Bell lurking outside the hangar. Another six officers stood guard around the huge building. She supposed there were snipers nearby too.

Her eye caught the hillock where she’d dropped to the ground under fire. She remembered, with a disgusted twist in her belly, the smell of the dirt mingling with the sweet cordite scent from her own impotent pistol shots.

Turned to Bell. “Detective.”

His eyes glanced at her once. “Hey.” Then he returned to scanning the airport. His easy southern demeanor was gone. He’d changed. Sachs realized that they shared something notorious now. They’d both had a shot at the Coffin Dancer and missed.

They both had also been in his kill zone and survived. Bell, though, with more glory than she. His body armor, she noticed, bore stigmata: the streaks from the two slugs that had glanced off him during the safe house attack. He’d stood his ground.

“Where’s Percey?” Sachs asked.

“Inside. Finishing up the repairs.”

“By herself?”

“Think so. She’s something, she is. You wouldn’t think a woman that wasn’t so, well, attractive’d have quite the draw she does. You know?”

Ugh. Don’t get me started.

“Anybody else here? From the Company?” She nodded toward the Hudson Air office. There was a light on inside.

“Percey sent ’most everybody home. Fellow’s going to be her copilot’s due here anytime. And somebody from Operations’s inside. Needs to be on duty when there’s a flight going on, I guess. I checked him out. He’s okay.”

“So she’s really going to fly?” Sachs asked.

“Looks that way.”

“The plane’s been guarded the whole time?”

“Yep, since yesterday. What’re you doing here?”

“Need some samples for analysis.”

“That Rhyme, he’s something too.”

“Uh-huh.”

“All two of you go back a ways?”

“We’ve worked a few cases,” she said dismissingly. “He saved me from Public Affairs.”

“That’s his good deed. Say, I hear you can really drive a nail.”

“I can…?”

“Shoot. Sidearms. You’re on a team.”

And here I am at the site of my latest competition, she thought bitterly. “Just weekend sport,” she muttered.

“I do some pistol work myself, but I’ll tell you, even on a good day, with a nice, long barrel and firing single-action, fifty, sixty yards is all the far I can shoot.”

She appreciated his comments but recognized that they were just an attempt to reassure her about yesterday’s fiasco; the words meant nothing to her.

“Better talk to Percey now.”

“Right through there, Officer.”

Sachs pushed into the huge hangar. She walked slowly, looking at all the places the Dancer could hide. Sachs paused behind a tall row of boxes; Percey didn’t see her.

The woman was standing on a small scaffolding, hands on her hips, as she gazed at the complicated network of pipes and tubes of the open engine. She’d rolled her sleeves up and her hands were covered with grease. She nodded to herself then reached forward into the compartment.

Sachs was fascinated, watching the woman’s hands fly over the machinery, adjusting, probing, seating metal to metal, and tightening the fixtures down with judicious swipes of her thin arms. She mounted a large red cylinder, a fire extinguisher, Sachs guessed, in about ten seconds flat.

But one part – it looked like a big metal inner tube – wouldn’t fit correctly.

Percey climbed off the scaffolding, selected a socket wrench, and climbed up again. She loosened bolts, removed another part to give her more room to maneuver, and tried again to push the big ring into place.

Wouldn’t budge.

She shouldered it. Didn’t move an inch. She removed yet another part, meticulously setting each screw and bolt in a plastic tray at her feet. Percey’s face turned bright red as she struggled to mount the metal ring. Her chest heaved as she fought the part. Suddenly it slipped, dropping completely out of position, and knocked her backward off the scaffolding. She twisted and landed on her hands and knees. The tools and bolts that she’d arranged so carefully in the tray spilled to the floor beneath the plane’s tail.

“No!” Percey cried. “No!”

Sachs stepped forward to see if she was hurt, but noticed immediately that the outburst had nothing to do with pain – Percey grabbed a large wrench and slammed it furiously into the floor of the hangar. The policewoman stopped, stepped into the shadow beside a large carton.

“No, no, no…,” Percey cried, hammering the smooth concrete.

Sachs remained where she was.

“Oh, Ed…” She dropped the wrench. “I can’t do it alone.” Gasping for breath, she rolled into a ball. “Ed… oh, Ed… I miss you so much!” She lay, curled like a frail leaf, on the shiny floor and wept.

Then, suddenly, the attack was over. Percey rolled upright, took a deep breath, and climbed to her feet, wiped the tears from her face. The aviatrix within her took charge once again and she picked up the bolts and tools and climbed back up onto the scaffolding. She stared at the troublesome ring for a moment. She examined the fittings carefully but couldn’t see where the metal pieces were binding.

Sachs retreated to the door, slammed it hard, and then started back into the hangar, walking with loud steps.

Percey swung around, saw her, then turned back to the engine. She gave a few swipes to her face with her sleeve and continued to work.

Sachs walked up to the base of the scaffolding and watched as Percey struggled with the ring.

Neither woman said anything for a long moment.

Finally Sachs said, “Try a jack.”

Percey glanced back at her, said nothing.

“It’s just that the tolerance is close,” Sachs continued. “All you need is more muscle. The old coercion technique. They don’t teach it in mechanics school.”

Percey looked carefully at the mounting brackets on the pieces of metal. “I don’t know.”

“I do. You’re talking to an expert.”

The flier asked, “You’ve mounted a combustor in a Lear?”

“Nope. Spark plugs in a Chevy Monza. You have to jack up the engine to reach them. Well, only in the V-eight. But who’d buy a four-cylinder car? I mean, what’s the point?”

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.

“That’s right,” Percey said. “It’s Lauren. You met her yesterday.”

The brunette who’d been crying so hard.

“It tore me apart. Hell, it tore Ed apart too. He loved me but he needed his beautiful lovers. Always did. And, you know, I think it was harder on them. Because he always came home to me.” She paused for a moment and fought the tears. “That’s what love is, I think. Who you come home to.”

“And you?”

“Was I faithful?” Percey asked. She gave another of her wry laughs – the laugh of someone who has keen self-awareness but who doesn’t like all the insights. “I didn’t have a lot of opportunities. I’m hardly the kind of girl gets picked up walking down the street.” She examined a socket wrench absently. “But, yeah, after I found out about Ed and his girlfriends, a few years ago, I was mad. It hurt a lot. I saw some other men. Ron and I – Ron Talbot – spent some time together, a few months.” She smiled. “He even proposed to me. Said I deserved better than Ed. And I suppose I did. But even with those other women in his life, Ed was the man I had to be with. That never changed.”

Percey’s eyes grew distant for a moment. “We met in the navy, Ed and I. Both fighter pilots. When he proposed… See, the traditional way to propose in the military is you say, ‘You want to become my dependent?’ Sort of a joke. But we were both lieutenants j.g., so Ed said, ‘Let’s you and me become each other’s dependents.’ He wanted to get me a ring but my father’d disowned me -”

“For real?”

“Yep. Real soap opera, which I won’t go into now. Anyway, Ed and I were saving every penny to open our own charter company after we were discharged and we were completely broke. But one night he said, ‘Let’s go up.’ So we borrowed this old Norseman they had on the field. Tough plane. Big air-cooled rotary engine… You could do anything with that aircraft. Well, I was in the left-hand seat. I’d taken off and’d got us up to about six thousand feet. Suddenly he kissed me and wobbled the yoke, which meant he was taking over. I let him. He said, ‘I got you a diamond after all, Perce.’ ”

“He did?” Sachs asked.

Percey smiled. “He throttled up, all the way to the fire wall, and pulled the yoke back. The nose went straight up in the air.” Tears were coming fast now to Percey Clay’s eyes. “For a moment, before he kicked rudder and we started down out of the stall, we were looking straight up into the night sky. He leaned over and said, ‘Take your pick. All the stars of evening – you can have any one you want.’ ” Percey lowered her head, caught her breath. “All the stars of evening…”

After a moment she wiped her eyes with her sleeve, then turned back to the engine, “Believe me, you don’t have anything to worry about. Lincoln’s a fascinating man, but Ed was all I ever wanted.”

“There’s more to it than you know.” Sachs sighed. “You remind him of someone. Someone he was in love with. You show up and all of a sudden it’s like he’s with her again.”

Percey shrugged. “We have some things in common. We understand each other. But so what? That doesn’t mean anything. Take a look, Amelia. Rhyme loves you.”

Sachs laughed. “Oh, I don’t think so.”

Percey gave her another look that said, Whatever… and began replacing the equipment in boxes as meticulously as she’d worked with the tools and computers.

Roland Bell ambled inside, checking windows and scanning the shadows.

“All quiet?” he asked.

“Not a peep.”

“Got a message to pass on. The folk from U.S. Medical just left Westchester Hospital. The shipment’ll be here in an hour. I’ve got a car of my people behind them just to be on the safe side. But don’t worry that it’ll spook ’em and be bad for business – my guys’re top-notch. The driver’ll never know he’s being followed.”

Percey looked at her watch. “Okay.” She glanced at Bell, who was looking uncertainly at the open engine compartment, like a snake at a mongoose. She asked, “We don’t need baby-sitters on the flight, do we?”

Bell’s sigh was loud. “After what happened at the safe house,” he said in a low, solemn voice, “I’m not letting you outa my sight.” He shook his head and, already looking airsick, he walked back to the front door and disappeared into the cool late afternoon air.

Her head in the engine compartment, studying her work carefully, Percey said in a reverberating voice, “Looking at Rhyme and looking at you, I wouldn’t give it much more than fifty-fifty, I’ve got to say.” She turned and looked down at Sachs. “But you know, I had this flight instructor a long time ago.”

“And?”

“When we’d fly multiengine he had this game of throttling back one engine to idle and feathering the prop, then telling us to land. Lot of instructors’ll cut power for a few minutes, with altitude, just to see how you can handle it. But they always throttled up again before landing. This instructor, though – uh-uh. He’d make us land on one engine. Students’d always be asking him, ‘Isn’t that risky?’ His answer was, ‘God don’t give out certain. Sometimes you just gotta play the odds.’ ”

Percey lowered the flap of the engine cowl and clamped it into place. “All right, this’s done. Damn aircraft may actually fly.” She swatted the glossy skin like a cowgirl patting a rodeo rider’s butt.

chapter thirty

Hour 32 of 45

AT 6 P.M. ON SUNDAY they summoned Jodie from Rhyme’s downstairs bedroom, where he’d been under lock and key.

He trotted up the stairs reluctantly, clutching his silly book, Dependent No More, like a Bible. Rhyme remembered the title. It had been on the Times bestseller list for months. In a black mood at the time, he’d noticed the book and thought cynically, about himself, Dependent Forever.

A team of federal agents was flying from Quantico to Cumberland, West Virginia, Stephen Kall’s old residence, to pick up whatever leads they could, hoping they might track him to his present whereabouts from there. But Rhyme had seen how carefully he’d scoured his crime scenes and he had no reason to think the man would have been any less careful in covering his other tracks.

“You told us some things about him,” Rhyme said to Jodie. “Some facts, some nutritional information. I want to know more.”

“I -”

“Think hard.”

Jodie squinted. Rhyme supposed he was considering what he could say to mollify them, superficial impressions. But he was surprised when Jodie said, “Well, for one thing, he’s afraid of you.”

“Us?” Rhyme asked.

“No. Just you.”

“Me?” he asked, astonished. “He knows about me?”

“He knows your name’s Lincoln. And that you’re out to get him.”

“How?”

“I don’t know,” the man said, then added, “you know, he made a couple of calls on that cell phone. And he listened for a long time. I was thinking -”

“Oh, hellfire,” Dellray sang out. “He’s tapping somebody’s line.”

“Of course!” Rhyme cried. “Probably the Hudson Air office. That’s how he found out about the safe house. Why didn’t we think about that?”

Dellray said, “We gotta sweep the office. But the bug might be in a relay box somewheres. We’ll find it. We’ll find it.” He placed a call to the Bureau’s tech services.

To Jodie, Rhyme said, “Go on. What else does he know about me?”

“He knows you’re a detective. I don’t think he knows where you live, or your last name. But you scare the hell out of him.”

If Rhyme’s belly had been able to register the lub-dub of excitement – and pride – he’d have felt that now.

Let’s see, Stephen Kall, if we can’t give you a little more to be afraid of.

“You helped us once, Jodie. I need you to help us again.”

“Are you crazy?”

“Shut the fuck up,” Dellray barked. “And listen t’what the man’s sayin’, hokay? Hokay?”

“I did what I said I would. I’m not doing anything more.” The whine really was too much. Rhyme glanced at Sellitto. This called for people skills.

“It’s in your interest,” Sellitto said reasonably, “to help us.”

“Gettin’ shot in the back’s in my interest? Gettin’ shot in the head’s in my interest? Uh-huh. I see. You wanna explain that?”

“Sure, I’ll fucking explain it,” Sellitto grumbled. “The Dancer knows you dimed him. He didn’t have to target you back there at the safe house, right? Am I right?”

Always get the mutts to talk. To participate. Sellitto had often explained the ways of interrogation to Lincoln Rhyme.

“Yeah. I guess.”

Sellitto motioned Jodie closer with a crooked finger. “It woulda been the smart thing for him just to take off. But he went to the trouble to take up a sniper position and try to cap your ass. Now, what’s that tell us?”

“I -”

“It tells us that he ain’t gonna rest till he clips you.”

Dellray, happy to play straight man for a change, said, “And he’s the sort I don’t think you wanna have knocking on yo’ door at three in the morning – this week, next month, or next year. We all together on that?”

“So,” Sellitto resumed snappily, “agreed that it’s in your interest to help us?”

“But you’ll give me, like, witness protection?”

Sellitto shrugged. “Yes and no.”

“Huh?”

“If you help us, yes. If you don’t, no.”

Jodie’s eyes were red and watery. He seemed so afraid. In the years since his accident Rhyme had been fearful for others – Amelia and Thom and Lon Sellitto. But he himself didn’t believe he’d ever been afraid to die, certainly not since the accident. He wondered what it must be like to live so timidly. A mouse’s life.

Too many ways to die…

Sellitto, slipping into his good-cop persona, offered a faint smile to Jodie. “You were there when he killed that agent, in the basement, right?”

“I was there, yeah.”

“That man could be alive now. And Brit Hale could be alive now. A lot of other people could too… if somebody’d helped us stop this asshole a coupla years ago. Well, you can help us stop him now. You can keep Percey alive, maybe dozens of others. You can do that.”

This was Sellitto’s genius at work. Rhyme would have bullied and coerced and, in a pinch, bribed the little man. But it never occurred to him to appeal to the splinter of decency that the detective, at least, could see within him.

Jodie absently riffled the pages in his book with a filthy thumb. Finally he looked up and – with surprising sobriety – said, “When I was taking him to my place, in the subway, a couple times I thought I’d maybe push him into a sewer interceptor pipe. The water goes real fast there. Wash him right down to the Hudson. Or I know where they have these piles of tie spikes in the subway. I could grab one and hit him over the head when he wasn’t looking. I really, really thought about doing that. But I got scared.” He held up the book. “ ‘Chapter Three. Confronting your Demons.’ I’ve always run, you know. I never stood up to anything. I thought maybe I could stand up to him, but I couldn’t.”

“Hey, now’s your chance to,” Sellitto said.

Flipping through the tattered pages again. Sighing. “Whatta l gotta do?”

Dellray pointed an alarmingly long thumb toward the ceiling. His mark of approval.

“We’ll get to that in a minute,” Rhyme said, looking around the room. Suddenly he shouted, “Thom! Thom! Come here. I need you.”

The handsome, exasperated face of the aide poked around the corner. “Yessss?”

“I’m feeling vain,” Rhyme announced dramatically.

“What?”

“I’m feeling vain. I need a mirror.”

“You want a mirror?”

“A big one. And would you please comb my hair. I keep asking you and you keep forgetting.”

The U.S. Medical and Healthcare van pulled onto the tarmac. If the two white-jacketed employees, carting a quarter million dollars’ worth of human organs, were concerned about the machine-gun-armed cops ringing the field, they gave no indication of it.

The only time they flinched was when King, the bomb squad German shepherd, sniffed the cargo cases for explosives.

“Uhm, I’d watch that dog there,” one of the deliverymen said uneasily. “I imagine to them liver’s liver and heart’s heart.”

But King behaved like a thorough professional and signed off on the cargo without sampling any. The men carried the containers on board, loaded them into the refrigeration units. Percey returned to the cockpit where Brad Torgeson, a sandy-haired young pilot who flew occasional freelance jobs for Hudson Air, was going through the pre-flight check.

They’d both already done the walkaround, accompanied by Bell, three troopers, and King. There was no way the Dancer could have gotten to the plane in the first place, but the killer now had a reputation of materializing out of thin air; this was the most meticulous pre-flight visual in the history of aviation.

Looking back into the passenger compartment, Percey could see the lights of the refrigeration units. She felt that tug of satisfaction she always felt when inanimate machinery, built and honed by humans, came to life. The proof of God, for Percey Clay, could be found in the hum of servomotors and the buoyancy of a sleek metal wing at that instant when the airfoil creates negative top pressure and you become weightless.

Continuing with the pre-flight checklist, Percey was startled by the sound of heavy breathing next to her.

“Whoa,” Brad said as King decided there were no explosives in his crotch and continued his examination of the inside of the plane.

Rhyme had spoken to Percey not long ago and told her that he and Amelia Sachs had examined the gaskets and tubing and found no match for the latex discovered at the crash site in Chicago. Rhyme got the idea that he might have used the rubber to seal the explosives so that the dogs couldn’t smell it. So he had Percey and Brad stand down for a few minutes while Tech Services went through the entire plane, inside and out, with hypersensitive microphones, listening for a detonator timer.

Clean.

When the plane rolled out, the taxiway would be guarded by uniformed patrolmen. Fred Dellray had contacted the FAA to arrange that the flight plan be sealed, so that the Dancer couldn’t learn where the plane was going – if he even knew that Percey was at the helm. The agent had also contacted the FBI field offices in each of the arrival cities and arranged for tactical agents to be on the tarmac when the shipments were delivered.

Now, engines started, Brad in the right-hand seat and Roland Bell shifting uneasily in one of the two remaining passenger seats, Percey Clay spoke to the tower, “Lear Six Miner Five Foxtrot Bravo at Hudson Air. Ready for taxi.”

“Roger, Niner Five Foxtrot Bravo. Cleared onto taxiway zero nine right.”

“Zero nine right, Niner Five Foxtrot Bravo.”

A touch to the smooth throttles and the spritely plane turned onto the taxiway and proceeded through the gray, early spring evening. Percey was driving. Copilots have flight authority but only the pilot can steer the plane on the ground.

“You having fun, Officer?” she called back to Bell.

“I’m just tickled,” he said, looking sourly out the large round window. “You know, you can see straight down. I mean, the windows go so far round. Why’d they make it that way?”

Percey laughed. She called out, “On airliners, they try to keep you from realizing you’re flying. Movies, food, small windows. Where’s the fun? What’s the point?”

“I can see a point or two,” he said, chewing his Wrigley’s with energetic teeth. He closed the curtain.

Percey’s eyes were on the taxiway, checking left and right, always vigilant. To Brad she said, “I’ll do the briefing now. Okay?”

“Yes’m.”

“This’ll be a rolling takeoff with flaps set to fifteen degrees,” Percey said. “I’ll advance the throttles. You call airspeed, eighty knots, cross-check, V one, rotate, V two, and positive rate. I’ll command gear up and you raise it. Got that?”

“Airspeed, eighty, V one, rotate, V two, positive rate. Gear.”

“Good. You’ll monitor all instruments and the annunciator panel. Now, if we get a red panel light or there’s an engine malfunction before V one, sing out ‘Abort’ loud and clear and I’ll make a go/no-go decision. If there’s a malfunction at or after V one, we will continue the takeoff and we’ll treat the situation as an in-flight emergency. We will continue on heading and you’ll request VFR clearance for an immediate return to the airport. Understood?”

“Understood.”

“Good. Let’s do some flying… You ready, Roland?”

“I’m ready. Hope you are. Don’t drop your candy.”

Percey laughed again. Their housekeeper in Richmond had used that expression. It meant, don’t screw up.

She wobbled the throttles a little closer to the firewall. The engines gave a grinding sound and the Learjet sped forward. They continued to the hold position, where the killer had placed the bomb on Ed’s plane. She looked out the window and saw two cops standing guard.

“Lear Niner Five Foxtrot Bravo,” Ground Control called through the radio, “proceed to and hold short of runway five left.”

“Foxtrot Bravo. Hold short of zero five left.”

She steered onto the taxiway.

The Lear was a ground hugger, yet whenever Percey Clay sat in the left-hand seat, whether in the air or on the ground, she felt that she was a mile high. It was a powerful place to be. All the decisions would be hers, followed unquestioningly. All the responsibility was on her shoulders. She was the captain.

Eyes scanning the instruments.

“Flaps fifteen, fifteen, green,” she said, repeating the degree setting.

Doubling the redundancy, Brad said, “Flaps fifteen, fifteen, green.”

ATC called, “Lear Niner Five Foxtrot Bravo, turn into position. Cleared for takeoff, runway five left.”

“Five left, Foxtrot Bravo. Cleared for takeoff.”

Brad concluded the takeoff checklist. “Pressurization, normal. Temperature select is in auto. Transponder and exterior lights on. Ignition, pitot heat, and strobes, your side.”

Percey checked those controls, said, “Ignition, pitot heat, and strobes on.”

She turned the Lear onto the runway, straightened the nosewheel, and lined up with centerline. She glanced at the compass. “All heading indicators check zero five. Runway five L. I’m setting power.”

She pushed the throttles forward. They began racing down the middle of the concrete strip. She felt his hand grip the throttles just below hers.

“Power set.” Then Brad called, “Airspeed alive,” as the airspeed indicators jumped off the peg and started to move upward, twenty knots, forty knots…

The throttles nearly to the fire wall, the plane shot forward. She heard a “wayl…” from Roland Bell and repressed a smile.

Fifty knots, sixty knots, seventy…

“Eighty knots,” Brad called out, “cross-check.”

“Check,” she called after a glance at the airspeed indicator.

“V one,” Brad sang out. “Rotate.”

Percey removed her right hand from the throttles and took the yoke. Wobbly until now, the plastic control suddenly grew firm with air resistance. She eased back, rotating the Lear upward to the standard seven-and-a-half-degree incline. The engines continued to roar smoothly and so she pulled back slightly more, increasing the climb to ten degrees.

“Positive rate,” Brad called.

“Gear up. Flaps up. Yaw damp on.”

Through the headphone came the voice of ATC. “Lear Niner Five Foxtrot Bravo, turn left heading two eight oh. Contact departure control.”

“Two eight oh, Niner Five Foxtrot Bravo. Thank you, sir.”

“Good evening.”

Tugging the yoke a bit more, eleven degrees, twelve, fourteen… Leaving the power settings at takeoff level, higher than normal, for a few minutes. Hearing the sweet grind of the turbofans behind her, the slipstream.

And in this sleek silver needle, Percey Clay felt herself flying into the heart of the sky, leaving behind the cumbersome, the heavy, the painful. Leaving behind Ed’s death and Brit’s, leaving behind even that terrible man, the devil, the Coffin Dancer. All of the hurt, all of the uncertainty, all of the ugliness were trapped far below her, and she was free. It seemed unfair that she should escape these stifling burdens so easily, but that was the fact of it. For the Percey Clay who sat in the left-hand seat of Lear N695FB was not Percey Clay the short girl with the squat face, or Percey Clay the girl whose only sex appeal was the lure of Daddy’s chopped-tobacco money. It wasn’t Per-ceee Pug, Percey the Mug, Percey the Troll, the awkward brunette struggling with the ill-fitting gloves at her cotillion, on the arm of her mortified cousin, surrounded by willowy blondes who nodded at her with pleasant smiles and stored up the sight for a gossip fest later.

That wasn’t the real Percey Clay.

This was.

Another gasp from Roland Bell. He must have peeked through the window curtain during their alarming bank.

“Mamaroneck departure, Lear Niner Five Foxtrot Bravo with you out of two thousand.”

“Evening, Five Foxtrot Bravo. Climb and maintain six thousand.”

And then they began the mundane tasks of setting nav com for the VOR frequencies that would guide them to Chicago as straight as a samurai’s arrow.

At six thousand feet they broke through the cloud cover into a sky that was as spectacular as any sunset Percey had ever seen. Not really an outdoor person, she never grew tired of the sight of beautiful skies. Percey allowed herself a single sentimental thought – that it would have been a very good thing if Ed’s last sight had been as beautiful as this.

At twenty-one thousand feet she said, “Your aircraft.”

Brad responded, “Got it.”

“Coffee?”

“Love some.”

She stepped into the back of the plane, poured three cups, took one to Brad, and then sat down next to Roland Bell, who took the cup in shaking hands.

“How you doing?” she asked.

“It’s not like I get airsick. It’s just I get” – his face folded – “well, nervous as a…” There were probably a thousand good Tarheel similes to choose from, but for once his southern talk failed him. “Just nervous,” he concluded.

“Take a look,” she said, pointing out the cockpit window.

He eased forward in the seat and looked out the windshield. She watched his craggy face blossom in surprise as they stared into the maw of the sunset.

Bell whistled. “Well, now. Lookit that… Say, that was a real rush, takeoff.”

“She’s a sweet bird. You ever hear of Brooke Knapp?”

“Don’t believe so.”

“Businesswoman in California. Set an around-the-world speed record in a Lear thirty-five A – what we’re in right now. Took her a hair over fifty hours. I’m going to break that someday.”

“I don’t doubt you are.” Calmer now. Eyes on the controls. “Looks awful complicated.”

She sipped the coffee. “There’s a trick to flying we don’t tell people. Sort of a trade secret. It’s a lot simpler than you’d think.”

“What’s that?” he asked eagerly. “The trick?”

“Well, look outside. You see those colored lights on the wing tips?”

He didn’t want to look, but he did. “Okay, got it.”

“There’s one on the tail too.”

“Uh-huh. Remember seeing that, I think.”

“All we have to do is make sure we keep the plane in between those lights and everything’ll go fine.”

“In between…” It took a moment for the joke to register. He gazed at her deadpan face for a minute, then smiled. “You get a lotta people with that one?”

“A few.”

But the joke didn’t really amuse him. His eyes were still on the carpet. After a long moment of silence she said, “Brit Hale could’ve said no, Roland. He knew the risks.”

“No, he didn’t,” Bell answered. “Nope. He went along with what we had in mind, not knowing much of anything. I should’ve thought better. I should’ve guessed about the fire trucks. Should’ve guessed that the killer’d know where your rooms were. I could’ve put you in the basement, or someplace. And I could’ve shot better too.”

Bell seemed so despondent that Percey could think of nothing to say. She rested her veiny hand on his forearm. He seemed thin, but he was really quite strong.

He gave a soft laugh. “You wanta know something?”

“What?”

“This is the first time I’ve seen you looking halfway comfortable since I met you.”

“Only place I feel really at home,” she said.

“We’re going two hundred miles an hour a mile up in the air and you feel safe.” Bell sighed.

“No, we’re going four hundred miles an hour, four miles up.”

“Uh. Thanks for sharing that.”

“There’s an old pilot’s saying,” Percey said. “ ‘Saint Peter doesn’t count the time spent flying, and he doubles the hours you spend on the ground.’ ”

“Funny,” Bell said. “My uncle said something like that too. Only he used it talking about fishing. I’d vote for his version over yours any day. Nothing personal.”

chapter thirty-one

Hour 33 of 45

WORMS…

Stephen Kall, sweating, stood in a filthy bathroom in the back of a Cuban Chinese restaurant.

Scrubbing to save his soul.

Worms gnawing, worms eating, worms swarming…

Clean ’ em away… Clean them away!!!

Soldier -

Sir, I’m busy, sir.

Sol -

Scrub, scrub, scrub, scrub.

Lincoln the Worm is looking for me.

Everywhere Lincoln the Worm looks, worms appear.

Go away!!!

The brush moved whisk, whisk, back and forth until his cuticles bled.

Soldier, that blood is evidence. You can’t -

Go away!!!

He dried his hands then grabbed the Fender guitar case and the book bag, pushed into the restaurant.

Soldier, your gloves -

The alarmed patrons stared at his bloody hands, his crazed expression. “Worms,” he muttered in explanation to the entire restaurant, “fucking worms,” then burst outside onto the street.

Hurrying down the sidewalk, calming. He was thinking about what he had to do. He had to kill Jodie, of course. Have to kill him have to kill him have to… Not because he was a traitor, but because he’d given away so much information -

And why the fuck d’you do that, Soldier?

– about himself to the man. And he had to kill Lincoln the Worm because… because the worms would get him if he didn’t.

Have to kill have to have to have…

Are you listening to me, Soldier? Are you?

That was all there was left to do.

Then he’d leave this city. Head back to West Virginia. Back to the hills.

Lincoln, dead.

Jodie, dead.

Have to kill have to have to have to…

Nothing more to keep him here.

As for the Wife – he looked at his watch. Just after 7p.m. Well, she was probably dead already.

“ ’Sbulletproof.”

“Against those bullets?” Jodie asked. “You said they blowup!”

Dellray assured him it was effective. The vest was thick Kevlar on top of a steel sheet. It weighed forty-two pounds and Rhyme didn’t know a cop in the city who wore a vest like this, or ever would.

“But what if he shoots my head?”

“He wants me a lot more than he wants you,” Rhyme said.

“And how’s he gonna know I’m staying here?”

“How d’ya think, mutt?” Dellray snapped. “I’ma tell him.”

The agent cinched up the little man tight in the vest and tossed him a windbreaker. He’d showered – after protesting – and had been given a set of clean clothes. The large navy blue jacket, covering the bulletproof vest, was a little lopsided but actually gave him a muscular physique. He caught sight of himself in the mirror – his scrubbed and newly attired self – and smiled for the first time since he’d been here.

“Okay,” Sellitto said to two undercover officers, “take him downtown.”

The officers ushered him out the door.

After he’d left, Dellray looked at Rhyme, who nodded. The lanky agent sighed and flicked open his cell phone, placed a call to Hudson Air Charters, where another agent was waiting to pick up the phone. The fed’s tech group had found a remote tap on a relay box near the airport, clipped into the Hudson Air phone lines. The agents hadn’t removed it, though; in fact at Rhyme’s insistence they checked to make sure it was working and had replaced the weak batteries. The criminalist was relying on the device for the new trap.

On the speakerphone, several rings then a click.

“Agent Mondale,” came the deep voice. Mondale wasn’t Mondale and he was speaking according to a prewritten script.

“Mondale,” Dellray said, sounding lily white, to a Connecticut manor born. “Agent Wilson here, we’re at Lincoln’s now.” (Not “Rhyme”; the Dancer knew him as “Lincoln.”)

“How’s the airport?”

“Still secure.”

“Good. Listen, got a question. We’ve got a CI working for us, Joe D’Oforio.”

“He was the one -”

“Right.”

“- turned. You’re working with him?”

“Yeah,” said Wilson, aka Fred Dellray. “Bit of a mutt, but he’s cooperating. We’re going to run him down to his hidey-hole and back here.”

“Where’s ‘here’? You mean, back to Lincoln’s?”

“Right. He wants his stuff.”

“Fuck you doing that for?”

“He cut a deal. He dimes this killer and Lincoln agreed he could have some stuff from his place. This old subway station… Anyway, we’re not doing a convoy. Just one car. Reason I called, we need a good driver. You worked with somebody you liked, right?”

“Driver?”

“On the Gambino thing?”

“Oh, yeah… Lemme think.”

They stretched it out. Rhyme was, as always, impressed with Dellray’s performance. Whoever he wanted to be, he was.

The phony agent Mondale – who deserved a best-supporting award himself – said, “I remember. Tony Glidden. No, Tommy. The blond guy, right?”

“That’s him. I want to use him. He around?”

“Naw. He’s in Phillie. That carjacking sting.”

“Phillie. Too bad. We’re going in about twenty minutes. Can’t wait any longer than that. Well, I’ll just do it myself then. But that Tommy. He -”

“Fucker could drive a car! He could lose a tail in two blocks. Man was amazing.”

“Sure could use him now. Listen, thanks, Mondale.”

“Later.”

Rhyme winked, a quad’s equivalent of applause. Dellray hung up, exhaled long and slow. “We’ll see. We’ll see.”

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.

chapter thirty-two

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.”

“Roger. Descend and maintain ten. Vectors, two seven right. Niner Five Foxtrot Bravo.”

Percey refused to look down. Somewhere below and ahead of them was the grave of her husband and his aircraft. She didn’t know if he’d been cleared to land on O’Hare’s runway 27 right, but it was likely that he had, and if so, ATC would’ve vectored Ed through exactly the same airspace she was now sailing through.

Maybe he’d started to call her right about here…

No! Don’t think about it, she ordered herself. Fly the aircraft.

In a low, calm voice she said, “Brad, this will be a visual approach to runway twenty-seven right. Monitor the approach and call all assigned altitudes. When we turn on final, please monitor airspeed, altitude, and rate of descent. Warn me of a sink rate greater than one thousand fpm. Go-around will be at ninety-two percent.”

“Roger.”

“Flaps ten degrees.”

“Flaps, ten, ten, green.”

The radio crackled, “Lear Niner Five Foxtrot Bravo, turn left heading two four zero, descend, and maintain four thousand.”

“Five Foxtrot Bravo, out of ten for four. Heading two four zero.”

She eased back on the throttle and the plane settled slightly, the grinding sound of the engines diminished, and she could hear the woosh of the air like a whisper of wind over bedsheets beside an open window at night.

Percey yelled back to Bell, “You’re about to have your first landing in a Lear. Let’s see if I can set her down without rippling your coffee.”

“In one piece’s all I’m asking for,” Bell said and cinched his seat belt tight as a bungee cord harness.

“Nothing, Rhyme.”

The criminalist closed his eyes in disgust. “I don’t believe it. I just don’t believe it.”

“He’s gone. He was there, they’re pretty sure. But the mikes didn’t pick up a sound.”

Rhyme glanced up at the big mirror he’d ordered Thom to prop up across the room. They’d been waiting for the explosive rounds to crash into it. Central Park was peppered with Haumann’s and Dellray’s tactical officers, just waiting for a gunshot.

“Where’s Jodie?” Rhyme asked.

Dellray snickered. “Hiding in the alley. Saw some car go by and spooked.”

“What car?” Rhyme asked.

The agent laughed. “If it was the Dancer, then he turned hisself into four fat Puerto Rican girls. Little shit said he won’t come out till somebody shuts off the streetlight in front of your building.”

“Leave him. He’ll come back when he gets cold.”

“Or to get his money,” Sachs reminded.

Rhyme scowled. He was bitterly disappointed that this trick too hadn’t worked.

Was it his failing? Or was there some uncanny instinct that the Dancer had? A sixth sense? The idea was repugnant to Lincoln Rhyme, the scientist, but he couldn’t discount it completely. After all, even the NYPD used psychics from time to time.

Sachs started toward the window.

“No,” Rhyme said to her. “We still don’t know for certain he’s gone.” Sellitto stood away from the glass as he drew the drapes shut.

Oddly, it was scarier not knowing exactly where the Dancer was than thinking he was pointing a large rifle through a window twenty feet away.

It was then that Cooper’s phone rang. He took the call.

“Lincoln, it’s the Bureau’s bomb people. They’ve checked the Explosives Reference Collection. They say they’ve got a possible match on those bits of latex.”

“What do they say?”

Cooper listened to the agent for a moment.

“No leads on the specific type of rubber, but they say it’s not inconsistent with a material used in altimeter detonators. There’s a latex balloon filled with air. It expands when the plane goes up because of the low pressure at higher altitudes, and at a certain height the balloon presses into a switch on the side of the bomb wall. Contact’s completed. The bomb goes off.”

“But this bomb was detonated by a timer.”

“They’re just telling me about the latex.”

Rhyme looked at the plastic bags containing components of the bomb. His eyes fell to the timer, and he thought: Why’s it in such perfect shape?

Because it had been mounted behind the overhanging lip of steel.

But the Dancer could have mounted it anywhere, pressed it into the plastic explosive itself, which would have reduced it to microscopic pieces. Leaving the timer intact had seemed careless at first. But now he wondered.

“Tell him that the plane exploded as it was descending,” Sachs said.

Cooper relayed the comment, then listened. The tech reported, “He says it could just be a point-of-construction variation. As the plane climbs, the expanding balloon trips a switch that arms the bomb; when the plane descends the balloon shrinks and closes the circuit. That detonates it.”

Rhyme whispered, “The timer’s a fake! He mounted it behind the piece of metal so it wouldn’t be destroyed. So we’d think it was a time bomb, not an altitude bomb. How high was Carney’s plane when it exploded?”

Sellitto raced through the report. “It was just descending through five thousand feet.”

“So it armed when they climbed through five thousand outside of Mamaroneck and detonated when he went below it near Chicago,” Rhyme said.

“Why on descent?” the detective asked.

“So the plane would be farther away?” Sachs suggested.

“Right,” Rhyme said. “It’d give the Dancer a better chance to get away from the airport before it blew.”

“But,” Cooper asked, “why go to all the trouble to fool us into thinking it was one kind of bomb and not another?”

Rhyme saw that Sachs figured it out just as fast as he did. “Oh, no!” she cried.

Sellitto still didn’t get it. “What?”

“Because,” she said, “the bomb squad was looking for a time bomb when they searched Percey’s plane tonight. Listening for the timer.”

“Which means,” Rhyme spat out, “Percey and Bell ’ve got an altitude bomb on board too.”

“Sink rate twelve hundred feet per minute,” Brad sang out.

Percey gentled the yoke of the Lear back slightly, slowing the descent. They passed through fifty-five hundred feet.

Then she heard it.

A strange chirping sound. She’d never heard any sound like it, not in a Lear 35A. It sounded like a warning buzzer of some kind, but distant. Percey scanned the panels but could see no red lights. It chirped again.

“Five three hundred feet,” Brad called. “What’s that noise?”

It stopped abruptly.

Percey shrugged.

An instant later, she heard a voice shouting beside her, “Pull up! Go higher! Now!”

Roland Bell’s hot breath was on her cheek. He was beside her, in a crouch, brandishing his cell phone.

“What?”

“There’s a bomb on! Altitude bomb. It goes off when we hit five thousand feet.”

“But we’re above -”

“I know! Pull up! Up!”

Percey shouted, “Set power, ninety-eight percent. Call out altitude.”

Without a second’s hesitation, Brad shoved the throttles forward. Percey pulled the Lear into a ten-degree rotation. Bell stumbled backward and landed with a crash on the floor.

Brad said, “Five thousand two, five one five… five two, five thousand three, five four… five eight. Six thousand feet.”

Percey Clay had never declared an emergency in all her years flying. Once, she’d declared a “pan-pan” – indicating an urgency situation – when an unfortunate flock of pelicans decided to commit suicide in her number two engine and clog up her pitot tube to boot. But now, for the first time in her career, she said, “May-day, may-day, Lear Six Niner Five Foxtrot Bravo.”

“Go ahead, Foxtrot Bravo.”

“Be advised, Chicago Approach. We have reports of a bomb on board. Need immediate clearance to one zero thousand feet and a heading for holding pattern over unpopulated area.”

“Roger, Niner Five Foxtrot Bravo,” the ATC controller said calmly. “Uhm, maintain present heading of two four zero. Cleared to ten thousand feet. We are vectoring all aircraft around you… Change transponder code to seven seven zero zero and squawk.”

Brad glanced uneasily at Percey as he changed the transponder setting – to the code that automatically sent a warning signal to all radar facilities in the area that Foxtrot Bravo was in trouble. Squawking meant sending out a signal from the transponder to let everyone at ATC and other aircraft know exactly which blip was the Lear.

She heard Bell say into his phone, “Th’only person got close to the plane, ’cept for me and Percey, was the business manager, Ron Talbot – and, nothing personal to him, but my boys or I watched him like a hawk while he was doing the work, stood over his shoulder the whole time. Oh, and that guy delivered some of the engine parts came by too. From Northeast Aircraft Distributors in Greenwich. But I checked him out good. Even got his home phone and called his wife, had them talk – to make sure he was legit.” Bell listened for a moment more then hung up. “They’ll call us back.”

Percey looked at Brad and at Bell, then returned to the task of piloting her aircraft.

“Fuel?” she asked her copilot. “How much time?”

“We’re under our estimated. Headwinds’ve been good.” He did the calculations. “A hundred and five minutes.”

She thanked God, or fate, or her own intuition, for deciding not to refuel at Chicago, but to load enough to get them to Saint Louis, plus the FAA requirement for an additional forty-five minutes’ flying time.

Bell’s phone chirped again.

He listened, sighed, then asked Percey, “Did that Northeast company deliver a fire extinguisher cartridge?”

“Shit, did he put it in there?” she asked bitterly.

“Looks like it. The delivery truck had a flat tire just after it left the warehouse on the way to make that delivery to you. Driver was busy for about twenty minutes. Connecticut trooper just found a mess of what looks like carbon dioxide foam in the bushes right near where it happened.”

“God damn!” Percey glanced involuntarily toward the engine. “And I installed the fucker myself.”

Bell asked, “Rhyme wants to know about heat. Wouldn’t it blow the bomb?”

“Some parts are hot, some aren’t. It’s not that hot by the cartridge.”

Bell told this to Rhyme, then he said, “He’s going to call you directly.”

A moment later, through the radio, Percey heard the patch of a unicom call.

It was Lincoln Rhyme.

“Percey, can you hear me?”

“Loud and clear. That prick pulled a fast one, hm?”

“Looks like it. How much flying time do you have?”

“Hour forty-five minutes. About.”

“Okay, okay,” the criminalist said. A pause. “All right… Can you get to the engine from the inside?”

“No.”

Another pause. “Could you somehow disconnect the whole engine? Unbolt it or something? Let it drop off?”

“Not from the inside.”

“Is there any way you could refuel in midair?”

“Refuel? Not with this plane.”

Rhyme asked, “Could you fly high enough to freeze the bomb mechanism?”

She was amazed at how fast his mind worked. These were things that wouldn’t have occurred to her. “Maybe. But even at emergency descent rate – I’m talking nosedive – it’d still take eight, nine minutes to get down. I don’t think any bomb parts’d stay very frozen for that long. And the Mach buffet would probably tear us apart.”

Rhyme continued, “Okay, what about getting a plane in front of you and tethering some parachutes back?”

Her initial thought was that she would never abandon her aircraft. But the realistic answer – the one she gave him – was that given the stall speed of a Lear 35A and the configuration of door, wings, and engines, it was unlikely that anyone could leap from the aircraft without being killed.

Rhyme was again silent for a moment. Brad swallowed and wiped his hands on his razor-creased slacks. “Brother.”

Roland Bell rocked back and forth.

Hopeless, she thought, staring down at the murky blue dusk.

“Lincoln?” Percey asked. “Are you there?”

She heard his voice. He was calling to someone in his lab – or bedroom. In a testy tone he was demanding, “Not that map. You know which one I mean. Well, why would I want that one? No, no…”

Silence.

Oh, Ed, Percey thought. Our lives have always followed parallel paths. Maybe our deaths will too. She was most upset about Roland Bell, though. The thought of leaving his children orphans was unbearable.

Then she heard Rhyme asking, “On the fuel you’ve got left, how far can you fly?”

“At the most efficient power settings…” She looked at Brad, who was punching in the figures.

He said, “If we got some altitude, say, eight hundred miles.”

“Got an idea,” Rhyme said. “Can you make it to Denver?”

chapter thirty-three

Hour 36 of 45

“AIRPORT ELEVATION’S FIFTY-ONE EIGHTY FEET,” Brad said, reviewing the Airman’s Guide of Denver International. “We were about that outside of Chicago and the thing didn’t blow.”

“How far?” Percey asked.

“From present location, nine oh two miles.”

Percey debated for no more than a few seconds, nodded. “We go for it. Give me a dead-reckoning heading, just something to play with till we get VORs.” Then into the radio: “We’re going to try it, Lincoln. The gas’ll be real close. We’ve got a lot to do. I’ll get back to you.”

“We’ll be here.”

Brad eyeballed the map and referred to the flight log. “Turn left heading two six six.”

“Two six six,” she repeated, then called ATC.

“Chicago Center, Miner Five Foxtrot Bravo. We’re heading for Denver International. Apparently it’s a… we’ve got an altitude-sensitive bomb on board. We need to get on the ground at five thousand feet or higher. Request immediate VORs for vectoring to Denver.”

“Roger, Foxtrot Bravo. We’ll have those in a minute.”

Brad asked, “Please advise the weather en route, Chicago Center.”

“High pressure front moving through Denver right now. Headwinds vary from fifteen to forty at ten thousand, increasing to sixty, seventy knots at twenty-five.”

“Ouch,” Brad muttered then returned to his calculations. After a moment he said, “Fuel depletion about fifty-five miles short of Denver.”

Bell asked, “Can you set down on the highway?”

“In a big ball of flames we can,” Percey said.

ATC asked, “Foxtrot Bravo, ready to copy VOR frequencies?”

While Brad took down the information, Percey stretched, pressed her head into the back of her seat. The gesture seemed familiar and she remembered she’d seen Lincoln Rhyme do the same in his elaborate bed. She thought about her little speech to him. She’d meant it, of course, but hadn’t realized how true the words were. How dependent they were on fragile bits of metal and plastic.

And maybe about to die because of them.

Fate is the hunter…

Fifty-five miles short. What could they do?

Why wasn’t her mind as far-ranging as Rhyme’s? Wasn’t there anything she could think of to conserve fuel?

Flying higher was more fuel efficient.

Flying lighter was too. Could they throw anything out of the aircraft?

The cargo? The U.S. Medical shipment weighed exactly 478 pounds. That would buy them some miles.

But even as she considered this, she knew she’d never do it. If there was any chance she could salvage the flight, salvage the Company, she would.

Come on, Lincoln Rhyme, she thought, give me an idea. Give me… Picturing his room, picturing sitting beside him, she remembered the tiercel – the male falcon – lording about on the window ledge.

“Brad,” she asked abruptly, “what’s our glide ratio?”

“A Lear thirty-five A? No idea.”

Percey had flown a Schweizer 2-32 sailplane. The first prototype was built in 1962 and it had set the standard for glider performance ever since. Its sink rate was a miraculous 120 feet per minute. It weighed about thirteen hundred pounds. The Lear she was flying was fourteen thousand pounds. Still, aircraft will glide, any aircraft. She remembered the incident of the Air Canada 767 a few years ago – pilots still talked about it. The jumbo jet ran out of fuel due to a combination of computer and human error. Both engines flamed out at forty-one thousand feet and the aircraft became a 143-ton glider. It crash-landed without a single death.

“Well, let’s think. What’d the sink rate be at idle?”

“We could keep it at twenty-three hundred, I think.”

Which meant a vertical drop of about thirty miles per hour.

“Now. Calculate if we burned fuel to take us to fifty-five thousand feet, when would we deplete?”

“Fifty-five?” Brad asked with some surprise.

“Roger.”

He punched in numbers. “Maximum climb is forty-three hundred fpm; we’d burn a lot down here, but after thirty-five thousand the efficiency goes way up. We could power back…”

“Go to one engine?”

“Sure. We could do that.”

He tapped in more numbers. “That scenario, we’d deplete about eighty-three miles short. But, of course, then we’d have altitude.”

Percey Clay, who got A’s in math and physics and could dead reckon without a calculator, saw the numbers stream past in her head. Flame out at fifty-five thousand, sink rate of twenty-three… They could cover a little over eighty miles before they touched down. Maybe more if the headwinds were kind.

Brad, with the help of a calculator and fast fingers, came up with the same conclusion. “Be close, though.”

God don’t give out certain.

She said, “ Chicago Center. Lear Foxtrot Bravo requesting immediate clearance to five five thousand feet.”

Sometimes you play the odds.

“Uh, say again, Foxtrot Bravo.”

“We need to go high. Five five thousand feet.”

The ATC controller’s voice intruded: “Foxtrot Bravo, you’re a Lear three five, is that correct?”

“Roger.”

“Maximum operating ceiling is forty-five thousand feet.”

“That’s affirmative, but we need to go higher.”

“Your seals’ve been checked lately?”

Pressure seals. Doors and windows. What kept the aircraft from exploding.

“They’re fine,” she said, neglecting to mention that Foxtrot Bravo had been shot full of holes and jerry-rigged back together just that afternoon.

ATC answered, “Roger, you’re cleared to five five thousand feet, Foxtrot Bravo.”

And Percey said something that few, if any, Lear pilots had ever said, “Roger, out of ten for fifty-five thousand.”

Percey commanded, “Power to eighty-eight percent. Call out rate of climb and altitude at forty, fifty, and fifty-five thousand.”

“Roger,” Brad said placidly.

She rotated the plane and it began to rise.

They sailed upward.

All the stars of evening…

Ten minutes later Brad called out, “Five five thousand.”

They leveled off. It seemed to Percey that she could actually hear the groaning of the aircraft’s seams. She recalled her high-altitude physiology. If the window Ron had replaced were to blow out or any pressure seal burst – if it didn’t tear the aircraft apart – hypoxia would knock them out in about five seconds. Even if they were wearing masks, the pressure difference would make their blood boil.

“Go to oxygen. Increase cabin pressure to ten thousand feet.”

“Pressure to ten thousand,” he said. This at least would relieve some of the terrible pressure on the fragile hull.

“Good idea,” Brad said. “How’d you think of that?”

Monkey skills…

“Dunno,” she responded. “Let’s cut power in number two. Throttle closed, autothrottle disengaged.”

“Closed, disengaged,” Brad echoed.

“Fuel pumps off, ignition off.”

“Pumps off, ignition off.”

She felt the slight swerve as their left side thrust vanished. Percey compensated for the yaw with a slight adjustment to the rudder trim tabs. It didn’t take much. Because the jets were mounted on the rear of the fuselage and not on the wings, losing one power plant didn’t affect the stability of the aircraft much.

Brad asked, “What do we do now?”

“I’m having a cup of coffee,” Percey said, climbing out of her seat like a tomboy jumping from a tree house. “Hey, Roland, how d’you like yours again?”

For a torturous forty minutes there was silence in Rhyme’s room. No one’s phone rang. No faxes came in. No computer voices reported, “You’ve got mail.”

Then, at last, Dellray’s phone brayed. He nodded as he spoke, but Rhyme could see the news wasn’t good. He clicked the phone off.

“Cumberland?”

Dellray nodded. “But it’s a bust. Kall hasn’t been there for years. Oh, the locals’re still talking about the time the boy tied his stepdaddy up ’n’ let the worms get him. Sorta a legend. But no family left in the area. And nobody knows nuthin’. Or’s willing to say.”

It was then that Sellitto’s phone chirped. The detective unfolded it and said, “Yeah?”

A lead, Rhyme prayed, please let it be a lead. He looked at the cop’s doughy, stoic face. He flipped the phone closed.

“That was Roland Bell,” he said. “He just wanted us to know. They’re outa gas.”

chapter thirty-four

Hour 38 of 45

THREE DIFFERENT WARNING BUZZERS went off simultaneously.

Low fuel, low oil pressure, low engine temperature.

Percey tried adjusting the attitude of the aircraft slightly to see if she could trick some fuel into the lines, but the tanks were bone dry.

With a faint clatter, number one engine quit coughing and went silent.

And the cockpit went completely dark. Black as a closet.

Oh, no…

She couldn’t see a single instrument, a single control lever or knob. The only thing that kept her from slipping into blind-flight vertigo was the faint band of light that was Denver – in the far distance in front of them.

“What’s this?” Brad asked.

“Jesus. I forgot the generators.”

The generators are run by the engines. No engines, no electricity.

“Drop the RAT,” she ordered.

Brad groped in the dark for the control and found it. He pulled the lever and the ram air turbine dropped out beneath the aircraft. It was a small propeller connected to a generator. The slipstream turned the prop, which powered the generator. It provided basic power for the controls and lights. But not the flaps, gear, speed brakes.

A moment later some of the lights returned.

Percey was staring at the vertical speed indicator. It showed a descent rate of thirty-five hundred feet per minute. Far faster than they’d planned on. They were dropping at close to fifty miles an hour.

Why? she wondered. Why was the calculation so far off?

Because of the rarified air here! She was calculating sink rate based on denser atmosphere. And now that she considered this she remembered that the air around Denver would be rarified too. She’d never flown a sailplane more than a mile up.

She pulled back on the yoke to arrest the descent. It dropped to twenty-one hundred feet per minute. But the airspeed dropped too, fast. In this thin air the stall speed was about three hundred knots. The shaker stick began to vibrate and the controls went mushy. There’d be no recovery from a powerless stall in an aircraft like this.

The coffin corner…

Forward with the yoke. They dropped faster, but the airspeed picked up. For nearly fifty miles she played this game. Air Traffic Control told them where the headwinds were strongest and Percey tried to find the perfect combination of altitude and route – winds that were powerful enough to give the Lear optimal lift but not so fast that they slowed their ground speed too much.

Finally, Percey – her muscles aching from controlling the aircraft with brute force – wiped sweat from her face and said, “Give ’em a call, Brad.”

“Denver Center, this is Lear Six Niner Five Foxtrot Bravo, with you out of one nine thousand feet. We are twenty-one miles from the airport. Airspeed two hundred twenty knots. We’re in a no-power situation here and requesting vectoring to longest available runway consistent with our present heading of two five zero.”

“Roger, Foxtrot Bravo. We’ve been expecting you. Altimeter thirty point nine five. Turn left heading two four zero. We’re vectoring you to runway two eight left. You’ll have eleven thousand feet to play with.”

“Roger, Denver Center.”

Something was nagging at her. That ping in the gut again. Like she’d felt with the black van.

What was it? Just superstition?

Tragedies come in threes…

Brad said, “Nineteen miles from touchdown. One six thousand feet.”

“Foxtrot Bravo, contact Denver Approach.” He gave them the radio frequency, then added, “They’ve been apprised of your situation. Good luck, ma’am. We’re all thinking of you.”

“Goodnight, Denver. Thanks.”

Brad clicked the radio to the new frequency.

What’s wrong? she wondered again. There’s something I haven’t thought of.

“Denver Approach, this is Lear Six Niner Five Foxtrot Bravo. With you at one three thousand feet, thirteen miles from touchdown.”

“We have you, Foxtrot Bravo. Come right heading two five zero. Understand you are power-free, is that correct?”

“We’re the biggest damn glider you ever saw, Denver.”

“You have flaps and gear?”

“No flaps. We’ll crank the gear down manually.”

“Roger. You want trucks?” Meaning emergency vehicles.

“We think we’ve got a bomb on board. We want everything you’ve got.”

“Roger that.”

Then, with a shudder of horror, it occurred to her: the atmospheric pressure!

“Denver Approach,” she asked, “what’s the altimeter?”

“Uhm, we have three oh point nine six, Foxtrot Bravo.”

It had gone up a hundredth of an inch of mercury in the last minute.

“It’s rising?”

“That’s affirmative, Foxtrot Bravo, Major high-pressure front moving in.”

No! That would increase the ambient pressure around the bomb, which would shrink the balloon, as if they were lower than they actually were.

“Shit on the street,” she muttered.

Brad looked at her.

She said to him, “What was the mercury at Mamaroneck?”

He looked it up in the log. “Twenty-nine point six.”

“Calculate five thousand feet altitude at that pressure reading compared with thirty-one point oh.”

“Thirty-one? That’s awful high.”

“That’s what we’re moving into.”

He stared at her. “But the bomb…”

Percey nodded. “Calculate it.”

The young man punched numbers with a steady hand.

He sighed, his first visible display of emotion. “Five thousand feet at Mamaroneck translates to forty-eight five here.”

She called Bell forward again. “Here’s the situation. There’s a pressure front coming in. By the time we get to the runway, the bomb may be reading the atmosphere as below five thousand feet. It may blow when we’re fifty to a hundred feet above the ground.”

“Okay.” He nodded calmly. “Okay.”

“We don’t have flaps, so we’re going to be landing fast, close to two hundred miles an hour. If it blows we’ll lose control and crash. There won’t be much fire ’cause the tanks are dry. And depending on what’s in front of us, if we’re low enough we may skid a ways before we start tumbling. There’s nothing to do but keep the seat belts tight and keep your head down.”

“All right,” he said, nodding, looking out the window.

She glanced at his face. “Can I ask you something, Roland?”

“You bet.”

“This isn’t your first airplane flight, is it?”

He sighed. “You know, you live mosta your born days in North Carolina, you just don’t have much of a chance to travel. And coming to New York, well, those Amtraks’re nice and comfy.” He paused. “Fact is, I’ve never been higher than an elevator’ll take me.”

“They’re not all like this,” she said.

He squeezed her on the shoulder, whispered, “Don’t drop your candy.” He returned to his seat.

“Okay,” Percey said, looking over the Airman’s Guide information on Denver International. “Brad, this’ll be a nighttime visual approach to runway two eight left. I’ll have command of the aircraft. You’ll lower the gear manually and call out rate of descent, distance to runway, and altitude – give me true altitude above ground, not sea level – and airspeed.” She tried to think of something else. No power, no flaps, no speed brakes. There was nothing else to say; it was the shortest pre-landing briefing in the history of her flying career. She added, “One last thing. When we stop, just get the fuck out as fast as you can.”

“Ten miles to runway,” he called. “Speed two hundred knots. Altitude nine thousand feet. We need to slow descent.”

She pulled up on the yoke slightly and the speed dropped dramatically. The shaker stick vibrated again. Stall now and they died.

Forward again.

Nine miles… Eight…

Sweating like a rainstorm. She wiped her face. Blisters on the soft skin between her thumbs and index fingers.

Seven… Six…

“Five miles from touchdown, forty-five hundred feet. Airspeed two hundred ten knots.”

“Gear down,” Percey commanded.

Brad spun the wheel that manually lowered the heavy gear. He had gravity helping him, but it was nonetheless a major effort. Still, he kept his eyes glued to the instruments and recited, calm as an accountant reading a balance sheet, “Four miles from touchdown, thirty-nine hundred feet…”

She fought the buffeting of the lower altitude and the harsh winds.

“Gear down,” Brad called, panting, “three green.”

The airspeed dropped to one hundred eighty knots – about two hundred miles an hour. It was too fast. Way too fast. Without their reverse thrusters they’d burn up even the longest runway in a streak.

“Denver Approach, what’s the altimeter?”

“Three oh nine eight,” the unflappable ATC controller said.

Rising. Higher and higher.

She took a deep breath. According to the bomb, the runway was slightly less than five thousand feet above sea level. How accurate had the Coffin Dancer been when he’d made the detonator?

“The gear’s dragging. Sink rate’s twenty-six hundred.”

Which meant a vertical speed of about thirty-eight miles per hour. “We’re dropping too fast, Percey,” Brad called. “We’ll hit in front of the approach lights. A hundred yards short. Two, maybe.”

ATC’s voice had noticed this too: “ Foxtrot Bravo, you have to get some altitude. You’re coming in too low.”

Back on the stick. The speed dropped. Stall warning. Forward on the stick.

“Two and a half miles from touchdown, altitude nineteen hundred feet.”

“Too low, Foxtrot Bravo!” the ATC controller warned again.

She looked out over the silver nose. There were all the lights – the strobes of the approach lights beckoning them forward, the blue dots of the taxiway, the orange-red of the runway… And lights that Percey’d never seen before on approach. Hundreds of flashing lights. White and red. All the emergency vehicles.

Lights everywhere.

All the stars of evening…

“Still low,” Brad called. “We’re going to impact two hundred yards short.”

Hands sweating, straining forward, Percey thought again of Lincoln Rhyme, strapped to his seat, himself leaning forward, examining something in the computer screen.

“Too low, Foxtrot Bravo,” ATC repeated. “I’m moving emergency vehicles to the field in front of the runway.”

“Negative that,” Percey said adamantly.

Brad called, “Altitude thirteen hundred feet. One and a half miles from touchdown.”

We’ve got thirty seconds! What do I do?

Ed? Tell me? Brit? Somebody…

Come on, monkey skills… What the hell do I do?

She looked out the cockpit window. In the light of the moon she could see suburbs and towns and some farmland but also, to the left, large patches of desert.

Colorado’s a desert state… Of course!

Suddenly she banked sharply to the left.

Brad, without a clue as to what she was doing, called out, “Rate of descent thirty-two hundred, altitude one thousand feet, nine hundred feet, eight five…”

Banking a powerless aircraft sheds altitude in a hurry.

ATC called, “Foxtrot Bravo, do not turn. Repeat, do not turn! You don’t have enough altitude as is.”

She leveled out over the patch of desert.

Brad gave a fast laugh. “Altitude steady… Altitude rising, we’re at nine hundred feet, one thousand feet, twelve hundred feet. Thirteen hundred feet… I don’t get it.”

“A thermal,” she said. “Desert soaks up heat during the day and releases it all night.”

ATC had figured it out too. “Good, Foxtrot Bravo! Good. You just bought yourself about three hundred yards. Come right two nine oh… good, now left two eight oh. Good. On course. Listen, Foxtrot Bravo, you want to take out those approach lights, you go right ahead.”

“Thanks for the offer, Denver, but I think I’ll set her down a thousand past the numbers.”

“That’s all right too, ma’am.”

They had another problem now. They could reach the runway, but the airspeed was way too high. Flaps were what decreased the stall speed of an aircraft so it could land more slowly. The Lear 35A’s normal stall speed was about 110 miles an hour. Without flaps it was closer to 180. At that speed even a two-mile-long runway vanishes in an instant.

So Percey sideslipped.

This is a simple maneuver in a private plane, used in crosswind landings. You bank to the left and hit the right rudder pedal. It slows the aircraft considerably. Percey didn’t know if anyone had ever used this technique in a seven-ton jet, but she couldn’t think of anything else to do. “Need your help here,” she called to Brad, gasping at the effort and the pain shooting through her raw hands. He gripped the yoke and shoved on the pedal too. This had the effect of slowing the aircraft, though it dropped the left wing precipitously.

She’d straighten it out just before contact with the runway.

She hoped.

“Airspeed?” she called.

“One fifty knots.”

“Looking good, Foxtrot Bravo.”

“Two hundred yards from runway, altitude two hundred eighty feet,” Brad called. “Approach lights, twelve o’clock.”

“Sink rate?” she asked.

“Twenty-six hundred.”

Too fast. Landing at that sink rate could destroy the undercarriage. And might very well set off the bomb too.

There were the approach strobes right in front of her – guiding them forward…

Down, down, down…

Just as they hurtled toward the scaffolding of the lights, Percey shouted, “My aircraft!”

Brad released the yoke.

Percey straightened from the sideslip and brought the nose up. The plane flared beautifully and grabbed air, halting the precipitous descent right over the numbers at the end of the runway.

Grabbed air so well, in fact, that it wouldn’t land.

In the thicker air of the relatively lower atmosphere the speeding plane – lighter without fuel – refused to touch down.

She glimpsed the yellow-green of the emergency vehicles scattered along the side of the runway.

A thousand feet past the numbers, still thirty feet above the concrete.

Then two thousand feet past. Then three thousand.

Hell, fly her into the ground.

Percey eased the stick forward. The plane dipped dramatically and Percey yanked all the way back on the yoke. The silver bird shuddered then settled gently on the concrete. It was the smoothest landing she’d ever made.

“Full brakes!”

She and Brad jammed their feet down on the rudder pedals and they heard the squealing of the pads, the fierce vibrations. Smoke filled the cabin.

They’d used well over half the runway already and were still speeding at a hundred miles an hour.

Grass, she thought, I’ll veer into if I have to. Wreck the undercarriage but I’ll still save the cargo…

Seventy, sixty…

“Fire light, right wheel,” Brad called. Then: “Fire light, nosewheel.”

Fuck it, she thought, and pressed down on the brakes with all her weight.

The Lear began to skid and shudder. She compensated with the nosewheel. More smoke filling the cabin.

Sixty miles per hour, fifty, forty…

“The door,” she called to Bell.

In an instant the detective was up, pushing the door outward; it became a staircase.

The fire trucks were converging on the aircraft.

With a wild groan of the smoking brakes, Lear N695FB skidded to a stop ten feet from the end of the runway.

The first voice to fill the cabin was Bell’s. “Okay, Percey, out! Move.”

“I have to -”

“I’m taking over now!” the detective shouted. “I have to drag you outta here, I’ll do it. Now move!”

Bell hustled her and Brad out the door, then leapt to the concrete himself, led them away from the aircraft. He called to the rescue workers, who’d started shooting foam at the wheel wells, “There’s a bomb on board, could go any minute. In the engine. Don’t get close.” One of his guns was in his hand and he surveyed the crowd of rescue workers circling the plane. At one time Percey would have thought he was being paranoid. No longer.

They paused about a hundred feet from the plane. The Denver Police Bomb Squad truck pulled up. Bell waved it over.

A lanky cowboy of a cop got out of the truck and walked up to Bell. They flashed IDs at each other and Bell explained about the bomb, where they thought it was.

“So,” the Denver cop said, “you’re not sure it’s on board.”

“Nope. Not a hundred percent.”

Though as Percey happened to glance at Foxtrot Bravo – her beautiful silver skin flecked with foam and glistening under the fierce spotlights – there was a deafening bang. Everyone except Bell and Percey hit the ground fast as the rear half of the aircraft disintegrated in a huge flash of orange flame, strewing bits of metal into the air.

“Oh,” Percey gasped, her hand rising to her mouth.

There was no fuel left in the tanks, of course, but the interior of the aircraft – the seats, the wiring, the carpet, the plastic fittings, and the precious cargo-burned furiously as the fire trucks waited a prudent moment then streamed forward, pointlessly shooting more snowy foam on the ruined metallic corpse.