The Coffin Dancer

chapter thirty-five

Hour 42 of 45

IT WAS AFTER 3 A.M., RHYME NOTED. Percey Clay was flying back to the East Coast on an FBI jet and in just a few hours she’d be on her way to the courthouse to get ready for her grand jury appearance.

And Rhyme still had no idea where the Coffin Dancer was, what he was planning, what identity he was now assuming.

Sellitto’s phone brayed. He listened. His face screwed up. “Jesus. The Dancer just got somebody else. They found another body – ID-proofed – in a tunnel in Central Park. Near Fifth Avenue.”

“Completely ID-proofed?”

“Did it up right, sounds like. Removed the hands, teeth, jaw, and clothes. White male. Youngish. Late twenties, early thirties.” The detective listened again. “Not a bum,” he reported. “He’s clean, in good shape. Athletic. Haumann thinks he’s some yuppie from the East Side.”

“Okay,” Rhyme said. “Bring him here. I want to go over it myself.”

“The body?”

“Right.”

“Well, okay.”

“So the Dancer’s got a new identity,” Rhyme mused angrily. “What the hell is it? How’s he going to come at us next?”

Rhyme sighed, looked out the window. He said to Dellray, “What safe house’re you going to put them in?”

“I been thinking ’bout that,” the lanky agent said. “Seems to me -”

“Ours,” a new voice said.

They looked at the heavyset man in the doorway.

“Our safe house,” Reggie Eliopolos said. “We’re taking custody.”

“Not unless you’ve got -” Rhyme began.

The prosecutor waved the paper too fast for Rhyme to read it but they all knew the protective custody order would be legit.

“That’s not a good idea,” Rhyme said.

“It’s better than your idea of trying to get our last witness killed any way you can.”

Sachs stepped forward, angrily, but Rhyme shook his head.

“Believe me,” Rhyme said, “the Dancer’ll figure out that you’re going to take them into custody. He’s probably already figured it out. In fact,” he added ominously, “he may be banking on it.”

“He’d have to be a mind reader.”

Rhyme tipped his head. “You’re catching on.”

Eliopolos snickered. He looked around the room, spotted Jodie. “You’re Joseph D’Oforio?”

The little man stared back. “I – yes.”

“You’re coming too.”

“Hey, hold on a minute, they said I’d get my money and I could -”

“This doesn’t have anything to do with rewards. If you’re entitled to it you’ll get it. We’re just going to make sure you’re safe until the grand jury.”

“Grand jury! Nobody said anything about testifying!”

“Well,” Eliopolos said, “you’re a material witness.” A nod toward Rhyme. “He may have been intent on murdering some hit man. We’re making a case against the man who hired him. Which is what most law enforcers do.”

“I’m not going to testify.”

“Then you’re going to do time for contempt. In general population. And I’ll bet you know how safe you’ll be there.”

The little man tried to be angry but was just too scared. His face shriveled. “Oh, Jesus.”

“You’re not going to have enough protection,” Rhyme said to Eliopolos. “We know him. Let us protect them.”

“Oh, and Rhyme?” Eliopolos turned to him. “Because of the incident with the plane, I’m charging you with interference with a criminal investigation.”

“The fuck you are,” Sellitto said.

“The fuck I am,” the round man snapped back. “He could’ve ruined the case, letting her make that flight. I’m having the warrant served Monday. And I’m going to supervise the prosecution myself. He -”

Rhyme said softly, “He’s been here, you know.”

The assistant U.S. attorney stopped speaking. After a moment he asked, “Who?”

Though he knew who.

“He was right outside that window not an hour ago, pointing a sniper rifle, loaded with explosive shells, into this room.” Rhyme’s eyes dipped to the floor. “Probably the very spot where you’re standing.”

Eliopolos wouldn’t have stepped back for the world. But his eyes flickered to the windows to make certain the shades were closed.

“Why…?”

Rhyme finished the sentence. “Didn’t he shoot? Because he had a better idea.”

“What’s that?”

“Ah,” Rhyme said. “That’s the million-dollar question. All we know is he’s killed somebody else – some young man in Central Park – and stripped him. He’s ID-proofed the body and taken over his identity. I don’t doubt for one minute that he knows the bomb didn’t kill Percey and that he’s on his way to finish the job. And he’ll make you a co-conspirator.”

“He doesn’t even know I exist.”

“If that’s what you want to believe.”

“Jesus, Reggie Boy,” Dellray said. “Get with the picture!”

“Don’t call me that.”

Sachs joined in. “Aren’t you figuring it out? You’ve never been up against anybody like him.”

Eyes on her, Eliopolos spoke to Sellitto. “Guess you do things different on the city level. Federal, our people know their places.”

Rhyme snapped, “You’re a fool if you treat him like a gangsta or some has-been mafioso. Nobody can hide from him. The only way is to stop him.”

“Yeah, Rhyme, that’s been your war cry all along. Well, we’re not sacrificing any more troops because you’ve got a hard-on for a guy killed two of your techs five years ago. Assuming you can get a hard-on -”

Eliopoloswas a large man and so he was surprised to find himself slammed so lithely to the floor, gasping for breath and staring up into Sellitto’s purple face, the lieutenant’s fist drawn back.

“Do that, Officer,” the attorney wheezed, “and you’ll be arraigned within a half hour.”

“Lon,” Rhyme said, “let it go, let it go…”

The detective calmed, glared at the man, walked away. Eliopolos climbed to his feet.

The insult in fact meant nothing. He wasn’t even thinking of Eliopolos. Or the Dancer for that matter. For he’d happened to glance at Amelia Sachs, at the hollowness in her eyes, the despair. And he knew what she was feeling: the desperation at losing her prey. Eliopolos was stealing away her chance to get the Dancer. As with Lincoln Rhyme, the killer had come to be the dark focus of her life.

All because of a single misstep – the incident at the airport, her going for cover. A small thing, minuscule to everyone but her. But what was the expression? A fool can throw a stone into a pond that a dozen wise men can’t recover. And what was Rhyme’s Me now but the result of a piece of wood breaking a tiny piece of bone? Sachs’s life had been snapped in that single moment of what she saw as cowardice. But unlike Rhyme’s case, there was – he believed – a chance for her to mend.

Oh, Sachs, how it hurts to do this, but I have no choice. He said to Eliopolos, “All right, but you have to do one thing in exchange.”

“Or you’ll what?” Eliopolos snickered.

“Or I won’t tell you where Percey is,” Rhyme said simply. “We’re the only ones who know.”

Eliopolos’s face, no longer flushed from his World Wrestling pins gazed icily at Rhyme. “What do you want?”

Rhyme inhaled deeply. “The Dancer’s shown an interest in targeting the people looking for him. If you’re going to protect Percey, I want you to protect the chief forensic investigator in the case too.”

“You?” the lawyer asked.

“No, Amelia Sachs,” Rhyme replied.

“Rhyme, no,” she said, frowning.

Reckless Amelia Sachs… And I’m putting her square in the kill zone.

He motioned her over to him.

“I want to stay here,” she said. “I want to find him.”

He whispered, “Oh, don’t worry about that, Sachs. He’ll find you. We’ll try to figure out his new identity, Mel and me. But if he makes a move out on Long Island, I want you there. I want you with Percey. You’re the only one who understands him. Well, you and me. And I won’t be doing any shooting in the near future.”

“He could come back here -”

“I don’t think so. There’s a chance this is the first fish of his that’s going to get away and he doesn’t like that one bit. He’s going after Percey. He’s desperate to. I know it.”

She debated for a moment, then nodded.

“Okay,” Eliopolos said, “you’ll come with us. We’ve got a van waiting.”

Rhyme said, “Sachs?”

She paused.

Eliopolos said, “We really should move.”

“I’ll be down in a minute.”

“We’re under some time pressure here, Officer.”

“I said, a minute.” She handily won the staring contest and Eliopolos and his trooper escort led Jodie down the stairs. “Wait,” the little man shouted from the hallway. He returned, grabbed his self-help book, and trotted down the stairs.

“Sachs…”

He thought of saying something about avoiding heroics, about Jerry Banks, about being too hard on herself.

About giving up the dead…

But he knew that any words of caution or encouragement would ring like lead.

And so he settled for “Shoot first.”

She placed her right hand on his left. He closed his eyes and tried so very hard to feel the pressure of her skin on his. He believed he did, if just in his ring finger.

He looked up at her. She said, “And you keep a minder handy, okay?” Nodding at Sellitto and Dellray.

Then an EMS medic appeared in the door, looking around the room at Rhyme, at the equipment, at the beautiful lady cop, trying to fathom why on earth he was doing what he’d been instructed to. “Somebody wanted a body?” he asked uncertainly.

“In here!” Rhyme shouted. “Now! We need it now!”

The van drove through a gate and then down a one-lane driveway. It extended for what seemed like miles.

“If this’s the driveway,” Roland Bell muttered, “can’t wait to see the house.”

He and Amelia Sachs flanked Jodie, who irritated everybody no end as he fidgeted nervously, his bulky bulletproof vest banging into them as he’d examined shadows and dark doorways and passing cars on the Long Island Expressway. In the back were two 32-E officers, armed with machine guns. Percey Clay was in the front passenger seat. When they’d picked up her and Bell at the Marine Air Terminal at LaGuardia on their way to Suffolk County, Sachs had been shocked at the sight of the woman.

Not exhaustion – though she was clearly tired. Not fear. No, it was Percey’s complete resignation that troubled Sachs. As a patrol officer, she’d seen plenty of tragedy on the street. She’d delivered her share of bad news, but she’d never seen someone who’d given up so completely as Percey Clay.

Percey was on the phone with Ron Talbot. Sachs deduced from the conversation that U.S. Medical hadn’t even waited for the cinders of her airplane to cool before canceling the contract. When she hung up she stared at the passing scenery for a moment. She said absently to Bell, “The insurance company isn’t even going to pay for the cargo. They’re saying I assumed a known risk. So, that’s it. That’s it.” She added briskly, “We’re bankrupt.”

Pine trees swept past, scrub oaks, patches of sand. Sachs, a city girl, had come to Nassau and Suffolk Counties when she was a teenager not for the beaches or the shopping malls but to pop the clutch of her Charger and goose the maroon car up to sixty within five point nine seconds in the renegade drag races that made Long Island famous. She appreciated trees and grass and cows but enjoyed nature best when she was streaking past it at 110 miles per hour.

Jodie crossed and uncrossed his arms and burrowed into the center seat, playing with the seat belt, knocking into Sachs again.

“Sorry,” he muttered.

She wanted to slug him.

The house didn’t live up to the driveway.

It was a rambling split-level, a combination of logs and clapboard. A ramshackle place, added on to over the years with plenty of federal money and no inspiration.

The night was overcast, filled with dense swatches of mist, but Sachs could see enough to note that the house was set in a tight ring of trees. The grounds around it had been cleared for two hundred yards. Good cover for the residents of the house and good groomed open areas to pick off anyone trying an assault. A grayish band in the distance suggested the resumption of the forest. There was a large, still lake behind the house.

Reggie Eliopolos climbed out of the lead van and motioned everyone out. He led them into the main entryway of the building. He handed them off to a round man, who seemed cheerful even though he never once smiled.

“Welcome,” he said. “I’m US. Marshal David Franks. Want to tell you a little about your home away from home here. The most secure witness-protection enclave in the country. We have weight and motion sensors built into the entire perimeter of the place. Can’t be broken through without setting off all sorts of other alarms. The computer’s programmed to sense human motion patterns, correlated to weight, so the alarm doesn’t go off if a deer or dog happens to wander over the perimeter. Somebody – some human – steps where he shouldn’t, this whole place lights up like Times Square on Christmas Eve. What if somebody tries to ride a horse into the perimeter? We thought of that. The computer picks up a weight anomaly correlated to the distance between the animal’s hooves, the alarm goes off. And any motion at all – raccoon or squirrel – starts the infrared videos going.

“Oh, and we’re covered by radar from the Hampton Regional Airport, so any aerial assault gets picked up plenty early. Anything happens, you’ll hear a siren and maybe see the lights. Just stay where you are. Don’t go outside.”

“What kind of guards do you have?” Sachs asked.

“We’ve got four marshals inside. Two outside at the front guard station, two in the back by the lake. And hit that panic button there and there’ll be a Huey full of SWAT boys here in twenty minutes.”

Jodie’s face said twenty minutes seemed like a very long time. Sachs had to agree with him.

Eliopolos looked at his watch. He said, “We’re going to have an armored van here at six to take you to the grand jury. Sorry you won’t get much sleep.” He glanced at Percey. “But if I’d had my way, you’d’ve been here all night, safe and sound.”

No one said a word of farewell as he walked out the door.

Franks continued, “Few other things need mentioning. Don’t look out windows. Don’t go outside without an escort. That phone there” – he pointed to a beige phone in the corner of the living room – “is secure. It’s the only one you should use. Shut off your cell phones and don’t use them under any circumstances. So. That’s it. Any questions?”

Percey asked, “Yeah, you got any booze?”

Franks bent to the cabinet beside him and pulled out a bottle of vodka and one of bourbon. “We like to keep our guests happy.”

He set the bottles on the table, then walked to the front door, slipping his windbreaker on. “I’m headed home. ‘Night, Tom,” he said to the marshal at the door and nodded to the quartet of guardees, standing incongruously in the middle of the varnished wood hunting lodge, two bottles of liquor between them and a dozen deer and elk heads staring down.

The phone rang, startling them all. One of the marshals got it on the third ring. “Hello?…”

He glanced at the two women. “Amelia Sachs?”

She nodded and took the receiver.

It was Rhyme. “Sachs, how safe is it?”

“Pretty good,” she said. “High tech. Any luck with the body?”

“Nothing so far. Four missing males reported in Manhattan in the last four hours. We’re checking them all out. Is Jodie there?”

“Yes.”

“Ask him if the Dancer ever mentioned assuming a particular identity.”

She relayed the question.

Jodie thought back. “Well, I remember him saying something once… I mean, nothing specific. He said if you’re going to kill somebody you have to infiltrate, evaluate, delegate, then eliminate. Or something like that. I don’t remember exactly. He meant delegate somebody else to do something, then when everybody’s distracted, he’d move in. I think he mentioned like a delivery guy or shoe-shine boy.”

Your deadliest weapon is deception…

After she relayed this to Rhyme he said, “We’re thinking the body’s a young businessman. Could be a lawyer. Ask Jodie if he ever mentioned trying to get into the courthouse for the grand jury.”

Jodie didn’t think so.

Sachs told Rhyme this.

“Okay. Thanks.” She heard him calling something to Mel Cooper. “I’ll check in later, Sachs.”

After they hung up, Percey asked them, “You want a nightcap?”

Sachs couldn’t decide if she did or not. The memory of the scotch preceding her fiasco in Lincoln Rhyme’s bed made her cringe. But on impulse she said, “Sure.”

Roland Bell decided he could be off duty for a half hour.

Jodie opted for a fast, medicinal shot of whiskey, then headed off to bed, toting his self-help book under his arm and staring with a city boy’s fascination at a mounted moose head.

Outside, in the thick spring air, cicadas chirped and bullfrogs belched their peculiar, unsettling calls.

As he looked out the window into the early morning darkness Jodie could see the starbursts of searchlights radiating through the fog. Shadows danced sideways – the mist moving through the trees.

He stepped away from his window and walked to the door of his room, looked out.

Two marshals guarded this corridor, sitting in a small security room twenty feet away. They seemed bored and only moderately vigilant.

He listened and heard nothing other than the snaps and ticks of an old house late in the evening.

Jodie returned to his bed and sat on the sagging mattress. He picked up his battered, stained copy of Dependent No More.

Let’s get to work, he thought.

He opened the book wide, the glue cracking, and tore a small patch of tape off the bottom of the spine. A long knife slid onto the bed. It looked like black metal though it was made of ceramic-impregnated polymer and wouldn’t register on a metal detector. It was stained and dull, sharp as a razor on one edge, serrated like a surgical saw on the other. The handle was taped. He’d designed and constructed it himself. Like most serious weapons it wasn’t glitzy and it wasn’t sexy and it did only one thing: it killed. And it did this very, very well.

He had no qualms about picking up the weapon – or touching doorknobs or windows – because he was the owner of new fingerprints. The skin on the pads of eight fingers and two thumbs had been burned away chemically last month by a surgeon in Berne, Switzerland, and a new set of prints etched into the scar tissue by a laser used for microsurgery. His own prints would regenerate but not for some months.

Sitting on the edge of the bed, eyes closed, he pictured the common room and took a mental stroll through it, remembering the location of every door, every window, every piece of furniture, the bad landscapes on the walls, the elk antlers above the fireplace, ashtrays, weapons, and potential weapons. Jodie had such a good memory he would have been able to walk through the room blindfolded, never brushing a single chair or table.

Lost in this meditation, he steered his imaginary self to the telephone in the corner and spent a moment considering the safe house’s communications system. He was completely familiar with how it worked (he spent much of his free time reading operating manuals of security and communications systems) and he knew that if he cut the line the drop in voltage would send a signal to the marshals’ panel here and probably to a field office as well. So he’d have to leave it intact.

Not a problem, just a factor.

On with his mental stroll. Examining the common-room video cameras – which the marshal had “forgotten” to tell them about. They were in the Y configuration that a budget-conscious security designer would use for a government safe house. He knew this system too and that it harbored a serious design flaw – all you had to do was tap the middle of the lens hard. This misaligned all the optics; the image in the security monitor would go black but there’d be no alarm, which would happen if the coaxial cable were cut.

Thinking about the lighting… He could shut out six – no, five – of eight lights he’d seen in the safe house but no more than that. Not until all the marshals were dead. He noted the location of each lamp and light switch, then moved on, more phantom walking. The TV room, the kitchen, the bedrooms. Thinking of distances, angles of view from outside.

Not a problem…

Noting the location of each of his victims. Considering the possibility that they might have moved in the past fifteen minutes.

…just a factor.

Now his eyes opened. He nodded to himself, slipped the knife in his pocket, and stepped to the door.

Silently he eased into the kitchen, stole a slotted spoon from a rack over the sink. Walked to the refrigerator and poured himself a glass of milk. Then he walked into the common room and meandered from bookshelf to bookshelf, pretending to look for something to read. As he passed each of the video surveillance cameras he reached up with the spoon and slapped the lens. Then he set the milk and spoon on a table and headed into the security room.

“Hey, check out the monitors,” one marshal muttered, turning a knob on the TV screen in front of him.

“Yeah?” the other asked, not really interested.

Jodie walked past the first marshal, who looked up and started to ask, “Hey, sir, how you doing?” when swish, swish, Jodie tidily opened the man’s throat in a V, spraying his copious velvet blood in a high arc. His partner’s eyes flashed wide and he reached for his gun, but Jodie pulled it from his hand and stabbed him once in the throat and once in the chest. He dropped to the floor and thrashed for a moment. It was a noisy death – as Jodie’d known it would be. But he couldn’t do more knife work on the man; he needed the uniform and had to kill him with a minimum of blood.

As the marshal lay on the floor, shaking and dying, he gazed up at Jodie, who was stripping off his own blood-soaked clothes. The marshal’s eyes flickered to Jodie’s biceps. They focused on the tattoo.

As Jodie bent down and began to undress the marshal he noticed the man’s gaze and said, “It’s called ‘Dance Macabre.’ See? Death’s dancing with his next victim. That’s her coffin behind them. Do you like it?”

He asked this with genuine curiosity, though he expected no answer. And received none.

chapter thirty-six

Hour 43 of 45

MEL COOPER, CLAD IN LATEX GLOVES, was standing over the body of the young man they’d found in Central Park.

“I could try the plantars,” he suggested, discouraged.

The friction ridge prints on the feet were as unique as fingerprints, but they were of marginal value until you had samples from a suspect; they weren’t cataloged in AFIS databases.

“Don’t bother,” Rhyme muttered.

Who the hell is this? Rhyme wondered, looking at the savaged body in front of him. He’s the key to the Dancer’s next move. Oh, this was the worst feeling in the world: an unreachable itch. To have a piece of evidence in front of you, to know it was the key to the case, and yet to be unable to decipher it.

Rhyme’s eyes strayed to the evidence chart on the wall. The body was like the green fibers they’d found at the hangar – significant, Rhyme felt, but its meaning unknown.

“Anything else?” Rhyme asked the tour doctor from the medical examiner’s office. He’d accompanied the body here. He was a young man, balding, with dots of sweat in constellations on his crown. The doctor said, “He’s gay or, to be accurate, he’d lived a gay lifestyle when he was young. He’s had repeated anal intercourse though not for some years.”

Rhyme continued, “What does that scar tell you? Surgery?”

“Well, it’s a precise incision, but I don’t know of any reason to operate there. Maybe some intestinal blockage. But even then I’ve never heard of a procedure in that quadrant of the abdomen.”

Rhyme regretted Sachs was not here. He wanted to throw around ideas with her. She’d think of something he’d overlooked.

Who could he be? Rhyme racked his brain. Identification was a complex science. He’d established a man’s identity once with nothing more than a single tooth. But the procedure took time – usually weeks or months.

“Run blood type and DNA profile,” Rhyme said.

“Already ordered,” the tour doctor said. “I sent the samples downtown already.”

If he were HIV positive that might help them ID him through doctors or clinics. But without anything else to go on, the blood work wouldn’t be very helpful.

Fingerprint…

I’d give anything for a nice friction ridge print, Rhyme thought. Maybe -

“Wait!” Rhyme laughed out loud. “His dick!”

“What?” Sellitto blurted.

Dellray lifted an arching brow.

“He doesn’t have any hands, but what’s the one part of his anatomy he’d be sure to touch?”

“Penis,” Cooper called out. “If he peed in the last couple of hours we can probably get a print.”

“Who wants to do the honors?”

“No job too disgusting,” the tech said, donning a double layer of latex gloves. He went to work with Kromekote skin-printing cards. He lifted two excellent prints – a thumb from the top of the corpse’s penis and an index finger from the bottom.

“Perfect, Mel.”

“Don’t tell my girlfriend,” he said coyly. He fed the prints through the AFIS system.

The message came up on the screen: Please Wait… Please Wait…

Be on file, Rhyme thought desperately. Please be on file.

He was.

But when the results came back, Sellitto and Dellray, closest to Cooper’s computer, stared at the screen in disbelief.

“What the hell?” the detective said.

“What?” Rhyme cried. “Who is it?”

“It’s Kall.”

“What?”

“It’s Stephen Kall,” Cooper repeated. “It’s a twenty-point match. There’s no doubt.” Cooper found the composite print they’d constructed earlier to find the Dancer’s identity. He dropped it on the table next to the Kromekote. “It’s identical.”

How? Rhyme was wondering. How on earth?

“What if,” Sellitto said, “it’s Kall’s prints on this guy’s dick. What if Kall’s a bone smoker?”

“We’ve got genetic markers from Kall’s blood, right? From the water tower?”

“Right,” Cooper called.

“Compare them,” Rhyme called out. “I want a profile of the corpse’s markers. And I want it now.”

Poetry was not lost on him.

The “Coffin Dancer”… I like that, he thought. Much better than “Jodie” – the name he’d picked for this job because it was so unthreatening. A silly name, a diminutive name.

The Dancer…

Names were important, he knew. He read philosophy. The act of naming – of designating – is unique to humans. The Dancer now spoke silently to the late, dismembered Stephen Kall: It was me you heard about. I’m the one who calls my victims “corpses.” You call them Wives, Husbands, Friends, whatever you like.

But once I’m hired, they’re corpses. That’s all they are.

Wearing a U.S. marshal’s uniform, he started down the dim hallway from the bodies of the two officers. He hadn’t avoided the blood completely, of course, but in the murkiness of the enclave you couldn’t see that the navy blue uniform had patches of red on it.

On his way to find corpse three.

The Wife, if you will, Stephen. What a mixed-up, nervous creature you were. With your scrubbed hands and your confused dick. The Husband, the Wife, the Friend…

Infiltrate, evaluate, delegate, eliminate…

Ah, Stephen… I could have taught you there’s only one rule in this business: you stay one step ahead of every living soul.

He now had two pistols but wouldn’t use them yet. He wouldn’t think of acting prematurely. If he stumbled now he’d never have another chance to kill Percey Clay before the grand jury met later that morning.

Moving silently into a parlor where two more U.S. marshals sat, one reading a paper, one watching TV.

The first one glanced up at the Dancer, saw the uniform, and returned to the paper. Then looked up again.

“Wait,” the marshal said, suddenly realizing he didn’t recognize the face.

But the Dancer didn’t wait.

He answered with swish, swish to both carotid arteries. The man slid forward to die on page six of the Daily News so quietly that his partner never turned from the TV, where a blond woman wearing excessive gold jewelry was explaining how she met her boyfriend through a psychic.

“Wait? For what?” the second marshal asked, not looking away from the screen.

He died slightly more noisily than his partner but no one in the compound seemed to notice. The Dancer dragged the bodies flat, stowed them under a table.

At the back door he made certain there were no sensors on the door frame and then slipped outside. The two marshals in the front were vigilant, but their eyes were turned away from the house. One quickly glanced toward the Dancer, nodded a greeting, then turned back to his reconnaissance. The light of dawn was in the sky but it was still dim enough so that the man didn’t recognize him. They both died almost silently.

As for the two in the back, at the guard station overlooking the lake, the Dancer came up behind them. He tickled the heart of one marshal with a stab in the back and then, swish, swish, sliced apart the throat of the second guard. Lying on the ground, the first marshal gave a plaintive scream as he died. But once again no one seemed to notice; the sound, the Dancer decided, was very much like the call of a loon, waking to the beautiful pink and gray dawn.

Rhyme and Sellitto were deep in bureaucratic debt by the time the fax of the DNA profile arrived. The test had been the fast version, the polymerase chain reaction test, but it was still virtually conclusive; the odds were about six thousand to one that the body in front of them was Stephen Kall.

“Somebody killed him?” Sellitto muttered. His shirt was so wrinkled it looked like a fiber sample under five-hundred-times magnification. “Why?”

But why was not a criminalist’s question.

Evidence… Rhyme thought. Evidence was his only concern.

He glanced at the crime scene charts on his wall, scanning all the clues of the case. The fibers, the bullets, the broken glass…

Analyze! Think!

You know the procedure. You’ve done it a million times.

You identify the facts. You quantify and categorize them. You state your assumptions. And you draw your conclusions. Then you test -

Assumptions, Rhyme thought.

There was one glaring assumption that had been present in this case from the beginning. They’d based their entire investigation on the belief that Kall was the Coffin Dancer. But what if he wasn’t? What if he was the pawn and the Dancer’d been using him as a weapon?

Deception…

If so, there’d be some evidence that didn’t fit. Something that pointed to the real Dancer.

He pored over the charts carefully.

But there was nothing unaccounted for except the green fiber. And that told him nothing.

“We don’t have any of Kall’s clothes, right?”

“No, he was buck naked when we found him,” the tour doctor said.

“We have anything he came in contact with?”

Sellitto shrugged. “Well, Jodie.”

Rhyme asked, “He changed clothes here, didn’t he?”

“Right,” Sellitto said.

“Bring ’ em here. Jodie ’s clothes. I want to look at them.”

“Uck,” Dellray said. “They’re excessively unpleasant.”

Cooper found and produced them. He brushed them out over sheets of clean newsprint. He mounted samples of the trace on slides and set them in the compound ’scope.

“What do we have?” Rhyme asked, looking over the computer screen, a copycat image of what Cooper was seeing in his microscope.

“What’s that white stuff?” Cooper asked. “Those grains. There’s a lot of it. It was in the seams of his pants.”

Rhyme felt his face flush. Some of it was his erratic blood pressure from exhaustion, some of it was the phantom pain that still plagued him every now and then. But mostly it was the heat of the chase.

“Oh, my God,” he whispered.

“What, Lincoln?”

“It’s oolite,” he announced.

“The fuck’s that?” Sellitto asked.

“Eggstone. It’s a wind-borne sand. You find it in the Bahamas.”

“Bahamas?” Cooper asked, frowning. “What else did we just hear about the Bahamas?” He looked around the lab. “I don’t remember.”

But Rhyme did. His eyes were seated on the bulletin board, where was pinned the FBI analyst’s report on the sand Amelia Sachs had found last week in Tony Panelli’s car, the missing agent downtown.

He read:

“Substance submitted for analysis is not technically sand. It is coral rubble from reef formations and contains spicules, cross sections of marine worm tubes, gastropod shells, and foraminifers. Most likely source is the northern Caribbean: Cuba, the Bahamas.”

Dellray’s agent, Rhyme reflected… A man who’d know where the most secure federal safe house in Manhattan was. Who’d tell whoever was torturing him the address.

So that the Dancer could wait there, wait for Stephen Kall to show up, befriend him, and then arrange to get captured and get close to the victims.

“The drugs!” Rhyme cried.

“What?” Sellitto asked.

“What was I thinking of? Dealers don’t cut prescription drugs! It’s too much trouble. Only street drugs!”

Cooper nodded. “Jodie wasn’t cutting them with the baby formula. He just dumped out the drugs. He was popping placebos, so we’d think he was a druggie.”

“Jodie’s the Dancer,” Rhyme called. “Get on the phone! Call the safe house now!”

Sellitto picked up the phone and dialed.

Was it too late?

Oh, Amelia, what’ve I done? Have I killed you?

The sky was turning a metallic rosy color.

A siren sounded far away.

The peregrine falcon – the tiercel, he remembered – was awake and about to go hunting.

Lon Sellitto looked up desperately from the phone. “There’s no answer,” he said.

chapter thirty-seven

Hour 44 of 45

THEY’D TALKED FOR A WHILE, the three of them, in Percey’s room.

Talked about airplanes and cars and police work.

Then Bell went off to bed and Percey and Sachs had talked about men.

Finally Percey’d lain back on the bed, closed her eyes. Sachs lifted the bourbon glass from the sleeping woman’s hand and shut out the lights. Decided to try to sleep herself.

She now paused in the corridor to look out at the dim dawn sky – pink and orange – when she realized that the phone in the compound’s main hallway had been ringing for a long time.

Why wasn’t anybody answering it?

She continued down the corridor.

She couldn’t see the two guards nearby. The enclave seemed darker than before. Most of the lights had been shut off. A gloomy place, she thought. Spooky. Smelling of pine and mold. Something else? Another smell that was very familiar to her. What?

Something from crime scenes. In her exhaustion she couldn’t place it.

The phone continued to chirp.

She passed Roland Bell’s room. The door was partly open and she looked in. His back was to the door. He was sitting in an armchair that faced a curtained window, his head forward on his chest, arms crossed.

“Detective?” she asked.

He didn’t answer.

Sound asleep. Just what she wanted to be. She closed his door softly and continued down the corridor, toward her room.

She thought about Rhyme. She hoped he was getting some sleep too. She’d seen one of his dysreflexia attacks. It had been terrifying and she didn’t want him to go through another one.

The phone went quiet, cut off in the middle of a ring. She glanced toward where she’d heard it, wondering if it was for her. She couldn’t hear whoever’d answered. She waited a moment, but no one summoned her.

Silence. Then a tap, a faint scrape. More silence.

She stepped into her room. It was dark. She turned to grope for the switch and found herself staring at two eyes that caught a sliver of reflected light from outside.

Right hand on the butt of her Glock, she swept her left up to the light switch. The eight-point buck stared at her with his shiny, false eyes.

“Dead animals,” she muttered. “Great idea in a safe house…”

She pulled her blouse off and removed the bulky American Body Armor suit. Not as bulky as Jodie’s, of course. What a kick he was. The little… what was Dellray’s street word? Skel. Short for “skeleton.” Scrawny little loser. What a mutt.

She reached under her mesh undershirt and scratched frantically. Her boobs, her back under the bra, her sides.

Ooooo, feels good.

Exhausted, sure, but could she sleep?

The bed looked pretty damn nice.

She pulled on her blouse again, buttoned it, and lay down on the comforter. Closed her eyes. Did she hear footsteps?

One of the guards making coffee, she supposed.

Sleep? Breathe deep…

No sleep.

Her eyes opened and she stared at the webby ceiling.

The Coffin Dancer, she mused. How would he come at them? What would his weapon be?

His deadliest weapon is deception…

Glancing out a crack in the curtain, she saw the beautiful fish-gray dawn. A haze of mist bleached the color from the distant trees.

Somewhere inside the compound she heard a thud. A footstep.

Sachs swung her feet around to the floor and sat up. May as well just give up and get some coffee. I’ll sleep tonight.

She had a sudden urge to talk to Rhyme, to see if he’d found anything. She could hear him saying, “If I’d found something I would’ve called you, wouldn’t I? I said I’d check in.”

No, she didn’t want to wake him, but she doubted he was asleep. She pulled her cell phone out of her pocket and clicked it on before she remembered Marshal Franks’s warning to use only the secure line in the living room.

As she was about to shut the phone off, it chirped loudly.

She shivered – not at the jarring sound, but at the thought that the Dancer had somehow found her number and wanted to confirm she was in the compound. For an instant she wondered if somehow he’d slipped explosives into her phone too.

Damnit, Rhyme, look how spooked I am!

Don’t answer it, she told herself.

But instinct told her to, and while criminalists may shun instinct, patrol cops, street cops, always listen to those inner voices. She pulled the antenna out of the phone.

“Lo?”

“Thank God…” The panicked tone of Lincoln Rhyme chilled her.

“Hey, Rhyme. What’s -”

“Listen very carefully. Are you alone?”

“Yeah. What’s going on?”

“Jodie’s the Dancer.”

“What?”

“Stephen Kall was the diversion. Jodie killed him. It was his body in the park we found. Where’s Percey?”

“In her room. Up the hall. But how -”

“No time. He’s going for the kill right now. If the marshals’re still alive, tell them to get into a defensive position in one of the rooms. If they’re dead, find Percey and Bell and get out. Dellray’s scrambled SWAT, but it’ll be twenty or thirty minutes before they’re there.”

“But there’re eight guards. He can’t’ve taken them all out…”

“Sachs,” he said sternly, “remember who he is. Move! Call me when you’re safe.”

Bell! she thought suddenly, recalling the detective’s still posture, his head slumped forward.

She raced to her door, threw it open, drew her gun. The black living room and corridor gaped. Dark. Only faint dawn light filtering into the rooms. She listened. A shuffle. A clink of metal. But where were the sounds coming from?

Sachs turned toward Bell’s room and trotted as quietly as she could.

He got her just before she got to his room.

As the figure stepped from the doorway she dropped into a crouch and swung the Glock toward him. He grunted and slapped the pistol from her hand. Without thinking, she shoved him forward, slamming his back into the wall.

Groping for her switchblade.

Roland Bell gasped, “Hold up there. Hey, now…”

Sachs let go of his shirt.

“It’s you!”

“You scared the everlivin’ you-know-what outta me. What’s -”

“You’re all right!” she said.

“Just dozed off for a minute. What’s going on?”

“Jodie’s the Dancer. Rhyme just called.”

“What? How?”

“I don’t know.” She looked around, shivering in panic. “Where’re the guards?”

The hall was empty.

Then she recognized the smell she’d wondered about. It was blood! Like hot copper. And she knew then that all the guards were dead. Sachs went to retrieve her weapon, which was lying on the floor. She frowned, looking at the end of the grip. Where the clip should have been was an empty hole. She picked up the gun.

“No!”

“What?” Bell asked.

“My clip. It’s gone.” She slapped her utility belt. The two clips in the keepers were gone too.

Bell drew his weapons – the Glock and the Browning. They too were clipless. The chambers of the guns were empty too.

“In the car!” she stammered. “I’ll bet he did it in the car. He was sitting between us. Fidgeting all the time. Bumping into us.”

Bell said, “I saw a gun case in the living room. A couple of hunting rifles.”

Sachs remembered it. She pointed. “There.” They could just make it out in the dim light of dawn. Bell looked around him and hurried to it, crouching, while Sachs ran to Percey’s room and looked in. The woman was asleep on the bed.

Sachs stepped back to the corridor, flicked her knife open, and crouched, squinting. Bell returned a moment later. “It’s been broken into. All the rifles’re gone. And no ammo for the sidearms.”

“Let’s get Percey and get out of here.”

A footstep not far away. A click of a bolt-action rifle’s safety going off.

She grabbed Bell’s collar and pulled him to the floor.

The gunshot was deafening and the bullet broke the sound barrier directly over them. She smelled her own burning hair. Jodie must have had a sizable arsenal by now – all the sidearms of the marshals – but he was using the hunting rifle.

They sprinted for Percey’s door. It opened just as they got there and she stepped out, saying, “My God, what’s -”

The full body tackle from Roland Bell shoved Percey back into her room. Sachs tumbled in on top of them. She slammed the door shut, locked it, and ran to the window, flung it open. “Go, go, go, go…”

Bell lifted a stunned Percey Clay off the ground and dragged her toward the window as several high-powered deer slugs tore through the door around the lock.

None of them looked to see how successful the Coffin Dancer’d been. They rolled through the window into the dawn and ran and ran and ran through the dewy grass.

chapter thirty-eight

Hour 44 of 45

SACHS STOPPED BESIDE THE LAKE. Mist, tinted red and pink, wafted in ghostly tatters over the still, gray water.

“Go on,” she shouted to Bell and Percey. “Those trees.”

She was pointing to the nearest cover – a wide band of trees at the end of a field on the other side of the lake. It was more than a hundred yards away but was the closest cover.

Sachs glanced back at the cabin. There was no sign of Jodie. She dropped into a crouch over the body of one of the marshals. Their holsters were empty, of course, their clip cases too. She’d known Jodie had taken those weapons, but she hoped there was one thing he hadn’t thought of.

He is human, Rhyme…

And frisking the cool body she found what she was looking for. Tugging up the marshal’s pants cuff she pulled his backup weapon out of his ankle holster. A silly gun. A tiny five-shot Colt revolver with a two-inch barrel.

She glanced at the cabin just as Jodie’s face appeared in the window. He lifted the hunting rifle. Sachs spun and squeezed off a round. Glass broke inches from his face and he stumbled backward into the room.

Sachs sprinted around the lake after Bell and Percey. They ran fast, weaving sideways, through the dewy grass.

They got nearly a hundred yards from the house before they heard the first shot. It was a rolling sound, echoing off the trees. It kicked up dirt near Percey’s leg.

“Down,” Sachs cried. “There.” Pointing to a dip in the earth.

They rolled to the ground just as he fired again. If Bell had been upright the shot would have hit him directly between the shoulder blades.

They were still fifty feet from the nearest clump of trees that would give them protection. But to try for it now would be suicide. Jodie was apparently every bit the marksman that Stephen Kall had been.

Sachs lifted her head briefly.

She saw nothing but heard an explosion. An instant later the slug snapped through the air beside her. She felt the same draining terror as at the airport. She pressed her face into the cool spring grass, slick with dew and her sweat. Her hands shook.

Bell looked up fast and then down again.

Another shot. Dirt kicked up inches from his face.

“I think I saw him,” the detective drawled. “There’re some bushes to the right of the house. On that hill.”

Sachs breathed a trio of fast breaths. Then she rolled five feet to the right, poked her head up fast, ducked again.

Jodie chose not to shoot this time and she’d gotten a good look. Bell was right: the killer was on the side of a hill, targeting them with the telescopic deer rifle; she’d seen the faint glint from the ’scope. He couldn’t quite hit them where they were if they stayed prone. But all he had to do was move up the hill. From its crest he could shoot down into the pit they were hiding in now – a perfect kill zone.

Five minutes passed without a shot. He’d be working his way up the hill, though cautiously – he knew Sachs was armed and he’d seen she was a good shot. Could they wait him out? When would the SWAT chopper get here?

Sachs squeezed her eyes closed, smelled the dirt, the grass.

She thought of Lincoln Rhyme.

You know him better than anybody, Sachs…

You never really know a perp until you’ve walked where he’s walked, until you’ve cleaned up after his evil…

But, Rhyme, she thought, this isn’t Stephen Kall. Jodie isn’t the killer I know. It wasn’t his crime scenes I walked through. It wasn’t his mind I peered into…

She looked for a low spot in the ground that might lead them safely to the trees, but there was nothing. If they moved five feet in either direction, he’d have a clean shot.

Well, he’d have a clean shot at them any minute now, when he got to the crest of the hill.

Then something occurred to her. That the crime scenes she’d worked really were the Dancer’s scenes. He may not have been the one who fired the bullet that killed Brit Hale or planted the bomb that blew up Ed Carney’s plane or swung the knife that killed John Innelman in the basement of the office building.

But Jodie was a perpetrator.

Get into his mind, Sachs, she heard Lincoln Rhyme say.

His deadliest – my deadliest weapon is deception.

“Both of you,” Sachs called, looking around. “There.” She pointed toward a slight ravine.

Bell glared at her. She saw how badly he wanted the Dancer too. But the look in her eyes told him that the killer was her prey and hers alone. No debate and no argument. Rhyme had given this chance to her and nothing in the world could stop her from doing what she was about to.

The detective nodded solemnly and he pulled Percey after him into the shallow notch in the earth.

Sachs checked the pistol. Four rounds left.

Plenty.

More than enough…

If I’m right.

Am I? she wondered, face against the wet, fragrant earth. And she decided that, yes, she was right. A frontal assault wasn’t the Dancer’s way. Deception…

And that’s just what I’m going to give him.

“Stay down. Whatever happens, stay down.” She rose to her hands and knees, looking over the ridge. Getting ready, preparing herself. Breathing slowly.

“That’s a hundred-yard shot, Amelia,” Bell whispered. “With a snub-nose?”

She ignored him.

“Amelia,” Percey said. The flier held her eyes for a moment and the women shared a smile. “Head down,” Sachs ordered and Percey complied, nestling into the grass.

Amelia Sachs stood up.

She didn’t crouch, didn’t turn sideways to present a more narrow target. She just slipped into the familiar two-hand target pistol stance. Facing the house, the lake, facing the prone figure halfway up the hill, who pointed the telescopic sight directly at her. The stubby pistol felt as light as a scotch glass in her hand.

She aimed at the glare of the telescopic sight, a football field away.

Sweat and mist forming on her face.

Breathe, breathe.

Take your time.

Wait…

A ripple passed through her back and arms and hands. She forced the panic away.

Breathe…

Listen, listen.

Breathe…

Now!

She spun around and dropped to her knees as the rifle jutting from the grove of trees behind her, fifty feet away, fired. The bullet split the air just over her head.

Sachs found herself staring at Jodie’s astonished face, the hunting rifle still at his cheek. He realized that he hadn’t fooled her after all. That she’d figured out his tactic. How he’d fired a few shots from the lake, then dragged one of the guards up the hill and propped him there with one of the hunting rifles to keep them pinned down while he jogged up the road and circled behind.

Deception…

For a moment neither of them moved.

The air was completely still. No tatters of mist floating past, no trees or grass bending in the wind.

A faint smile crossed Sachs’s face as she lifted the pistol in both hands.

Frantic, he ejected the shell from the deer rifle and chambered another round. As he lifted the gun to his cheek again Sachs fired. Two shots.

Both clean hits. Saw him fly backward, the rifle sailing through the air like a majorette’s baton.

“Stay with her, Detective!” Sachs called to Bell and sprinted toward Jodie.

She found him in the grass, lying on his back.

One of her bullets had shattered his left shoulder. The other had hit the telescopic sight straight on and blown metal and glass into the man’s right eye. His face was a bloody mess.

She cocked her tiny gun, put a good ration of pressure on the trigger and pressed the muzzle against his temple. She frisked him. Lifted a single Glock and a long carbide knife out of his pocket. She found no other weapons.

“Clear,” she called.

As she stood, pulling her cuffs out of the case, the Dancer coughed and spit, wiped blood out of his good eye. Then he lifted his head and looked out over the field. He spotted Percey Clay as she slowly rose from the grass, staring at her attacker.

Jodie seemed to shiver as he gazed at her. Another cough then a deep moan. He startled Sachs by pushing against her leg with his uninjured arm. He was badly hurt – maybe mortally – and had little strength. It was a curious gesture, the way you’d push an irritating Pekinese out of your way.

She stepped back, keeping the gun trained squarely on his chest.

Amelia Sachs was no longer of any interest to the Coffin Dancer. Neither were his wounds or the terrible pain they must be radiating. There was only one thing on his mind. With superhuman effort he rolled onto his belly and, moaning and clawing dirt, he began muscling his way toward Percey Clay, toward the woman he’d been hired to kill.

Bell joined Sachs. She handed him the Glock and together they kept their weapons on the Dancer. They could easily have stopped him – or killed him. But they remained transfixed, watching this pitiable man so desperately absorbed in his task that he didn’t even seem to know his face and shoulder had been destroyed.

He moved another few feet, pausing only to grab a sharp rock about the size of a grapefruit. And he continued on toward his prey. Never saying a word, drenched in blood and sweat, his face a knot of agony. Even Percey, who had every reason to hate this man, to sweep Sachs’s pistol from her hand and end the killer’s life right here, even she was mesmerized, watching this hopeless effort to finish what he’d started.

“That’s enough,” Sachs said finally. She bent down and lifted the rock away.

“No,” he gasped. “No…”

She cuffed him.

The Coffin Dancer gave a horrifying moan – which might have been from his pain but seemed to arise more out of unbearable loss and failure – and dropped his head to the ground.

He lay still. The trio stood around him, watching his blood soak the grass and innocent crocuses. Soon the heartrending call of the loons was lost in the whup whup whup of a helicopter skimming over the trees. Sachs noticed that Percey Clay’s attention slipped immediately away from the man who’d caused her so much sorrow, and the flier watched in rapt attention as the cumbersome aircraft eased through the misty air and touched down lithely on the grass.

chapter thirty-nine

“AIN’T KOSHER, LINCOLN. CAN’T DO IT.”

Lon Sellitto was insistent.

But so was Lincoln Rhyme. “Give me a half hour with him.”

“They’re not comfy with it.” Which really meant what the detective added: “They shit when I suggested it. You’re civilian.”

It was nearly ten on Monday morning. Percey’s appearance before the grand jury had been postponed until tomorrow. The navy divers had found the duffel bags that Phillip Hansen had sunk deep in Long Island Sound. They were being raced to an FBI PERT team in the Federal Building downtown for analysis. Eliopolos had delayed the grand jury to be able to present as much damning evidence against Hansen as possible.

“What’re they worried about?” Rhyme asked petulantly. “It’s not as if I can beat him up.”

He thought about lowering his offer to twenty minutes. But that was a sign of weakness. And Lincoln Rhyme did not believe in showing weakness. So he said, “ Icaught him. I deserve a chance to talk to him.”

And fell silent.

Blaine, his ex-wife, had told him in a moment of very uncharacteristic perception that Rhyme’s eyes, dark as night, argued better than his words did. And so he stared at Sellitto until the detective sighed, then glanced at Dellray.

“Aw, give him a little time,” the agent said. “What’s it gonna hurt? Bring the billy-boy up here. And if he tries to run, hell, gimme a golden excuse for some target practice.”

Sellitto said, “Oh, all right. I’ll make the call. Only, don’t fuck up this case.”

The criminalist barely heard the words. His eyes turned toward the doorway, as if the Coffin Dancer were about to materialize magically.

He wouldn’t have been surprised if that had happened.

“What’s your real name? Is it really Joe or Jodie?”

“Ah, what’s it matter? You caught me. You can call me what you want.”

“How ’bout a first name?” Rhyme asked. “How ’bout what you call me? The Dancer. I like that.”

The small man examined Rhyme carefully with his good eye. If he was in pain from the wounds, or groggy from medication, he didn’t show it. His left arm was in a shoulder cast but he still wore thick cuffs attached to a waist shackle. His feet were chained too.

“Whatever you like,” Rhyme said pleasantly, and continued to study the man as if he were an unusual pollen spore picked up at a crime scene.

The Dancer smiled. Because of the damaged facial nerves and the bandages, his expression was grotesque. Tremors occasionally shook his body, and his fingers twitched; his broken shoulder rose and fell involuntarily. Rhyme had a curious feeling – that he himself was healthy and it was the prisoner who was the cripple.

In the valley of the blind, the one-eyed man is king.

The Dancer smiled at him. “You’re just dying to know, aren’t you?” he asked Rhyme.

“Know what?”

“To know all… That’s why you brought me here. You were lucky – catching me, I mean – but you don’t really have a clue as to how I did it.”

Rhyme clucked his tongue. “Oh, but I know exactly how you did it.”

“Do you now?”

“I just asked you here to talk to you,” Rhyme replied. “That’s all. To talk to the man who almost out-thought me.”

“ ‘Almost.’ ” The Dancer laughed. Another twisted smile. It was really quite eerie. “Okay, then tell me.”

Rhyme sipped from his straw. It was fruit juice. He’d astonished Thom by asking him to dump out the scotch and replace it with Hawaiian Punch. Rhyme now said agreeably, “All right. You were hired to kill Ed Carney, Brit Hale, and Percey Clay. You were paid a lot, I’d guess. Six figures.”

“Seven,” the Dancer said proudly.

Rhyme lifted an eyebrow. “Lucrative line of work.”

“If you’re good.”

“You deposited the money in the Bahamas. You’d gotten Stephen Kall’s name from somewhere – I don’t know where exactly, probably a mercenary network” – the Dancer nodded – “and you hired him as a subcontractor. Anonymously, maybe by E-mail, maybe fax, using references he’d trust. You’d never meet him face-to-face, of course. And I assume you tried him out?”

“Of course. A hit outside of Washington, D.C. I was hired to kill a congressional aide sneaking secrets out of Armed Services Committee files. It was an easy job, so I subcontracted it to Stephen. Gave me a good chance to check him out. I watched him every step of the way. I checked the entrance wound on the body myself. Very professional. I think he saw me watching him and he came after me to take care of witnesses. That was good too.”

Rhyme continued. “You left him his cash and the key to Phillip Hansen’s hangar – where he waited to plant the bomb on Carney’s plane. You knew he was good but you weren’t sure he was good enough to kill all three of them. You probably thought he could get one at the most but would provide enough diversion for you to get close to the other two.”

The Dancer nodded, reluctantly impressed. “Him killing Brit Hale surprised me. Oh, yes. And it surprised me even more that he got away afterward and got the second bomb onto Percey Clay’s plane.”

“You guessed that you’d have to kill at least one of the victims yourself, so last week you became Jodie, started hawking your drugs everywhere so that people on the street’d know about you. You kidnapped the agent in front of the Federal Building, found out which safe house they’d be in. You waited in the most logical place for Stephen to make his attack and let him kidnap you. You left plenty of clues to your subway hideout so we’d be sure to find you… and use you to get to Kall. We all trusted you. Sure we did – Stephen didn’t have a clue you’d hired him. All he knew was that you betrayed him and he wanted to kill you. Perfect cover for you. But risky.”

“But what’s life without risk?” the Dancer asked playfully. “Makes it all worthwhile, don’t you think? Besides, when we were together I built in a few… let’s call them countermeasures, so that he’d hesitate to shoot me. Latent homosexuality is always helpful.”

“But,” Rhyme added, piqued that his narrative had been interrupted, “when Kall was in the park, you slipped out of the alley where you were hiding, found him, and killed him… You disposed of the hands, teeth, and clothes – and his guns – in the sewer interceptor pipes. And then we invited you out to Long Island… Fox in the henhouse.” Rhyme added flippantly, “That’s the schematic… That’s the bare bones. But I think it tells the story.”

The man’s good eye closed momentarily, then opened again. Red and wet, it stared at Rhyme. He gave a faint nod of concession, or perhaps admiration. “What was it?” the Dancer finally asked. “What tipped you?”

“Sand,” Rhyme answered. “From the Bahamas.”

He nodded, winced at the pain. “I turned my pockets out. I vacuumed.”

“In the folds of the seams. The drugs too. Residue and the baby formula.”

“Yes. Sure.” After a moment the Dancer added, “He was right to be scared of you. Stephen, I mean.” The eye was still scanning Rhyme, like a doctor looking for a tumor. He added, “Poor man. What a sad creature. Who buggered him, d’you think? Stepdad or the boys in reform? Or all of the above?”

“I wouldn’t know,” Rhyme said. On the windowsill the male falcon landed and folded his wings.

“Stephen got scared,” the Dancer mused. “And when you get scared it’s all over. He thought the worm was looking for him. Lincoln the Worm. I heard him whisper that a few times. He was scared of you.”

“But you weren’t scared.”

“No,” the Dancer said. “I don’t get scared.” Suddenly he nodded, as if he’d finally noticed something that had been nagging him. “Ah, listening carefully, are you? Trying to peg the accent?”

Rhyme had been.

“But, see, it changes. Mountain… Connecticut… Plains southern and swamp southern… Mizzura. Kayntuckeh. Why’re you interrogating me? You’re Crime Scene. I’m caught. Time for beddy-bye. End of story. Say, I like chess. I love chess. You ever play, Lincoln?”

He’d used to like it. He and Claire Trilling had played quite a bit. Thom had been after him to play on the computer and had bought him a good chess program, installed it. Rhyme had never loaded it. “I haven’t played for a long time.”

“You and I’ll have to play a game of chess sometime. You’d be a good man to play against… You want to know a mistake some players make?”

“What’s that?” Rhyme felt the man’s hot gaze. He was suddenly uneasy.

“They get curious about their opponents. They try to learn things about their personal life. Things that aren’t useful. Where they’re from, where they were born, who their siblings are.”

“Is that right?”

“That may satisfy an itch, but it confuses them. It can be dangerous. See, the game is all on the board, Lincoln. It’s all on the board.” A lopsided smile. “You can’t accept not knowing anything about me, can you?”

No, Rhyme thought, I can’t.

The Dancer continued. “Well, what exactly do you want? An address? A high school yearbook? How about a clue? ‘Rosebud.’ How’s that? I’m surprised at you, Lincoln. You’re a criminalist – the best I’ve ever seen. And here you are right now on some kind of pathetic sentimental journey. Well, who am I? The headless horseman. Beelzebub. I’m Queen Mab. I’m ‘them’ as in ‘Look out for them; they’re after you.’ I’m not your proverbial worst nightmare because nightmares aren’t real and I am more real than anybody wants to admit. I’m a craftsman. I’m a businessman. You won’t get my name, rank, or serial number. I don’t play according to the Geneva convention.”

Rhyme could say nothing.

There was a knock on the door.

The transport had arrived.

“Can you take the shackles off my feet?” the Dancer asked the two officers in a pathetic voice, his good eye blinking and tearful. “Oh, please. I hurt so much. And it’s so hard to walk.”

One of the guards looked at him sympathetically then at Rhyme, who said matter-of-factly, “You loosen so much as one restraint and you’ll lose your job and never work in this city again.”

The trooper stared at Rhyme for a moment, then nodded at his partner. The Dancer laughed. “Not a problem,” he said, his eye on Rhyme. “Just a factor.”

The guards gripped him by his good arm and lifted him to his feet. He was dwarfed by the two tall men as they led him to the door. He looked back.

“Lincoln?”

“Yes?”

“You’re going to miss me. Without me, you’ll be bored.” His single eye burned into Rhyme’s. “Without me, you’re going to die.”

An hour later the heavy footsteps announced the arrival of Lon Sellitto. He was accompanied by Sachs and Dellray.

Rhyme knew immediately there was trouble. For a moment he wondered if the Dancer had escaped.

But that wasn’t the problem.

Sachs sighed.

Sellitto gave Dellray a look. The agent’s lean face grimaced.

“Okay, tell me,” Rhyme snapped.

Sachs delivered the news. “The duffel bags. PERT’s been through ’em.”

“Guess what was inside,” Sellitto said.

Rhyme sighed, exhausted, and not in the mood for games. “Detonators, plutonium, and Jimmy Hoffa’s body.”

Sachs said, “A bunch of Westchester County Yellow Pages and five pounds of rocks.”

“What?”

“There’s nothing, Lincoln. Zip.”

“You’re sure they were phone books, not encrypted business records?”

“Bureau cryptology looked ’em over good,” Dellray said. “Fuckin’ off-the-shelf Yellow Pages. And the rocks’re nothin’. Just added ’em to make it sink.”

“They’re gonna release Hansen’s fat ass,” Sellitto muttered darkly. “They’re doin’ the paperwork right now. They’re not even presenting it to the grand jury. All those people died for nothing.”

“Tell him the rest,” Sachs added.

“Eliopolos is on his way here now,” Sellitto said. “He’s got paper.”

“A warrant?” Rhyme asked shortly. “For what?”

“Oh. Like he said. To arrest you.”

chapter forty

REGINALD ELIOPOLOS APPEARED AT THE DOORWAY, backed up by two large agents.

Rhyme had thought of the attorney as middle aged. But in the daylight he seemed to be in his early thirties. The agents were young too and dressed as well as he was, but they reminded Rhyme of pissed-off longshoremen.

What exactly did he need them for? Against a man flat on his back?

“Well, Lincoln, I guess you didn’t believe me when I said there’d be repercussions. Uh-huh. You didn’t believe me.”

“What the fuck’re you bitchin’ about, Reggie?” Sellitto asked. “We caught him.”

“Uh-huh… uh-huh. I’ll tell you what I’m” – he lifted his hands and made imaginary quotation marks in the air – “bitchin’ for. The case against Hansen is kaput. No evidence in the duffel bags.”

“That’s not our fault,” Sachs said. “We kept your witness alive. And caught Hansen’s hired killer.”

“Ah,” Rhyme said, “but there’s more to it than that, right, Reggie?”

The assistant U.S. attorney gazed at him coldly.

Rhyme continued, “See, Jodie – I mean, the Dancer – is the only chance they have to make a case against Hansen now. Or that’s what he thinks. But Dancer’ll never dime a client.”

“Oh, that a fact? Well, you don’t know him as well as you think you do. I just had a long talk with him. He was more than willing to implicate Hansen. Except now he’s stonewalling. Thanks to you.”

“Me?” Rhyme asked.

“He said you threatened him. During that little unauthorized meeting you had a few hours ago. Uh-huh. Heads are going to roll because of that. Rest assured.”

“Oh, for God’s sake,” Rhyme spat out, laughing bitterly. “Don’t you see what he’s doing? Let me guess… you told him that you’d arrest me, right? And he’d agree to testify if you did.”

The pendulum swing of Eliopolos’s eyes told Rhyme that this was exactly what happened.

“Don’t you get it?”

But Eliopolos didn’t get a thing.

Rhyme said, “Don’t you think he’d like to get me in detention, maybe fifty, sixty feet from where he is?”

“Rhyme,” Sachs said, frowning with concern.

“What’re you talking about?” the attorney said.

“He wants to kill me, Reggie. That’s his point. I’m the only man who’s ever stopped him. He can’t very well go back to work knowing I’m out there.”

“But he’s not going anywhere. Ever.”

Uh-huh.

Rhyme said, “After I’m dead he’ll recant. He’ll never testify against Hansen. And what’re you going to pressure him with? Threaten him with the needle? He won’t care. He’s not afraid of anything. Not a single thing.”

What was nagging? Rhyme wondered. Something seemed wrong here. Very wrong.

He decided it was the phone books…

Phone books and rocks.

Rhyme was lost in thought, staring at the evidence chart on the wall. He heard a jingle, glanced up. One of the agents with Eliopolos actually pulled out his handcuffs and was proceeding toward the Clinitron. Rhyme laughed to himself. Better shackle the old feet. Might run away.

“Come on, Reggie,” Sellitto said.

The green fiber, phone books, and rocks.

He remembered something the Dancer had told him. Sitting in the very chair Eliopolos stood beside now.

A million dollars…

Rhyme was vaguely aware of the agent trying to figure out how to best subdue a crip. And he was vaguely aware of Sachs stepping forward trying to figure out how to subdue the agent. Suddenly he barked, “Wait,” in a voice commanding enough to freeze everyone in the room.

The green fiber…

He stared at it on the chart.

People were talking to him. The agent was still eyeing Rhyme’s hands, brandishing the tinkling cuffs. But Rhyme ignored them all. He said to Eliopolos, “Give me a half hour.”

“Why should I?”

“Come on, what’s it going to hurt? It’s not like I’m going anywhere.” And before the attorney could agree or disagree, Rhyme was shouting, “Thom! Thom, I need to make a phone call. Are you going to help me, or not? I don’t know where he gets to sometimes. Lon, will you call for me?”

Percey Clay had just returned from burying her husband when Lon Sellitto tracked her down. Wearing black she sat in the crinkly wicker chair beside Lincoln Rhyme’s bed. Standing nearby was Roland Bell, in a tan suit, badly cut – thanks to the size of the two guns he wore. He pushed his thinning brown hair straight back over the crown of his head.

Eliopolos was gone, though his two goons were outside, guarding the hallway. Apparently they actually did believe that, given a chance, Thom would wheel Rhyme out the door and he’d make a getaway in the Storm Arrow, top speed 7.5 miles per hour.

Percey’s outfit chafed at collar and waist, and Rhyme bet that it was the only dress she owned. She began to lift ankle to knee as she sat back, realized a skirt was wrong for this pose, and sat up formally, knees together.

She eyed him with impatient curiosity and Rhyme realized that no one else – Sellitto and Sachs had fetched her – had delivered the news.

Cowards, he thought grumpily.

“Percey… They won’t be presenting the case against Hansen to the grand jury.”

For an instant there was a flash of relief. Then she understood the implication. “No!” she gasped.

“That flight Hansen made? To dump those duffel bags? The bags were fake. There was nothing in them.”

Her face grew pallid. “They’re letting him go?”

“They can’t find any connection between the Dancer and Hansen. Until we do, he’s free.”

Her hands rose to her face. “It was all a waste then? Ed… and Brit? They died for nothing.”

He asked her, “What’s happening to your company now?”

Percey wasn’t expecting the question. She wasn’t sure she heard him. “I’m sorry?”

“Your company? What’s going to happen to Hudson Air now?”

“We’ll sell it, probably. We’ve had an offer from another company. They can carry the debt. We can’t. Or maybe we’ll just liquidate.” It was the first time he’d heard resignation in her voice. A Gypsy in defeat.

“What other company?”

“I frankly don’t remember. Ron’s been talking to them.”

“That’s Ron Talbot, right?”

“Yes.”

“Would he know about the financial condition of the Company?”

“Sure. As much as the lawyers and accountants. More than me.”

“Could you call him, ask him to come down here as soon as possible?”

“I suppose I could. He was at the cemetery. He’s probably home by now. I’ll call him.”

“And, Sachs?” he said, turning to her, “We’ve got another crime scene. I need you to search it. As fast as possible.”

Rhyme looked over the big man coming through the doorway, wearing a dark blue suit. It was shiny and had the color and cut of a uniform about it. Rhyme supposed it was what he’d worn when he flew.

Percey introduced them.

“So you got that son of a bitch,” Talbot grumbled. “Think he’ll get the chair?”

“I collect the trash,” Rhyme said, pleased as always when he could think up a melodramatic line. “What the DA does with it is up to him. Did Percey tell you we’ve had trouble with the evidence implicating Hansen?”

“Yeah, she said something about that. The evidence he dumped was fake? Why’d he do that?”

“I think I can answer that, but I need some more information. Percey tells me you know the Company pretty well. You’re a partner, right?”

Talbot nodded, took out a pack of cigarettes, saw no one else was smoking, replaced them in his pocket. He was even more rumpled than Sellitto and it looked as if it had been a long time since he’d been able to button his jacket around his ample belly.

“Let me try this out on you,” Rhyme said. “What if Hansen didn’t want to kill Ed and Percey because they were witnesses?”

“But then why?” Percey blurted.

Talbot asked, “You mean, he had another motive? Like what?”

Rhyme didn’t respond directly. “Percey tells me the Company hasn’t been doing well for a while.”

Talbot shrugged. “Been a tough couple years. Deregulation, lots of small carriers. Fighting UPS and FedEx. Postal Service too. Margins’ve shrunk.”

“But you still have good – what is that, Fred? You did some white-collar crime work, right? Money that comes in. What’s the word for it?”

Dellray snorted a laugh. “Revy-nue, Lincoln.”

“You had good revenue.”

Talbot nodded. “Oh, cash flow’s never been a problem. It’s just that more goes out than comes in.”

“What do you think about the theory that the Dancer was hired to murder Percey and Ed so that the killer could buy the Company at a discount?”

“What company? Ours?” Percey asked, frowning.

“Why would Hansen do that?” Talbot said, wheezing again.

Percey added, “And why not just come to us with a big check? He never even approached us.”

“I didn’t actually say Hansen,” Rhyme pointed out. “The question I asked before was what if Hansen didn’t want to kill Ed and Percey? What if it was somebody else?”

“Who?” Percey asked.

“I’m not sure. It’s just… well, that green fiber.”

“Green fiber?” Talbot followed Rhyme’s eyes to the evidence chart.

“Everyone seems to’ve forgotten about it. Except me.”

“Man never forgets a single thing. Do you, Lincoln?”

“Not too often, Fred. Not too often. That fiber. Sachs – my partner -”

“I remember you,” Talbot said, nodding toward her.

“She found it in the hangar that Hansen leased. It was in some trace materials near the window where Stephen Kall waited before he planted the bomb on Ed Carney’s plane. She also found bits of brass and some white fibers and envelope glue. Which tells us that somebody left a key to the hangar in an envelope somewhere for Kall. But then I got to thinking – why did Kall need a key to break into an empty hangar? He was a pro. He could’ve broken into the place in his sleep. The only reason for the key was to make it look like Hansen had left it. To implicate him.”

“But the hijacking,” Talbot said, “when he killed those soldiers and stole the guns. Everybody knows he’s a murderer.”

“Oh, he probably is,” Rhyme agreed. “But he didn’t fly his airplane over Long Island Sound and play bombardier with those phone books. Somebody else did.”

Percey stirred uneasily.

Rhyme continued, “Somebody who never thought we’d find the duffel bags.”

“Who?” Talbot demanded.

“Sachs?”

She pulled three large evidence envelopes out of a canvas bag and rested them on the table.

Inside two of them were accounting books. The third contained a stack of white envelopes.

“Those came from your office, Talbot.”

He gave a weak laugh. “I don’t think you can just take those without a warrant.”

Percey Clay frowned. “I gave them permission. I’m still head of the Company, Ron. But what’re you saying, Lincoln?”

Rhyme regretted not sharing his suspicions with Percey before this; it was coming as a terrible shock. But he couldn’t risk that she might tip their hand to Talbot. He’d covered his tracks so well until now.

Rhyme glanced at Mel Cooper, who said, “The green fiber that we found with the particles of key came from a ledger sheet. The white ones from an envelope. There’s no doubt they match.”

Rhyme continued, “They all came from your office, Talbot.”

“What do you mean, Lincoln?” Percey gasped.

Rhyme said to Talbot, “Everybody at the airport knew Hansen was under investigation. You thought you’d use that fact. So you waited until one night when Percey and Ed and Brit Hale were working late. You stole Hansen’s plane for the flight, you dumped the fake duffel bags. You hired the Dancer. I assume you’d heard about him on your jobs in Africa or the Far East. I made a few calls. You worked for the Botswana air force and the Burmese government advising them in buying used military airplanes. The Dancer told me he was paid a million for the hit.” Rhyme shook his head. “That should have tipped me right there. Hansen could have had all three witnesses killed for a couple hundred thousand. Professional killing’s definitely a buyer’s market nowadays. A million told me that the man ordering the hit was an amateur. And that he had a lot of money at his disposal.”

The scream rose from Percey Clay’s mouth and she leapt for him. Talbot stood, backed up. “How could you?” she screamed. “Why?”

Dellray said, “My boys from financial crimes’re looking over your books now. What we think we’re gonna be finding is lots and lots of money that ain’t where it oughta be.”

Rhyme continued. “Hudson Air’s a lot more successful than you were thinking, Percey. Only most of it was going into Talbot’s pocket. He knew he was going to get caught someday and he needed to get you and Ed out of the way and buy the Company himself.”

“The stock purchase option,” she said. “As a partner he had a right to buy our interest from our estates at a discount if we die.”

“This’s bullshit. That guy was shooting at me too, remember.”

“But you didn’t hire Kall,” Rhyme reminded. “You hired Jodie – the Coffin Dancer – and he subcontracted the work with Kall. Who didn’t know you from beans.”

“How could you?” Percey repeated in a hollow voice. “Why? Why?”

Talbot raged, “Because I loved you!”

“What?” Percey gasped.

Talbot continued. “You laughed when I said I wanted to marry you.”

“Ron, no. I -”

“And you went back to him.” He sneered. “Ed Carney, the handsome fighter pilot. Top gun… He treated you like shit and you still wanted him. Then…” His face was purple with fury. “Then… then I lost the last thing I had – I was grounded. I couldn’t fly anymore. I watched the two of you logging hundreds of hours a month while all I could do was sit at a desk and push papers. You had each other, you had flying… You don’t have a clue what it’s like to lose everything you love. You just don’t have a clue!”

Sachs and Sellitto saw him tense. They anticipated his trying something, but they hadn’t guessed Talbot’s strength. As Sachs stepped forward, unholstering her weapon, Talbot scooped the tall woman completely off her feet and flung her into the evidence table, scattering microscopes and equipment, knocking Mel Cooper back into the wall. Talbot pulled the Glock from her hand.

He swung it toward Bell, Sellitto, and Dellray. “All right, throw your guns on the floor. Do it now. Now!”

“Come on, man,” Dellray said, rolling his eyes. “What’re you gonna do? Climb out the window? You ain’t going nowhere.”

He shoved the gun toward Dellray’s face. “I’m not going to say it again.”

His eyes were desperate. He reminded Rhyme of a cornered bear. The agent and the cops tossed their guns onto the floor. Bell dropped both of his.

“Where does that door lead?” He nodded to the wall. He’d have seen Eliopolos’s guards outside and knew there was no escape that way.

“That’s a closet,” Rhyme said quickly.

He opened it, eyed the tiny elevator.

“Fuck you,” Talbot whispered, pointing the gun at Rhyme.

“No,” Sachs shouted.

Talbot swung the weapon her way.

“Ron,” Percey cried, “think about it. Please…”

Sachs, embarrassed but unhurt, was on her feet, looking at the pistols that lay on the floor ten feet away.

No, Sachs, Rhyme thought. Don’t!

She’d survived the coolest professional killer in the country and now was about to get shot by a panicked amateur.

Talbot’s eyes were flicking back and forth from Dellray and Sellitto to the elevator, trying to figure out the switch pad.

No, Sachs, don’t do it.

Rhyme was trying to catch her attention, but her eyes were judging distances and angles. She’d never make it in time.

Sellitto said, “Let’s just talk, Talbot. Come on, put the gun down.”

Please, Sachs, don’t do it… He’ll see you. He’ll go for a head shot – amateurs always do – and you’ll die.

She tensed, eyes on Dellray’s Sig-Sauer.

No…

The instant Talbot looked back at the elevator Sachs leapt for the floor and snagged Dellray’s weapon as she rolled. But Talbot saw her. Before she could lift the large automatic he shoved the Glock at her face, squinting as he started to pull the trigger in panic.

“No!” Rhyme shouted.

The gunshot was deafening. Windows rattled and the falcons took off into the sky.

Sellitto scrambled for his weapon. The door burst open and Eliopolos’s officers ran into the room, their own pistols drawn.

Ron Talbot, the tiny red hole in his temple, stood perfectly still for an instant, then dropped in a spiral to the ground.

“Oh, brother,” said Mel Cooper, frozen in position, holding an evidence bag and staring down at his skinny little.38 Smith & Wesson, held in Roland Bell’s steady hand, pointing out from beside the tech’s elbow. “Oh, my.” The detective had eased up behind Cooper and slipped the weapon off the narrow belt holster on the back of the tech’s belt. Bell had fired from the hip – well, from Cooper’s hip.

Sachs rose to her feet and lifted her Glock out of Talbot’s hand. She felt for a pulse, shook her head.

The wailing filled the room as Percey Clay dropped to her knees over the body and, sobbing, pounded her fist into Talbot’s dense shoulder again and again. No one moved for a long moment. Then both Amelia Sachs and Roland Bell started toward her. They paused and it was Sachs who backed away and let the lanky detective put his arm around the petite woman and lead her from the body of her friend and enemy.

chapter forty-one

A LITTLE THUNDER, A SPRINKLING of spring rain late at night.

The window was open wide – not the falcon window, of course; Rhyme didn’t like them disturbed – and the room was filled with cool evening air.

Amelia Sachs popped the cork and poured Cake-bread chardonnay into Rhyme’s tumbler and her glass.

She looked down and gave a faint laugh.

“I don’t believe it.”

On the computer beside the Clinitron was a chess program.

“You don’t play games,” she said. “I mean, I’ve never seen you play games.”

“Hold on,” he said to her.

On the screen: I did not understand what you just said. Please try again.

In a clear voice he said, “Rook to queen’s bishop four. Checkmate.”

A pause. The computer said, Congratulations, followed by a digitized version of Sousa’s “Washington Post” march.

“It’s not for entertainment,” he said churlishly. “Keeps the mind sharp. It’s my Nautilus machine. You want to play sometime, Sachs?”

“I don’t play chess,” she said after a swallow of the fine wine. “Some damn knight goes for my king, I’d rather blow him away than figure out how to outsmart him. How much did they find?”

“Money? That Talbot had hidden? Over five million.”

After the auditors had gone through the second set of books, the real books, they found that Hudson Air was an extremely profitable company. Losing the aircraft and the U.S. Medical contract would sting, but there was plenty of cash to keep the company, as Percey told him, “aloft.”

“Where’s the Dancer?”

“In SD.”

Special Detention was a little-known facility in the Criminal Courts Building. Rhyme had never seen the place – few cops had – but in thirty-five years no one had ever broken out of it.

“Coped his talons pretty good,” Percey Clay had said when Rhyme told her this. Which means, she explained, the filing down of a hunting falcon’s claws.

Rhyme – given his special interest in the case – insisted on being informed about the Dancer’s tenure in SD. He’d heard from the guards that he’d been asking about windows in the facility, what floor they were on, what part of town the facility was located in.

“Do I smell a service station nearby?” he’d asked cryptically.

When he’d heard this, Rhyme had immediately called Lon Sellitto and asked him to call the head of the detention center and double the guard.

Amelia Sachs took another fortifying sip of wine, and whatever was coming was coming now.

She inhaled deeply then blurted, “Rhyme, you should go for it.” Another sip. “I wasn’t sure I was going to say that.”

“Beg pardon?”

“She’s right for you. It could be real good.”

They rarely had trouble looking at each other’s eyes. But, rough water ahead, Sachs looked down at the floor.

What was this all about?

When she glanced up and saw her words weren’t registering, she said, “I know how you feel about her. And she doesn’t admit it, but I know how she feels about you.”

“Who?”

“You know who. Percey Clay. You’re thinking she’s a widow, she’s not going to want someone in her life right now. But… You heard what Talbot said – Carney had a girlfriend. A woman in the office. Percey knew about it. They stayed together because they were friends. And because of the Company.”

“I never -”

“Go for it, Rhyme. Come on. I really mean that. You think it’d never work. But she doesn’t care about your situation. Hell, look at what she said the other day. She was right – you’re both real similar.”

There are times when you just need to lift your hands and let them flop into your lap in frustration. Rhyme settled for nestling his head in his luxurious down pillow. “Sachs, where on earth did you get this idea?”

“Oh, please. It’s so obvious. I’ve seen how you’ve been since she showed up. How you look at her. How obsessed you’ve been to save her. I know what’s going on.”

“What is going on?”

“She’s like Claire Trilling, the woman who left you a few years ago. That’s who you want.”

Oh… He nodded. So that’s it.

He smiled. Said, “Sure, Sachs, I have been thinking about Claire a lot the past few days. I lied when I said I hadn’t been.”

“Whenever you mentioned her I could tell you were still in love with her. I know that after the accident she never saw you again. I figured it was still an open book for you. Like me and Nick after he left me. You met Percey and she reminded you of Claire all over again. You realized that you could be with someone again. With her, I mean. Not… not with me. Hey, that’s life.”

“Sachs,” he began, “it’s not Percey you should’ve been jealous of. She’s not the one that booted you out of bed the other night.”

“No?”

“It was the Dancer.”

Another splash of wine in her glass. She swirled it and looked down at the pale liquid. “I don’t understand.”

“The other night?” He sighed. “I had to draw the line between us, Sachs. I’m already too close to you for my own good. If we’re going to keep working together, I had to keep that barrier up. Don’t you see? I can’t be close to you, not that close, and still send you in harm’s way. I can’t let it happen again.”

“Again?” She was frowning, then her face flooded with understanding.

Ah, that’s my Amelia, he thought. A fine criminalist. A good shot. And she’s quick as a fox.

“Oh no, Lincoln, Claire was…”

He was nodding. “She was the tech I assigned to search the crime scene in Wall Street after the Dancer’s hit five years ago. She was the one who reached into the wastebasket and pulled out the paper that set off the bomb.”

Which is why he’d been so obsessed with the man. Why he’d wanted, so uncharacteristically, to debrief the killer. He wanted to catch the man who’d killed his lover. Wanted to know all about him.

It was revenge, undiluted revenge. When Lon Sellitto – who’d known about Claire – had wondered if it might not be better for Percey and Hale to leave town, he was asking if Rhyme’s personal feelings weren’t intruding into the case.

Well, yes, they were. But Lincoln Rhyme, for all the overwhelming stasis of his present life, was as much a hunter as the falcons on his window ledge. Every criminalist is. And when he scented his prey he wouldn’t be stopped.

“So, that’s it, Sachs. It has nothing to do with Percey. And as much as I wanted you to spend the night – to spend every night – I can’t risk loving you any more than I do.”

It was so astonishing – bewildering – to Lincoln Rhyme to be having this conversation. After the accident he’d come to believe that the oak beam that had snapped his spine actually did its worst damage to his heart, killing all sensation within it. And his ability to love and be loved were as crushed as the thin fiber of his spinal cord. But the other night, Sachs close to him, he’d realized how wrong he was.

“You understand, don’t you, Amelia?” Rhyme whispered.

“Last names only,” she said, smiling, walking close to the bed.

She bent down and kissed him on the mouth. He pressed back into his pillow for a moment then returned the kiss.

“No, no,” he persisted. But he kissed her hard once again.

Her purse dropped to the floor. Her jacket and watch went on the bedside table, followed by the last of the fashion accessories to come off – her Glock 9.

They kissed again.

But he pulled away. “Sachs… It’s too risky!”

“God don’t give out certain,” she said, their eyes locked on each other’s. Then she stood and walked across the room to the light switch.

“Wait,” he said.

She paused, looked back. Her red hair fell over her face, obscuring one eye.

Into the microphone hanging on the bed frame Rhyme commanded, “Lights out.”

The room went dark.