The Coffin Dancer (15 page)

Sellitto, Sachs, Rhyme, and Cooper were on the ground floor of Rhyme’s town house, in the lab.. Dellray had left to make sure the safe house was ready and to check out the new baby-sitter the NYPD was providing to replace Banks.

At the airport they’d loaded the wounded young detective into the ambulance—the same one containing the dead, handless painting contractor. Earl, the medic, had stopped being an asshole long enough to work feverishly to stop Banks’s torrential bleeding. Then he’d sped the pale, unconscious detective to the emergency room several miles away.

FBI agents from White Plains got Percey and Hale into an armored van and started south to Manhattan, using evasive driving techniques. Sachs worked the new crime scenes: the sniper’s nest, the painter’s van, and the Dancer’s getaway wheels—a catering van. It was found not far from where he’d killed the contractor and where, they guessed, he’d have hidden the car he’d driven to Westchester in.

Then she’d sped back to Manhattan with the evidence.

“What’ve we got?” Rhyme now asked her and Cooper. “Any rifle slugs?”

Worrying a tattered bloody nail, Sachs explained, “Nothing left of them. They were explosive rounds.” She seemed very spooked, eyes flitting like birds’.

“That’s the Dancer. Not only deadly but his evidence self-destructs.”

Sachs prodded a plastic bag. “Here’s what’s left of one. I scraped it off a wall.”

Cooper spilled the contents into a porcelain examining tray. He stirred them. “Ceramic tipped too. Vests’re pointless.”

“Grade-A asshole,” Sellitto offered.

“Oh, the Dancer knows his tools,” Rhyme said.

There was a bustle of activity at the doorway and Thom let two suited FBI agents into the room. Behind them were Percey Clay and Brit Hale.

Percey asked Sellitto, “How’s he doing?” Her dark eyes looked around the room, saw the coolness that greeted her. Didn’t seem fazed. “Jerry, I mean.”

Sellitto didn’t answer.

Rhyme said, “He’s still in surgery.”

Her face was fretted, hair more tangled than this morning. “I hope he’ll be all right.”

Amelia Sachs turned to Percey and said coldly, “You what?”

“I said, I hope he’ll be all right.”

“You
hope?”
The policewoman towered over her. She stepped closer. The squat woman stood her ground as Sachs continued, “Little late for that, isn’t it?”

“What’s your problem?”

“That’s what I oughta be asking you. You got him shot.”

“Hey, Officer—” Sellitto said.

Composed, Percey said, “I didn’t ask him to run after me.”

“You’d be dead if it wasn’t for him.”

“Maybe. We don’t know that. I’m sorry he was hurt. I—”

“And how sorry are you?”

“Amelia,” Rhyme said sharply.

“No, I want to know
how
sorry. Are you sorry enough to give blood? To wheel him around if he can’t walk? Give his eulogy if he dies?”

Rhyme snapped, “Sachs, take it easy. It’s not her fault.”

Sachs slapped her hands, tipped in chewed nails, against her thighs. “It’s not?”

“The Dancer out-thought us.”

Sachs continued, gazing down into Percey’s dark eyes. “Jerry was baby-sitting you. When you ran into the line of fire what’d you think he was going to do?”

“Well, I didn’t think, okay? I just reacted.”

“Jesus.”

“Hey, Officer,” Hale said, “maybe you act a lot cooler under pressure than some of us. But we’re not used to getting shot at.”

“Then she should’ve stayed down. In the office. Where I told her to stay.”

There seemed to be a slight drawl in Percey’s voice when she continued. “I saw my aircraft endangered. I reacted. Maybe for you it’s like seeing your partner wounded.”

Hale said, “She just did what any pilot would’ve done.”

“Exactly,” Rhyme announced. “That’s what I’m saying, Sachs. That’s the way the Dancer works.”

But Amelia Sachs wasn’t letting go. “You should’ve been in the safe house in the first place. You never should have gone to the airport.”

“That was Jerry’s fault,” said Rhyme, growing angrier. “He had no authority to change the route.”

Sachs glanced at Sellitto, who’d been Banks’s partner for two years. But apparently he wasn’t about to stand up for the young man.

“This’s been real pleasant,” Percey Clay said dryly, turning toward the door. “But I’ve got to get back to the airport.”

“What?” Sachs almost gasped. “Are you crazy?”

“That’s impossible,” Sellitto said, emerging from his gloom.

“It was bad enough just trying to get my aircraft outfitted for the flight tomorrow. Now we’ve got to repair the damage too. And since it looks like every certified mechanic in Westchester’s a damn coward I’m going to have to do the work myself.”

“Mrs. Clay,” Sellitto began, “not a good idea. You’ll be okay in the safe house but there’s no way we can guarantee your safety anywhere else. You stay there until Monday, you’ll be—”

“Monday,” she blurted. “Oh, no. You don’t understand. I’m driving that aircraft tomorrow night—the charter for U.S. Medical.”

“You can’t—”

“A question,” asked the icy voice of Amelia Sachs. “Could you tell me exactly who else you want to kill?”

Percey stepped forward. She snapped, “Goddamn it, I lost my husband and one of my best employees last night. I’m not losing my company too. You can’t tell me where I’m going or not. Not unless I’m under arrest.”

“Okay,” Sachs said, and in a flash the cuffs were ratcheted onto the woman’s narrow wrists. “You’re under arrest.”

“Sachs,” Rhyme called, enraged. “What are you doing? Uncuff her. Now!”

Sachs swung to face him, snapped back, “You’re a civilian. You can’t order me to do a
thing!”

“I
can,” Sellitto said.

“Uh-un,” she said adamantly. “I’m the arresting, Detective. You can’t stop me from making a collar. Only the DA can throw a case out.”

“What is this bullshit?” Percey spat out, the vestigial drawl returning full force. “What’re you arresting me for? Being a witness?”

“The charge is reckless endangerment, and if Jerry dies then it’ll be criminally negligent homicide. Or maybe manslaughter.”

Hale worked up some courage and said, “Look now. I don’t really like the way you’ve been talking to her all day. If you arrest her, you’re going to have to arrest me ...”

“Not a problem,” Sachs said, then turned to Sellitto. “Lieutenant, I need your cuffs.”

“Officer, enougha this crap,” he grumbled.

“Sachs,” Rhyme called, “we don’t have time for this! The Dancer’s out there, planning another attack right now.”

“You arrest me,” Percey said, “I’ll be out in two hours.”

“Then you’ll be dead in two hours and ten minutes. Which would be your business—”

“Officer,” Sellitto snapped, “you’re on real thin ice here.”

“—if you didn’t have this habit of taking other people with you.”

“Amelia,” Rhyme said coldly.

She swung to face him. He called her “Sachs” most of the time; using her first name now was like a slap in the face.

The chains on Percey’s bony wrists clinked. In the window the falcon fluttered its wings. No one said a word.

Finally, in a reasonable voice, Rhyme asked, “Please take the cuffs off and let me have a few minutes alone with Percey.”

Sachs hesitated. Her face was an expressionless mask.

“Please, Amelia,” Rhyme said, struggling to be patient.

Without a word she unhooked the cuffs.

Everyone filed out.

Percey rubbed her wrists then pulled her flask from her pocket and took a sip.

“Would you mind closing the door?” Rhyme asked Sachs.

But she merely glanced toward him and then continued into the corridor. It was Hale who swung the heavy oak door shut.

Outside in the hallway Lon Sellitto called again about Banks. He was still in surgery and the floor nurse would say nothing else about him.

Sachs took this news with a faint nod. She walked to the window overlooking the alley behind Rhyme’s town house. The oblique light fell onto her hands and she looked at her torn nails. She’d put bandages on two of the most damaged fingers. Habits, she thought. Bad habits ... Why can’t I stop?

The detective walked up beside her, looked up at the gray sky. More spring storms were promised.

“Officer,” he said, speaking softly so none of the others could hear. “She fucked up, that lady did, okay. But you gotta understand—she’s not a pro. Our mistake was
letting
her fuck up and, yeah, Jerry should’ve known better. It hurts me more than I can even think about to say it. But he blew it.”

“No,” she said through clenched teeth. “You don’t understand.”

“Whatsat?”

Could she say it? The words were so hard.

“
I
blew it. It’s not Jerry’s fault.” She tossed her head toward Rhyme’s room. “Or Percey’s. It’s mine.”

“You? Fuck, you ’n’ Rhyme’re the ones figured out he was at the airport. He mighta nailed everybody, it wasn’t for you.”

She was shaking her head. “I saw ... I saw the Dancer’s position before he capped Jerry.”

“And?”

“I knew exactly where he was. I drew a target. I ...”

Oh, hell. This was hard.

“What’re you sayin’, Officer?”

“He let off a round at me ... Oh, Christ. I clenched. I hit the ground.” Her finger disappeared into her scalp and she scratched until she felt slick blood. Stop it. Shit.

“So?” Sellitto didn’t get it. “Everybody hit the deck, right? I mean, who wouldn’t?”

Staring out the window, face burning with shame. “After he fired and missed, I’d’ve had at least three seconds to fire—I knew he was shooting bolt action. I could’ve lost a whole clip at him. But I tongued dirt. Then I didn’t have the balls to get up again because I knew he’d rechambered.”

Sellitto scoffed. “What? You’re worried ’cause you didn’t stand up, without cover, and give a sniper a nice fat target? Come on, Officer ... And, hey, wait a minute; you had your service weapon?”

“Yeah, I—”

“Three hundred yards with a Glock nine? In your dreams.”

“I might not have hit him but I could’ve parked enough nearby to keep him pinned down. So he wouldn’t’ve got that last shot in and hit Jerry. Oh, hell.” She clenched her hands, looked at her index-finger nail again. It was dark with blood. She scratched harder.

The brilliant red reminded her of the dust cloud of blood rising around Jerry Banks and so she scratched harder still.

“Officer, I wouldn’t lose any sleep over that one.”

How could she explain? What was eating at her now was more complex than the detective knew. Rhyme was the best criminalist in New York, maybe in the country. Sachs aspired, but she’d never match him at that. But shooting—like driving fast—was one of
her
gifts. She could outshoot most of the men and women on the force, either-handed. She’d prop dimes up on the fifty-yard range and shoot for the glare, making presents of the bent coins for her goddaughter and her friends. She
could
have saved Jerry. Hell, she might even have hit the son of a bitch.

She was furious with herself, furious with Percey for putting her in this position.

And furious with Rhyme too.

The door swung open and Percey appeared. With a cold look at Sachs she asked Hale to join them. He disappeared into the room and a few minutes later it was Hale who opened the door and said, “He’d like everyone back inside.”

Sachs found them this way: Percey was sitting next to Rhyme in a battered old armchair. She had this ridiculous image of them as a married couple.

“We’re compromising,” Rhyme announced. “Brit and Percey’ll go to Dellray’s safe house. They’ll have somebody else do the repairs on the plane. Whether we find the Dancer or not, though, I’ve agreed to let her make the flight tomorrow night.”

“And if I just arrest her?” Sachs said heatedly. “Take her to detention?”

She’d thought Rhyme would explode at this—she was ready for it—but he said reasonably, “I thought about that, Sachs. And I don’t believe it’s a good idea. There’d be more exposure—court, detention, transport. The Dancer’d have more of a chance to get them.”

Amelia Sachs hesitated then gave in, nodded. He was right; he usually was. But right or not, he’d have things his way. She was his assistant, nothing more. An employee. That’s all she was to him.

Rhyme continued. “Here’s what I’ve got in mind. We’re going to set a trap. I’ll need your help, Lon.”

“Talk to me.”

“Percey and Hale’ll go to the safe house. But I want to make it look like they’re going someplace else. We’ll make a big deal out of it. Very visible. I’d pick one of the precincts, pretend they’re going into the lockup there for security. We’ll put out a transmission or two on citywide, unscrambled, that we’re closing the street in front of the station house for security and transporting all booked suspects down to detention to keep the facility clear. If we’re lucky the Dancer’ll be listening on a scanner. If not, the media’ll pick it up and he might hear about it that way.”

“How ’bout the Twentieth?” Sellitto suggested.

The Twentieth Precinct, on the Upper West Side, was only a few blocks from Lincoln Rhyme’s town house. He knew many of the officers there.

“Okay, good.”

Sachs then noticed some uneasiness in Sellitto’s eyes. He leaned forward toward Rhyme’s chair, sweat dripping down his broad, creased forehead. In a voice only Rhyme and Sachs could hear, he whispered, “You’re sure about this, Lincoln. I mean, you thought about it?”

Rhyme’s eyes swiveled toward Percey. A look passed between the two of them. Sachs didn’t know what it meant. She knew only that she didn’t like it.

“Yes,” Rhyme said. “I’m sure.”

Though to Sachs he didn’t seem very sure at all.

chapter thirteen

Hour 6 of 45

“Lots of trace, I see.”

Rhyme looked approvingly at the plastic bags Sachs had brought back from the airport crime scenes.

Trace evidence was Rhyme’s favorite—the bits and pieces, sometimes microscopic, left by perps at crime scenes, or picked up there by them unwittingly. It was trace evidence that even the cleverest of perps didn’t think to alter or plant and it was trace that even the most industrious couldn’t dispose of altogether.