The Coffin Dancer (21 page)

But Sachs knew it was just the opposite. The turn-on was that he was a man who had complete control,
despite
the fact he couldn’t move.

Fragments of his words floated past as he spoke about Claire, then about the Dancer. She tilted her head back and looked at his thin lips.

Her hands started roving.

He couldn’t feel, of course, but he could see her perfect fingers with their damaged nails slide over his chest, down his smooth body. Thom exercised him daily with a passive range of motion exercises and though Rhyme wasn’t muscular he had a body of a young man. It was as if the aging process had stopped the day of the accident.

“Sachs?”

Her hand moved lower.

Her breathing was coming faster now. She tugged the blanket down. Thom had dressed Rhyme in a T-shirt. She tugged it up, moved her hands over his chest. Then she pulled her own shirt off, unhooked her bra, pressed her flushed skin against his pallid. She expected it to be cold but it wasn’t. It was hotter than hers. She rubbed harder.

She kissed him once on the cheek, then the corner of the mouth, then squarely on the mouth.

“Sachs, no ... Listen to me. No.”

But she didn’t listen.

She’d never told Rhyme, but some months ago she’d bought a book called
The Disabled Lover.
Sachs was surprised to learn that even quadriplegics can make love and father children. A man’s perplexing organ literally has a mind of its own and severing the spinal cord eliminates only one type of stimulus. Handicapped men were capable of perfectly normal erections. True, he’d have no sensation, but—for her part—the physical thrill was only a part of the event, often a minor part. It was the closeness that counted; that was a high that a million phony movie orgasms would never approach. She suspected that Rhyme might feel the same way.

She kissed him again. Harder.

After a moment’s hesitation he kissed her back. She was not surprised that he was good at it. After his dark eyes, his perfect lips were the first thing she’d noticed about him.

Then he pulled his face away.

“No, Sachs, don’t ...”

“Shhh, quiet ...” She worked her hand under the blankets, began rubbing, touching.

“It’s just that ...”

It was
what?
she wondered. That things might not work out?

But things were working out fine. She felt him growing hard under her hand, more responsive than some of the most macho lovers she’d had.

She slid on top of him, kicked the sheets and blanket back, bent down and kissed him again. Oh, how she wanted to be here, face-to-face—as close as they could be. To make him understand that she saw he was her perfect man. He was whole as he was.

She unpinned her hair, let it fall over him. Leaned down, kissed him again.

Rhyme kissed back. They pressed their lips together for what seemed like a full minute.

Then suddenly he shook his head, so violently that she thought he might have been having an attack of dysreflexia.

“No! “he whispered.

She’d expected playful, she’d expected passionate, at worst a flirtatious
Oh-oh, not a good idea ...
But he sounded weak. The hollow sound of his voice cut into her soul. She rolled off, clutching a pillow to her breasts.

“No, Amelia. I’m sorry. No.”

Her face burned with shame. All she could think was how many times she’d been out with a man who was a friend or a casual date and suddenly been horrified to feel him start to grope her like a teenager. Her voice had registered the same dismay that she now heard in Rhyme’s.

So this was all that she was to him, she understood at last.

A partner. A colleague. A capital
F
Friend.

“I’m sorry, Sachs ... I can’t. There’re complications.”

Complications? None that she could see, except, of course, for the fact that he didn’t love her.

“No,
I’m
sorry,” she said brusquely. “Stupid. Too much of that damn single malt. I never could hold the stuff. You know that.”

“Sachs.”

She kept a terse smile on her face as she dressed.

“Sachs, let me say something.”

“No.” She didn’t want to hear another word.

“Sachs ...”

“I should go. I’ll be back early.”

“I want to say something.”

But Rhyme never got a chance to say anything, whether it was an explanation or apology or a confession. Or a lecture.

They were interrupted by a huge pounding on the door. Before Rhyme could ask who it was, Lon Sellitto burst into the room.

He glanced at Sachs without judgment, then back to Rhyme and announced, “Just heard from Bo’s guys over at the Twentieth. The Dancer was there, staking out the place. The son of a bitch’s taken the bait! We’re gonna get him, Lincoln. This time we’re gonna get him.”

“Couple hours ago,” the detective continued his story, “some of the S&S boys saw a white male taking a stroll around the Twentieth Precinct house. He ducked into an alley and it looked like he was checking out guards. And then they saw him scoping out the gas pump next to the station house.”

“Gas pump? For the RMPs?” Radio mobile patrols—squad cars.

“Right.”

“They follow him?”

“Tried. But he vanished ’fore they got close.”

Rhyme was aware of Sachs’s discreetly fixing the top button of her blouse ... He had to have a talk with her about what had happened. He
had
to make her understand. But considering what Sellitto was now saying, it would have to wait.

“Gets better. Half hour ago, we got a report of a truck hijacking. Rollins Distributing. Upper West Side near the river. They deliver gas to independent service stations. Some guy cuts through the chain-link. The guard hears and goes to investigate. He gets blindsided. Gets the absolute crap beat out of him. And the guy gets away with one of the trucks.”

“Is Rollins the company the department uses for gas?”

“Naw, but who’d know? The Dancer pulls up to the Twentieth in a tanker, the guards there don’t think anything of it, they wave him through, next thing—”

Sachs interrupted. “The truck blows.”

This brought Sellitto up short. “I was just thinking he’d use it as a way to get inside. You’re thinking a bomb?”

Rhyme nodded gravely. Angry with himself. Sachs was right. “Outsmarted ourselves here. Never occurred to me he’d try anything like this. Jesus, a tanker truck goes up in that neighborhood ...”

“A fertilizer bomb?”

“No,” Rhyme said. “I don’t think he’d have time to put that together. But all he needs is an AP charge on the side of a small tanker and he’s got a super gas-enhanced device. Burn the precinct to the ground. We’ve got to evacuate everyone. Quietly.”

“Quietly,” Sellitto muttered. “That’ll be easy.”

“How’s the guard from the gas distributor? Can he talk?”

“Can, but he got hit from behind. Didn’t see a thing.”

“Well, I want his clothes at least. Sachs”—she caught his eye—“could you get over to the hospital and bring them back? You’ll know how to pack them to save the trace. And then work the scene where he stole the truck.”

He wondered what her response would be. He wouldn’t have been surprised if she’d quit cold and walked out the door. But he saw in her still, beautiful face that she was feeling exactly what he was: ironically, relief that the Dancer had intervened to change the disastrous course of their evening.

Finally, finally, some of the luck Rhyme had hoped for.

An hour later Amelia Sachs was back. She held up a plastic bag containing a pair of wire cutters.

“Found them near the chain-link. The guard must’ve surprised the Dancer and he dropped them.”

“Yes!” Rhyme shouted. “I’ve never known him to make a mistake like that. Maybe he is getting careless ... I wonder what’s spooking him.”

Rhyme glanced at the cutters. Please, he prayed silently, let there be a print.

But a groggy Mel Cooper—he’d been sleeping in one of the smaller bedrooms upstairs—went over every square millimeter of the tool. Not a print to be found.

“Does it tell us
anything?”
Rhyme asked.

“It’s a Craftsman model, top of the line, sold in every Sears around the country. And you can pick them up in garage sales and junkyards for a couple bucks.”

Rhyme wheezed in disgust. He gazed at the clippers for a moment then asked, “Tool marks?”

Cooper looked at him curiously. Tool marks are distinctive impressions left at crime scenes by the tools criminals used—screwdrivers, pliers, lock picks, crowbars, slim jims, and the like. Rhyme had once linked a burglar to a crime scene solely on the basis of a tiny V notch on a brass lock plate. The notch matched an imperfection in a chisel found on the man’s workbench. Here, though, they had the
tool
, not any marks it might have made. Cooper didn’t understand what tool marks Rhyme might be referring to.

“I’m talking about marks
on
the blade,” he said impatiently. “Maybe the Dancer’s been cutting something distinctive, something that might tell us where he’s holing up.”

“Oh.” Cooper examined it closely. “It’s nicked, but take a look ... Do you see anything unusual?”

Rhyme didn’t. “Scrape the blade and handle. See if there’s any residue.”

Cooper ran the scrapings through the gas-chromatograph.

“Phew,” he muttered as he read the results. “Listen to this. Residue of RDX, asphalt, and rayon.”

“Detonating cord,” Rhyme said.

“He cut it with clippers?” Sachs asked. “You can do that?”

“Oh, it’s stable as clothesline,” Rhyme said absently, picturing what a thousand gallons of flaming gasoline would do to the neighborhood around the Twentieth Precinct.

I should’ve made them leave, he was thinking, Percey and Brit Hale. Put them into protective custody and sent them to Montana until the grand jury. This is damn nuts what I’m doing, this trap idea.

“Lincoln?” Sellitto asked. “We’ve got to find that truck.”

“We’ve got a little time,” Rhyme said. “He’s not going to try to get in until the morning. He needs the cover story of a delivery. Anything else, Mel? Anything in the trace?”

Cooper scanned the vacuum filter. “Dirt and brick. Wait ... here’re some fibers. Should I GC them?”

“Yes.”

The tech hunched over the screen as the results came up. “Okay, okay, it’s vegetable fiber. Consistent with paper. And I’m reading a compound ... NH four OH.”

“Ammonium hydroxide,” Rhyme said.

“Ammonia?” Sellitto asked. “Maybe you’re wrong about the fertilizer bomb.”

“Any oil?” Rhyme asked.

“None.”

Rhyme asked, “The fiber with the ammonia—was it from the handle of the clipper?”

“No. It was on the clothes of the guard he beat up.”

Ammonia? Rhyme wondered. He asked Cooper to look at one of the fibers through the scanning electron microscope. “High magnification. How’s the ammonia attached?”

The screen clicked on. The strand of fiber appeared like a tree trunk.

“Heat fused, I’d guess.”

Another mystery. Paper and ammonia ...

Rhyme looked at the clock. It was 2:40 a.m.

Suddenly he realized Sellitto had asked him a question. He cocked his head.

“I said,” the detective repeated, “should we start evacuating everybody around the precinct? I mean, better now than wait till it’s closer to the time he might attack.”

For a long moment Rhyme gazed at the bluish tree trunk of fiber on the screen of the SEM. Then he said abruptly, “Yes. We have to get everybody out. Evacuate the buildings around the station house. Let’s think—the four apartments on either side and across the street.”

“That many?” Sellitto asked, giving a faint laugh. “You think we really gotta do that?”

Rhyme looked up at the detective and said, “No, I've changed my mind. The whole block. We’ve got to evacuate the whole block. Immediately. And get Haumann and Dellray over here. I don’t care where they are. I want them now.”

chapter seventeen

Hour 22 of 45

Some of them had slept.

Sellitto in an armchair, waking more rumpled than ever, his hair askew. Cooper downstairs.

Sachs had apparently spent the night on a couch downstairs or in the other bedroom on the first floor. No interest in the Clinitron anymore.

Thom, himself bleary, was hovering, a dear busybody, taking Rhyme’s blood pressure. The smell of coffee filled the town house.

It was just after dawn and Rhyme was staring at the evidence charts. They’d been up till four, planning their strategy for snagging the Dancer—and responding to the legion of complaints about the evacuation.

Would this work? Would the Dancer step into their trap? Rhyme believed so. But there was another question, one that Rhyme didn’t like to think about but couldn’t avoid. How bad would springing the trap be? The Dancer was deadly enough on his own territory. What would he be like when he was cornered?

Thom brought coffee around and they looked over Dellray’s tactical map. Rhyme, back in the Storm Arrow, rolled into position and studied it too.

“Everybody in place?” he asked Sellitto and Dellray.

Both Haumann’s 32-E teams and Dellray’s federal pickup band of Southern and Eastern District FBI SWAT officers were ready. They’d moved in under cover of night, through sewers and basements and over rooftops, in full urban camouflage; Rhyme was convinced that the Dancer was surveiling his target.

“He won’t be sleeping tonight,” Rhyme had said.

“You sure he’s going in this way, Linc?” Sellitto’d asked uncertainly.

Sure? he thought testily. Who can be sure about anything with the Coffin Dancer?

His deadliest weapon is deception ...

Rhyme said wryly, “Ninety-two point seven percent sure.”

Sellitto snorted a sour laugh.

It was then that the doorbell rang. A moment later a stocky, middle-aged man Rhyme didn’t recognize appeared in the doorway of the living room.

The sigh from Dellray suggested trouble brewing. Sellitto knew the man too, it seemed, and nodded cautiously.

He identified himself as Reginald Eliopolos, assistant U.S. attorney in the Southern District. Rhyme recalled he was the prosecutor handling the Phillip Hansen case.