The Coffin Dancer (26 page)

“You’d think he’d be in combat boots,” Sellitto muttered.

“No, those’d be too obvious. Work shoes have rubber soles for gripping and steel caps in the toes. They’re as good as boots if you don’t need ankle support Hold the other one closer, Sachs.”

The smaller shoes were very worn at the heel and the ball of the foot. There was a large hole in the right shoe and through it you could see a lattice of skin wrinkles.

“No socks. Could be his friend’s homeless.”

“Why’s he got somebody with him?” Cooper asked.

“Don’t know,” Sellitto said. “Word is he always works alone. He uses people but he doesn’t trust them.”

Just what I’ve been accused of, Rhyme thought. He said, “And leaving fingerprints at the scene? This guy’s no pro. He must have something the Dancer needs.”

“A way out of the building, for one thing,” Sachs suggested.

“That could be it.”

“And’s probably dead now,” she suggested.

Probably, Rhyme agreed silently.

“The prints,” Cooper said. “They’re pretty small. I’d guess size eight male.”

The size of the sole doesn’t necessarily correspond to shoe size and provides even less insight into the stature of the person wearing them, but it was reasonable to conclude the Dancer’s partner had a slight build.

Turning to the trace evidence, Cooper mounted samples onto a slide and slipped it under the compound ’scope. He patched the image through to Rhyme’s computer.

“Command mode, cursor left,” Rhyme ordered into his microphone. “Stop. Double click.” He examined the computer monitor. “More of the mortar from the cinder block. Dirt and dust ... Where’d you get this, Sachs?”

“I scraped it from around the cinder blocks and vacuumed the floor of the tunnel. I also found a nest behind some boxes where it looked like somebody’d been hiding.”

“Good. Okay, Mel, gas it. There’s a lot of stuff here I don’t recognize.”

The chromatograph rumbled, separating the compounds, and sent the resulting vapors to the spectrometer for identification. Cooper examined the screen.

He exhaled a surprised breath. “I’m surprised his friend’s able to walk at all.”

“Little more specific there, Mel.”

“He’s a drugstore, Lincoln. We’ve got secobarbital, phenobarbital, Dexedrine, amobarbital, meprobamate, chlordiazepoxide, diazepam.”

“Jesus,” Sellitto muttered. “Reds, dexies, blue devils ...”

Cooper continued, “Lactose and sucrose too. Calcium, vitamins, enzymes consistent with dairy products.”

“Baby formula,” Rhyme muttered. “Dealers use it to cut drugs.”

“So the Dancer’s got himself a cluckhead for a sidekick. Go figure.”

Sachs said, “All those doctors’ offices there ... This guy must’ve been boosting pills.”

“Log on to FINEST,” Rhyme said. “Get a list of every drugstore cowboy they’ve got.”

Sellitto laughed. “It’s gonna be big as the White Pages, Lincoln.”

“Nobody says it’s easy, Lon.”

But before he could make the call, Cooper received an E-mail. “Don’t bother.”

“Huh?”

“The AFIS report on the fingerprints?” The tech tapped the screen. “Whoever the guy is, he doesn’t have a record in New York City or State or NCIC.”

“Hell!” Rhyme snapped. He felt cursed. Couldn’t it be just a little easier? He muttered, “Any other trace?”

“Something here,” Cooper said. “A bit of blue tile, grouted on the back, attached to what looks like concrete.”

“Let’s see it.”

Cooper mounted the specimen onto the ’scope’s stage.

His neck quivering, almost breaking into a spasm, Rhyme leaned forward and studied it carefully. “Okay. Old mosaic tile. Porcelain, crackle finish, lead based. Sixty, seventy years old, I’d guess.” But he could make no cunning deductions from the sample. “Anything else?” he muttered.

“Some hairs.” Cooper mounted them to do a visual. He bent over the ’scope.

Rhyme too examined the thin shafts.

“Animal,” he announced.

“More cats?” Sachs asked.

“Let’s see,” Cooper said, head down.

But these hairs weren’t feline. They were rodent. “Rat,” Rhyme announced. “
Rattus norvegicus.
Your basic sewer rat.”

“Keep going. What’s in that bag, Sachs?” Rhyme asked like a hungry boy looking over chocolates in a candy store display case. “No, no. There. Yes, that one.”

Inside the evidence bag was a square of paper towel smeared with a faint brown stain.

“I found that on the cinder block, the one he moved. I think it was on his hands. There were no prints but the pattern could’ve been made by a palm.”

“Why do you think that?”

“Because I rubbed my hand in some dirt and pushed on another cinder block. The mark was the same.”

That’s my Amelia, he thought. For an instant his thoughts returned to last night—the two of them lying in bed together. He pushed the thought away.

“What is it, Mel?”

“Looks like it’s grease. Impregnated with dust, dirt, fragments of wood, bits of organic material. Animal flesh, I think. All very old. And look there in the upper corner.”

Rhyme examined some silvery flecks on his computer screen. “Metal. Ground or shaved off of something. Gas it. Let’s find out for certain.”

Cooper did.

“Petrochemical,” he answered. “Crudely refined, no additives ... There’s iron with traces of manganese, silicon, and carbon.”

“Wait,” Rhyme called. “Any other elements—chromium, cobalt, copper, nickel, tungsten?”

“No.”

Rhyme gazed at the ceiling. “The metal? It’s old steel, made from pig iron in a Bessemer furnace. If it were modern it’d have some of those other materials in it.”

“And here’s something else. Coal tar.”

“Creosote!” Rhyme cried. “I’ve got it. The Dancer’s first big mistake. His partner’s a walking road map.”

“To where?” Sachs asked.

“To the subway. That grease is old, the steel’s from old fixtures and tie spikes, the creosote’s from the ties. Oh, and the fragment of tile is from a mosaic. A lot of the old stations were tiled—they had pictures of something that related to the neighborhood.”

Sachs said, “Sure—the Astor Place station’s got mosaics of the animals that John Jacob Astor traded.”

“Grouted porcelain tile. So that’s what the Dancer wanted him for. A place to hide out. The Dancer’s friend’s probably a homeless druggie living in an abandoned siding or tunnel or station somewhere.”

Rhyme realized that everyone was looking at a man’s shadow in the doorway. He stopped speaking.

“Dellray?” Sellitto said uncertainly.

The dark, somber face of Fred Dellray was focused out the window.

“What is it?” Rhyme asked.

“Innelman’s what it is. They stitched him up. Three hundred stitches they gave him. But it was too late. Lost too much blood. He just died.”

“I’m sorry,” Sachs said.

The agent lifted his hands, long sticklike fingers raised like spikes.

Everyone in the room knew about Dellray’s longtime partner—the one killed in the Oklahoma City federal building bombing. And Rhyme thought too of Tony Panelli—’napped downtown a few days ago. Probably dead by now, the only clue to his whereabouts the grains of curious sand.

And now another of Dellray’s friends was gone.

The agent paced in a threatening lope.

“You know why he got cut, don’t you—Innelman?”

Everyone knew; no one answered.

“A diversion. That’s the only reason in the world. To keep us off the scent. Can you believe that? A fuckin’ diversion.” He stopped pacing abruptly. He looked at Rhyme with his frightening black eyes. “You got any leads at all, Lincoln?”

“Not much.” He explained about the Dancer’s homeless friend, the drugs, the hidey-hole in the subway. Somewhere.

“That’s it?”

“Afraid so. But we still have some more evidence to look at.”

“Evidence,” Dellray whispered contemptuously. He walked to the door, paused. “A distraction. That’s no fucking reason for a good man to die. No reason at all.”

“Fred, wait ... we need you.”

But the agent didn’t hear, or he ignored Rhyme if he did. He stalked out of the room.

A moment later the door downstairs closed with a sharp click.

chapter twenty-one

Hour 24 of 45

“Home, sweet home,” Jodie said.

A mattress and two boxes of old clothes, canned food. Magazines—
Playboy
and
Penthouse
and some cheap hard-core porn, which Stephen glanced at distastefully. A book or two. The fetid subway station where Jodie lived, somewhere downtown, had been closed decades ago and replaced by one up the street.

A good place for worms, Stephen thought grimly, then pried the image from his mind.

They’d entered the small station from the platform below. They’d made their way here—probably two or three miles from the safe house—completely underground, moving through the basements of buildings, tunnels, huge sewer pipes, and small sewer pipes. Leaving a false lead—an open manhole cover. Finally they’d entered the subway tunnel and made good time, though Jodie was pathetically out of shape and gasped for breath trying to keep up with Stephen’s frantic pace.

There was a door leading out to the street, barred from the inside. Slanting lines of dusty light fell through the slats in the boards. Stephen peered outside into the grim spring overcast. It was a poor part of town. Derelicts sat on street corners, bottles of Thunderbird and Colt 44 were strewn on the sidewalk, and the polka dots of crack vial caps were everywhere. A huge rat chewed something gray in the alley.

Stephen heard a clatter behind him and turned to see Jodie dropping a handful of stolen pills into coffee cans. He was hunched over, carefully organizing them. Stephen dug through his book bag and found his cell phone. He made a call to Sheila’s apartment He was expecting to hear her answering machine but a recording came on that said the line was out of order.

Oh, no ...

He was stunned.

It meant that the antipersonnel satchel had gone off in Sheila’s apartment. And
that
meant they’d found out he’d been there. How the hell had they done that?

“You all right?” Jodie asked.

How?

Lincoln, King of the Worms. That’s how!

Lincoln, the white, wormy face peering out the window ...

Stephen’s palms began to sweat.

“Hey?”

Stephen looked up.

“You seem—”

“I’m fine,” Stephen answered shortly.

Stop worrying, he told himself. If it blew, the explosion was big enough to hose the apartment and destroy any trace of him. It’s all right. You’re safe. They’ll never find you, never tie you down. The worms won’t get you ...

He looked at Jodie’s easy smile of curiosity. The cringe went away. “Nothing,” he said. “Just a change of plans.” He hung up.

Stephen opened his book bag again, counted out $5,000. “Here’s the money.”

Jodie was transfixed by the cash. His eyes flipped back and forth between the bills and Stephen’s face. The thin hand reached out, shaking, and took the five thousand carefully, as if it might crumble if he gripped it too hard.

As he took the bills Jodie’s hand touched Stephen’s. Even through the glove the killer felt a huge jolt—like the time he’d been stabbed in the gut with a razor knife—stunning but painless. Stephen let go of the money and, looking away, said, “If you’ll help me again I’ll pay you another ten.”

The man’s red, puffy face broke into a cautious smile. He took a deep breath and poked through one of his coffee cans. “I get ... I don’t know ... nervous, sort of.” He found a pill, swallowed it. “It’s a blue devil. Makes you feel nice. Makes you feel all comfy. Want one?”

“Uhm ...”

Soldier, do men take a drink occasionally?

Sir, I don’t know, sir.

Well, they do. Here, have one.

I don’t think I—

Take a drink, Soldier. That’s an order.

Well, sir—

You’re not a pussy girl, are you, Soldier? You have titties?

I ... Sir, I do not, sir.

Then drink, Soldier.

Sir, yes sir.

Jodie repeated, “You want one?”

“No,” Stephen whispered.

Jodie closed his eyes and lay back. “Ten ... thousand ...” After a moment he asked, “You killed him, didn’t you?”

“Who?” Stephen asked.

“Back there, that cop? Hey, you want some orange juice?”

“That agent in the basement?
Maybe
I killed him. I don’t know. That wasn’t the point.”

“Was it hard to do? Like, I don’t mean anything, I’m just curious. Orange juice? I drink a lot of it. Pills make you thirsty. Your mouth gets all dry.”

“No.” The can looked dirty. Maybe worms had crawled on it. Maybe crawled
inside.
You could drink a worm and never know it ... He shivered. “Do you have running water here?”

“No. But I have some bottles. Poland Spring. I stole a case from A&P.”

Cringey.

“I need to wash my hands.”

“You do?”

“To get the blood off them. It soaked through the gloves.”

“Oh. It’s right there. Why do you wear gloves all the time? Fingerprints?”

“That’s right.”

“You were in the army, right? I knew it.”

Stephen was about to lie, changed his mind suddenly. He said, “No. I was almost in the army. Well, the marines. I was going to join. My stepfather was a marine and I was going in like him.”

“
Semper Fi
.”

“Right.”

There was silence and Jodie was looking at him expectantly. “What happened?”

“I tried to enlist but they wouldn’t let me in.”

“That’s stupid. Wouldn’t
let
you? You’d make a great soldier.” Jodie was looking Stephen up and down, nodding. “You’re strong. Great muscles. I”—he laughed—“I don’t hardly get any exercise, ’cept running from niggers or kids want to mug me. And they always catch me anyway. You’re handsome too. Like soldiers ought to be. Like the soldiers in movies.”

Stephen felt the wormy feeling going away and, my God, he started blushing. He stared at the floor. “Well, I don’t know about that.”

“Come on. Your girlfriend thinks you’re handsome, bet.”