The Coffin Dancer (43 page)

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

So Percey sideslipped.

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

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

She hoped.

“Airspeed?” she called.

“One fifty knots.”

“Looking good,
Foxtrot Bravo.
”

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

“Sink rate?” she asked.

“Twenty-six hundred.”

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

There were the approach strobes right in front of her—guiding them forward ...

Down, down, down ...

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

Brad released the yoke.

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

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

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

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

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

Then two thousand feet past. Then three thousand.

Hell, fly her into the ground.

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

“Full brakes!”

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

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

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

Seventy, sixty ...

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

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

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

Sixty miles per hour, fifty, forty ...

“The door,” she called to Bell.

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

The fire trucks were converging on the aircraft.

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

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

“I have to—”

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

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

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

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

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

“Nope. Not a hundred percent.”

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

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

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

Danse Macabre

I looked up to see a dot dropping, becoming an inverted heart, a diving bird. The wind screamed through her bells, making a sound like nothing else on earth as she fell a half mile through the clear autumn air. At the last moment she turned parallel to the chukar’s line of flight and hit it from behind with the solid “thwack” of a large-caliber bullet striking flesh.

A Rage for Falcons,

Stephen Bodio

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 coconspirator.”

“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—”

Eliopolos was 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.”