The Coffin Dancer

by Jeffery Deaver

  Like Rhyme, Cooper was a member of the International Association for Identification. They were experts at identifying people from fingerprints, DNA, and odontology--dental remains. But this particular print--like the one on the metal lip of the bomb--was beyond their power. If any experts could find and classify a print, it would be the two of them. But not this one.

  "Shoot it and mount it," Rhyme muttered. "Up on the wall." They'd go through the motions because it was what you had to do in this business. But he was very frustrated. Sachs had nearly died for nothing.

  Edmond Locard, the famous French criminalist, developed a principle named after him. He said that in every encounter between criminal and victim there is an exchange of evidence. It might be microscopic, but a transfer does take place. Yet it seemed to Rhyme that if anyone could disprove Locard's Principle, it was the ghost they called the Coffin Dancer.

  Sellitto, seeing the frustration on Rhyme's face, said, "We've got the trap at the station house. If we're lucky we'll get him."

  "Let's hope. We could use some goddamn luck."

  He closed his eyes, rested his head in the pillow. A moment later he heard Thom saying, "It's nearly eleven. Time for bed."

  At times it's easy to neglect the body, to forget we even have bodies--times like these, when lives are at stake and we have to step out of our physical beings and keep working, working, working. We have to go far beyond our normal limitations. But Lincoln Rhyme had a body that wouldn't tolerate neglect. Bedsores could lead to sepsis and blood poisoning. Fluid in the lungs, to pneumonia. Didn't catheterize the bladder? Didn't massage the bowels to encourage a movement? Spenco boots too tight? Dysreflexia was the consequence and that could mean a stroke. Exhaustion alone could bring on an attack.

  Too many ways to die . . .

  "You're going to bed," Thom said.

  "I have to--"

  "Sleep. You have to sleep."

  Rhyme acquiesced. He was very tired.

  "All right, Thom. All right." He wheeled toward the elevator. "One thing." He looked back. "Could you come up in a few minutes, Sachs?"

  She nodded, watching the tiny elevator door swing shut.

  She found him in the Clinitron.

  Sachs had waited ten minutes to give him time to take care of bedtime functions--Thom had applied the catheter and brushed his boss's teeth. She knew Rhyme talked tough--he had a crip's disregard for modesty. But she knew too that there were certain personal routines he didn't want her to witness.

  She used the time to take a shower in the downstairs bathroom, dressed in clean clothes--hers--which Thom happened to have in the laundry room in the basement.

  The lights were dim. Rhyme was rubbing his head against the pillow like a bear scratching his back on a tree. The Clinitron was the most comfortable bed in the world. Weighing a half ton, it was a massive slab containing glass beads through which flowed heated air.

  "Ah, Sachs, you did good today. You out-thought him."

  Except thanks to me Jerry Banks lost his arm.

  And I let the Dancer get away.

  She walked to his bar and poured a glass of Macallan, lifted an eyebrow.

  "Sure," he said. "Mother's milk, the dew of nepenthe . . . "

  She kicked her issue shoes off, pulled up her blouse to look at the bruise.

  "Ouch," Rhyme said.

  The bruise was the shape of Missouri and dark as an eggplant.

  "I don't like bombs," she said. "Never been that close to one. And I don't like them."

  Sachs opened her purse, found and swallowed three aspirin dry (a trick arthritics learn early). She walked to the window. There were the peregrines. Beautiful birds. They weren't large. Fourteen, sixteen inches. Tiny for a dog. But for a bird . . . utterly intimidating. Their beaks were like the claws on a creature from one of those Alien movies.

  "You all right, Sachs? Tell me true?"

  "I'm okay."

  She returned to the chair, sipped more of the smokey liquor.

  "You want to stay tonight?" he asked.

  On occasion she'd spend the night here. Sometimes on the couch, sometimes in bed next to him. Maybe it was the fluidized air of the Clinitron, maybe it was the simple act of lying next to another human being--she didn't know the reason--but she never slept better than when she slept here. She hadn't enjoyed being close to another man since her most recent boyfriend, Nick. She and Rhyme would lie together and talk. She'd tell him about cars, about her pistol matches, about her mother and her goddaughter. About her father's full life and sad, protracted death. She'd ante up far more personal information than he. But that was all right. She loved listening to him say whatever he wanted to. His mind was astonishing. He'd tell her about old New York, about Mafia hits the rest of the world had never heard about, about crime scenes so clean they seemed hopeless until the searchers found the single bit of dust, the fingernail, the dot of spit, the hair or fiber that revealed who the perp was or where he lived--well, revealed these facts to Rhyme, not necessarily anyone else. No, his mind never stopped. She knew that before the injury he'd roam the streets of New York looking for samples of soil or glass or plants or rocks--anything that might help him solve cases. It was as if that restlessness had moved from his useless legs into his mind, which roamed the city--in his imagination--well into the night.

  But tonight was different. Rhyme was distracted. She didn't mind him ornery--which was good because he was ornery a lot. But she didn't like him being elsewhere. She sat on the edge of the bed.

  He began to say what he'd apparently asked her here for. "Sachs . . . Lon told me. About what happened at the airport."

  She shrugged.

  "There's nothing you could've done except gotten yourself killed. You did the right thing, going for cover. He fired one for range and would've gotten you with the second shot."

  "I had two, three seconds. I could've hit him. I know I could've."

  "Don't be reckless, Sachs. That bomb--"

  The fervent look in her eyes silenced him. "I want to get him, whatever it takes. And I have a feeling you want to get him just as much. I think you'd take chances too." She added with cryptic significance, "Maybe you are taking chances."

  This had a greater reaction than she'd expected. He blinked, looked away. But he said nothing else, sipped his scotch.

  On impulse, she asked, "Can I ask something? If you don't want me to you can tell me to clam up."

  "Come on, Sachs. We've got secrets, you and me? I don't think so."

  Eyes on the floor, she said, "I remember once I was telling you about Nick. How I felt about him and so on. How what happened between us was so hard."

  He nodded.

  "And I asked you if you'd felt that way about anyone, maybe your wife. And you said yes, but not Blaine." She looked up at him.

  He recovered fast, though not fast enough. And she realized she'd blown cold air on an exposed nerve.

  "I remember," he answered.

  "Who was she? Look, if you don't want to talk about it . . . "

  "I don't mind. Her name was Claire. Claire Trilling. How's that for a last name?"

  "Probably put up with the same crap in school I had to. Amelia Sex. Amelia Sucks . . . How'd you meet her?"

  "Well . . . " He laughed at his own reluctance to continue. "In the department."

  "She was a cop?" Sachs was surprised.

  "Yep."

  "What happened?"

  "It was a . . . difficult relationship." Rhyme shook his head ruefully. "I was married, she was married. Just not to each other."

  "Kids?"

  "She had a daughter."

  "So you broke up?"

  "It wouldn't have worked, Sachs. Oh, Blaine and I were destined to get divorced--or kill each other. It was only a matter of time. But Claire . . . she was worried about her daughter--about her husband taking the little girl if she got divorced. She didn't love him, but he was a good man. Loved the girl a lot."

  "You meet her?"

  "The daughter
? Yes."

  "You ever see her now? Claire?"

  "No. That was the past. She's not on the force anymore."

  "You broke up after your accident?"

  "No, no, before."

  "She knows you were hurt, though, right?"

  "No," Rhyme said after another hesitation.

  "Why didn't you tell her?"

  A pause. "There were reasons . . . Funny you bring her up. Haven't thought about her for years."

  He offered a casual smile and Sachs felt the pain course through her--actual pain like the blow that left the bruise in the shape of the Show Me State. Because what he was saying was a lie. Oh, he'd been thinking about this woman. Sachs didn't believe in woman's intuition but she did believe in cop's intuition; she'd walked a beat for far too long to discount insights like these. She knew Rhyme'd been thinking about Ms. Trilling.

  Her feelings were ridiculous, of course. She had no patience for jealousy. Hadn't been jealous of Nick's job--he was undercover and spent weeks on the street. Hadn't been jealous of the hookers and blond ornaments he'd drink with on assignments.

  And beyond jealousy, what could she possibly hope for with Rhyme? She'd talked about him to her mother many times. And the cagey old woman would usually say something like "It's good to be nice to a cripple like that."

  Which just about summed up all that their relationship should be. All that it could be.

  It was more than ridiculous.

  But jealous she was. And it wasn't of Claire.

  It was of Percey Clay.

  Sachs couldn't forget how they'd looked together when she'd seen them sitting next to each other in his room, earlier today.

  More scotch. Thinking of the nights she and Rhyme had spent here, talking about cases, drinking this very good liquor.

  Oh, great. Now I'm maudlin. That's a mature feeling. I'm gonna group a cluster right in its chest and kill it dead.

  But instead she offered the sentiment a little more liquor.

  Percey wasn't an attractive woman, but that meant nothing; it had taken Sachs all of one week at Chantelle, the modeling agency on Madison Avenue where she'd worked for several years, to understand the fallacy of the beautiful. Men love to look at gorgeous women, but nothing intimidates them more.

  "You want another hit?" she asked.

  "No," he said.

  Without thinking now, she reclined, laid her head on his pillow. It was funny how we adjust to things, she thought. Rhyme couldn't, of course, pull her to his chest and slip his arm around her. But the comparable gesture was his tilting his head to hers. In this way they'd fallen asleep a number of times.

  Tonight, though, she sensed a stiffness, a caution.

  She felt she was losing him. And all she could think about was trying to be closer. As close as possible.

  Sachs had once confided with her friend Amy, her goddaughter's mother, about Rhyme, about her feelings for him. The woman had wondered what the attraction was and speculated, "Maybe it's that, you know, he can't move. He's a man but he doesn't have any control over you. Maybe that's a turn-on."

  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.