The Coffin Dancer

by Jeffery Deaver

  They stretched it out. Rhyme was, as always, impressed with Dellray's performance. Whoever he wanted to be, he was.

  The phony agent Mondale--who deserved a best-supporting award himself--said, "I remember. Tony Glidden. No, Tommy. The blond guy, right?"

  "That's him. I want to use him. He around?"

  "Naw. He's in Phillie. That carjacking sting."

  "Phillie. Too bad. We're going in about twenty minutes. Can't wait any longer than that. Well, I'll just do it myself then. But that Tommy. He--"

  "Fucker could drive a car! He could lose a tail in two blocks. Man was amazing."

  "Sure could use him now. Listen, thanks, Mondale."

  "Later."

  Rhyme winked, a quad's equivalent of applause. Dellray hung up, exhaled long and slow. "We'll see. We'll see."

  Sellitto uttered an optimistic "The third time we're baiting him. This should be it."

  Lincoln Rhyme didn't believe that was a rule of law enforcement, but he said, "Let's hope."

  Sitting in a stolen car not far from Jodie's subway station, Stephen Kall watched a government-issue sedan pull up.

  Jodie and two uniformed cops climbed out, scanning the rooftops. Jodie ran inside and, five minutes later, escaped back to the car with two bundles under his arm.

  Stephen could see no backup, no tail cars. What he'd heard on the tap was accurate. They pulled into traffic and he started after them, thinking there was no place in the world like Manhattan for following and not being seen. He couldn't be doing this in Iowa or Virginia.

  The unmarked car drove fast, but Stephen was a good driver too and he stayed with it as they made their way uptown. The sedan slowed when they got to Central Park West and drove past a town house in the Seventies. There were two men in front of it, wearing street clothes, but they were obviously cops. A signal--probably "All clear"--passed between them and the driver of the unmarked sedan.

  So that's it. That's Lincoln the Worm's house.

  The car continued north. Stephen did too for a little ways, then parked suddenly and climbed out, hurrying into the trees with the guitar case. He knew there'd be some surveillance around the apartment and he moved quietly.

  Like a deer, Soldier.

  Yes, sir.

  He vanished into a stand of brush and crawled back toward the town house, finding a good nest on a stony ledge under a budding lilac tree. He opened the case. The car containing Jodie, now going south, screeched up to the town house. Standard evasive practice, Stephen recognized--it had made an abrupt U-turn in heavy traffic and sped back here.

  He was watching the two cops climb out of the sedan, look around, and escort a very scared Jodie along the sidewalk.

  Stephen flipped the covers off the telescope and took careful aim on the traitor's back.

  Suddenly a black car drove past and Jodie spooked. His eyes went wide and he pulled away from the cops, running into the alley beside the town house.

  His escorts spun around, hands on their weapons, staring at the car that had startled him. They looked at the quartet of Latino girls inside and realized it was just a false alarm. The cops laughed. One of them called to Jodie.

  But Stephen wasn't interested in the little man right now. He couldn't get both the Worm and Jodie, and Lincoln was the one he had to kill now. He could taste it. It was a hunger, a need as great as scrubbing his hands.

  To shoot the face in the window, to kill the worm.

  Have to have to have to have to . . .

  He was looking through the telescope, scanning the building's windows. And there he was. Lincoln the Worm!

  A shiver rippled through Stephen's entire body.

  Like the electricity he felt when his leg rubbed against Jodie's . . . only a thousand times greater. He actually gasped in excitement.

  For some reason Stephen wasn't the least surprised to see that the Worm was crippled. In fact, this was how he knew the handsome man in a fancy motorized wheelchair was Lincoln. Because Stephen believed it would take an extraordinary man to catch him. Someone who wasn't distracted by everyday life. Someone whose essence was his mind.

  Worms could crawl over Lincoln all day long and he'd never even feel them. They could crawl into his skin and he'd never know. He was immune. And Stephen hated him all the more for his invulnerability.

  So the face in the window during the Alexandria, Virgina, hit . . . it hadn't been Lincoln.

  Or had it?

  Stop thinking about it! Stop! The worms'll get you if you don't.

  The explosive rounds were in the clip. He chambered one, and scanned the room again.

  Lincoln the Worm was speaking to someone Stephen couldn't see. The room, on the first floor, seemed to be a laboratory. He saw a computer screen and some other equipment.

  Stephen wrapped the sling around him, spot-welded the rifle butt to his cheek. It was a cool, damp evening. The air was heavy; it would sustain the explosive bullet easily. There was no need to correct; the target was only eighty yards away. Safety off, breathe, breathe . . .

  Go for a head shot. It would be easy from here.

  Breathe . . .

  In, out, in, out.

  He looked through the reticles, centered them on Lincoln the Worm's ear as he stared at the computer screen.

  The pressure on the trigger began to build.

  Breathe. Like sex, like coming, like touching firm skin . . .

  Harder.

  Harder . . .

  Then Stephen saw it.

  Very faint--a slight unevenness on Lincoln the Worm's sleeve. But not a wrinkle. It was a distortion.

  He relaxed his trigger finger and studied the image through the telescope for a moment. Stephen clicked to a higher resolution on the Redfield telescope. He looked at the type on the computer screen. The letters were backwards.

  A mirror! He was sighting on a mirror.

  It was another trap!

  Stephen closed his eyes. He'd almost given his position away. Cringey now. Smothering in worms, choking on worms. He looked around him. He knew there must be a dozen search-and-surveillance troopers in the park with Big Ears microphones just waiting to pinpoint the gunshot. They'd sight on him with M-16s mounted with Starlight scopes and nail him in a cross fire.

  Green-lighted to kill. No surrender pitch.

  Quickly but in absolute silence he removed the telescope with shaking hands and replaced it and the gun in the guitar case. Fighting down the nausea, the cringe.

  Soldier . . .

  Sir, go away, sir.

  Soldier, what are you--

  Sir, fuck you, sir!

  Stephen slipped through the trees to a path and walked casually around the meadow, heading east.

  Oh, yes, he was now even more certain than before that he had to kill Lincoln. A new plan. He needed an hour or two, to think, to consider what he was going to do.

  He turned suddenly off the path, paused in the bushes for a long moment, listening, looking around him. They'd been worried he'd be suspicious if he noticed that the park was deserted, so they hadn't closed the entrances.

  That was their mistake.

  Stephen saw a group of men about his age--yuppies, from the look of them, dressed in sweats or jogging outfits. They were carrying racquetball cases and backpacks and headed for the Upper East Side, talking loudly as they walked. Their hair glistened from the showers they'd just had at a nearby athletic club.

  Stephen waited until they were just past, then fell in behind them, as if he were a part of the group. Offered one of them a big smile. Walking briskly, swinging the guitar case jauntily, he followed them toward the tunnel that led to the East Side.

  . . . Chapter Thirty-two

  Hour 34 of 45

  Dusk surrounded them.

  Percey Clay, once again in the left-hand seat of the Learjet, saw the cusp of light that was Chicago in front of them.

  Chicago Center cleared them down to twelve thousand feet.

  "Starting descent," she announced, easing back on
the throttles. "ATIS."

  Brad clicked his radio to the automated airport information system and repeated out loud what the recorded voice told him. "Chicago information, Whiskey. Clear and forever. Wind two five oh at three. Temperature fifty-nine degrees. Altimeter thirty point one one."

  Brad set the altimeter as Percey said into her microphone, "Chicago Approach, this is Lear Niner Five Foxtrot Bravo. With you inbound at twelve thousand. Heading two eight zero."

  "Evening, Foxtrot Bravo. Descend and maintain one zero thousand. Expect vectors runway twenty-seven right."

  "Roger. Descend and maintain ten. Vectors, two seven right. Niner Five Foxtrot Bravo."

  Percey refused to look down. Somewhere below and ahead of them was the grave of her husband and his aircraft. She didn't know if he'd been cleared to land on O'Hare's runway 27 right, but it was likely that he had, and if so, ATC would've vectored Ed through exactly the same airspace she was now sailing through.

  Maybe he'd started to call her right about here . . .

  No! Don't think about it, she ordered herself. Fly the aircraft.

  In a low, calm voice she said, "Brad, this will be a visual approach to runway twenty-seven right. Monitor the approach and call all assigned altitudes. When we turn on final, please monitor airspeed, altitude, and rate of descent. Warn me of a sink rate greater than one thousand fpm. Go-around will be at ninety-two percent."

  "Roger."

  "Flaps ten degrees."

  "Flaps, ten, ten, green."

  The radio crackled, "Lear Niner Five Foxtrot Bravo, turn left heading two four zero, descend, and maintain four thousand."

  "Five Foxtrot Bravo, out of ten for four. Heading two four zero."

  She eased back on the throttle and the plane settled slightly, the grinding sound of the engines diminished, and she could hear the woosh of the air like a whisper of wind over bedsheets beside an open window at night.

  Percey yelled back to Bell, "You're about to have your first landing in a Lear. Let's see if I can set her down without rippling your coffee."

  "In one piece's all I'm asking for," Bell said and cinched his seat belt tight as a bungee cord harness.

  "Nothing, Rhyme."

  The criminalist closed his eyes in disgust. "I don't believe it. I just don't believe it."

  "He's gone. He was there, they're pretty sure. But the mikes didn't pick up a sound."

  Rhyme glanced up at the big mirror he'd ordered Thom to prop up across the room. They'd been waiting for the explosive rounds to crash into it. Central Park was peppered with Haumann's and Dellray's tactical officers, just waiting for a gunshot.

  "Where's Jodie?" Rhyme asked.

  Dellray snickered. "Hiding in the alley. Saw some car go by and spooked."

  "What car?" Rhyme asked.

  The agent laughed. "If it was the Dancer, then he turned hisself into four fat Puerto Rican girls. Little shit said he won't come out till somebody shuts off the streetlight in front of your building."

  "Leave him. He'll come back when he gets cold."

  "Or to get his money," Sachs reminded.

  Rhyme scowled. He was bitterly disappointed that this trick too hadn't worked.

  Was it his failing? Or was there some uncanny instinct that the Dancer had? A sixth sense? The idea was repugnant to Lincoln Rhyme, the scientist, but he couldn't discount it completely. After all, even the NYPD used psychics from time to time.

  Sachs started toward the window.

  "No," Rhyme said to her. "We still don't know for certain he's gone." Sellitto stood away from the glass as he drew the drapes shut.

  Oddly, it was scarier not knowing exactly where the Dancer was than thinking he was pointing a large rifle through a window twenty feet away.

  It was then that Cooper's phone rang. He took the call.

  "Lincoln, it's the Bureau's bomb people. They've checked the Explosives Reference Collection. They say they've got a possible match on those bits of latex."

  "What do they say?"

  Cooper listened to the agent for a moment.

  "No leads on the specific type of rubber, but they say it's not inconsistent with a material used in altimeter detonators. There's a latex balloon filled with air. It expands when the plane goes up because of the low pressure at higher altitudes, and at a certain height the balloon presses into a switch on the side of the bomb wall. Contact's completed. The bomb goes off."

  "But this bomb was detonated by a timer."

  "They're just telling me about the latex."

  Rhyme looked at the plastic bags containing components of the bomb. His eyes fell to the timer, and he thought: Why's it in such perfect shape?

  Because it had been mounted behind the overhanging lip of steel.

  But the Dancer could have mounted it anywhere, pressed it into the plastic explosive itself, which would have reduced it to microscopic pieces. Leaving the timer intact had seemed careless at first. But now he wondered.

  "Tell him that the plane exploded as it was descending," Sachs said.

  Cooper relayed the comment, then listened. The tech reported, "He says it could just be a point-of-construction variation. As the plane climbs, the expanding balloon trips a switch that arms the bomb; when the plane descends the balloon shrinks and closes the circuit. That detonates it."

  Rhyme whispered, "The timer's a fake! He mounted it behind the piece of metal so it wouldn't be destroyed. So we'd think it was a time bomb, not an altitude bomb. How high was Carney's plane when it exploded?"

  Sellitto raced through the report. "It was just descending through five thousand feet."

  "So it armed when they climbed through five thousand outside of Mamaroneck and detonated when he went below it near Chicago," Rhyme said.

  "Why on descent?" the detective asked.

  "So the plane would be farther away?" Sachs suggested.

  "Right," Rhyme said. "It'd give the Dancer a better chance to get away from the airport before it blew."

  "But," Cooper asked, "why go to all the trouble to fool us into thinking it was one kind of bomb and not another?"

  Rhyme saw that Sachs figured it out just as fast as he did. "Oh, no!" she cried.

  Sellitto still didn't get it. "What?"

  "Because," she said, "the bomb squad was looking for a time bomb when they searched Percey's plane tonight. Listening for the timer."

  "Which means," Rhyme spat out, "Percey and Bell've got an altitude bomb on board too."

  "Sink rate twelve hundred feet per minute," Brad sang out.

  Percey gentled the yoke of the Lear back slightly, slowing the descent. They passed through fifty-five hundred feet.

  Then she heard it.

  A strange chirping sound. She'd never heard any sound like it, not in a Lear 35A. It sounded like a warning buzzer of some kind, but distant. Percey scanned the panels but could see no red lights. It chirped again.

  "Five three hundred feet," Brad called. "What's that noise?"

  It stopped abruptly.

  Percey shrugged.

  An instant later, she heard a voice shouting beside her, "Pull up! Go higher! Now!"

  Roland Bell's hot breath was on her cheek. He was beside her, in a crouch, brandishing his cell phone.

  "What?"

  "There's a bomb on! Altitude bomb. It goes off when we hit five thousand feet."

  "But we're above--"

  "I know! Pull up! Up!"

  Percey shouted, "Set power, ninety-eight percent. Call out altitude."

  Without a second's hesitation, Brad shoved the throttles forward. Percey pulled the Lear into a ten-degree rotation. Bell stumbled backward and landed with a crash on the floor.

  Brad said, "Five thousand two, five one five . . . five two, five thousand three, five four . . . five eight. Six thousand feet."

  Percey Clay had never declared an emergency in all her years flying. Once, she'd declared a "pan-pan"--indicating an urgency situation--when an unfortunate flock of pelicans decided to commit suicide in he
r number two engine and clog up her pitot tube to boot. But now, for the first time in her career, she said, "May-day, may-day, Lear Six Niner Five Foxtrot Bravo."

  "Go ahead, Foxtrot Bravo."

  "Be advised, Chicago Approach. We have reports of a bomb on board. Need immediate clearance to one zero thousand feet and a heading for holding pattern over unpopulated area."

  "Roger, Niner Five Foxtrot Bravo," the ATC controller said calmly. "Uhm, maintain present heading of two four zero. Cleared to ten thousand feet. We are vectoring all aircraft around you . . . Change transponder code to seven seven zero zero and squawk."

  Brad glanced uneasily at Percey as he changed the transponder setting--to the code that automatically sent a warning signal to all radar facilities in the area that Foxtrot Bravo was in trouble. Squawking meant sending out a signal from the transponder to let everyone at ATC and other aircraft know exactly which blip was the Lear.

  She heard Bell say into his phone, "Th'only person got close to the plane, 'cept for me and Percey, was the business manager, Ron Talbot--and, nothing personal to him, but my boys or I watched him like a hawk while he was doing the work, stood over his shoulder the whole time. Oh, and that guy delivered some of the engine parts came by too. From Northeast Aircraft Distributors in Greenwich. But I checked him out good. Even got his home phone and called his wife, had them talk--to make sure he was legit." Bell listened for a moment more then hung up. "They'll call us back."

  Percey looked at Brad and at Bell, then returned to the task of piloting her aircraft.

  "Fuel?" she asked her copilot. "How much time?"

  "We're under our estimated. Headwinds've been good." He did the calculations. "A hundred and five minutes."

  She thanked God, or fate, or her own intuition, for deciding not to refuel at Chicago, but to load enough to get them to Saint Louis, plus the FAA requirement for an additional forty-five minutes' flying time.

  Bell's phone chirped again.

  He listened, sighed, then asked Percey, "Did that Northeast company deliver a fire extinguisher cartridge?"

  "Shit, did he put it in there?" she asked bitterly.

  "Looks like it. The delivery truck had a flat tire just after it left the warehouse on the way to make that delivery to you. Driver was busy for about twenty minutes. Connecticut trooper just found a mess of what looks like carbon dioxide foam in the bushes right near where it happened."

  "Goddamn!" Percey glanced involuntarily toward the engine. "And I installed the fucker myself."