The Coffin Dancer (Lincoln Rhyme, #2)

by Jeffery Deaver

She felt uneasy receiving gratitude—she was truly Lincoln Rhyme’s protégée there—but she now had no problem saying, “You saved my life. My ass’d be capped now if it wasn’t for you.

Oh, and one thing—he said he wears gloves all the time because he’s got a record.” Rhyme asked, “Where and for what?” “I don’t know where. But it’s for manslaughter. He said he killed this guy in his town. When he was a teenager.”

Stephen would answer and hear the man’s high-pitched voice one last time. And he’d push the transmit button that would detonate the twelve ounces of RDX in Jodie’s cell phone.

Still, Rhyme was a criminalist before anything else and he had a secret admiration for the man’s brilliance.

Their eyes locked and, mock soldier though he was, Stephen Kall had seen enough combat to know that the string of rationality within this cop had snapped and he’d become the most dangerous thing there was—a skillful soldier with no regard for his own safety.

Sachs knew the only reason he wasn’t throwing things was that he couldn’t.

There was Percey Clay. Immediately, Rhyme’s eyes dropped to the floor. He fell silent. Sure, Sachs thought. Doesn’t want to misbehave in front of his new love.

Percey glanced at Sachs and stepped forward to the shelf, poured herself and Rhyme both glasses. Sachs glared at her and she noticed, didn’t respond. “Here’s a classy lady,” Rhyme said. “I kill her partner and she still shares a drink with me. You didn’t do that, Sachs.” “Oh, Rhyme, you can be such an asshole,” Sachs spat out.

It’s just that I couldn’t fucking call anyone and tell them! I couldn’t . . . pick up . . . the fucking phone and tell anybody what was going to happen. And your friend died. Because of me.”

Jesus Christ, I’m only alive because of machines.” Another laugh. “How’s that different from you?” “You don’t understand,” he said snippily. “You’re not answering my question. How?” she demanded, unrelenting. “How’s it different?”

Amelia Sachs wanted to flee. To bolt out of here, get into her car, and tear up the roads in New Jersey or Nassau County at 120 miles an hour. She couldn’t stand to be in the same room with this woman a moment longer.

“They oughta make body armor for the soul, Amie. They oughta do that.” Good-bye, Rhyme, she thought. Good-bye.

“Rolls the plastic?” Rhyme asked. “Between his fingers?” “Usually.” Rhyme looked at Sachs and for a moment the rift between them vanished. They smiled and said simultaneously, “Fingerprints!”

“Then,” Sachs said, “we’ll take it apart.” “No, no, no, Sachs,” Rhyme said curtly. “Not you. We’ll wait for the bomb squad.”

“Trying to get those old spark plugs out. Hard enough to unseat them, not so hard you broke the ceramic.”

She was staring at the wall, the evidence charts. CS-1, CS-2 . . . “Put them together,” she said. “What?” “We’ve got three partials,” she explained. “They’re probably all from his index finger. Can’t you fit them together?”

“He’s not the Dancer anymore,” Cooper said. “He’s Stephen Robert Kall. Thirty-six. Present whereabouts unknown. LKA, fifteen years ago, an RFD number in Cumberland, West Virginia.”

He did twenty months for manslaughter when he was fifteen.” A faint laugh. “Apparently the Dancer didn’t bother to tell him that the victim was his stepfather.”

With this information and her calculator she was filling out the two basic pre-flight documents: the navigation log and the flight plan.

If the aircraft didn’t arrive at its destination within a half hour after ETA, it would be declared overdue and search-and-rescue procedures would start.

But not only was fuel expensive to begin with (and the twin Garrett turbofans burned an astonishing amount of it); it was also extremely heavy and cost a lot—in extra fuel charges—just to carry.

But he seemed to be one of those men who, when faced with loss, disappear into themselves; any sympathy would jar.

Sachs realized that they shared something notorious now. They’d both had a shot at the Coffin Dancer and missed.

The flier asked, “You’ve mounted a combustor in a Lear?” “Nope. Spark plugs in a Chevy Monza. You have to jack up the engine to reach them. Well, only in the V-eight. But who’d buy a four-cylinder car? I mean, what’s the point?” Percey looked back at the engine. “So?” Sachs persisted. “A jack?”

“Naw, I got the speed bug. And when you get that you better get the suspension bug and the transmission bug and the engine bug or you ain’t going anywhere fast.”

“Most of it’s dull. They pay you for the five percent that’s adrenaline.”

“No, there’s more than that,” Sachs replied cautiously. “Isn’t there?” Percey examined Sachs’s face. “Ed and I were incredibly close. We were husband and wife and friends and business partners . . . And yes, he was seeing someone else.”

He loved me but he needed his beautiful lovers. Always did. And, you know, I think it was harder on them. Because he always came home to me.”

“For a moment, before he kicked rudder and we started down out of the stall, we were looking straight up into the night sky. He leaned over and said, ‘Take your pick. All the stars of evening—you can have any one you want.’ ” Percey lowered her head, caught her breath. “All the stars of evening . . . ”

Take a look, Amelia. Rhyme loves you.”

He trotted up the stairs reluctantly, clutching his silly book, Dependent No More, like a Bible.

“He knows you’re a detective. I don’t think he knows where you live, or your last name. But you scare the hell out of him.” If Rhyme’s belly had been able to register the lub-dub of excitement—and pride—he’d have felt that now.

Rhyme had been fearful for others—Amelia and Thom and Lon Sellitto. But he himself didn’t believe he’d ever been afraid to die, certainly not since the accident. He wondered what it must be like to live so timidly. A mouse’s life.

He held up the book. “ ‘Chapter Three. Confronting your Demons.’ I’ve always run, you know. I never stood up to anything. I thought maybe I could stand up to him, but I couldn’t.”

Percey laughed. She called out, “On airliners, they try to keep you from realizing you’re flying. Movies, food, small windows. Where’s the fun? What’s the point?”

And in this sleek silver needle, Percey Clay felt herself flying into the heart of the sky, leaving behind the cumbersome, the heavy, the painful. Leaving behind Ed’s death and Brit’s, leaving behind even that terrible man, the devil, the Coffin Dancer. All of the hurt, all of the uncertainty, all of the ugliness were trapped far below her, and she was free.

“All we have to do is make sure we keep the plane in between those lights and everything’ll go fine.” “In between . . . ” It took a moment for the joke to register. He gazed at her deadpan face for a minute, then smiled. “You get a lotta people with that one?” “A few.”

“We’re going two hundred miles an hour a mile up in the air and you feel safe.” Bell sighed. “No, we’re going four hundred miles an hour, four miles up.” “Uh. Thanks for sharing that.”

Rhyme was, as always, impressed with Dellray’s performance. Whoever he wanted to be, he was.

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.

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.

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.

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

Rhyme asked, “Could you fly high enough to freeze the bomb mechanism?” She was amazed at how fast his mind worked. These were things that wouldn’t have occurred to her.

Airport elevation’s fifty-one eighty feet,” Brad said, reviewing the Airman’s Guide of Denver International. “We were about that outside of Chicago and the thing didn’t blow.”

The gesture seemed familiar and she remembered she’d seen Lincoln Rhyme do the same in his elaborate bed. She thought about her little speech to him. She’d meant it, of course, but hadn’t realized how true the words were. How dependent they were on fragile bits of metal and plastic.

And Percey said something that few, if any, Lear pilots had ever said, “Roger, out of ten for fifty-five thousand.”

Because of the rarified air here! She was calculating sink rate based on denser atmosphere.

“We have you, Foxtrot Bravo. Come right heading two five zero. Understand you are power-free, is that correct?” “We’re the biggest damn glider you ever saw, Denver.”

“A thermal,” she said. “Desert soaks up heat during the day and releases it all night.”