The Coffin Dancer

only batch of trace exhibiting indications of bomb residue were tiny fragments of a pliable beige substance. The gas chromatograph/mass spectrometer reported it was C 5 H 8 .
    “Isoprene,” Cooper reflected.
    “What’s that?” Sachs asked.
    “Rubber,” Rhyme answered.
    Cooper continued. “I’m also reading fatty acids. Dyes, talcum.”
    “Any hardening agents?” Rhyme asked. “Clay? Magnesium carbonate? Zinc oxide?”
    “None.”
    “It’s soft rubber. Like latex.”
    “And little fragments of rubber cement too,” Cooper added, peering at a sample in the compound microscope. “Bingo,” he said.
    “Don’t tease, Mel,” Rhyme grumbled.
    “Bits of soldering and tiny pieces of plastic embedded in the rubber. Circuit boards.”
    “Part of the timer?” Sachs wondered aloud.
    “No, that was intact,” Rhyme reminded.
    He felt they were on to something here. If this was another part of the bomb, it might give them a clue as to the source of the explosive or another component.
    “We have to know for sure whether this’s from the bomb or from the plane itself. Sachs, I want you to go up to the airport.”
    “The—”
    “Mamaroneck. Find Percey and have her give you samples of anything with latex, rubber, or circuit boards that would be in the belly of a plane like the one he was flying. Near the seat of the explosion. And, Mel, send the info off to the Bureau’s Explosives Reference Collection and check Army CID—maybe there’s a latex waterproof coating of some kind the army uses for explosives. Maybe we can trace it that way.”
    Cooper began typing the request on his computer, but Rhyme noticed Sachs wasn’t pleased with her assignment.
    “You want me to go talk to her?” she asked. “To Percey?”
    “Yes. That’s what I’m saying.”
    “Okay.” She sighed. “All right.”
    “And don’t give her any crap like you’ve been doing. We need her cooperation.”
    Rhyme didn’t have a clue why she pulled on her vest so angrily and stalked out the door without saying good-bye.

 . . . Chapter Twenty-nine
    Hour 31 of 45
    A t Mamaroneck Airport Amelia Sachs saw Roland Bell lurking outside the hangar. Another six officers stood guard around the huge building. She supposed there were snipers nearby too.
    Her eye caught the hillock where she’d dropped to the ground under fire. She remembered, with a disgusted twist in her belly, the smell of the dirt mingling with the sweet cordite scent from her own impotent pistol shots.
    Turned to Bell. “Detective.”
    His eyes glanced at her once. “Hey.” Then he returned to scanning the airport. His easy southern demeanor was gone. He’d changed. Sachs realized that they shared something notorious now. They’d both had a shot at the Coffin Dancer and missed.
    They both had also been in his kill zone and survived.Bell, though, with more glory than she. His body armor, she noticed, bore stigmata: the streaks from the two slugs that had glanced off him during the safe house attack. He’d stood his ground.
    “Where’s Percey?” Sachs asked.
    “Inside. Finishing up the repairs.”
    “By herself?”
    “Think so. She’s something, she is. You wouldn’t think a woman that wasn’t so, well, attractive’d have quite the draw she does. You know?”
    Ugh. Don’t get me started.
    “Anybody else here? From the Company?” She nodded toward the Hudson Air office. There was a light on inside.
    “Percey sent ’most everybody home. Fellow’s going to be her copilot’s due here anytime. And somebody from Operations’s inside. Needs to be on duty when there’s a flight going on, I guess. I checked him out. He’s okay.”
    “So she’s really going to fly?” Sachs asked.
    “Looks that way.”
    “The plane’s been guarded the whole time?”
    “Yep, since yesterday. What’re you doing here?”
    “Need some samples for analysis.”
    “That Rhyme, he’s something too.”
    “Uh-huh.”
    “All two of you go back a ways?”
    “We’ve worked a few cases,” she said dismissingly. “He saved me from Public Affairs.”
    “That’s his good deed. Say, I hear you can really drive a nail.”
    “I can . . . ?”
    “Shoot. Sidearms. You’re on a team.”
    And here I am at the site of my latest competition, she thought bitterly. “Just weekend sport,” she muttered.
    “I do some pistol work myself, but I’ll tell you, even on a good day, with a nice, long barrel and firing single-action, fifty, sixty yards is all the far I can