The Coffin Dancer

him,” Rhyme said to Jodie. “Some facts , some nutritional information. I want to know more.”
    “I—”
    “Think hard.”
    Jodie squinted. Rhyme supposed he was considering what he could say to mollify them, superficial impressions. But he was surprised when Jodie said, “Well, for one thing, he’s afraid of you.”
    “Us?” Rhyme asked.
    “No. Just you.”
    “Me?” he asked, astonished. “He knows about me?”
    “He knows your name’s Lincoln. And that you’re out to get him.”
    “How?”
    “I don’t know,” the man said, then added, “you know, he made a couple of calls on that cell phone. And he listened for a long time. I was thinking—”
    “Oh, hellfire,” Dellray sang out. “He’s tapping somebody’s line.”
    “Of course!” Rhyme cried. “Probably the Hudson Air office. That’s how he found out about the safe house. Why didn’t we think about that?”
    Dellray said, “We gotta sweep the office. But the bug might be in a relay box somewheres. We’ll find it. We’ll find it.” He placed a call to the Bureau’s tech services.
    To Jodie, Rhyme said, “Go on. What else does he know about me?”
    “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.
    Let’s see, Stephen Kall, if we can’t give you a little more to be afraid of.
    “You helped us once, Jodie. I need you to help us again.”
    “Are you crazy?”
    “Shut the fuck up,” Dellray barked. “And listen t’what the man’s sayin’, hokay? Hokay?”
    “I did what I said I would. I’m not doing anything more.” The whine really was too much. Rhyme glanced at Sellitto. This called for people skills.
    “It’s in your interest,” Sellitto said reasonably, “to help us.”
    “Gettin’ shot in the back ’s in my interest? Gettin’ shot in the head ’s in my interest? Uh-huh. I see. You wanna explain that?”
    “Sure, I’ll fucking explain it,” Sellitto grumbled. “The Dancer knows you dimed him. He didn’t have to target you back there at the safe house, right? Am I right?”
    Always get the mutts to talk. To participate. Sellitto had often explained the ways of interrogation to Lincoln Rhyme.
    “Yeah. I guess.”
    Sellitto motioned Jodie closer with a crooked finger. “It woulda been the smart thing for him just to take off. But he went to the trouble to take up asniper position and try to cap your ass. Now, what’s that tell us?”
    “I—”
    “It tells us that he ain’t gonna rest till he clips you.”
    Dellray, happy to play straight man for a change, said, “And he’s the sort I don’t think you wanna have knocking on yo’ door at three in the morning—this week, next month, or next year. We all together on that?”
    “So,” Sellitto resumed snappily, “agreed that it’s in your interest to help us?”
    “But you’ll give me, like, witness protection?”
    Sellitto shrugged. “Yes and no.”
    “Huh?”
    “If you help us, yes. If you don’t, no.”
    Jodie’s eyes were red and watery. He seemed so afraid. In the years since his accident 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.
    Too many ways to die . . .
    Sellitto, slipping into his good-cop persona, offered a faint smile to Jodie. “You were there when he killed that agent, in the basement, right?”
    “I was there, yeah.”
    “That man could be alive now. And Brit Hale could be alive now. A lot of other people could too . . . if somebody’d helped us stop this asshole a coupla years ago. Well, you can help us stop him now. You can keep Percey alive, maybe dozens of others. You can do that.”
    This was Sellitto’s genius at work. Rhyme would have bullied and coerced and, in a pinch, bribed the little man. But it never occurred to him to appeal to the splinter of decency that the detective, at least, could see within him.
    Jodie absently riffled the pages in his book with a filthy thumb. Finally he looked up and—with surprising sobriety—said, “When I was taking him to my place, in the subway, a couple times I thought I’d maybe push him into a sewer interceptor pipe. The water goes real fast there. Wash him right down to