The Coffin Dancer

was dismayed by the size of the area.
    An hour to search? She could’ve spent an entire day here.
    Thanks loads, Rhyme.
    She hurried into the office.
    A dozen men and women, some in business suits, some in overalls, stood in clusters. They were mostly in their twenties and thirties. Sachs supposed they’d been a young and enthusiastic group until last night. Now their faces revealed a collective sorrow that had aged them quickly.
    “Is there someone named Ron Talbot here?” she asked, displaying her silver shield.
    The oldest person in the room—a woman in her fifties, with spun and sprayed hair and wearing a frumpy suit—walked up to Sachs. “I’m Sally Anne McCay,” she said. “I’m the office manager. Oh, how’s Percey?”
    “She’s all right,” Sachs said guardedly. “Where’s Mr. Talbot?”
    A brunette in her thirties wearing a wrinkled blue dress stepped out of an office and put her arm around Sally Anne’s shoulders. The older woman squeezed the younger’s hand. “Lauren, you okay?”
    Lauren, her puffy face a mask of shock, asked Sachs, “Do they know what happened yet?”
    “We’re just starting the investigation . . . Now, Mr. Talbot?”
    Sally Anne wiped tears then glanced toward an office in the corner. Sachs walked to the doorway. Inside was a bearish man with a stubbled chin and tangle of uncombed black-and-gray hair. He was poring over computer printouts, breathing heavily. He looked up, a dismal expression on his face. He’d been crying too, it seemed.
    “I’m Officer Sachs,” she said. “I’m with the NYPD.”
    He nodded. “You have him yet?” he asked, looking out the window as if he expected to see Ed Carney’s ghost float past. He turned back to her. “The killer?”
    “We’re following up on several leads.” Amelia Sachs, second-generation cop, had the art of evasion down cold.
    Lauren appeared in Talbot’s doorway. “I can’t believe he’s gone,” she gasped, an edgy panic in her voice. “Who’d do something like that? Who?” As a patrol officer—a beat cop—Sachs had delivered her share of bad news to loved ones. She never got used to the despair she heard in the voices of surviving friends and family.
    “Lauren.” Sally Anne took her colleague’s arm. “Lauren, go on home.”
    “No! I don’t want to go home. I want to know who the hell did it? Oh, Ed . . . ”
    Stepping farther into Talbot’s office, Sachs said, “Ineed your help. It looks like the killer mounted the bomb outside the plane underneath the cockpit. We have to find out where.”
    “Outside?” Talbot was frowning. “How?”
    “Magnetized and glued. The glue wasn’t completely set before the blast so it had to’ve been not long before takeoff.”
    Talbot nodded. “Whatever I can do. Sure.”
    She tapped the walkie-talkie on her hip. “I’m going to go on-line with my boss. He’s in Manhattan. We’re going to ask you some questions.” Hooked up the Motorola, headset, and stalk mike.
    “Okay, Rhyme, I’m here. Can you hear me?”
    Though they were on an areawide Special Ops frequency and should have been ten-fiveing and K’ing, according to Communications Department procedures, Sachs and Rhyme rarely bothered with radioese. And they didn’t now. His voice grumbled through the earphone, bouncing off who knew how many satellites. “Got it. Took you long enough.”
    Don’t push it, Rhyme.
    She asked Talbot, “Where was the plane before it took off? Say, an hour, hour and a quarter?”
    “In the hangar,” Talbot said.
    “You think he could’ve gotten to the plane there? After the—what do you call it? When the pilot inspects the plane?”
    “The walkaround. I suppose it’s possible.”
    “But there were people around all the time,” Lauren said. The crying fit was over and she’d wiped her face. She was calmer now and determination had replaced despair in her eyes.
    “Who are you, please?”
    “Lauren Simmons.”
    “Lauren’s our assistant operations manager,” Talbot said. “She works for me.”
    Lauren continued. “We’d been working with Stu—our chief mechanic, our former chief mechanic—to outfit the aircraft, working round the clock. We would’ve seen anybody near the plane.”
    “So,” she said, “he mounted the bomb after the plane left the hangar.”
    “Chronology!” Rhyme’s voice crackled through the headset. “Where was it from the moment it left the hangar until takeoff?”
    When she relayed this question Talbot and