The Coffin Dancer

might’ve eliminated prints and trace evidence, it wouldn’t destroy anything largerthat the Dancer might’ve dropped, nor would it ruin footprints or body impressions left in the mud beside the taxiway.
    But she found nothing.
    “Hell, Rhyme, not a thing.”
    “Ah, Sachs, I’ll bet there is. I’ll bet there’s plenty. Just takes a little bit more effort than most scenes. The Dancer’s not like other perps, remember.”
    Oh, that again.
    “Sachs.” His voice low and seductive. She felt a shiver. “Get into him,” Rhyme whispered. “You know what I mean.”
    She knew exactly what he meant. Hated the thought. But, oh, yes, Sachs knew. The best criminalists were able to find a place in their minds where the line between hunter and hunted was virtually nonexistent. They moved through the crime scene not as cops tracking down clues but as the perp himself, feeling his desires, lusts, fears. Rhyme had this talent. And though she tried to deny it, Sachs did too. (She’d searched a scene a month ago—a father had murdered his wife and child—and managed to find the murder weapon when no one else had. After the case she hadn’t been able to work for a week and had been plagued by flashbacks that she’d been the one who stabbed the victims to death. Saw their faces, heard their screams.)
    Another pause. “Talk to me,” he said. And finally the edginess in his voice was gone. “You’re him. You’re walking where he’s walked, you’re thinking the way he thinks . . . ”
    He’d said words like these to her before, of course. But now—as with everything else about theDancer—it seemed to her that Rhyme had more in mind than just finding obscure evidence. No, she sensed that he was desperate to know about this perp. Who he was, what made him kill.
    Another shiver. An image in her thoughts: back to the other night. The lights of the airfield, the sound of airplane engines, the smell of jet exhaust.
    “Come on, Amelia . . . You’re him. You’re the Coffin Dancer. You know Ed Carney’s on the plane; you know you have to get the bomb on board. Just think about it for a minute or two.”
    And she did, summoning up from somewhere a need to kill.
    He continued, speaking in an eerie, melodic voice. “You’re brilliant,” he said. “You have no morals whatsoever. You’ll kill anyone , you’ll do anything to get to your goal. You divert attention, you use people . . . Your deadliest weapon is deception.”
    I lay in wait.
    My deadliest weapon . . .
    She closed her eyes.
     . . . is deception.
    Sachs felt a dark hope, a vigilance, a hunt lust.
    “I—”
    He continued softly. “Is there any distraction, any diversion you can try?”
    Eyes open now. “The whole area’s empty. Nothing to distract the pilots with.”
    “Where are you hiding?”
    “The hangars’re all boarded up. The grass is too short for cover. There’re no trucks or oil drums. No alleys. No nooks.”
    In her gut: desperation. What’m I going to do? I’ve got to plant the bomb. I don’t have any time. Lights . . . there’re lights everywhere. What? What should I do?
    She said, “I can’t hide around the other side of the hangars. There’re lots of workers. It’s too exposed. They’ll see me.”
    For a moment, Sachs herself floated back into her mind and she wondered, as she often did, why Lincoln Rhyme had the power to conjure her into someone else. Sometimes it angered her. Sometimes it thrilled.
    Dropping into a crouch, ignoring the pain in her knees from the arthritis that had tormented her off and on for the past ten of her thirty-three years. “It’s all too open here. I feel exposed.”
    “What’re you thinking?”
    There’re people looking for me. I can’t let them find me. I can’t!
    This is risky. Stay hidden. Stay down.
    Nowhere to hide.
    If I’m seen, everything’s ruined. They’ll find the bomb; they’ll know I’m after all three witnesses. They’ll put them in protective custody. I’ll never get them then. I can’t let that happen.
    Feeling his panic she turned back to the only possible place to hide. The hangar beside the taxiway. In the wall facing her was a single broken window, about three by four feet. She’d ignored it because it was covered with a sheet of rotting plywood, nailed to the frame on the inside.
    She approached it slowly. The ground in front was gravel; there were no footprints.
    “There’s a boarded-up window, Rhyme. Plywood on the inside. The glass is