The Coffin Dancer

hands.” Earl yanked the door open, reached in, and unzipped the body bag. Blood flowed out onto the floor of the ambulance.
    “Ooops.” Earl winked. “Say, Jim, after you’re through here, wanna get some spaghetti?”
    “Mebbe pig’s knuckles.”
    “There’s a thought.”
    Rhyme interrupted. “Sachs, what’s going on there? You got the body?”
    “I’ve got it. Trying to figure out the story.” To the medic she said, “We’ve gotta move on this. Anybody have any idea who he is?”
    “Wasn’t anything around to ID him. No missing persons reported. Nobody saw nothing.”
    “Any chance he’s a cop?”
    “Naw. Nobody I know,” Jim said. “You, Earl?”
    “Nup. Why?”
    Sachs didn’t answer. She said, “I need to examine him.”
    “Okay, miss,” Earl said. “How ’bout I give you a hand?”
    “Hell,” the trooper said, “sounds like he’s the one needs a hand.” He chuckled; the medic gave another of his piggy giggles.
    She climbed up in the back of the ambulance and unzipped the body bag completely.
    And because she wasn’t going to tug off her jeans and have intercourse with them or at the very least flirt back, they had no choice but to torment her further.
    “The thing is, this isn’t the kind of traffic detail you’re probably used to,” Earl said to her. “Hey, Jim, this as bad as the one you saw last week?”
    “That head we found?” The cop mused, “Hell, I’d rather have a fresh head any day than a month-er. You ever seen a month-er, honey? Now, they’re about as unpleasant as can be. Give a body three, four months in the water, hey, not a problem—mostly just bones. But you get one’s been simmering for a month . . . ”
    “Nasty,” Earl said. “Uck-o.”
    “You ever seen a month-er, honey?”
    “ ’Preciate your not saying that, Jim,” she said absently to the cop.
    “ ‘Month-er’?”
    “ ‘Honey.’”
    “Sure, sorry.”
    “Sachs,” Rhyme snapped, “what the hell is going on?”
    “No ID, Rhyme. Nobody’s got a clue as to who it is. Hands removed with a fine-bladed razor saw.”
    “Is Percey safe? Hale?”
    “They’re in the office. Banks’s with them. Away from the windows. What’s the word on the van?”
    “Should be there in ten minutes. You’ve got to find out about that body.”
    “You talking to yourself, hon—Officer?”
    Sachs studied the poor man’s body. She guessed the hands had been removed just after he’d died, or as he was dying, because of the copious amount of blood. She pulled on her latex examining gloves.
    “It’s strange, Rhyme. Why’s he only partially ID-proofed?”
    If killers don’t have time to dispose of a body completely they ID-proof it by removing the main points of identification: the hands and the teeth.
    “I don’t know,” the criminalist responded. “It’s not like the Dancer to be careless, even if he was in a hurry. What’s he wearing?”
    “Just skivvies. No clothes or other ID found at the scene.”
    “Why,” Rhyme mused, “did the Dancer pick him?”
    “ If it was the Dancer did this.”
    “How many bodies turn up like that in Westchester?”
    “To hear the locals tell it,” she said ruefully, “every other day.”
    “Tell me about the corpse. COD?”
    “You determine the cause of death?” she called to chubby Earl.
    “Strangled,” the tech said.
    But Sachs noticed right away there were no petechial hemorrhages on the inner surface of the eyelids. No damage to the tongue either. Most strangulation victims bite their tongue at some point during the attack.
    “I don’t think so.”
    Earl cast another glance at Jim and snorted. “Sure, he was. Lookit that red line on his neck. We call that a ligature mark, honey. You know, we can’t keep him here forever. They start going ripe, days like this. Now, that’s a smell you haven’t lived till you smelled.”
    Sachs frowned. “He wasn’t strangled.”
    They double-teamed her. “Hon—Officer, that’s a ligature mark,” Jim, the trooper, said. “I seen hundreds of ’em.”
    “No, no,” she said. “The perp just ripped a chain off him.”
    Rhyme broke in. “That’s probably it, Sachs. First thing you do when you’re ID-proofing a corpse, get rid of the jewelry. It was probably a Saint Christopher, maybe inscribed. Who’s there with you?”
    “A pair of cretins,” she said.
    “Oh. Well, what is the COD?”
    After a brief search she found the wound. “Ice pick or narrow-bladed knife in the back of the