The Coffin Dancer

reflected glint of the pale clouds overhead.
    “Over there,” she cried, pointing, to two county cops huddling in their cruiser.
    The troopers rolled into their car and took off, skidding behind a nearby hangar to flank him.
    “Sachs,” Rhyme called through her headset. “What’s—”
    “Jesus, Rhyme, he’s on the field, shooting at the plane.”
    “What?”
    “Percey’s trying to get to the hangar. He’s shooting explosive slugs. He’s shooting to draw her out.”
    “You stay down, Sachs. If Percey’s going to kill herself, let her. But you stay down!”
    She was sweating furiously, hands shaking, heart pounding. She felt the quiver of panic run down her back.
    “Percey!” Sachs cried.
    The woman had broken free from Jerry Banks and rolled to her feet. She was speeding toward the hangar door.
    “No!”
    Oh, hell.
    Sachs’s eyes were on the spot where she’d seen the flare of the Dancer’s ’scope.
    Too far, it’s too far, she thought. I can’t hit anything at that distance.
    If you stay calm, you can. You’ve got eleven rounds left. There’s no wind. Trajectory’s the only problem. Aim high and work down.
    She saw several leaves fly outward as the Dancer fired again.
    An instant later a bullet passed within inches of her face. She felt the shock wave and heard the snap as the slug, traveling twice the speed of sound, burned the air around her.
    She uttered a faint whimper and dropped to her stomach, cowering.
    No! You had a chance to shoot. Before he rechambered. But it’s too late now. He’s locked and loaded again.
    She looked up fast, lifted her gun, then lost her nerve. Head down, the Glock pointed generally in the direction of the trees, she fired five fast shots.
    But she might as well have been shooting blanks.
    Come on, girl. Get up. Aim and shoot. You got six left and two clips on your belt.
    But the thought of the near miss kept her pinned to the ground.
    Do it! she raged at herself.
    But she couldn’t.
    All Sachs had the courage for was to raise her head a few inches—just far enough to see Percey Clay, sprinting, race to the hangar door just as Jerry Banks caught up with her. The young detective shoved her down to the ground behind a generator cart. Almost simultaneously with the rolling boom of the Coffin Dancer’s rifle there came the sickening crack of the bullet striking Banks, who spun about like a drunk as blood puffed into a cloud around him.
    And on his face, first a look of surprise, then of bewilderment, then of nothing whatsoever as he spiraled down to the damp concrete.

 . . . Chapter Twelve
    Hour 5 of 45
    “W ell?” Rhyme asked.
    Lon Sellitto folded up his phone. “They still don’t know.” Eyes out the window of Rhyme’s town house, tapping the glass compulsively. The falcons had returned to the ledge but kept their eyes vigilantly on Central Park, uncharacteristically oblivious to the noise.
    Rhyme had never seen the detective this upset. His doughy, sweat-dotted face was pale. A legendary homicide investigator, Sellitto was usually unflappable. Whether he was reassuring victims’ families or relentlessly punching holes in a suspect’s alibi, he always concentrated on the job before him. But at the moment his thoughts seemed miles away, with Jerry Banks, in surgery—maybe dying—in a Westchester hospital. It was now three on Saturday afternoon andBanks had been in the operating room for an hour.
    Sellitto, Sachs, Rhyme, and Cooper were on the ground floor of Rhyme’s town house, in the lab. Dellray had left to make sure the safe house was ready and to check out the new baby-sitter the NYPD was providing to replace Banks.
    At the airport they’d loaded the wounded young detective into the ambulance—the same one containing the dead, handless painting contractor. Earl, the medic, had stopped being an asshole long enough to work feverishly to stop Banks’s torrential bleeding. Then he’d sped the pale, unconscious detective to the emergency room several miles away.
    FBI agents from White Plains got Percey and Hale into an armored van and started south to Manhattan, using evasive driving techniques. Sachs worked the new crime scenes: the sniper’s nest, the painter’s van, and the Dancer’s getaway wheels—a catering van. It was found not far from where he’d killed the contractor and where, they guessed, he’d have hidden the car he’d driven to Westchester in.
    Then she’d sped back to Manhattan with the evidence.
    “What’ve we