The Coffin Dancer

got?” Rhyme now asked her and Cooper. “Any rifle slugs?”
    Worrying a tattered bloody nail, Sachs explained, “Nothing left of them. They were explosive rounds.” She seemed very spooked, eyes flitting like birds’.
    “That’s the Dancer. Not only deadly but his evidence self-destructs.”
    Sachs prodded a plastic bag. “Here’s what’s left of one. I scraped it off a wall.”
    Cooper spilled the contents into a porcelain examining tray. He stirred them. “Ceramic tipped too. Vests’re pointless.”
    “Grade-A asshole,” Sellitto offered.
    “Oh, the Dancer knows his tools,” Rhyme said.
    There was a bustle of activity at the doorway and Thom let two suited FBI agents into the room. Behind them were Percey Clay and Brit Hale.
    Percey asked Sellitto, “How’s he doing?” Her dark eyes looked around the room, saw the coolness that greeted her. Didn’t seem fazed. “Jerry, I mean.”
    Sellitto didn’t answer.
    Rhyme said, “He’s still in surgery.”
    Her face was fretted, hair more tangled than this morning. “I hope he’ll be all right.”
    Amelia Sachs turned to Percey and said coldly, “You what?”
    “I said, I hope he’ll be all right.”
    “You hope?” The policewoman towered over her. She stepped closer. The squat woman stood her ground as Sachs continued, “Little late for that, isn’t it?”
    “What’s your problem?”
    “That’s what I oughta be asking you. You got him shot.”
    “Hey, Officer—” Sellitto said.
    Composed, Percey said, “I didn’t ask him to run after me.”
    “You’d be dead if it wasn’t for him.”
    “Maybe. We don’t know that. I’m sorry he was hurt. I—”
    “And how sorry are you?”
    “Amelia,” Rhyme said sharply.
    “No, I want to know how sorry. Are you sorry enough to give blood? To wheel him around if he can’t walk? Give his eulogy if he dies?”
    Rhyme snapped, “Sachs, take it easy. It’s not her fault.”
    Sachs slapped her hands, tipped in chewed nails, against her thighs. “It’s not?”
    “The Dancer out-thought us.”
    Sachs continued, gazing down into Percey’s dark eyes. “Jerry was baby-sitting you. When you ran into the line of fire what’d you think he was going to do?”
    “Well, I didn’t think, okay? I just reacted.”
    “Jesus.”
    “Hey, Officer,” Hale said, “maybe you act a lot cooler under pressure than some of us. But we’re not used to getting shot at.”
    “Then she should’ve stayed down. In the office. Where I told her to stay.”
    There seemed to be a slight drawl in Percey’s voice when she continued. “I saw my aircraft endangered. I reacted. Maybe for you it’s like seeing your partner wounded.”
    Hale said, “She just did what any pilot would’ve done.”
    “Exactly,” Rhyme announced. “That’s what I’m saying, Sachs. That’s the way the Dancer works.”
    But Amelia Sachs wasn’t letting go. “You should’ve been in the safe house in the first place. You never should have gone to the airport.”
    “That was Jerry’s fault,” said Rhyme, growing angrier. “He had no authority to change the route.”
    Sachs glanced at Sellitto, who’d been Banks’s partnerfor two years. But apparently he wasn’t about to stand up for the young man.
    “This’s been real pleasant,” Percey Clay said dryly, turning toward the door. “But I’ve got to get back to the airport.”
    “What?” Sachs almost gasped. “Are you crazy?”
    “That’s impossible,” Sellitto said, emerging from his gloom.
    “It was bad enough just trying to get my aircraft outfitted for the flight tomorrow. Now we’ve got to repair the damage too. And since it looks like every certified mechanic in Westchester’s a damn coward I’m going to have to do the work myself.”
    “Mrs. Clay,” Sellitto began, “not a good idea. You’ll be okay in the safe house but there’s no way we can guarantee your safety anywhere else. You stay there until Monday, you’ll be—”
    “Monday,” she blurted. “Oh, no. You don’t understand. I’m driving that aircraft tomorrow night—the charter for U.S. Medical.”
    “You can’t—”
    “A question,” asked the icy voice of Amelia Sachs. “Could you tell me exactly who else you want to kill?”
    Percey stepped forward. She snapped, “Goddamn it, I lost my husband and one of my best employees last night. I’m not losing my company too. You can’t tell me where I’m going or not. Not unless I’m under arrest.”
    “Okay,” Sachs said, and