The Coffin Dancer

Cooper mounted another slide.
    “Hairs,” Cooper said, bent over his own ’scope. “Three, four, six, nine . . . a dozen of ’em. It looks like a continuous medulla.”
    The medulla is a canal running through the middle of a strand of some types of hair. In humans, the medulla is either nonexistent or fragmented. A continuous medulla meant the hair was animal. “What do you think, Mel?”
    “I’ll run them through the SEM.” The scanning electron microscope. Cooper ran the scale up to 1500X magnification and adjusted dials until one of the hairs was centered in the screen. It was a whitish stalk with sharp-edged scales resembling a pineapple’s skin.
    “Cat,” Rhyme announced.
    “Cats, plural,” Cooper corrected, looking into the compound ’scope again. “Looks like we’ve got a black and a calico. Both shorthairs. Then a tawny, long and fine. Persian, something like that.”
    Rhyme snorted. “Don’t think the Dancer’s profile’s that he’s an animal lover. He’s either passing for somebody with cats or’s staying with somebody who’s got ’em.”
    “More hair,” Cooper announced and mounted a slide on the compound ’scope. “Human. It’s . . . wait, two strands about six inches long.”
    “He’s shedding, huh?” Sellitto asked.
    “Who knows?” Rhyme said skeptically. Without the bulb attached, it’s impossible to determine the sexof the person who lost the strand. Age, except with an infant’s hair, was also impossible to tell. Rhyme suggested, “Maybe it’s the paint truck driver’s. Sachs? He have long hair?”
    “No. Crew cut. And it was blond.”
    “What do you think, Mel?”
    The tech scanned the length of the hair. “It’s been colored.”
    “The Dancer’s known for changing his appearance,” Rhyme said.
    “Don’t know, Lincoln,” Cooper said. “The dye’s similar to the natural shade. You’d think he’d go for something very different if he wanted to change his identity. Wait, I see two colors of dye. The natural shade is black. It’s had some auburn added, and then more recently a dark purple wash. About two to three months apart.
    “I’m also picking up a lot of residue here, Lincoln. I ought to gas one of the hairs.”
    “Do it.”
    A moment later Cooper was reading the chart on the computer connected to the GC/MS. “Okay, we’ve got some kind of cosmetic.”
    Makeup was very helpful to the criminalist; cosmetic manufacturers were notorious for changing the formulation of their products to take advantage of new trends. Different compositions could often be pinpointed to different dates of manufacture and distribution locations.
    “What do we have?”
    “Hold on.” Cooper was sending the formula to the brand-name database. A moment later he had an answer.“Slim-U-Lite. Swiss made, imported by Jencon, outside of Boston. It’s a regular detergent-based soap with oils and amino acids added. It was in the news—the FTC’s on their case for claiming that it takes off fat and cellulite.”
    “Let’s profile,” he announced. “Sachs, what do you think?”
    “About him?”
    “About her. The one aiding and abetting him. Or the one he killed to hide out in her apartment. And maybe steal her car.”
    “You’re sure it’s a woman?” wondered Lon Sellitto.
    “No. But we don’t have time to be timid in our speculations. More women are worried about cellulite than men. More women color their hair than men. Bold propositions! Come on!”
    “Well, overweight,” Sachs said. “Self-image problem.”
    “Maybe punky, New Wave, or whatever the fuck the weirdos call ’emselves nowadays,” Sellitto suggested. “My daughter turned her hair purple. Pierced some stuff too, which I don’t want to talk about. How ’bout the East Village?”
    “I don’t think she’s going for a rebel image,” Sachs said. “Not with those colors. They’re not different enough. She’s trying to be stylish and nothing she’s doing is working. I say she’s fat, with short hair, in her thirties, professional. Goes home alone to her cats at night.”
    Rhyme nodded, staring at the chart. “Lonely. Just the sort to get suckered in by somebody with a glibtongue. Let’s check veterinarians. We know she’s got three cats, three different colors.”
    “But where?” Sellitto asked. “Westchester? Manhattan?”
    “Let’s first ask,” Rhyme mulled, “why would he hook up with this woman in the first place?”
    Sachs snapped her fingers. “Because he had