The Coffin Dancer

officer should note. “But what does ‘funny’ mean?”
    “A sour smell. Chemical. Can’t place it.”
    Then he realized that something didn’t make sense.
    “Sachs,” he asked abruptly. “Did you open the refrigerator door?”
    “No. I found it that way. It’s propped open with a chair, looks like.”
    Why? Rhyme wondered. Why’d he do that? He thought furiously.
    “That smell, it’s stronger. Smokey.”
    The woman’s a distraction! Rhyme thought suddenly. He left the door open to make sure the entry team would focus on it.
    Oh, no, not again!
    “Sachs! That’s fuse you’re smelling. A time-delay fuse. There’s another bomb! Get out now! He left the refrigerator door open to lure us inside.”
    “What?”
    “It’s a fuse! He’s set a bomb. You’ve got seconds. Get out! Run!”
    “I can get the tape. On her mouth.”
    “Get the fuck out!”
    “I can get it . . . ”
    Rhyme heard a rustle, a faint gasp, and seconds later, the ringing bang of the explosion, like a sledgehammer on a boiler.
    It stunned his ear.
    “No!” he cried. “Oh, no!”
    He glanced at Sellitto, who was staring at Rhyme’s horrified face. “What happened, what happened?” the detective was calling.
    A moment later Rhyme could hear through the earpiece a man’s voice, panicky, shouting, “We’ve got a fire. Second floor. The walls’re gone. They’re gone . . . We got injuries . . . Oh, God. What happened to her? Look at the blood. All the blood! We need help. Second floor! Second floor . . . ”

    Stephen Kall walked a circle around the Twentieth Precinct on the Upper West Side.
    The station house wasn’t far from Central Park and he caught a glimpse of the trees. The cross street the precinct house was located on was guarded, butsecurity wasn’t too bad. There were three cops in front of the low building, looking around nervously. But there were none on the east side of the station house, where a thick steel grille covered the windows. He guessed that this was the lockup.
    Stephen continued around the corner and then walked south to the next cross street. There were no blue sawhorses closing off this street, but there were guards—two more cops. They eyed every car and pedestrian that passed. He studied the building briefly then continued yet another block south and circled around the west side of the precinct. He slipped through a deserted alley, took his binoculars from his backpack, and gazed at the station house.
    Can you use this, Soldier?
    Sir, yes, I can, sir.
    In a parking lot beside the station house was a gas pump. An officer was filling his squad car with gas. It never occurred to Stephen that police cars wouldn’t buy their gas at Amoco or Shell stations.
    For a long moment he gazed at the pump through his small, heavy Leica binoculars, then put them back into the bag and hurried west, conscious, as always, of people on the lookout for him.

 . . . Chapter Sixteen
    Hour 12 of 45
    “S achs!” Rhyme cried again.
    Damnit, what was she thinking of? How could she be so careless?
    “What happened?” Sellitto asked again. “What’s going on?”
    What happened to her?
    “A bomb in the Horowitz apartment,” Rhyme said hopelessly. “Sachs was inside when it went off. Call them. Find out what happened. On the speakerphone.”
    All the blood . . .
    An interminable three minutes later Sellitto was patched through to Dellray.
    “Fred,” Rhyme shouted, “how is she?”
    A harrowing pause before he answered.
    “Ain’t good, Lincoln. We’re just gettin’ the fire outnow. It was an AP of some kind. Shit. We shoulda looked first. Fuck.”
    Antipersonnel booby traps were usually plastic explosive or TNT and often contained shrapnel or ball bearings—to inflict the most damage they could.
    Dellray continued. “Took a coupla walls down and burned mosta the place out.” A pause. “I have to tell you, Lincoln. We . . . found . . . ” Dellray’s voice—usually so steady—now waffled uneasily.
    “What?” Rhyme demanded.
    “Some body parts . . . A hand. Part of an arm.”
    Rhyme closed his eyes and felt a horror he hadn’t felt in years. An icy stab through his insentient body. His breath came out in a low hiss.
    “Lincoln—” Sellitto began.
    “We’re still searching,” Dellray continued. “She might not be dead. We’ll find her. Get her to the hospital. We’ll do everything we can. You know we will.”
    Sachs, why the hell did you do it? Why did I let