The Coffin Dancer

you?
    I should never—
    Then a crackle sounded in his ear. A pop as loud as a firecracker. “Could somebody . . . I mean, Jesus, could somebody get this off me?”
    “Sachs?” Rhyme called into the microphone. He was sure the voice was hers. Then it sounded like she was choking and retching.
    “Uck,” she said. “Oh, boy . . . This’s gross.”
    “Are you all right?” He turned to the speakerphone. “Fred, where is she?”
    “Is that you, Rhyme?” she asked. “I can’t hear anything. Somebody talk to me!”
    “Lincoln,” Dellray called. “We got her! She’s A-okay. She’s all right.”
    “Amelia?”
    He heard Dellray shouting for medics. Rhyme, whose body hadn’t shivered for some years, noted that his left ring finger was trembling fiercely.
    Dellray came back on. “She can’t hear too good, Lincoln. What happened was . . . looks like what happened was it was the woman’s body we saw. Horowitz. Sachs pulled it out of the fridge just ’fore the bang. The corpse took mosta the blast.”
    Sellitto said, “I see that look, Lincoln. Give her a break.”
    But he didn’t.
    In a fierce growl he said, “What the hell were you thinking of, Sachs? I told you it was a bomb. You should’ve known it was a bomb and bailed out.”
    “Rhyme, is that you?”
    She was faking. He knew she was.
    “Sachs—”
    “I had to get the tape, Rhyme. Are you there? I can’t hear you. It was plastic packing tape. We need to get one of his prints. You said so yourself.”
    “Honestly,” he snapped, “you’re impossible.”
    “Hello? Hello-o? Can’t hear a word you’re saying.”
    “Sachs, don’t give me any crap.”
    “I’m going to check something, Rhyme.”
    There was silence for a moment.
    “Sachs? . . . Sachs, you there? What the hell . . . ?”
    “Rhyme, listen—I just hit the tape with the PoliLight. And guess what? There’s a partial on it! I’ve got one of the Dancer’s prints!”
    That stopped him for a moment but he soon resumed his tirade again. He was well into his lecture before he realized that he was reading the riot act to an empty line.

    She was sooty and had a stunned look about her.
    “No dressing-down, Rhyme. It was stupid but I didn’t think about it. I just moved.”
    “What happened?” he asked. His stern visage had fallen away momentarily, he was so happy to see her alive.
    “I was halfway inside. I saw the AP charge behind the door and didn’t think I could make it out in time. I grabbed the woman’s body out of the fridge. I was going to pull her to the kitchen window. It blew before I got halfway there.”
    Mel Cooper looked over the bag of evidence Sachs handed him. He examined the soot and fragments from the bomb. “M forty-five charge. TNT, with a rocker switch and forty-five-second fuse delay. The entry team knocked it over when they rammed the door; that ignited the fuse. There’s graphite, so it’s newer-formulation TNT. Very powerful, very bad.”
    “Fucker,” Sellitto spat out. “Time delay . . . He wanted to make sure as many people got into the room as possible ’fore it blew.”
    Rhyme asked, “Anything traceable?”
    “Off-the-shelf military. Won’t lead us anywhere except—”
    “To the asshole gave it to him,” Sellitto muttered.“Phillip Hansen.” The detective’s phone rang and he took the call, lowered his head as he listened, nodding.
    “Thank you,” he said finally, shut off the phone.
    “What?” Sachs asked.
    The detective’s eyes were closed.
    Rhyme knew it was about Jerry Banks.
    “Lon?”
    “It’s Jerry.” The detective looked up. Sighed. “He’ll live. But he lost his arm. They couldn’t save it. Too much damage.”
    “Oh, no,” Rhyme whispered. “Can I talk to him?”
    “No,” the detective said. “He’s asleep.”
    Rhyme thought of the young man, pictured him saying the wrong thing at the wrong time, poking at his cowlick, rubbing a razor cut on his smooth, pink chin. “I’m sorry, Lon.”
    The detective shook his head, much the same way Rhyme deflected bouquets of sympathy. “We got other things to worry about.”
    Yes, they did.
    Rhyme noticed the plastic packing tape—the gag the Dancer had used. He could see, as could Sachs, a faint lipstick mark on the adhesive side.
    Sachs was staring at the evidence, but it wasn’t a clinical look. Not a scientist’s gaze. She was troubled.
    “Sachs?” he asked.
    “Why’d he do that?”
    “The bomb?”
    She shook her head. “Why’d