The Coffin Dancer

out for certain.”
    Cooper did.
    “Petrochemical,” he answered. “Crudely refined, no additives . . . There’s iron with traces of manganese, silicon, and carbon.”
    “Wait,” Rhyme called. “Any other elements—chromium, cobalt, copper, nickel, tungsten?”
    “No.”
    Rhyme gazed at the ceiling. “The metal? It’s oldsteel, made from pig iron in a Bessemer furnace. If it were modern it’d have some of those other materials in it.”
    “And here’s something else. Coal tar.”
    “Creosote!” Rhyme cried. “I’ve got it. The Dancer’s first big mistake. His partner’s a walking road map.”
    “To where?” Sachs asked.
    “To the subway. That grease is old, the steel’s from old fixtures and tie spikes, the creosote’s from the ties. Oh, and the fragment of tile is from a mosaic. A lot of the old stations were tiled—they had pictures of something that related to the neighborhood.”
    Sachs said, “Sure—the Astor Place station’s got mosaics of the animals that John Jacob Astor traded.”
    “Grouted porcelain tile. So that’s what the Dancer wanted him for. A place to hide out. The Dancer’s friend’s probably a homeless druggie living in an abandoned siding or tunnel or station somewhere.”
    Rhyme realized that everyone was looking at a man’s shadow in the doorway. He stopped speaking.
    “Dellray?” Sellitto said uncertainly.
    The dark, somber face of Fred Dellray was focused out the window.
    “What is it?” Rhyme asked.
    “Innelman’s what it is. They stitched him up. Three hundred stitches they gave him. But it was too late. Lost too much blood. He just died.”
    “I’m sorry,” Sachs said.
    The agent lifted his hands, long sticklike fingers raised like spikes.
    Everyone in the room knew about Dellray’s longtimepartner—the one killed in the Oklahoma City federal building bombing. And Rhyme thought too of Tony Panelli—’napped downtown a few days ago. Probably dead by now, the only clue to his whereabouts the grains of curious sand.
    And now another of Dellray’s friends was gone.
    The agent paced in a threatening lope.
    “You know why he got cut, don’t you—Innelman?”
    Everyone knew; no one answered.
    “A diversion. That’s the only reason in the world. To keep us off the scent. Can you believe that? A fuckin’ di-version.” He stopped pacing abruptly. He looked at Rhyme with his frightening black eyes. “You got any leads at all, Lincoln?”
    “Not much.” He explained about the Dancer’s homeless friend, the drugs, the hidey-hole in the subway. Somewhere.
    “That’s it?”
    “Afraid so. But we still have some more evidence to look at.”
    “Evidence,” Dellray whispered contemptuously. He walked to the door, paused. “A distraction. That’s no fucking reason for a good man to die. No reason at all.”
    “Fred, wait . . . we need you.”
    But the agent didn’t hear, or he ignored Rhyme if he did. He stalked out of the room.
    A moment later the door downstairs closed with a sharp click.

 . . . Chapter Twenty-one
    Hour 24 of 45
    “H ome, sweet home,” Jodie said.
    A mattress and two boxes of old clothes, canned food. Magazines— Playboy and Penthouse and some cheap hard-core porn, which Stephen glanced at distastefully. A book or two. The fetid subway station where Jodie lived, somewhere downtown, had been closed decades ago and replaced by one up the street.
    A good place for worms, Stephen thought grimly, then pried the image from his mind.
    They’d entered the small station from the platform below. They’d made their way here—probably two or three miles from the safe house—completely underground, moving through the basements of buildings, tunnels, huge sewer pipes, and small sewer pipes. Leaving a false lead—an open manhole cover. Finally they’d entered the subway tunnel and madegood time, though Jodie was pathetically out of shape and gasped for breath trying to keep up with Stephen’s frantic pace.
    There was a door leading out to the street, barred from the inside. Slanting lines of dusty light fell through the slats in the boards. Stephen peered outside into the grim spring overcast. It was a poor part of town. Derelicts sat on street corners, bottles of Thunderbird and Colt 44 were strewn on the sidewalk, and the polka dots of crack vial caps were everywhere. A huge rat chewed something gray in the alley.
    Stephen heard a clatter behind him and turned to see Jodie dropping a handful of stolen pills into