The Coffin Dancer

or moody landscapes by George Inness but with very different objets d’art: density-gradient tubes, computers, compound microscopes, comparison ’scopes, a gas chromatograph/mass spectrometer, a PoliLight alternative light source, fuming frames for raising friction ridge prints. A very expensive scanning electron microscope hooked to an energy dispersive X-ray unit sat prominently in the corner. Here too were the mundane tools of the criminalist’s trade: goggles, latex and cut-resistant gloves, beakers, screwdrivers and pliers, postmortem finger spoons, tongs, scalpels, tongue depressors, cotton swabs, jars, plastic bags, examining trays, probes. A dozen pairs of chopsticks (Rhyme ordered his assistants to lift evidence the way they picked up dim sum at Ming Wa’s).
    Rhyme steered the sleek, candy-apple red Storm Arrow into position beside the worktable. Thom placed the microphone over his head and booted up the computer.
    A moment later Sellitto and Banks appeared in the doorway, joined by another man who’d just arrived. He was tall and rangy, with skin as dark as tires. He was wearing a green suit and an unearthly yellow shirt.
    “Hello, Fred.”
    “Lincoln.”
    “Hey.” Sachs nodded to Fred Dellray as she entered the room. She’d forgiven him for arresting her not long ago—an interagency squabble—and they now had a curious affinity, this tall, beautiful cop andthe tall, quirky agent. They were both, Rhyme had decisively concluded, people cops (he himself being an evidence cop). Dellray trusted forensics as little as Rhyme trusted the testimony of witnesses. As for former beat cop Sachs, well, there was nothing Rhyme could do about her natural proclivities but he was determined that she push those talents aside and become the best criminalist in New York, if not the country. A goal that was easily within her grasp, even if she herself didn’t know it.
    Dellray loped across the room, stationed himself beside the window, crossed his lanky arms. No one—Rhyme included—could peg the agent exactly. He lived alone in a small apartment in Brooklyn, loved to read literature and philosophy, and loved even more to play pool in tawdry bars. Once the jewel in the crown of the FBI’s undercover agents, Fred Dellray was still referred to occasionally by the nickname he’d had when he was in the field: “The Chameleon”—a tribute to his uncanny skill at being whoever his undercover role required he be. He had over a thousand arrests to his credit. But he’d spent too much time undercover and had become “overextended,” as the Bureau-ese went. It was only a matter of time before he’d be recognized by some dealer or warlord and killed. So he’d reluctantly agreed to take an administrative job running other undercover agents and CIs—confidential informants.
    “So, mah boys tell me we got us the Dancer hisself,” the agent muttered, the patois less Ebonics than, well . . . pure Dellray. His grammar and vocabulary, like his life, were largely improvised.
    “Any word on Tony?” Rhyme asked.
    “My boy gone missing?” Dellray asked, his face screwing up angrily. “Not. A. Thing.”
    Tony Panelli, the agent who’d disappeared from the Federal Building several days before, had left behind a wife at home, a gray Ford with a running engine, and a number of grains of infuriatingly mysterious sand—the sensuous asteroids that promised answers but had so far delivered none.
    “When we catch the Dancer,” Rhyme said, “we’ll get back on it, Amelia and me. Full-time. Promise.”
    Dellray angrily tapped the unlit tip of a cigarette nestling behind his left ear. “The Dancer . . . Shit. Better nail his ass this time. Shit.”
    “What about the hit?” Sachs asked. “The one last night. Have any details?”
    Sellitto read through the wad of faxes and some of his own handwritten notes. He looked up. “Ed Carney took off from Mamaroneck Airport around seven-fifteen last night. The company—Hudson Air—they’re a private charterer. They fly cargo, corporate clients, you know. Lease out planes. They’d just gotten a new contract to fly—get this—body parts for transplants to hospitals around the Midwest and East Coast. Hear it’s a real competitive business nowadays.”
    “Cutthroat,” Banks offered and was the only one who smiled at his joke.
    Sellitto continued. “The client was U.S. Medical and Healthcare. Based up in Somers. One of those for-profit hospital chains. Carney had a