The Coffin Dancer

it . . . He’ll see you. He’ll gofor a head shot—amateurs always do—and you’ll die.
    She tensed, eyes on Dellray’s Sig-Sauer.
    No . . .
    The instant Talbot looked back at the elevator Sachs leapt for the floor and snagged Dellray’s weapon as she rolled. But Talbot saw her. Before she could lift the large automatic he shoved the Glock at her face, squinting as he started to pull the trigger in panic.
    “No!” Rhyme shouted.
    The gunshot was deafening. Windows rattled and the falcons took off into the sky.
    Sellitto scrambled for his weapon. The door burst open and Eliopolos’s officers ran into the room, their own pistols drawn.
    Ron Talbot, the tiny red hole in his temple, stood perfectly still for an instant, then dropped in a spiral to the ground.
    “Oh, brother,” said Mel Cooper, frozen in position, holding an evidence bag and staring down at his skinny little .38 Smith & Wesson, held in Roland Bell’s steady hand, pointing out from beside the tech’s elbow. “Oh, my.” The detective had eased up behind Cooper and slipped the weapon off the narrow belt holster on the back of the tech’s belt. Bell had fired from the hip—well, from Cooper’s hip.
    Sachs rose to her feet and lifted her Glock out of Talbot’s hand. She felt for a pulse, shook her head.
    The wailing filled the room as Percey Clay dropped to her knees over the body and, sobbing, pounded her fist into Talbot’s dense shoulder againand again. No one moved for a long moment. Then both Amelia Sachs and Roland Bell started toward her. They paused and it was Sachs who backed away and let the lanky detective put his arm around the petite woman and lead her from the body of her friend and enemy.

 . . . Chapter Forty-one
    A little thunder, a sprinkling of spring rain late at night.
    The window was open wide—not the falcon window, of course; Rhyme didn’t like them disturbed—and the room was filled with cool evening air.
    Amelia Sachs popped the cork and poured Cakebread chardonnay into Rhyme’s tumbler and her glass.
    She looked down and gave a faint laugh.
    “I don’t believe it.”
    On the computer beside the Clinitron was a chess program.
    “You don’t play games,” she said. “I mean, I’ve never seen you play games.”
    “Hold on,” he said to her.
    On the screen: I did not understand what you just said. Please try again.
    In a clear voice he said, “Rook to queen’s bishop four. Checkmate.”
    A pause. The computer said, Congratulations , followed by a digitized version of Sousa’s “Washington Post” march.
    “It’s not for entertainment,” he said churlishly. “Keeps the mind sharp. It’s my Nautilus machine. You want to play sometime, Sachs?”
    “I don’t play chess,” she said after a swallow of the fine wine. “Some damn knight goes for my king, I’d rather blow him away than figure out how to outsmart him. How much did they find?”
    “Money? That Talbot had hidden? Over five million.”
    After the auditors had gone through the second set of books, the real books, they found that Hudson Air was an extremely profitable company. Losing the aircraft and the U.S. Medical contract would sting, but there was plenty of cash to keep the company, as Percey told him, “aloft.”
    “Where’s the Dancer?”
    “In SD.”
    Special Detention was a little-known facility in the Criminal Courts Building. Rhyme had never seen the place—few cops had—but in thirty-five years no one had ever broken out of it.
    “Coped his talons pretty good,” Percey Clay had said when Rhyme told her this. Which means, she explained, the filing down of a hunting falcon’s claws.
    Rhyme—given his special interest in the case—insisted on being informed about the Dancer’s tenurein SD. He’d heard from the guards that he’d been asking about windows in the facility, what floor they were on, what part of town the facility was located in.
    “Do I smell a service station nearby?” he’d asked cryptically.
    When he’d heard this, Rhyme had immediately called Lon Sellitto and asked him to call the head of the detention center and double the guard.
    Amelia Sachs took another fortifying sip of wine, and whatever was coming was coming now.
    She inhaled deeply then blurted, “Rhyme, you should go for it.” Another sip. “I wasn’t sure I was going to say that.”
    “Beg pardon?”
    “She’s right for you. It could be real good.”
    They rarely had trouble looking at each other’s eyes. But, rough