The Coffin Dancer

paranoid and kept a safe house in Alexandria, Virginia. Stephen had learned where it was and finally managed to get close enough for a pistol shot—although it would be a tricky one.
    One chance, one shot . . .
    Stephen had waited for four hours, and when the victim arrived and darted toward his town house Stephen had managed to fire a single shot. Hit him, he believed, but the man had fallen out of sight in a courtyard.
    Listen to me, boy. You listening?
    Sir, yessir.
    You track down every wounded target and finish the job. You follow the blood spoor to hell and back, you have to.
    Well—
    No well about it. You confirm every kill. You understand me? This’s not an option.
    Yessir.
    Stephen had climbed over the brick wall into the man’s courtyard. He found the aide’s body sprawled on the cobblestones, beside a goat-head fountain. The shot had been fatal after all.
    But something odd had happened. Something that sent a shiver through him and very few things in life had ever made him shiver. Maybe it was just a fluke, the way the aide had fallen or the way the bullet hit him. But it appeared that someone had carefully untucked the victim’s bloody shirt and pulled it up to see the tiny entrance wound above the man’s sternum.
    Stephen had spun around, looking for whoever had done this. But, no, there was no one nearby.
    Or so he thought at first.
    Then Stephen happened to look across the courtyard. There was an old carriage house, its windows smeared and dirty, lit from behind with failing sunset light. In one of those windows he saw—or imagined he saw—a face looking out at him. He couldn’t see the man—or woman—clearly. But whoever it was didn’t seem particularly scared. They hadn’t ducked or tried to run.
    A witness, you left a witness, Soldier!
    Sir, I will eliminate the possibility of identification immediately, sir.
    But when he kicked in the door of the carriage house he found it was empty.
    Evacuate, Soldier . . .
    The face in the window . . .
    Stephen had stood in the empty building, overlooking the courtyard of the aide’s town house, lit with bold western sunlight, and turned around and around in slow, manic circles.
    Who was it? What had he been doing? Or was it just Stephen’s imagination? The way his stepfather used to see snipers in the hawk nests of West Virginia oak trees.
    The face in the window had gazed at him the way his stepfather would look at him sometimes, studying him, inspecting. Stephen, remembering what young Stephen had often thought: Did I fuck up? Did I do good? What’s he thinking about me?
    Finally he couldn’t wait any longer and he’d headed back to his hotel in Washington.
    Stephen had been shot at and beaten and stabbed. But nothing had shaken him as much as that incident in Alexandria. He’d never once been troubled by the faces of his victims, dead or alive. But the face in the window was like a worm crawling up his leg.
    Cringey . . .
    Which was exactly what he felt now, seeing the lines of officers moving toward him from both directions on Lexington. Cars were honking, drivers were angry. But the police paid no mind; they continued their dogged search. It was just a matter ofminutes until they spotted him—an athletic white man by himself, carrying a guitar case that might easily contain the best sniper rifle God put on this earth.
    His eyes went to the black, grimy windows overlooking the street.
    He prayed he wouldn’t see a face looking out.
    Soldier, the fuck you talking about?
    Sir, I—
    Reconnoiter, Soldier.
    Sir, yessir.
    A burnt, bitter smell came to him.
    He turned around and found he was standing outside a Starbucks. He walked in and while he pretended to read the menu in fact he surveyed the customers.
    At a table by herself a large woman sat in one of the flimsy, uncomfortable chairs. She was reading a magazine and nursing a tall cup of tea. She was in her early thirties, dumpy, with a broad face and a thick nose. Starbucks, he free-associated . . . Seattle . . . dyke?
    But, no, he didn’t think so. She pored over the Vogue in her hands with envy, not lust.
    Stephen bought a cup of Celestial Seasonings tea, chamomile. He picked up the container and started to walk toward a seat at the window. Stephen was just passing the woman’s table when the cup slipped from his hand and dropped onto the chair opposite her, spraying the hot tea all over the floor. She slid back in surprise, looking up at the horrified expression