The Coffin Dancer

on Stephen’s face.
    “Oh, my goodness,” he whispered, “I am sooo sorry.” He lunged for a handful of napkins. “Tell me I didn’t get any on you. Please! ”

    Percey Clay pulled away from the young detective who held her pinned to the floor.
    Ed’s mother, Joan Carney, lay a few feet away, her face frozen in shock and bewilderment.
    Brit Hale was up against the wall, covered by two strong cops. It looked as if they were arresting him.
    “I’m sorry, ma’am, Mrs. Clay,” one cop said. “We—”
    “What’s going on?” Hale seemed mystified. Unlike Ed and Ron Talbot and Percey herself, Hale had never been military, never come close to combat. He was fearless—he always wore long sleeves instead of a pilots’ traditional short-sleeve white shirt to hide the leathery burn scars on his arms from the time a few years ago he’d climbed into a flaming Cessna 150 to rescue a pilot and passenger. But the idea of malice and crime—intentional harm—was wholly alien to him.
    “We got a call from the task force,” the detective explained. “They think the man who killed Mr. Carney has been back. Probably to come after you two. Mr. Rhyme thinks the killer was the one driving that black van you saw today.”
    “Well, we have those men to guard us,” Percey snapped, tossing her head to the cops who’d arrived earlier.
    “Jesus,” Hale muttered, looking outside. “There must be twenty cops out there.”
    “Away from the window, please, sir,” the detective said firmly. “He could be on a rooftop. The site’s not secure yet.”
    Percey heard footsteps running up the stairs. “The roof?” she asked sourly. “Maybe he’s tunneling into the basement.” She put her arm around Mrs. Carney. “You all right, Mother?”
    “What’s going on, what is all this?”
    “They think you might be in danger,” the officer said. “Not you, ma’am,” he added to Ed’s mother. “Mrs. Clay and Mr. Hale here. Because they’re witnesses in that case. We were told to secure the premises and take them to the command post.”
    “They talk to him yet?” Hale asked.
    “Don’t know who that’d be, sir.”
    The lean man answered, “The guy we’re witnesses against. Hansen.” Hale’s world was the world of logic. Of reasonable people. Of machines and numbers and hydraulics. His three marriages had failed because the only place where his heart poked out was in the science of flight and the irrefutable sense of the cockpit. He now swiped his hair off his forehead and said, “Just ask him. He’ll tell you where the killer is. He hired him.”
    “Well, I don’t think it’s quite as easy as that.”
    Another officer appeared in the doorway. “Street’s secure, sir.”
    “If you’ll come with us, please. Both of you.”
    “What about Ed’s mother?”
    “Do you live in the area?” the officer asked.
    “No. I’m staying with my sister,” Mrs. Carney answered. “In Saddle River.”
    “We’ll drive you back there, have a New Jersey trooper stay outside the house. You’re not involved in this, so I’m sure there’s nothing to worry about.”
    “Oh, Percey.”
    The women hugged. “It’ll be okay, Mother.” Percey struggled to hold back the tears.
    “No, it won’t,” the frail woman said. “It’ll never be okay . . . ”
    An officer led her off to a squad car.
    Percey watched the car drive off, then asked the cop beside her, “Where’re we going?”
    “To see Lincoln Rhyme.”
    Another officer said, “We’re going to walk out together, an officer on either side of you. Keep your heads down and don’t look up under any circumstance. We’re going to walk fast to that second van there. See it? You jump in. Don’t look out the windows, and get your belts on. We’ll be driving fast. Any questions?”
    Percey opened the flask and took a sip of bourbon. “Yeah, who the hell is Lincoln Rhyme?”

    “You sewed that? Yourself?”
    “I did,” the woman said, tugging at the embroidered vest, which, like the plaid skirt she wore, was slightly too large, calculated to obscure her substantial figure. The stitching reminded him of the rings around a worm’s body. He shivered, felt sick.
    But he smiled and said, “That’s amazing.” He’d sopped up the tea and apologized like the gentleman his stepfather could sometimes be.
    He asked if she minded if he sat down with her.
    “Uhm . . . no,” she said and hid the Vogue in her canvas bag as if it were porn.
    “Oh, by the way,”