The Coffin Dancer

the back of her vest contained about a thousand cat hairs. Cats, to Stephen, were just four-legged worms.
    He looked outside and saw that the line of cops was getting closer. Stephen glanced at his watch and said, “Say, I’ve gotta pick up my cat. He’s at the vet—”
    “Oh, you have a cat? What’s his name?” She leaned forward.
    “Buddy.”
    Her eyes glowed. “Oh, cutey cutey cute. You have a picture?”
    Of a fucking cat?
    “Not on me,” Stephen said, clicked his tongue regretfully.
    “Is poor Buddy sicky-wicky?”
    “Just a checkup.”
    “Oh, good for you. Watch out for those worms.”
    “How’s that?” he asked, alarmed.
    “You know, like heartworm.”
    “Oh. Right.”
    “Uhm, if you’re good, friend,” Sheila said, singsongy again, “maybe I’ll introduce you to Garfield, Andrea, and Essie. Well, it’s really Esmeralda but she’d never approve of that, of course.”
    “They sound so wonderful,” he said, gazing at the pictures Sheila’d dug from her wallet. “I’d love to meet them.”
    “You know,” she blurted, “I only live three blocks away.”
    “Hey, got an idea.” He looked bright. “Maybe I could drop this stuff off and meet your babies. Then you could help me collect Buddy.”
    “Neat-o,” Sheila said.
    “Let’s go.”
    Outside, she said, “Ooo, look at all the police. What’s going on?”
    “Wow. Dunno.” Stephen slung the backpack over his shoulder. Something metal clinked. Maybe a flash grenade banged against his Beretta.
    “What’s in there?”
    “Musical instruments. For the kids.”
    “Oh, like triangles?”
    “Yeah, like triangles.”
    “You want me to carry your guitar?”
    “You mind?”
    “Uhm, I think it’d be neat.”
    She took the Fender case and slipped her arm through his and they walked past a cluster of cops, blind to the loving couple, and continued down the street, laughing and talking about those crazy cats.

 . . . Chapter Six
    Hour 1 of 45
    T hom appeared in Lincoln Rhyme’s doorway and motioned someone inside.
    A trim, crew-cut man in his fifties. Captain Bo Haumann, head of the NYPD’s Emergency Services Unit—the police’s SWAT team. Grizzled and tendony, Haumann looked like the drill sergeant he’d been in the service. He spoke slowly and reasonably, and he looked you dead in the eye, with a faint smile, when he talked. In tactical operations he was often suited up in flak jacket and Nomex hood and was usually one of the first officers through the door in a dynamic barricade entry.
    “It’s really him?” the captain asked. “The Dancer?”
    “S’what we heard,” Sellitto said.
    The slight pause, which from the gray-haired cop was like a loud sigh from anyone else. Then he said,“I’ve got a couple of Thirty-two-E teams dedicated.”
    Thirty-two-E officers, nicknamed after their operations room at Police Plaza, were an unkept secret. Officially called Special Procedures Officers of the Emergency Services Unit, the men and women were mostly ex-military and had been relentlessly instructed in full S&S procedures—search and surveillance—as well as assault, sniping, and hostage rescue. There weren’t many of them. The city’s tough reputation notwithstanding, there were relatively few tactical operations in New York and the city’s hostage negotiators—considered the best in the country—usually resolved standoffs before an assault was necessary. Haumann’s committing two teams, which totaled ten officers, to the Dancer would have used up most of the 32-Es.
    A moment later a slight, balding man wearing very unstylish glasses entered the room. Mel Cooper was the best lab man in IRD, the department’s Investigation and Resources Division, which Rhyme used to head. He’d never searched a crime scene, never arrested a perp, had probably forgotten how to fire the slim pistol he grudgingly wore on the back of his old leather belt. Cooper had no desire to be anywhere in the world except sitting on a lab stool, peering into microscopes and analyzing friction ridge prints (well, there and on the ballroom dance floor, where he was an award-winning tango dancer).
    “Detective,” Cooper said, using the title that Rhyme had carried when he’d hired Cooper away from Albany PD some years ago, “thought I was going to be looking at sand. But I hear it’s the Dancer.”There’s only one place the word travels faster than on the street, Rhyme reflected, and that’s inside the Police Department itself.