The Coffin Dancer

“We’ll get him this time, Lincoln. We’ll get him.”
    As Banks briefed the newcomers Rhyme happened to look up. He saw a woman in the doorway of the lab. Dark eyes scanning the room, taking it all in. Not cautious, not uneasy.
    “Mrs. Clay?” he asked.
    She nodded. A lean man appeared in the doorway beside her. Britton Hale, Rhyme assumed.
    “Please come in,” the criminalist said.
    She stepped into the middle of the room, glancing at Rhyme, then at the wall of forensic equipment near Mel Cooper.
    “Percey,” she said. “Call me Percey. You’re Lincoln Rhyme?”
    “That’s right. I’m very sorry about your husband.”
    She nodded briskly, seemed uncomfortable with the sympathy.
    Just like me, Rhyme thought.
    He asked the man standing beside Percey, “And you’re Mr. Hale?”
    The lanky pilot nodded and stepped forward to shake hands, then noticed Rhyme’s arms were strapped to the wheelchair. “Oh,” he muttered, then blushed. He stepped back.
    Rhyme introduced them to the rest of the team, everyone except Amelia Sachs, who—at Rhyme’s insistence—was changing out of her uniform and putting on the jeans and sweatshirt that happened to be hanging upstairs in Rhyme’s closet. He’d explainedthat the Dancer often killed or wounded cops as a diversion; he wanted her to look as civilian as possible.
    Percey pulled a flask from her slacks pocket, a silver flask, and took a short sip. She drank the liquor—Rhyme smelled expensive bourbon—as if it were medicine.
    Betrayed by his own body, Rhyme rarely paid attention to the physical qualities in others, except victims and perps. But Percey Clay was hard to ignore. She wasn’t much over five feet tall. Yet she radiated a distilled intensity. Her eyes, black as midnight, were captivating. Only after you managed to look away from them did you notice her face, which was unpretty—pug and tomboyish. She had a tangle of black curly hair, cropped short, though Rhyme thought that long tresses would soften the angular shape of her face. She didn’t adopt the cloaking mannerisms of some short people—hands on hips, crossed arms, hands hovering in front of the mouth. She offered as few gratuitous gestures as Rhyme did, he realized.
    A sudden thought came to him: she’s like a Gypsy.
    He realized that she was studying him too. And hers seemed to be a curious reaction. Seeing him for the first time, most people slap a dumb grin on their faces, blush red as fruit, and force themselves to stare fixedly at Rhyme’s forehead so their eyes won’t drop accidentally to his damaged body. But Percey looked once at his face—handsome with its trim lips and Tom Cruise nose, a face younger than its forty-some years—and once at his motionless legs and arms andtorso. But her attention focused immediately on the crip equipment—the glossy Storm Arrow wheelchair, the sip-and-puff controller, the headset, the computer.
    Thom entered the room and walked up to Rhyme to take his blood pressure.
    “Not now,” his boss said.
    “Yes now.”
    “No.”
    “Be quiet,” Thom said and took the pressure reading anyway. He pulled off the stethoscope. “Not bad. But you’re tired and you’ve been way too busy lately. You need some rest.”
    “Go away,” Rhyme grumbled. He turned back to Percey Clay. Because he was a crip, a quad, because he was merely a portion of a human being, visitors often seemed to think he couldn’t understand what they were saying; they spoke slowly or even addressed him through Thom. Percey now spoke to him conversationally and earned many points from him for doing this. “You think we’re in danger, Brit and me?”
    “Oh, you are. Serious danger.”
    Sachs walked into the room and glanced at Percey and Rhyme.
    He introduced them.
    “Amelia?” Percey asked. “Your name’s Amelia ?”
    Sachs nodded.
    A faint smile passed over Percey’s face. She turned slightly and shared it with Rhyme.
    “I wasn’t named after her—the flier,” Sachs said, recalling, Rhyme guessed, that Percey was a pilot.“One of my grandfather’s sisters. Was Amelia Earhart a hero?”
    “No,” Percey said. “Not really. It’s just kind of a coincidence.”
    Hale said, “You’re going to have guards for her, aren’t you? Full-time?” He nodded at Percey.
    “Sure, you bet,” Dellray said.
    “Okay,” Hale announced. “Good . . . One thing. I was thinking you really ought to have a talk with that guy. Phillip Hansen.”
    “A talk?” Rhyme