The Coffin Dancer (Lincoln Rhyme 2)

"I can't risk losing this contract."

"Hold up, miss," Dellray said. "You're not understandin' this bad guy . . . "

"He killed my husband," she responded in a flinty voice. "I understand him perfectly. But I'm not being bullied into losing this job."

Sachs's hands went to her hips. "Hey, hold up there. If there's anybody who can save your skin, it's Lincoln Rhyme. I don't think we need an attitude here."

Rhyme's voice broke into the argument. He asked calmly, "Can you give us an hour for the search?"

"An hour?" Percey considered this.

Sachs gave a laugh and turned her surprised eyes on her boss. She asked, "Search a hangar in an hour? Come on, Rhyme." Her face said: Here I am defending you and now you're pulling this? Whose side are you on?

Some criminalists assigned teams to search crime scenes. But Rhyme always insisted that Amelia Sachs search alone, just as he'd done. A single CS searcher had a focus that couldn't be achieved with other people on the scene. An hour was an extraordinarily brief time for a single person to cover a large scene. Rhyme knew this but he didn't respond to Sachs. He kept his eyes on Percey. She said, "An hour? All right. I can live with that."

"Rhyme," Sachs protested, "I'll need more time."

"Ah, but you're the best, Amelia," he joshed. Which meant the decision had already been made.

"Who can help us up there?" Rhyme asked Percey.

"Ron Talbot. He's a partner in the company and our operations manager."

Sachs jotted the name in her watch book. "Should I go now?" she asked.

"No," Rhyme responded. "I want you to wait until we have the bomb from the Chicago flight. I need you to help me analyze it."

"I only have an hour," she said testily. "Remember?"

"You'll have to wait," he grumbled. Then asked Fred Dellray, "What about the safe house?"

"Oh, we got a place you'll like," the agent said to Percey. "In Manhattan. Your taxpayer dollars be working hard. Yep, yep. U.S. marshals use it for the creme de la creme in witness protection. Only thing is, we need somebody from NYPD for baby-sitting detail. Somebody who knows and appreciates the Dancer."

And just then Jerry Banks looked up, wondering why everybody was staring at him. "What?" he asked. "What?" And tried in vain to pat down his persistent cowlick.

Stephen Kall, talker of soldier talk, shooter of soldier guns, had never in fact been a soldier.

But he now said to Sheila Horowitz, "I'm proud of my military heritage. And that's the truth."

"Some people don't--"

"No," he interrupted, "some people don't respect you for it. But that's their problem."

"It is their problem," Sheila echoed.

"You have a nice place here." He looked around the dump, filled with Conran's markdowns.

"Thank you, friend. Uhm, you, like, want something to drink? Oopsie, there I go using that old preposition the wrong way. Mom's always after me. Watching too much TV. Like, like, like. Shamie shamie."

What the fuck is she talking about?

"You live here alone?" he asked with a pleasant smile of curiosity.

"Yep, just me and the dynamic trio. I don't know why they're hiding. Those silly-billy scamps." Sheila nervously pinched the fine hem of her vest. And because he hadn't answered, she repeated, "So? Something to drink?"

"Sure."

He saw a single bottle of wine, dust encrusted, sitting on top of her refrigerator. Saved for that special occasion. Was this it?