The Coffin Dancer (Lincoln Rhyme 2)

"Officer Sachs? Hellooo?" The trooper she'd spoken to outside stepped into the doorway. "I've done a fast visual of everybody here in uniform and the detectives too. No unknowns. And no reports of any state or Westchester officers missing. But our Central Dispatch told me something maybe you oughta know about. Might be nothing, but--"

"Tell me."

Percey Clay said, "Officer, I have to talk to you . . . "

Sachs ignored her and nodded to the trooper. "Go on."

"Traffic Patrol in White Plains, about two miles away. They found a body in a Dumpster. Think he was killed about an hour ago, maybe less."

"Rhyme, you hear?"

"Yes."

Sachs asked the cop, "Why d'you think that's important?"

"It's the way he was killed. Was a hell of a mess."

"Ask him if the hands and face were missing," Rhyme asked.

"What?"

"Ask him!"

She did, and everyone in the office stopped talking and stared at Sachs.

The trooper blinked in surprise and said, "Yes ma'am, Officer. Well, the hands at least. The dispatcher didn't say anything about the face. How'd you know . . . ?"

Rhyme blurted, "Where's it now? The body?"

She relayed the question.

"In a coroner's bus. They're taking it to the county morgue."

"No," Rhyme said. "Have them get it to you, Sachs. I want you to examine it."

"The--"

"Body," he said. "It's got the answer to how he's going to come at you. I don't want Percey and Hale moved until we know what we're up against."

She told the cop Rhyme's request.

"Okay," he said. "I'll get on it. That's . . . You mean you want the body here."

"Yes. Now."

"Tell 'em to get it there fast, Sachs," Rhyme said. He sighed. "Oh, this is bad. Bad."

And Sachs had the uneasy thought that Rhyme's urgent grief was not only for the man who had died so violently, whoever he was, but for those who, maybe, were just about to.

People believe that the rifle is the important tool for a sniper, but that's wrong. It's the telescope.

What do we call it, Soldier? Do we call it a telescopic sight? Do we call it a 'scope?

Sir, we do not. It's a telescope. This one is a Redfield, three-by-nine variable, with crosshair reticles. There is none better, sir.

The telescope Stephen was mounting on top of the Model 40 was twelve and three-quarters inches long and weighed just over twelve ounces. It had been matched to this particular rifle with corresponding serial numbers and had been painstakingly adjusted for focus. The parallax had been fixed by the optical engineer in the factory so that the crosshairs resting on the lip of a man's heart five hundred yards away would not move perceptibly when the sniper's head eased from left to right. The eye relief was so accurate that the recoil would knock the eyepiece back to within one millimeter of Stephen's eyebrow and yet never touch a hair.

The Redfield telescope was black and sleek, and Stephen kept it draped in velvet and nestled in a Styrofoam block in his guitar case.