The Coffin Dancer (Lincoln Rhyme 2)

. . . Chapter Twelve

Hour 5 of 45

"Well?" Rhyme asked.

Lon Sellitto folded up his phone. "They still don't know." Eyes out the window of Rhyme's town house, tapping the glass compulsively. The falcons had returned to the ledge but kept their eyes vigilantly on Central Park, uncharacteristically oblivious to the noise.

Rhyme had never seen the detective this upset. His doughy, sweat-dotted face was pale. A legendary homicide investigator, Sellitto was usually unflappable. Whether he was reassuring victims' families or relentlessly punching holes in a suspect's alibi, he always concentrated on the job before him. But at the moment his thoughts seemed miles away, with Jerry Banks, in surgery--maybe dying--in a Westchester hospital. It was now three on Saturday afternoon and Banks had been in the operating room for an hour.

Sellitto, Sachs, Rhyme, and Cooper were on the ground floor of Rhyme's town house, in the lab. Dellray had left to make sure the safe house was ready and to check out the new baby-sitter the NYPD was providing to replace Banks.

At the airport they'd loaded the wounded young detective into the ambulance--the same one containing the dead, handless painting contractor. Earl, the medic, had stopped being an asshole long enough to work feverishly to stop Banks's torrential bleeding. Then he'd sped the pale, unconscious detective to the emergency room several miles away.

FBI agents from White Plains got Percey and Hale into an armored van and started south to Manhattan, using evasive driving techniques. Sachs worked the new crime scenes: the sniper's nest, the painter's van, and the Dancer's getaway wheels--a catering van. It was found not far from where he'd killed the contractor and where, they guessed, he'd have hidden the car he'd driven to Westchester in.

Then she'd sped back to Manhattan with the evidence.

"What've we got?" Rhyme now asked her and Cooper. "Any rifle slugs?"

Worrying a tattered bloody nail, Sachs explained, "Nothing left of them. They were explosive rounds." She seemed very spooked, eyes flitting like birds'.

"That's the Dancer. Not only deadly but his evidence self-destructs."

Sachs prodded a plastic bag. "Here's what's left of one. I scraped it off a wall."

Cooper spilled the contents into a porcelain examining tray. He stirred them. "Ceramic tipped too. Vests're pointless."

"Grade-A asshole," Sellitto offered.

"Oh, the Dancer knows his tools," Rhyme said.

There was a bustle of activity at the doorway and Thom let two suited FBI agents into the room. Behind them were Percey Clay and Brit Hale.

Percey asked Sellitto, "How's he doing?" Her dark eyes looked around the room, saw the coolness that greeted her. Didn't seem fazed. "Jerry, I mean."

Sellitto didn't answer.

Rhyme said, "He's still in surgery."

Her face was fretted, hair more tangled than this morning. "I hope he'll be all right."

Amelia Sachs turned to Percey and said coldly, "You what?"

"I said, I hope he'll be all right."

"You hope?" The policewoman towered over her. She stepped closer. The squat woman stood her ground as Sachs continued, "Little late for that, isn't it?"

"What's your problem?"

"That's what I oughta be asking you. You got him shot."

"Hey, Officer--" Sellitto said.

Composed, Percey said, "I didn't ask him to run after me."

"You'd be dead if it wasn't for him."

"Maybe. We don't know that. I'm sorry he was hurt. I--"