The Coffin Dancer (Lincoln Rhyme 2)

"Means, uhm, eager. I guess I talk a bit South still. Boys down in the Big Building--that's headquarters--fool with me some. Leave messages saying they've collared themselves a redneck and want me to translate for 'em. Anyway, this place is good 'n' safe. Our friends in Justice, oh, they know what they're doing. Bigger'n it looks from the outside, right?"

"Bigger than a cockpit, smaller than an open road," Hale said.

Bell chuckled. "Those front windows? Didn't look too secure when you were driving up."

"That was one thing . . . ," Percey began.

"Well, here's the front room. Take a peek." He pushed open a door.

There were no windows. Sheets of steel had been bolted over them. "Curtains're on the other side," Bell explained. "From the street it looks just like dark rooms. All the other windows're bulletproof glass. But you stay away from 'em all the same. And keep the shades drawn. The fire escape and roof're loaded with sensors and we've got tons of video cameras hidden around the place. Anybody comes near we check 'em clip and clean 'fore they get to the front door. It'd take a ghost with anorexia to get in here." He walked down a wide corridor. "Follow me down this dogtrot here . . . Okay, that's your room there, Mrs. Clay."

"Long as we're living together, you may's well call me Percey."

"Done deal. And you're over here . . . "

"Brit."

The rooms were small and dark and very still--very different from Percey's office in the corner of the hangar at Hudson Air. She thought of Ed, who preferred to have an office in the main building, his desk organized, pictures of B17s and P-51s on the wall, Lucite paperweights on every stack of documents. Percey liked the smell of jet fuel, and for a sound track to her workday the buzz saw of pneumatic wrenches. She thought of them together, him perched on her desk, sharing coffee. She managed to push the thought away before the tears started again.

Bell called on his walkie-talkie. "Principals in position." A moment later two uniformed policemen appeared in the corridor. They nodded and one of them said, "We'll be out here. Full-time." Curiously, their New York twang didn't seem that different from Bell's resonant drawl.

"That was good," Bell said to Percey.

She raised an eyebrow.

"You checked his ID. Nobody's gonna get the bulge on you."

She smiled wanly.

Bell said to Percey, "Now, we've got two men with your mother-in-law in New Jersey. Any other family needs watching?"

Percey said she didn't, not in the area.

He repeated the question to Hale, who answered, with a rueful grin, "Not unless an ex-wife's considered family. Well, wives."

"Okay. Cats'r dogs need watering?"

"Nope," Percey said. Hale shook his head.

"Then we may's well just ree-lax. No phone calls from cell phones if you've got one. Only use that line there. Remember the windows and curtains. Over there, that's a panic button. Worse comes to worst, and it won't, you hit it and drop to the ground. Now, you need anything, just give me a holler."

"As a matter of fact, I do," Percey said. She held up the silver flask.

"Well, now," Bell drawled, "you want me to help you empty it, I'm afraid I'm still on duty. But 'preciate the offer. You want me to help you fill it, why, that's a done deal."

Their scam didn't make the five o'clock news.

But three transmissions went out unscrambled on a citywide polic

e channel, informing the precincts about a 10-66 secure operation at the Twentieth Precinct and broadcasting a 10-67 traffic advisory about street closures on the Upper West Side. All suspects apprehended within the borders of the Twentieth were to be taken directly to Central Booking and the Men's or Women's Detention Center downtown. No one would be allowed in or out of the precinct without a special okay from the FBI. Or the FAA--Dellray's touch.

As this was being broadcast, Bo Haumann's 32-E teams went into position around the station house.

Haumann was now in charge of that portion of the operation. Fred Dellray was putting together a federal hostage rescue team in case they discovered the cat lady's identity and her apartment. Rhyme, along with Sachs and Cooper, continued to work the evidence from the crime scenes.

There were no new clues, but Rhyme wanted Sachs and Cooper to reexamine what they'd already found. This was criminalistics--you looked and looked and looked, and then, when you couldn't find anything, you looked some more. And when you hit the inevitable brick wall, you kept right on looking.

Rhyme had wheeled up close to his computer and was ordering it to magnify images of the timer found in the wreckage of Ed Carney's plane. The timer itself might have been useless, because it was so generic, but Rhyme wondered if it might not contain a little trace or even a partial latent print. Bombers often believe that fingerprints are destroyed in the detonation and will shun gloves when working with the tinier components of the devices. But the blast itself will not necessarily destroy prints. Rhyme now ordered Cooper to fume the timer in the SuperGlue frame and, when that revealed nothing, to dust it with the Magna-Brush, a technique for raising prints that uses fine magnetic powder. Once again he found nothing.