The Coffin Dancer (Lincoln Rhyme 2)

Lincoln the Worm, he prayed.

The redheaded cop?

He looked over the safe house and saw the smoke curling from the top window.

Now, just a few more minutes, until the rest of his team joined him.

The telephone rang and Rhyme ordered the computer to shut off the radio and answer the phone.

"Yes," he said.

"Lincoln." It was Lon Sellitto. "I'm landline," he said, referring to the phone. "Want to keep Special Ops free for the chase."

"Okay. Go ahead."

"He blew the bomb."

"I know." Rhyme had heard it; the safe house was more than two miles from his bedroom, but his windows had rattled and the peregrines outside his window had taken off and flown a slow circle, angry at the disturbance.

"Everybody okay?"

"The mutt's freaking out, Jodie. But 'side from that everything's okay. 'Cept for the feds're looking at more damage to the safe house than they'd planned on. Already bitching about it."

"Tell 'em we'll pay our taxes early this year."

What had tipped Rhyme to the cell phone bomb had been tiny fingernails of polystyrene that Sachs had found in the trace at the subway station. That and more residue of plastic explosive, a slightly different formula from that of the AP bomb in Sheila Horowitz's apartment. Rhyme had simply matched the polystyrene fragments to the phone the Dancer'd given to Jodie and realized that somebody had unscrewed the casing.

Why? Rhyme had wondered. There was only one logical reason that he could see and so he'd called the bomb squad down at the Sixth Precinct. Two detectives had rendered the phone safe, removed the large wad of plastic explosive and the firing circuit from the phone, then mounted a much smaller bit of explosive and the same circuit in an oil drum near one of the windows, pointed into the alley like a mortar. They'd filled the room with bomb blankets and stepped into the corridor, handing the harmless phone back to Jodie, who held it with shaking hands, demanding that they prove to him all the explosive had been taken out.

Rhyme had guessed that the Dancer's tactic was to use the bomb to divert attention away from the van and give him a better chance to assault it. The killer had also probably guessed that Jodie wo

uld turn and, when he made the call, that the little man would be close to the cops who were mounting the operation. If he took out the leaders the Dancer would have an even better chance of success.

Deception . . .

There was no perp Rhyme hated more than the Coffin Dancer, no one he wanted more to run to ground and skewer through his hot heart. Still, Rhyme was a criminalist before anything else and he had a secret admiration for the man's brilliance.

Sellitto explained, "We've got two tail cars behind the Nissan. We're going to--"

There was a long pause.

"Stupid," Sellitto muttered.

"What?"

"Oh, nothing. It's just nobody called Central. We've got fire trucks coming in. Nobody called to tell 'em to ignore the reports of the blast."

Rhyme had forgotten about that too.

Sellitto continued. "Just got word. The decoy van's turning east, Linc. The Nissan's following. Maybe forty yards behind the van. It's about four blocks to the parking lot by the FDR."

"Okay, Lon. Is Amelia there? I want to talk to her."

"Jesus," he heard someone call in the background. Bo Haumann, Rhyme thought. "We got fire trucks all over the place here."

"Didn't somebody . . . ?" another voice began to ask, then faded.

No, somebody didn't, Rhyme thought. You can't think of--