The Coffin Dancer (Lincoln Rhyme 2)

"We're under some time pressure here, Officer."

"I said, a minute." She handily won the staring contest and Eliopolos and his trooper escort led Jodie down the stairs. "Wait," the little man shouted from the hallway. He returned, grabbed his self-help book, and trotted down the stairs.

"Sachs . . . "

He thought of saying something about avoiding heroics, about Jerry Banks, about being too hard on herself.

About giving up the dead . . .

But he knew that any words of caution or encouragement would ring like lead.

And so he settled for "Shoot first."

She placed her right hand on his left. He closed his eyes and tried so very hard to feel the pressure of her skin on his. He believed he did, if just in his ring finger.

He looked up at her. She said, "And you keep a minder handy, okay?" Nodding at Sellitto and Dellray.

Then an EMS medic appeared in the door, looking around the room at Rhyme, at the equipment, at the beautiful lady cop, trying to fathom why on earth he was doing what he'd been instructed to. "Somebody wanted a body?" he asked uncertainly.

"In here!" Rhyme shouted. "Now! We need it now!"

The van drove through a gate and then down a one-lane driveway. It extended for what seemed like miles.

"If this's the driveway," Roland Bell muttered, "can't wait to see the house."

He and Amelia Sachs flanked Jodie, who irritated everybody no end as he fidgeted nervously, his bulky bulletproof vest banging into them as he'd examined shadows and dark doorways and passing cars on the Long Island Expressway. In the back were two 32-E officers, armed with machine guns. Percey Clay was in the front passenger seat. When they'd picked up her and Bell at the Marine Air Terminal at LaGuardia on their way to Suffolk County, Sachs had been shocked at the sight of the woman.

Not exhaustion--though she was clearly tired. Not fear. No, it was Percey's complete resignation that troubled Sachs. As a patrol officer, she'd seen plenty of tragedy on the street. She'd delivered her share of bad news, but she'd never seen someone who'd given up so completely as Percey Clay.

Percey was on the phone with Ron Talbot. Sachs deduced from the conversation that U.S. Medical hadn't even waited for the cinders of her airplane to cool before canceling the contract. When she hung up she stared at the passing scenery for a moment. She said absently to Bell, "The insurance company isn't even going to pay for the cargo. They're saying I assumed a known risk. So, that's it. That's it." She added briskly, "We're bankrupt."

Pine trees swept past, scrub oaks, patches of sand. Sachs, a city girl, had come to Nassau and Suffolk Counties when she was a teenager not for the beaches or the shopping malls but to pop the clutch of her Charger and goose the maroon car up to sixty within five point nine seconds in the renegade drag races that made Long Island famous. She appreciated trees and grass and cows but enjoyed nature best when she was streaking past it at 110 miles per hour.

Jodie crossed and uncrossed his arms and burrowed into the center seat, playing with the seat belt, knocking into Sachs again.

"Sorry," he muttered.

She wanted to slug him.

The house didn't live up to the driveway.

It was a rambling split-level, a combination of logs and clapboard. A ramshackle place, added on to over the years with plenty of federal money and no inspiration.

The night was overcast, filled with dense swatches of mist, but Sachs could see enough to note that the house was set in a tight ring of trees. The grounds around it had been cleared for two hundred yards. Good cover for the residents of the house and good groomed open areas to pick off anyone trying an assault. A grayish band in the distance suggested the resumption of the forest. There was a large, still lake behind the house.

Reggie Eliopolos climbed out of the lead van and motioned everyone out. He led them into the main entryway of the building. He handed them off to a round man, who seemed cheerful even though he never once smiled.

"Welcome," he said. "I'm U.S. Marshal David Franks. Want to tell you a little about your home away from home here. The most secure witness-protection enclave in the country. We have weight and motion sensors built into the entire perimeter of the place. Can't be broken through without setting off all sorts of other alarms. The computer's programmed to sense human motion patterns, correlated to weight, so the alarm doesn't go off if a deer or dog happens to wander over the perimeter. Somebody--some human--steps where he shouldn't, this whole place lights up like Times Square on Christmas Eve. What if somebody tries to ride a horse into the perimeter? We thought of that. The computer picks up a weight anomaly correlated to the distance between the animal's hooves, the alarm goes off. And any motion at all--raccoon or squirrel--starts the infrared videos going.

"Oh, and we're covered by radar from the Hampton Regional Airport, so any aerial assault gets picked up plenty early. Anything happens, you'll hear a siren and maybe see the lights. Just stay where you are. Don't go outside."

"What kind of guards do you have?" Sachs asked.

"We've got four marshals inside. Two outside at the front guard station, two in the back by the lake. And hit that panic button there and there'll be a Huey full of SWAT boys here in twenty minutes."

Jodie's face said twenty minutes seemed like a very long time. Sachs had to agree with him.

Eliopolos looked at his watch. He said, "We're going to have an armored van here at six to take you to the grand jury. Sorry you won't get much sleep." He glanced at Percey. "But if I'd had my way, you'd've been here all night, safe and sound."