"How long's the corridor?"
She sighed, looked down it. "About fifty feet, give or take, and the blood trail covers the whole thing."
"Any footprints in the blood?"
"Dozens. They go everywhere. Wait . . . There's a service elevator. I didn't see it at first. That's where the trail leads! He must be inside. We have to--"
"No, Sachs, wait. That's too obvious."
"We have to get the elevator door open. I'm calling the Fire Department for somebody with a Halligan tool or an elevator key. They can--"
Calmly Rhyme said, "Listen to me. Do the drops leading to the elevator look like teardrops? With the tails pointing in different directions?"
"He's got to be in the elevator! There're smears on the door. He's dying, Rhyme! Will you listen to me!"
"Teardrops, Sachs?" he asked soothingly. "Do they look like tadpoles?"
She looked down. They did. Perfect tadpoles, with the tails pointing in a dozen different directions.
"Yeah, Rhyme. They do."
"Backtrack until those stop."
This was crazy. Innelman was bleeding out in the elevator shaft. She gazed at the metal door for a moment, thought about ignoring Rhyme, but then trotted back down the corridor.
To the place where they stopped.
"Here, Rhyme. They stop here."
"It's at a closet or door?"
"Yes, how'd you know?"
"And it's bolted from the outside?"
"That's right."
How the hell does he do it?
"So the search team'd see the bolt and pass it by--the Dancer couldn't very well bolt himself inside. Well, Innelman's in there. Open the door, Sachs. Use the pliers on the handle, not the knob itself. There's a chance we can lift a print. And Sachs?"
"Yes?"
"I don't think he left a bomb. He hardly had time. But whatever shape the agent's in, and it won't be good, ignore him for a minute and look for any traps first."
"Okay."
"Promise?"
"Yes."
Pliers out . . . unbolt the latch . . . twist the knob.
Glock up. Apply poundage. Now!
The door flew outward.
But there was no bomb or other trap. Just the pale, blood-slicked body of John Innelman, unconscious, tumbling to her feet.
She barked a soft scream. "He's here. Need medics! He's cut bad."
Sachs bent over him. Two EMS techs and more agents ran up, Dellray with them, grim faced.
"What'd he do to you, John? Oh, man." The lanky agent stood back while the medics went to work. They cut off much of his clothing and examined the stab wounds. Innelman's eyes were half open, glazed.
"Is he . . . ?" Dellray asked.
"Alive, just barely."
The medics slapped pads on the slashes, put a tourniquet on his leg and arm, and then ran a plasma line. "Get him in the bus. We gotta move. I mean, move!"
They placed the agent on a gurney and hurried down the corridor, Dellray with him, head down, muttering to himself and squeezing his dead cigarette between his fingers.
"Could he talk?" Rhyme asked. "Any clue where the Dancer went?"
"No. He was unconscious. I don't know if they can save him. Jesus."
"Don't get rattled, Sachs. We've got a crime scene to analyze. We have to find out where the Dancer is, if he's still around. Go back to the storeroom. See if there are exterior doors or windows."
As she walked to it she asked, "How'd you know about the closet?"
"Because of the direction of the drops. He shoved Innelman inside and soaked a rag in the cop's blood. He walked to the elevator, swinging the rag. The drops were moving in different directions when they fell. So they had a teardrop appearance. And since he tried leading us to the elevator, we should look in the opposite direction for his escape route. The storeroom. Are you there?"
"Yes."
"Describe it."
"There's a window looking out on the alley. Looks like he started to open it. But it's puttied shut. No doors." She looked out the window. "I can't see any of the trooper's positions, though. I don't know what tipped him."
"You can't see any of the troopers," Rhyme said cynically. "He could. Now, walk the grid and let's see what we find."
She searched the scene carefully, walking the grid, then vacuumed for trace and carefully bagged the filters.
"What do you see? Anything?"
She shone her light on the walls and she found two mismatched blocks. A tight squeeze, but someone limber could have fit through there.
"Got his exit route, Rhyme. He went through the wall. Some loose concrete blocks."
"Don't open it. Get SWAT there."
She called several agents down to the room and they pulled the blocks out, sweeping the inner chamber with flashlights mounted on the barrels of their H&K submachine guns.
"Clear," one agent called. Sachs drew her weapon and slipped into the cool, dank space.
It was a narrow declining ramp filled with rubble, leading through a hole in the foundation. Water dripped. She was careful to step on large chunks of concrete and leave the damp earth untouched.
"What do you see, Sachs? Tell me!"
She waved the PoliLight wand over the places where the Dancer would logically have gripped with his hands and stepped with his feet. "Whoa, Rhyme."
"What?"
"Fingerprints. Fresh latents . . . Wait. But here're the glove prints too. In blood. From holding the rag. I don't get it. It's like a cave . . . Maybe he took the gloves off for some reason. Maybe he thought he was safe in the tunnel."
Then she looked down and shone the eerie glow of yellow-green light at her feet. "Oh."
"What?"
"They're not his prints. He's with somebody else."
"Somebody else? How do you know?"
"There's another set of footprints too. They're both fresh. One bigger than the other. They go off in the same direction, running. Jesus, Rhyme."
"What's the matter?"
"It means he's got a partner."
"Come on, Sachs. The glass is half full." Rhyme added cheerfully, "It means we'll have twice as much evidence to help us track him down."
"I was thinking," she said darkly, "that it meant he'd be twice as dangerous."
"What've you got?" Lincoln Rhyme asked.
Sachs had returned to his town house and she and Mel Cooper were looking over the evidence collected at the scene. Sachs and SWAT had followed the footsteps into a Con Ed access tunnel, where they lost track of both the Dancer and his companion. It looked as if the men had climbed to the street and escaped through a manhole.
She gave Cooper the print she'd found in the entrance to the tunnel. He scanned it into the computer and sent it off to the feds for an AFIS search.
Then she held up two electrostatic prints for Rhyme to examine. "These're the footprints in the tunnel. This one's the Dancer's." She lifted one of the prints--transparent, like an X ray. "It matches a print in the shrink's office he broke into on the first floor."
"Wearing average ordinary factory shoes," Rhyme said.
"You'd think he'd be in combat boots," Sellitto muttered.
"No, those'd be too obvious. Work shoes have rubber soles for gripping and steel caps in the toes. They're as good as boots if you don't need ankle support. Hold the other one closer, Sachs."
The smaller shoes were very worn at the heel and the ball of the foot. There was a large hole in the right shoe and through it you could see a lattice of skin wrinkles.
"No socks. Could be his friend's homeless."
"Why's he got somebody with him?" Cooper asked.
"Don't know," Sellitto said. "Word is he always works alone. He uses people but he doesn't trust them."
Just what I've been accused of, Rhyme thought. He said, "And leaving fingerprints at the scene? This guy's no pro. He must have something the Dancer needs."
"A way out of the building, for one thing," Sachs suggested.
"That could be i
t."
"And's probably dead now," she suggested.
Probably, Rhyme agreed silently.
"The prints," Cooper said. "They're pretty small. I'd guess size eight male."
The size of the sole doesn't necessarily correspond to shoe size and provides even less insight into the stature of the person wearing them, but it was reasonable to conclude the Dancer's partner had a slight build.
Turning to the trace evidence, Cooper mounted samples onto a slide and slipped it under the compound 'scope. He patched the image through to Rhyme's computer.
"Command mode, cursor left," Rhyme ordered into his microphone. "Stop. Double click." He examined the computer monitor. "More of the mortar from the cinder block. Dirt and dust . . . Where'd you get this, Sachs?"
"I scraped it from around the cinder blocks and vacuumed the floor of the tunnel. I also found a nest behind some boxes where it looked like somebody'd been hiding."
"Good. Okay, Mel, gas it. There's a lot of stuff here I don't recognize."
The chromatograph rumbled, separating the compounds, and sent the resulting vapors to the spectrometer for identification. Cooper examined the screen.
He exhaled a surprised breath. "I'm surprised his friend's able to walk at all."
"Little more specific there, Mel."
"He's a drugstore, Lincoln. We've got secobarbital, phenobarbital, Dexedrine, amobarbital, meprobamate, chlordiazepoxide, diazepam."
"Jesus," Sellitto muttered. "Reds, dexies, blue devils . . . "
Cooper continued, "Lactose and sucrose too. Calcium, vitamins, enzymes consistent with dairy products."
"Baby formula," Rhyme muttered. "Dealers use it to cut drugs."
"So the Dancer's got himself a cluckhead for a sidekick. Go figure."
Sachs said, "All those doctors' offices there . . . This guy must've been boosting pills."
"Log on to FINEST," Rhyme said. "Get a list of every drugstore cowboy they've got."
Sellitto laughed. "It's gonna be big as the White Pages, Lincoln."
"Nobody says it's easy, Lon."
But before he could make the call, Cooper received an E-mail. "Don't bother."
"Huh?"
"The AFIS report on the fingerprints?" The tech tapped the screen. "Whoever the guy is, he doesn't have a record in New York City or State or NCIC."
"Hell!" Rhyme snapped. He felt cursed. Couldn't it be just a little easier? He muttered, "Any other trace?"
"Something here," Cooper said. "A bit of blue tile, grouted on the back, attached to what looks like concrete."
"Let's see it."
Cooper mounted the specimen onto the 'scope's stage.
His neck quivering, almost breaking into a spasm, Rhyme leaned forward and studied it carefully. "Okay. Old mosaic tile. Porcelain, crackle finish, lead based. Sixty, seventy years old, I'd guess." But he could make no cunning deductions from the sample. "Anything else?" he muttered.
"Some hairs." Cooper mounted them to do a visual. He bent over the 'scope.
Rhyme too examined the thin shafts.
"Animal," he announced.
"More cats?" Sachs asked.
"Let's see," Cooper said, head down.
But these hairs weren't feline. They were rodent. "Rat," Rhyme announced. "Rattus norvegicus. Your basic sewer rat."
"Keep going. What's in that bag, Sachs?" Rhyme asked like a hungry boy looking over chocolates in a candy store display case. "No, no. There. Yes, that one."
Inside the evidence bag was a square of paper towel smeared with a faint brown stain.
"I found that on the cinder block, the one he moved. I think it was on his hands. There were no prints but the pattern could've been made by a palm."
"Why do you think that?"
"Because I rubbed my hand in some dirt and pushed on another cinder block. The mark was the same."
That's my Amelia, he thought. For an instant his thoughts returned to last night--the two of them lying in bed together. He pushed the thought away.
"What is it, Mel?"
"Looks like it's grease. Impregnated with dust, dirt, fragments of wood, bits of organic material. Animal flesh, I think. All very old. And look there in the upper corner."
Rhyme examined some silvery flecks on his computer screen. "Metal. Ground or shaved off of something. Gas it. Let's find out for certain."
Cooper did.
"Petrochemical," he answered. "Crudely refined, no additives . . . There's iron with traces of manganese, silicon, and carbon."
"Wait," Rhyme called. "Any other elements--chromium, cobalt, copper, nickel, tungsten?"
"No."
Rhyme gazed at the ceiling. "The metal? It's old steel, made from pig iron in a Bessemer furnace. If it were modern it'd have some of those other materials in it."
"And here's something else. Coal tar."
"Creosote!" Rhyme cried. "I've got it. The Dancer's first big mistake. His partner's a walking road map."
"To where?" Sachs asked.
"To the subway. That grease is old, the steel's from old fixtures and tie spikes, the creosote's from the ties. Oh, and the fragment of tile is from a mosaic. A lot of the old stations were tiled--they had pictures of something that related to the neighborhood."
Sachs said, "Sure--the Astor Place station's got mosaics of the animals that John Jacob Astor traded."
"Grouted porcelain tile. So that's what the Dancer wanted him for. A place to hide out. The Dancer's friend's probably a homeless druggie living in an abandoned siding or tunnel or station somewhere."
Rhyme realized that everyone was looking at a man's shadow in the doorway. He stopped speaking.
"Dellray?" Sellitto said uncertainly.
The dark, somber face of Fred Dellray was focused out the window.
"What is it?" Rhyme asked.
"Innelman's what it is. They stitched him up. Three hundred stitches they gave him. But it was too late. Lost too much blood. He just died."
"I'm sorry," Sachs said.
The agent lifted his hands, long sticklike fingers raised like spikes.
Everyone in the room knew about Dellray's longtime partner--the one killed in the Oklahoma City federal building bombing. And Rhyme thought too of Tony Panelli--'napped downtown a few days ago. Probably dead by now, the only clue to his whereabouts the grains of curious sand.
And now another of Dellray's friends was gone.
The agent paced in a threatening lope.
"You know why he got cut, don't you--Innelman?"
Everyone knew; no one answered.
"A diversion. That's the only reason in the world. To keep us off the scent. Can you believe that? A fuckin' diversion." He stopped pacing abruptly. He looked at Rhyme with his frightening black eyes. "You got any leads at all, Lincoln?"
"Not much." He explained about the Dancer's homeless friend, the drugs, the hidey-hole in the subway. Somewhere.
"That's it?"
"Afraid so. But we still have some more evidence to look at."
"Evidence," Dellray whispered contemptuously. He walked to the door, paused. "A distraction. That's no fucking reason for a good man to die. No reason at all."
"Fred, wait . . . we need you."
But the agent didn't hear, or he ignored Rhyme if he did. He stalked out of the room.
A moment later the door downstairs closed with a sharp click.
. . . Chapter Twenty-one
Hour 24 of 45
"Home, sweet home," Jodie said.
A mattress and two boxes of old clothes, canned food. Magazines--Playboy and Penthouse and some cheap hard-core porn, which Stephen glanced at distastefully. A book or two. The fetid subway station where Jodie lived, somewhere downtown, had been closed decades ago and replaced by one up the street.
A good place for worms, Stephen thought grimly, then pried the image from his mind.
They'd entered the small station from the platform below. They'd made their way here--probably two or three miles from the safe house--compl
etely underground, moving through the basements of buildings, tunnels, huge sewer pipes, and small sewer pipes. Leaving a false lead--an open manhole cover. Finally they'd entered the subway tunnel and made good time, though Jodie was pathetically out of shape and gasped for breath trying to keep up with Stephen's frantic pace.
There was a door leading out to the street, barred from the inside. Slanting lines of dusty light fell through the slats in the boards. Stephen peered outside into the grim spring overcast. It was a poor part of town. Derelicts sat on street corners, bottles of Thunderbird and Colt 44 were strewn on the sidewalk, and the polka dots of crack vial caps were everywhere. A huge rat chewed something gray in the alley.
Stephen heard a clatter behind him and turned to see Jodie dropping a handful of stolen pills into coffee cans. He was hunched over, carefully organizing them. Stephen dug through his book bag and found his cell phone. He made a call to Sheila's apartment. He was expecting to hear her answering machine but a recording came on that said the line was out of order.
Oh, no . . .
He was stunned.
It meant that the antipersonnel satchel had gone off in Sheila's apartment. And that meant they'd found out he'd been there. How the hell had they done that?
"You all right?" Jodie asked.
How?
Lincoln, King of the Worms. That's how!
Lincoln, the white, wormy face peering out the window . . .
Stephen's palms began to sweat.
"Hey?"
Stephen looked up.
"You seem--"
"I'm fine," Stephen answered shortly.
Stop worrying, he told himself. If it blew, the explosion was big enough to hose the apartment and destroy any trace of him. It's all right. You're safe. They'll never find you, never tie you down. The worms won't get you . . .
He looked at Jodie's easy smile of curiosity. The cringe went away. "Nothing," he said. "Just a change of plans." He hung up.
Stephen opened his book bag again, counted out $5,000. "Here's the money."
Jodie was transfixed by the cash. His eyes flipped back and forth between the bills and Stephen's face. The thin hand reached out, shaking, and took the five thousand carefully, as if it might crumble if he gripped it too hard.
As he took the bills Jodie's hand touched Stephen's. Even through the glove the killer felt a huge jolt--like the time he'd been stabbed in the gut with a razor knife--stunning but painless. Stephen let go of the money and, looking away, said, "If you'll help me again I'll pay you another ten."
The man's red, puffy face broke into a cautious smile. He took a deep breath and poked through one of his coffee cans. "I get . . . I don't know . . . nervous, sort of." He found a pill, swallowed it. "It's a blue devil. Makes you feel nice. Makes you feel all comfy. Want one?"
The Coffin Dancer Page 19