The Coffin Dancer (13 page)

“Oh, come on. There’re cops all over the field. It’s perfectly safe. I need to—”

Sachs snapped to her, “No arguments.”

But argue she did. “We can’t leave. I’ve just had my chief mechanic quit. I have to—”

“Perce,” Hale said uneasily, “maybe we ought to listen to her.”

“We’ve got to get that aircraft—”

“Get back. In there. And be quiet.”

Percey’s mouth opened wide in shock. “You can’t talk to me that way. I’m not a prisoner.”

“Officer Sachs? Hellooo?” The trooper she’d spoken to outside stepped into the doorway. “I’ve done a fast visual of everybody here in uniform and the detectives too. No unknowns. And no reports of any state or Westchester officers missing. But our Central Dispatch told me something maybe you oughta know about. Might be nothing, but—”

“Tell me.”

Percey Clay said, “Officer, I have to talk to you ...”

Sachs ignored her and nodded to the trooper. “Go on.”

“Traffic Patrol in White Plains, about two miles away. They found a body in a Dumpster. Think he was killed about an hour ago, maybe less.”

“Rhyme, you hear?”

“Yes.”

Sachs asked the cop, “Why d’you think that’s important?”

“It’s the way he was killed. Was a hell of a mess.”

“Ask him if the hands and face were missing,” Rhyme asked.

“What?”

“Ask him!”

She did, and everyone in the office stopped talking and stared at Sachs.

The trooper blinked in surprise and said, “Yes ma’am, Officer. Well, the hands at least. The dispatcher didn’t say anything about the face. How’d you know ... ?”

Rhyme blurted, “Where’s it now? The body?”

She relayed the question.

“In a coroner’s bus. They’re taking it to the county morgue.”

“No,” Rhyme said. “Have them get it to you, Sachs. I want you to examine it.”

“The—”

“Body,” he said. “It’s got the answer to how he’s going to come at you. I don’t want Percey and Hale moved until we know what we’re up against.”

She told the cop Rhyme’s request.

“Okay,” he said. “I’ll get on it. That’s ... You mean you want the body
here
.”

“Yes. Now.”

“Tell ’em to get it there fast, Sachs,” Rhyme said. He sighed. “Oh, this is bad. Bad.”

And Sachs had the uneasy thought that Rhyme’s urgent grief was not only for the man who had died so violently, whoever he was, but for those who, maybe, were just about to.

People believe that the rifle is the important tool for a sniper, but that’s wrong. It’s the telescope.

What do we call it, Soldier? Do we call it a
telescopic sight?
Do we call it a ’
scope?

Sir, we do not. It’s a
telescope.
This one is a Red-field, three-by-nine variable, with crosshair reticles. There is none better, sir.

The telescope Stephen was mounting on top of the Model 40 was twelve and three-quarters inches long and weighed just over twelve ounces. It had been matched to this particular rifle with corresponding serial numbers and had been painstakingly adjusted for focus. The parallax had been fixed by the optical engineer in the factory so that the crosshairs resting on the lip of a man’s heart five hundred yards away would not move perceptibly when the sniper’s head eased from left to right. The eye relief was so accurate that the recoil would knock the eyepiece back to within one millimeter of Stephen’s eyebrow and yet never touch a hair.

The Redfield telescope was black and sleek, and Stephen kept it draped in velvet and nestled in a Styrofoam block in his guitar case.

Now, hidden in a nest of grass some three hundred yards from the Hudson Air hangar and office, Stephen fitted the black tube of the telescope into its mount, perpendicular to the gun (he always thought of his stepfather’s crucifix when he mounted it), then he swung the heavy tube into position with a satisfying click. He screwed down the lug nuts.

Soldier, are you a competent sniper?

Sir, I am the best, sir.

What are your qualifications?

Sir, I am in excellent physical shape, I am fastidious, I am right-handed, I have 20/20 vision, I do not smoke or drink or take any kind of drugs, I can lie still for hours at a time, and I live to send bullets up the ass of my enemy.

He nestled farther into the pile of leaves and grass.

There might be worms here, he thought. But he wasn’t feeling cringey at the moment. He had his mission and that was occupying his mind completely.

Stephen cradled the gun, smelling the machine oil from the bolt-action receiver and the neat’s-foot oil from the sling, so worn and soft it was like angora. The Model 40 was a
I
.62 millimeter NATO rifle and weighed eight pounds, ten ounces. The trigger pull generally ranged from three to five pounds, but Stephen set it a bit higher because his fingers were very strong. The weapon had a rated effective range of a thousand yards, though he had made kills at more than 1300.

Stephen knew this gun intimately. In sniper teams, his stepfather had told him, the snipers themselves have no disassemble authority, and the old man wouldn’t let him strip the weapon himself. But that was one rule of the old man’s that hadn’t seemed right to Stephen and so, in a moment of uncharacteristic defiance, he’d secretly taught himself how to dismantle the rifle, clean it, repair it, and even machine parts that needed adjustment or replacement.

Through the telescope he scanned Hudson Air. He couldn’t see the Wife, though he knew she was there or soon would be. Listening to the tape of the phone tap on the Hudson Air office lines, Stephen had heard her tell someone named Ron that they were changing their plans; rather than going to the safe house they were driving to the airport to find some mechanics who could work on the airplane.

Using the low-crawl technique, Stephen now moved forward until he was on a slight ridge, still hidden by trees and grass but with a better view of the hangar, the office, and the parking lot in front of it, separated from him by flat grass fields and two runways.

It was a glorious kill zone. Wide. Very little cover. All entrances and exits easily targeted from here.

Two people stood outside at the front door. One was a county or state trooper. The other was a woman—red hair dipping beneath a baseball cap. Very pretty. She was a cop, plainclothes. He could see the boxy outline of a Glock or Sig-Sauer high on her hip. He lifted his range finder and put the split image on the woman’s red hair. He twisted a ring until the images moved together seamlessly.

Three hundred and sixteen yards.

He replaced the range finder, lifted the rifle, and sighted on the woman, centering the reticles on her hair once more. He glanced at her beautiful face. It troubled him, her attractiveness. He didn’t like it. Didn’t like
her.
He wondered why.

The grass rustled around him. He thought: Worms.

Was starting to feel cringey.

The face in the window ...

He put the crosshairs on her chest.

The cringey feeling went away.

Soldier, what is the sniper’s motto?

Sir, it is “One chance, one shot, one kill.”

The conditions were excellent. There was a slight right-to-left crosswind, which he guessed was four miles an hour. The air was humid, which would buoy the slug. He was shooting over unvaried terrain with only moderate thermals.

He slid back down the knoll and ran a cleaning rod, tipped with a soft cotton cloth, through the Model 40. You always cleaned your weapon before firing. The slightest bit of moisture or oil could put a shot off by an inch or so. Then he made a loop sling and lay down in his nest.

Stephen loaded five rounds into the chamber. They were M-118 match-quality rounds, manufactured at the renowned Lake City arsenal. The bullet itself was a 173-grain boattail and it struck its target at a speed of a half mile a second. Stephen had altered the slugs somewhat, however. He’d drilled into the core and filled them with a small explosive charge and replaced the standard jacket with a ceramic nose that would pierce most kinds of body armor.

He unfolded a thin dish towel and spread it out on the ground to catch the ejected cartridges. Then he doubled the sling around his left biceps and planted that elbow firmly on the ground, keeping the forearm absolutely perpendicular to the ground—a
bone support. He “spot-welded” his cheek and right thumb to the stock above the trigger.

Then slowly he began scanning the kill zone.

It was hard to see inside the offices but Stephen thought he caught a glimpse of the Wife.

Yes! It was her.

She was standing behind a big curly-haired man in a wrinkled white shirt. He held a cigarette. A young blond man in a suit, a badge on his belt, ushered them back out of sight.

Patience ... she’ll present again. They don’t have a clue that you’re here. You can wait all day. As long as the worms—

Flashing lights again.

Into the parking lot sped a county ambulance. The red-haired cop saw it. Her eyes grew excited. She ran toward the vehicle.

Stephen breathed deeply.

One chance
...

Zero your weapon, Soldier.

Normal come-up elevation at 316 yards is three minutes, sir. He clicked the sight so that the barrel would be pointed upward slightly to take gravity into account.

One shot
...

Calculate the crosswind, Soldier.

Sir, the formula is range in hundreds of yards times velocity divided by fifteen. Stephen’s mind thought instantly: Slightly less than one minute of windage. He adjusted the telescope accordingly.

Sir, I am ready, sir.

One kill ...

A shaft of light streamed from behind a cloud and lit the front of the office. Stephen began to breathe slowly and evenly.

He was lucky; the worms stayed away. And there were no faces watching him from the windows.

chapter eleven

Hour 4 of 45

The medic rolled out of the ambulance.

She nodded to him. “I’m Officer Sachs.”

He aimed his rotund belly her way and, straight-faced, said, “So. You ordered the pizza?” Then giggled.

She sighed. “What happened?” Sachs said.

“What happened? T’him? He got himself dead’s what happened.” He looked her over, shook his head. “What kinda cop are you? I never seen you up here.”

“I’m from the city.”

“Oh, the city. She’s from the city. Well, better ask,” he added gravely. “You ever see a body before?”

Sometimes you bend just a little. Learning how and how far takes some doing but it’s a valuable lesson. Sometimes more than valuable, sometimes necessary. She smiled. “You know, we’ve got a real critical situation here. I’d sure appreciate your help. Could you tell me where you found him?”

He studied her chest for a moment. “Reason I ask about seeing bodies is this one’s gonna bother you. I could do what needs to be done, searching it or whatever.”

“Thanks. We’ll get to that. Now, again, where’d you find him?”

“Dumpster in a parking lot ’bout two clicks—”

“That’s miles,” another voice added.

“Hey, Jim,” the medic said.

Sachs turned. Oh, great. It was the
GQ
cop. The one who’d been flirting with her on the taxiway. He strode up to the ambulance.

“Hi, honey. Me again. How’s your police tape holdin’ up? Whatcha got, Earl?”

“One body, no hands.” Earl yanked the door open, reached in, and unzipped the body bag. Blood flowed out onto the floor of the ambulance.

“Ooops.” Earl winked. “Say, Jim, after you’re through here, wanna get some spaghetti?”

“Mebbe pig’s knuckles.”

“There’s a thought.”

Rhyme interrupted. “Sachs, what’s going on there? You got the body?”

“I’ve got it. Trying to figure out the story.” To the medic she said, “We’ve gotta
move
on this. Anybody have any idea who he is?”

“Wasn’t anything around to ID him. No missing persons reported. Nobody saw nothing.”

“Any chance he’s a cop?”

“Naw. Nobody I know,” Jim said. “You, Earl?”

“Nup. Why?”

Sachs didn’t answer. She said, “I need to examine him.”

“Okay, miss,” Earl said. “How ’bout I give you a hand?”

“Hell,” the trooper said, “sounds like
he’s
the one needs a hand.” He chuckled; the medic gave another of his piggy giggles.

She climbed up in the back of the ambulance and unzipped the body bag completely.

And because she wasn’t going to tug off her jeans and have intercourse with them or at the very least flirt back, they had no choice but to torment her further.

“The thing is, this isn’t the kind of traffic detail you’re probably used to,” Earl said to her. “Hey, Jim, this as bad as the one you saw last week?”

“That head we found?” The cop mused, “Hell, I’d rather have a fresh head any day than a month-er. You ever seen a month-er, honey? Now, they’re about as unpleasant as can be. Give a body three, four months in the water, hey, not a problem—mostly just bones. But you get one’s been simmering for a month ...”

“Nasty,” Earl said. “Uck-o.”

“You ever seen a month-er, honey?”

“ ’Preciate your not saying that, Jim,” she said absently to the cop.

“ ‘Month-er’?”

“ ‘Honey.’ ”

“Sure, sorry.”

“Sachs,” Rhyme snapped, “what the hell is going on?”

“No ID, Rhyme. Nobody’s got a clue as to who it is. Hands removed with a fine-bladed razor saw.”

“Is Percey safe? Hale?”

“They’re in the office. Banks’s with them. Away from the windows. What’s the word on the van?”

“Should be there in ten minutes. You’ve got to find out about that body.”

“You talking to yourself, hon—Officer?”

Sachs studied the poor man’s body. She guessed the hands had been removed just after he’d died, or as he was dying, because of the copious amount of blood. She pulled on her latex examining gloves.

“It’s strange, Rhyme. Why’s he only partially ID-proofed?”

If killers don’t have time to dispose of a body completely they ID-proof it by removing the main points of identification: the hands and the teeth.