The Coffin Dancer (37 page)

“Where’s Percey?” Sachs asked.

“Inside. Finishing up the repairs.”

“By herself?”

“Think so. She’s something, she is. You wouldn’t think a woman that wasn’t so, well, attractive’d have quite the draw she does. You know?”

Ugh. Don’t get me started.

“Anybody else here? From the Company?” She nodded toward the Hudson Air office. There was a light on inside.

“Percey sent ’most everybody home. Fellow’s going to be her copilot’s due here anytime. And somebody from Operations’s inside. Needs to be on duty when there’s a flight going on, I guess. I checked him out. He’s okay.”

“So she’s really going to fly?” Sachs asked.

“Looks that way.”

“The plane’s been guarded the whole time?”

“Yep, since yesterday. What’re you doing here?”

“Need some samples for analysis.”

“That Rhyme, he’s something too.”

“Uh-huh.”

“All two of you go back a ways?”

“We’ve worked a few cases,” she said dismissingly. “He saved me from Public Affairs.”

“That’s his good deed. Say, I hear you can really drive a nail.”

“I can ... ?”

“Shoot. Sidearms. You’re on a team.”

And here I am at the site of my latest competition, she thought bitterly. “Just weekend sport,” she muttered.

“I do some pistol work myself, but I’ll tell you, even on a good day, with a nice, long barrel and firing single-action, fifty, sixty yards is all the far I can shoot.”

She appreciated his comments but recognized that they were just an attempt to reassure her about yesterday’s fiasco; the words meant nothing to her.

“Better talk to Percey now.”

“Right through there, Officer.”

Sachs pushed into the huge hangar. She walked slowly, looking at all the places the Dancer could hide. Sachs paused behind a tall row of boxes; Percey didn’t see her.

The woman was standing on a small scaffolding, hands on her hips, as she gazed at the complicated network of pipes and tubes of the open engine. She’d rolled her sleeves up and her hands were covered with grease. She nodded to herself then reached forward into the compartment.

Sachs was fascinated, watching the woman’s hands fly over the machinery, adjusting, probing, seating metal to metal, and tightening the fixtures down with judicious swipes of her thin arms. She mounted a large red cylinder, a fire extinguisher, Sachs guessed, in about ten seconds flat.

But one part—it looked like a big metal inner tube—wouldn’t fit correctly.

Percey climbed off the scaffolding, selected a socket wrench, and climbed up again. She loosened bolts, removed another part to give her more room to maneuver, and tried again to push the big ring into place.

Wouldn’t budge.

She shouldered it. Didn’t move an inch. She removed yet another part, meticulously setting each screw and bolt in a plastic tray at her feet. Percey’s face turned bright red as she struggled to mount the metal ring. Her chest heaved as she fought the part. Suddenly it slipped, dropping completely out of position, and knocked her backward off the scaffolding. She twisted and landed on her hands and knees. The tools and bolts that she’d arranged so carefully in the tray spilled to the floor beneath the plane’s tail.

“No!” Percey cried. “No!”

Sachs stepped forward to see if she was hurt, but noticed immediately that the outburst had nothing to do with pain—Percey grabbed a large wrench and slammed it furiously into the floor of the hangar. The policewoman stopped, stepped into the shadow beside a large carton.

“No, no, no ... ,” Percey cried, hammering the smooth concrete.

Sachs remained where she was.

“Oh, Ed ...” She dropped the wrench. “I can’t do it alone.” Gasping for breath, she rolled into a ball. “Ed ... oh, Ed ... I miss you so much!” She lay, curled like a frail leaf, on the shiny floor and wept.

Then, suddenly, the attack was over. Percey rolled upright, took a deep breath, and climbed to her feet, wiped the tears from her face. The aviatrix within her took charge once again and she picked up the bolts and tools and climbed back up onto the scaffolding. She stared at the troublesome ring for a moment. She examined the fittings carefully but couldn’t see where the metal pieces were binding.

Sachs retreated to the door, slammed it hard, and then started back into the hangar, walking with loud steps.

Percey swung around, saw her, then turned back to the engine. She gave a few swipes to her face with her sleeve and continued to work.

Sachs walked up to the base of the scaffolding and watched as Percey struggled with the ring.

Neither woman said anything for a long moment.

Finally Sachs said, “Try a jack.”

Percey glanced back at her, said nothing.

“It’s just that the tolerance is close,” Sachs continued. “All you need is more muscle. The old coercion technique. They don’t teach it in mechanics school.”

Percey looked carefully at the mounting brackets on the pieces of metal. “I don’t know.”

“I do. You’re talking to an expert.”

The flier asked, “You’ve mounted a combustor in a Lear?”

“Nope. Spark plugs in a Chevy Monza. You have to jack up the engine to reach them. Well, only in the V-eight. But who’d buy a four-cylinder car? I mean, what’s the point?”

Percey looked back at the engine.

“So?” Sachs persisted. “A jack?”

“It’ll bend the outer housing.”

“Not if you put it there.” Sachs pointed to a structural member connecting the engine to the support that went to the fuselage.

Percey studied the fitting. “I don’t have a jack. Not one small enough to fit.”

“I do. I’ll get it.”

Sachs stepped outside to the RRV and returned with the accordion jack. She climbed up on the scaffolding, her knees protesting the effort.

“Try right there.” She touched the base of the engine. “That’s I-beam steel.”

As Percey positioned the jack, Sachs admired the intricacies of the engine. “How much horsepower?”

Percey laughed. “We don’t rate in horsepower. We rate in pounds of thrust. These’re Garrett TFE Seven Three Ones. They give up about thirty-five hundred pounds each.”

“Incredible.” Sachs laughed. “Brother.” She hooked the handle into the jack, then felt the familiar resistance as she started turning the crank. “I’ve never been this close to a turbine engine,” she said. “Was always a dream of mine to take a jet car out to the salt flats.”

“This isn’t a pure turbine. There aren’t many of those left anymore. Just the Concorde. Military jets, of course. These’re turbofans. Like the airliners. Look in the front—see those blades? That’s nothing more than a fixed-pitch propeller. Pure jets are inefficient at low altitudes. These’re about forty percent more fuel efficient.”

Sachs breathed hard as she struggled to turn the jack handle. Percey put her shoulder against the ring again and shoved. The part didn’t seem large but it was very heavy.

“You know cars, huh?” Percey asked, also gasping.

“My father. He loved them. We’d spend the afternoon taking ’em apart and putting ’em back together. When he wasn’t walking a beat.”

“A beat?”

“He was a cop too.”

“And you got the mechanic bug?” Percey asked.

“Naw, I got the
speed
bug. And when you get that you better get the suspension bug and the transmission bug and the engine bug or you ain’t going anywhere fast.”

Percey asked, “You ever driven an aircraft?”

“ ‘Driven’?” Sachs smiled at the word. “No. But maybe I’ll think about it, knowing you’ve got that much oomph under the hood.”

She cranked some more, her muscles aching. The ring groaned slightly and scraped as it rose into its fittings.

“I don’t know,” Percey said uncertainly.

“Almost there!”

With a loud metallic clang the ring popped on to the mounts perfectly. Percey’s squat face broke into a faint smile.

“You torque ’em?” Sachs asked, fitting bolts into the slots on the ring and looking for a wrench.

“Yeah,” Percey said. “The poundage I use is ‘Till there’s no way in hell they’ll come loose.’ ”

Sachs tightened the bolts down with a ratcheting socket. The clicking of the tool took her back to high school, cool Saturday afternoons with her father. The smells of gasoline, of fall air, of meaty casseroles cooking in the kitchen of their Brooklyn attached house.

Percey checked Sachs’s handiwork then said, "I'll do the rest.” She started reconnecting wires and electronic components. Sachs was mystified but fascinated. Percey paused. She added a soft “Thanks.” A few moments later: “What’re you doing here?”

“We found some other materials we think might be from the bomb, but Lincoln didn’t know if it was part of the plane or not. Bits of beige latex, circuit board? Sound familiar?”

Percey shrugged. “There’re thousands of gaskets in a Lear. They could be latex, I don’t have any idea. And circuit boards? There’re probably another thousand of them.” She nodded to a corner, toward a closet and workbench. “The boards are special orders, depending on the component. But there should be a good stock of gaskets over there. Take samples of whatever you need.”

Sachs walked over to the bench, began slipping all the beige-colored bits of rubber she could find into an evidence bag.

Without glancing at Sachs, Percey said, “I thought you were here to arrest me. Haul me back to jail.”

I ought to, the policewoman thought. But she said, “Just collecting exemplars.” Then, after a moment: “What other work needs to be done? On the plane?”

“Just recalibration. Then a run-up to check the power settings. I have to take a look at the window too, the one Ron replaced. You don’t want to lose a window at four hundred miles an hour. Could you hand me that hex set? No, the metric one.”

“I lost one at a hundred once,” Sachs said, passing over the tools.

“A what?”

“A window. A perp I was chasing had a shotgun. Double-ought buckshot. I ducked in time. But it blew the windshield clean out ... I’ll tell you, I caught a few bugs in my teeth before I collared him.”

“And I thought
I
lived an adventurous life,” Percey said.

“Most of it’s dull. They pay you for the five percent that’s adrenaline.”

“I hear that,” Percey said. She hooked up a laptop computer to components in the engine itself. She typed on the keyboard, read the screen. Without looking down she asked, “So, what is it?”

Eyes on the computer, the numbers flicking past, Sachs asked, “What do you mean?”

“This, uhm, tension. Between us. You and me.”

“You nearly got a friend of mine killed.”

Percey shook her head. She said reasonably, “That’s not it. There’re risks in your job. You decide if you’re going to assume them or not. Jerry Banks wasn’t a rookie. It’s something else—I felt it before Jerry got shot. When I first saw you, in Lincoln Rhyme’s room.”

Sachs said nothing. She lifted the jack out of the engine compartment and set it on a table, absently wound it closed.

Three pieces of metal slipped into place around the engine and Percey applied her screwdriver like a conductor’s baton. Her hands were truly magic. Finally she said, “It’s about him, isn’t it?”

“Who?”

“You know who I mean. Lincoln Rhyme.”

“You think I’m jealous?” Sachs laughed.

“Yes, I do.”

“Ridiculous.”

“It’s more than just work between you. I think you’re in love with him.”

“Of course I’m not. That’s crazy.”

Percey offered a telling glance and then carefully twined excess wire into a bundle and nestled it into a cutout in the engine compartment. “Whatever you saw is just respect for his talent, that’s all.” She lifted a grease-stained hand toward herself. “Come on, Amelia, look at me. I’d make a lousy lover. I’m short, I’m bossy, I’m not good looking.”

“You’re—” Sachs began.

Percey interrupted. “The ugly duckling story? You know, the bird that everybody thought was ugly until it turned out to be a swan? I read that a million times when I was little. But I never turned into a swan. Maybe I learned to fly like one,” she said with a cool smile, “but it isn’t the same. Besides,” Percey continued, “I’m a widow. I just lost my husband. I’m not the least interested in anyone else.”

“I’m sorry,” Sachs began slowly, feeling unwillingly drawn into this conversation, “but I’ve got to say ... well, you don’t really seem to be in mourning.”

“Why? Because I’m trying my hardest to keep my company going?”

“No, there’s more than that,” Sachs replied cautiously. “Isn’t there?”

Percey examined Sachs’s face. “Ed and I were incredibly close. We were husband and wife and friends and business partners ... And yes, he was seeing someone else.”

Sachs’s eyes swiveled toward the Hudson Air office.

“That’s right,” Percey said. “It’s Lauren. You met her yesterday.”

The brunette who’d been crying so hard.

“It tore me apart. Hell, it tore Ed apart too. He loved me but he needed his beautiful lovers. Always did. And, you know, I think it was harder on them. Because he always came home to me.” She paused for a moment and fought the tears. “That’s what love is, I think. Who you come home to.”

“And you?”

“Was I faithful?” Percey asked. She gave another of her wry laughs—the laugh of someone who has keen self-awareness but who doesn’t like all the insights. “I didn’t have a lot of opportunities. I’m hardly the kind of girl gets picked up walking down the street.” She examined a socket wrench absently. “But, yeah, after I found out about Ed and his girlfriends, a few years ago, I was mad. It hurt a lot. I saw some other men. Ron and I—Ron Talbot—spent some time together, a few months.” She smiled. “He even proposed to me. Said I deserved better than Ed. And I suppose I did. But even with those other women in his life, Ed was the man I had to be with. That never changed.”

Percey’s eyes grew distant for a moment. “We met in the navy, Ed and I. Both fighter pilots. When he proposed ... See, the traditional way to propose in the military is you say, ‘You want to become my dependent?’ Sort of a joke. But we were both lieutenants j.g., so Ed said, ‘Let’s you and me become each other’s dependents.’ He wanted to get me a ring but my father’d disowned me—”