The Coffin Dancer by Jeffery Deaver

Author:Jeffery Deaver
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Tags: Police Procedural, Serial murderers, Police, Mystery & Detective, Rhyme, Fiction, Psychological, Thrillers, Forensic pathologists, Quadriplegics, General, Lincoln (Fictitious character)
ISBN: 9780684868059
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
Published: 1999-03-01T01:04:45.098000+00:00

“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 it.”

“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 .

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