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Summary
Summary
NYPD criminalist Lincoln Rhyme joins his beautiful protégé, Amelia Sachs, in the hunt for the Coffin Dancer -- an ingenious killer who changes appearance even faster than he adds to his trail of victims. They have only one clue: the madman has a tattoo of the Grim Reaper waltzing with a woman. Rhyme must rely on his wits and intuition to track the elusive murderer through New York City -- knowing they have only forty-eight hours before the Coffin Dancer strikes again.
Author Notes
Jeffery Deaver was born on May 6, 1950 in Chicago, Illinois. He received a degree in journalism from the University of Missouri and a law degree from Fordham University. Before attending law school, he worked as a business writer. After law school, he worked for a Wall Street law firm practicing corporate law. In 1990, he decided to stop practicing law and become a full-time writer.
His first novel was a horror story entitled Voodoo. He is the author of more than 25 novels and has written some of those stories under the pseudonym William Jeffries. He writes the Lincoln Rhyme series and the Kathryn Dance series. A Maiden's Grave was adapted into a film by HBO called Dead Silence and The Bone Collector was adapted into a feature film starring Denzel Washington and Angelina Jolie. He received the Steel Dagger and Short Story Dagger from the British Crime Writers' Association, the Ellery Queen Reader's Award for Best Short Story of the Year three times, and the British Thumping Good Read Award.
(Bowker Author Biography)
Reviews (4)
Publisher's Weekly Review
Deaver has come a long way since his Rune novels (Manhattan Is My Beat; Death of a Blue Movie Star), and the measure of his growth as a writer is on display in this taut sequel to the bestselling The Bone Collector, starring quadriplegic forensic specialist Lincoln Rhyme. Rhyme is called in to track down a contract killer, known as the Coffin Dancer, who has been hired to eliminate three witnesses in the upcoming federal trial of Philip Hansen. The trial is set to begin just 48 hours from the novel's (literally) explosive beginning. Rhyme and his beautiful assistant, detective Amelia Sachs, have just that much time to ID the Dancer and keep him from murdering the remaining witnesses. Yet Rhyme has personal reasons to track the Dancer, which come out in just one of the revelations and reversals that punctuate this thriller like a string of firecrackers. The pace, energized by Deaver's precise attention, never flags; and if the romantic angle is a little obvious (Rhyme's seeming concern for one of the Dancer's female targets sparks Amelia's jealousy), Deaver manages to renovate many of the hoariest conventions of the ticking-clock-serial-murder subgenre. Another original renovation is his Nero Wolfe-ish Rhymea detective who lives the life of the mind by necessity, not choice, and who thinks of everything but can't even pick up a phone without help. Trust Deaver's superb plotting and brisk, no-nonsense prose to spin fresh gold from tired straw. Literary Guild main selection; Doubleday Book Club featured alternate; Reader's Digest Condensed Book Club. (Aug.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Booklist Review
Forensic scientist Lincoln Rhyme became a quadriplegic in an accident at a murder site, but the injury seemed only to intensify his powers of deduction and ability to get inside the heads of the killers he tracks from his state-of-the-art home laboratory. His beautiful protege, Amelia Sachs, serves as his arms and legs at the murder sites, bagging evidence and scoping out clues. In their latest case, the two team up to find a diabolical killer they've dubbed Coffin Dancer. The killer has a chameleonlike ability to change identities and murder methods, and he leaves behind no clues--not even the tiniest skin flake or clothing fiber. His latest mission is to destroy three witnesses who are set to testify against an international arms smuggler. Dancer has only 48 hours to accomplish his task before the trio appears before the grand jury. He's blown one witness apart using a booby-trap bomb. Can he get to the other two and kill them before they testify? In a classic battle of wills, Rhyme's dazzling forensic skills are pitted against Dancer's diabolical cunning. Intense, violent, and heart-stopping, Deaver's latest will leave readers gasping at the stunning climax. This one's already on the Literary Guild, Doubleday Book Club, and Reader's Digest A-lists. It belongs on every library's A-list, too. --Emily Melton
Kirkus Review
Lincoln Rhyme, the quadriplegic criminalist of The Bone Collector (1997), returns to confront the uncannily resourceful killer who's been hired to eliminate three witnesses in the last hours before their grand jury testimony. The first witness is no challenge for the Coffin Dancer, so dubbed after his distinctive tattoo: He simply plants a bomb on Hudson Air pilot/vice-president Edward Carney's flight to Chicago and waits for the TV news. But Ed's murder alerts the two other witnesses against millionaire entrepreneur-cum-weapons-stealer Phillip Hansen, and also alerts the NYPD and the FBI that both those witnesses--Ed's widow, Hudson Air president Percey Clay, and her old friend and fellow-pilot Brit Haleare on the hot seat. With 45 hours left before they're scheduled to testify against Hansen, they bring Rhyme and his eyes and ears, New York cop Amelia Sachs, into the case. Their job: to gather enough information about the Coffin Dancer from trace evidence at the crime scene (for a start, scrapings from the tires of the emergency vehicles that responded to the Chicago crash) to nail him, or at least to predict his next move and head him off. The resulting game of cat and mouse is even more far-fetched than in The Bone Collector--both Rhyme and the Dancer are constantly subject to unbelievably timely hunches and brain waves that keep their deadly shuttlecock in play down to the wire--but just as grueling, as the Dancer keeps on inching closer to his targets by killing bystanders whose death scenes in turn provide Rhyme and Sachs with new, ever more precise evidence against him. Fair warning to newcomers: Author Deaver is just as cunning and deceptive as his killer; don't assume he's run out of tricks until you've run out of pages. For forensics buffs: Patricia Cornwell attached to a time bomb. For everybody else: irresistibly overheated melodrama, with more twists than Chubby Checker. (First printing of 100,000; Literary Guild main selection)
Library Journal Review
In this follow-up to Deaver's The Bone Collector, Lincoln Rhyme and detective Amelia Sachs return in a story filled with as many twists, turns, and surprises as the first. Not much can divert Rhyme from a close examination of evidence, and the smaller and more obscure the evidence, the better. When presented with the opportunity to hunt an elusive and seemingly unstoppable assassin known to law enforcement simply as the Coffin Dancer, Rhyme can't resist. The hit man has killed once, and Rhyme and Sachs have 48 hours to prevent him from killing again. Alexander Adams's narration leans more to cold reading than actual performance; he uses distinct voices only when absolutely necessary and accents only when specifically called for in the text. Although Deaver paints interesting characters, the real thrust of the book is in a plot teeming with action, suspense, and surprises. Adams's style is a perfect fit, as a more animated narration only could have detracted from the urgency and entertainment. Recommended for popular fiction collections.--Jennifer Belford, Addison P.L., IL (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Excerpts
Excerpts
Chapter One When Edward Carney said good-bye to his wife, Percey, he never thought it would be the last time he'd see her. He climbed into his car, which was parked in a precious space on East Eighty-first Street in Manhattan, and pulled into traffic. Carney, an observant man by nature, noticed a black van parked near their town house. A van with mud-flecked, mirrored windows. He glanced at the battered vehicle and recognized the West Virginia plates, realizing he'd seen the van on the street several times in the past few days. But then the traffic in front of him sped up. He caught the end of the yellow light and forgot the van completely. He was soon on the FDR Drive, cruising north. Twenty minutes later he juggled the car phone and called his wife. He was troubled when she didn't answer. Percey'd been scheduled to make the flight with him -- they'd flipped a coin last night for the left-hand seat and she'd won, then given him one of her trademark victory grins. But then she'd wakened at 3 A.M. with a blinding migraine, which had stayed with her all day. After a few phone calls they'd found a substitute copilot and Percey'd taken a Fiorinal and gone back to bed. A migraine was the only malady that would ground her. Lanky Edward Carney, forty-five years old and still wearing a military hairstyle, cocked his head as he listened to the phone ringing miles away. Their answering machine clicked on and he returned the phone to the cradle, mildly concerned. He kept the car at exactly sixty miles per hour, centered perfectly in the right lane; like most pilots he was conservative in his car. He trusted other airmen but thought most drivers were crazy. In the office of Hudson Air Charters, on the grounds of Mamaroneck Regional Airport, in Westchester, a cake awaited. Prim and assembled Sally Anne, smelling like the perfume department at Macy's, had baked it herself to commemorate the company's new contract. Wearing the ugly rhinestone biplane brooch her grandchildren had given her last Christmas, she scanned the room to make sure each of the dozen or so employees had a piece of devil's food sized just right for them. Ed Carney ate a few bites of cake and talked about tonight's flight with Ron Talbot, whose massive belly suggested he loved cake though in fact he survived mostly on cigarettes and coffee. Talbot wore the dual hats of operations and business manager and he worried out loud if the shipment would be on time, if the fuel usage for the flight had been calculated correctly, if they'd priced the job right. Carney handed him the remains of his cake and told him to relax. He thought again about Percey and stepped away into his office, picked up the phone. Still no answer at their town house. Now concern became worry. People with children and people with their own business always pick up a ringing phone. He slapped the receiver down, thought about calling a neighbor to check up on her. But then the large white truck pulled up in front of the hangar next to the office and it was time to go to work. Six P.M. Talbot gave Carney a dozen documents to sign just as young Tim Randolph arrived, wearing a dark suit, white shirt, and narrow black tie. Tim referred to himself as a "copilot" and Carney liked that. "First officers" were company people, airline creations, and while Carney respected any man who was competent in the right-hand seat, pretension put him off. Tall, brunette Lauren, Talbot's assistant, had worn her lucky dress, whose blue color matched the hue of the Hudson Air logo -- a silhouette of a falcon flying over a gridded globe. She leaned close to Carney and whispered, "It's going to be okay now, won't it?" "It'll be fine," he assured her. They embraced for a moment. Sally Anne hugged him too and offered him some cake for the flight. He demurred. Ed Carney wanted to be gone. Away from the sentiment, away from the festivities. Away from the ground. And soon he was. Sailing three miles above the earth, piloting a Lear 35A, the finest private jet ever made, clear of markings or insignia except for its N registration number, polished silver, sleek as a pike. They flew toward a stunning sunset -- a perfect orange disk easing into big, rambunctious clouds, pink and purple, leaking bolts of sunlight. Only dawn was as beautiful. And only thunderstorms more spectacular. It was 723 miles to O'Hare and they covered that distance in less than two hours. Air Traffic Control's Chicago Center politely asked them to descend to fourteen thousand feet, then handed them off to Chicago Approach Control. Tim made the call. "Chicago Approach. Lear Four Niner Charlie Juliet with you at one four thousand." "Evening, Niner Charlie Juliet," said yet another placid air traffic controller. "Descend and maintain eight thousand. Chicago altimeter thirty point one one. Expect vectors to twenty-seven L." "Roger, Chicago. Niner Charlie Juliet out of fourteen for eight." O'Hare is the busiest airport in the world and ATC put them in a holding pattern out over the western suburbs of the city, where they'd circle, awaiting their turn to land. Ten minutes later the pleasant, staticky voice requested, "Niner Charlie Juliet , heading zero nine zero over the numbers downwind for twenty-seven L." "Zero nine zero. Nine Charlie Juliet," Tim responded. Carney glanced up at the bright points of constellations in the stunning gunmetal sky and thought, Look, Percey, it's all the stars of evening... And with that he had what was the only unprofessional urge of perhaps his entire career. His concern for Percey arose like a fever. He needed desperately to speak to her. "Take the aircraft," he said to Tim. "Roger," the young man responded, hands going unquestioningly to the yoke. Air Traffic Control crackled, "Niner Charlie Juliet, descend to four thousand. Maintain heading." "Roger, Chicago," Tim said. "Niner Charlie Juliet out of eight for four." Carney changed the frequency of his radio to make a unicom call. Tim glanced at him. "Calling the Company," Carney explained. When he got Talbot he asked to be patched through the telephone to his home. As he waited, Carney and Tim went through the litany of the pre-landing check. "Flaps approach...twenty degrees." "Twenty, twenty, green," Carney responded. "Speed check." "One hundred eighty knots." As Tim spoke into his mike -- "Chicago, Niner Charlie Juliet, crossing the numbers; through five for four" -- Carney heard the phone start to ring in their Manhattan town house, seven hundred miles away. Come on, Percey. Pick up! Where are you? Please... ATC said, "Niner Charlie Juliet, reduce speed to one eight zero. Contact tower. Good evening." "Roger, Chicago. One eight zero knots. Evening." Three rings. Where the hell is she? What's wrong? The knot in his gut grew tighter. The turbofan sang, a grinding sound. Hydraulics moaned. Static crackled in Carney's headset. Tim sang out, "Flaps thirty. Gear down." "Flaps, thirty, thirty, green. Gear down. Three green." And then, at last -- in his earphone -- a sharp click. His wife's voice saying, "Hello?" He laughed out loud in relief. Carney started to speak but, before he could, the aircraft gave a huge jolt -- so vicious that in a fraction of a second the force of the explosion ripped the bulky headset from his ears and the men were flung forward into the control panel. Shrapnel and sparks exploded around them. Stunned, Carney instinctively grabbed the unresponsive yoke with his left hand; he no longer had a right one. He turned toward Tim just as the man's bloody, rag-doll body disappeared out of the gaping hole in the side of the fuselage. "Oh, God. No, no..." Then the entire cockpit broke away from the disintegrating plane and rose into the air, leaving the fuselage and wings and engines of the Lear behind, engulfed in a ball of gassy fire. "Oh, Percey," he whispered, "Percey..." Though there was no longer a microphone to speak into. Copyright © 1998 by Jeffery Deaver Chapter Two Big as asteroids, bone yellow. The grains of sand glowed on the computer screen. The man was sitting forward, neck aching, eyes in a hard squint -- from concentration, not from any flaw in vision. In the distance, thunder. The early morning sky was yellow and green and a storm was due at any moment. This had been the wettest spring on record. Grains of sand... "Enlarge," he commanded, and dutifully the image on the computer doubled in size. Strange, he thought. "Cursor down...stop." Leaning forward again, straining, studying the screen. Sand, Lincoln Rhyme reflected, is a criminalist's delight: bits of rock, sometimes mixed with other material, ranging from .05 to 2 millimeters (larger than that is gravel, smaller is silt). It adheres to a perp's clothing like sticky paint and conveniently leaps off at crime scenes and hideouts to link murderer and murdered. It also can tell a great deal about where a suspect has been. Opaque sand means he's been in the desert. Clear means beaches. Hornblende means Canada. Obsidian, Hawaii. Quartz and opaque igneous rock, New England. Smooth gray magnetite, the western Great Lakes. But where this particular sand had come from, Rhyme didn't have a clue. Most of the sand in the New York area was quartz and feldspar. Rocky on Long Island Sound, dusty on the Atlantic, muddy on the Hudson. But this was white, glistening, ragged, mixed with tiny red spheres. And what are those rings? White stone rings like microscopic slices of calamari. He'd never seen anything like this. The puzzle had kept Rhyme up till 4 a.m. He'd just sent a sample of the sand to a colleague at the FBI's crime lab in Washington. He'd had it shipped off with great reluctance -- Lincoln Rhyme hated someone else's answering his own questions. Motion at the window beside his bed. He glanced toward it. His neighbors -- two compact peregrine falcons -- were awake and about to go hunting. Pigeons beware, Rhyme thought. Then he cocked his head, muttering, "Damn," though he was referring not to his frustration with this uncooperative evidence but at the impending interruption. Urgent footsteps were on the stairs. Thom had let visitors in and Rhyme didn't want visitors. He glanced toward the hallway angrily. "Oh, not now, for God's sake." But they didn't hear, of course, and wouldn't have paused even if they had. Two of them... One was heavy. One not. A fast knock on the open door and they entered. "Lincoln." Rhyme grunted. Lon Sellitto was a detective first grade, NYPD, and the one responsible for the giant steps. Padding along beside him was his slimmer, younger partner, Jerry Banks, spiffy in his pork gray suit of fine plaid. He'd doused his cowlick with spray -- Rhyme could smell propane, isobutane, and vinyl acetate -- but the charming spike still stuck up like Dagwood's. The rotund man looked around the second-floor bedroom, which measured twenty by twenty. Not a picture on the wall. "What's different, Linc? About the place?" "Nothing." "Oh, hey, I know -- it's clean," Banks said, then stopped abruptly as he ran into his faux pas. "Clean, sure," said Thom, immaculate in ironed tan slacks, white shirt, and the flowery tie that Rhyme thought was pointlessly gaudy though he himself had bought it, mail order, for the man. The aide had been with Rhyme for several years now -- and though he'd been fired by Rhyme twice, and quit once, the criminalist had rehired the unflappable nurse/assistant an equal number of times. Thom knew enough about quadriplegia to be a doctor and had learned enough forensics from Lincoln Rhyme to be a detective. But he was content to be what the insurance company called a "caregiver," though both Rhyme and Thom disparaged the term. Rhyme called him, variously, his "mother hen" or "nemesis," both of which delighted the aide no end. He now maneuvered around the visitors. "He didn't like it but I hired Molly Maids and got the place scrubbed down. Practically needed to be fumigated. He wouldn't talk to me for a whole day afterwards." "It didn't need to be cleaned. I can't find anything." "But then he doesn't have to find anything, does he?" Thom countered. "That's what I'm for." No mood for banter. "Well?" Rhyme cast his handsome face toward Sellitto. "What?" "Got a case. Thought you might wanta help." "I'm busy." "What's all that?" Banks asked, motioning toward a new computer sitting beside Rhyme's bed. "Oh," Thom said with infuriating cheer, "he's state of the art now. Show them, Lincoln. Show them." "I don't want to show them." More thunder but not a drop of rain. Nature, as often, was teasing today. Thom persisted. "Show them how it works." "Don't want to." "He's just embarrassed." "Thom," Rhyme muttered. But the young aide was as oblivious to threats as he was to recrimination. He tugged his hideous, or stylish, silk tie. "I don't know why he's behaving this way. He seemed very proud of the whole setup the other day." "Did not." Thom continued. "That box there" -- he pointed to a beige contraption -- "that goes to the computer." "Whoa, two hundred megahertz?" Banks asked, nodding at the computer. To escape Rhyme's scowl he'd grabbed the question like an owl snagging a frog. "Yep," Thom said. But Lincoln Rhyme was not interested in computers. At the moment Lincoln Rhyme was interested only in microscopic rings of sculpted calamari and the sand they nestled in. Thom continued. "The microphone goes into the computer. Whatever he says, the computer recognizes. It took the thing a while to learn his voice. He mumbled a lot." In truth Rhyme was quite pleased with the system -- the lightning-fast computer, a specially made ECU box -- environmental control unit -- and voice-recognition software. Merely by speaking he could command the cursor to do whatever a person using a mouse and keyboard could do. And he could dictate too. Now, with words, he could turn the heat up or down and the lights on or off, play the stereo or TV, write on his word processor, and make phone calls and send faxes. "He can even write music," Thom said to the visitors. "He tells the computer what notes to mark down on the staff." "Now that's useful," Rhyme said sourly. "Music." For a C4 quad -- Rhyme's injury was at the fourth cervical vertebra -- nodding was easy. He could also shrug, though not as dismissingly as he'd have liked. His other circus trick was moving his left ring finger a few millimeters in any direction he chose. That had been his entire physical repertoire for the past several years; composing a sonata for the violin was probably not in the offing. "He can play games too," Thom said. "I hate games. I don't play games." Sellitto, who reminded Rhyme of a large unmade bed, gazed at the computer and seemed unimpressed. "Lincoln," he began gravely. "There's a task-forced case. Us 'n' the feds. Ran into a problem last night." "Ran into a brick wall," Banks ventured to say. "We thought...well, I thought you'd want to help us out on this one." Want to help them out? "I'm working on something now," Rhyme explained. "For Perkins, in fact." Thomas Perkins, special agent in charge of the Manhattan office of the FBI. "One of Fred Dellray's runners is missing." Special Agent Fred Dellray, a longtime veteran with the Bureau, was a handler for most of the Manhattan office's undercover agents. Dellray himself had been one of the Bureau's top undercover ops. He'd earned commendations from the director himself for his work. One of Dellray's agents, Tony Panelli, had gone missing a few days earlier. "Perkins told us," Banks said. "Pretty weird." Rhyme rolled his eyes at the unartful phrase. Though he couldn't dispute it. The agent had disappeared from his car across from the Federal Building in downtown Manhattan around 9 P.M. The streets weren't crowded but they weren't deserted either. The engine of the Bureau's Crown Victoria was running, the door open. There was no blood, no gunshot residue, no scuff marks indicating struggle. No witnesses -- at least no witnesses willing to talk. Pretty weird indeed. Perkins had a fine crime scene unit at his disposal, including the Bureau's Physical Evidence Response Team. But it had been Rhyme who'd set up PERT and it was Rhyme whom Dellray had asked to work the scene of the disappearance. The crime scene officer who worked as Rhyme's partner had spent hours at Panelli's car and had come away with no unidentified fingerprints, ten bags of meaningless trace evidence, and -- the only possible lead -- a few dozen grains of this very odd sand. The grains that now glowed on his computer screen, as smooth and huge as heavenly bodies. Sellitto continued. "Perkins's gonna put other people on the Panelli case, Lincoln, if you'll help us. Anyway, I think you'll want this one." That verb again -- want. What was this all about? Rhyme and Sellitto had worked together on major homicide investigations some years ago. Hard cases -- and public cases. He knew Sellitto as well as he knew any cop. Rhyme generally distrusted his own ability to read people (his ex-wife Blaine had said -- often, and heatedly -- that Rhyme could spot a shell casing a mile away and miss a human being standing in front of him) but he could see now that Sellitto was holding back. "Okay, Lon. What is it? Tell me." Sellitto nodded toward Banks. "Phillip Hansen," the young detective said significantly, lifting a puny eyebrow. Rhyme knew the name only from newspaper articles. Hansen -- a large, hard-living businessman originally from Tampa, Florida -- owned a wholesale company in Armonk, New York. It was remarkably successful and he'd become a multimillionaire thanks to it. Hansen had a good deal for a small-time entrepreneur. He never had to look for customers, never advertised, never had receivables problems. In fact, if there was any downside to PH Distributors, Inc., it was that the federal government and New York State were expending great energy to shut it down and throw its president in jail. Because the product Hansen's company sold was not, as he claimed, secondhand military surplus vehicles but weaponry, more often than not stolen from military bases or imported illegally. Earlier in the year two army privates had been killed when a truckload of small arms was hijacked near the George Washington Bridge on its way to New Jersey. Hansen was behind it -- a fact the U.S. attorney and the New York attorney general knew but couldn't prove. "Perkins and us're hammering together a case," Sellitto said. "Working with the army CID. But it's been a bitch." "And nobody ever dimes him," said Banks. "Ever." Rhyme supposed that, no, no one would dare snitch on a man like Hansen. The young detective continued. "But finally, last week, we got a break. See, Hansen's a pilot. His company's got warehouses at Mamaroneck Airport -- that one near White Plains? A judge issued paper to check 'em out. Naturally we didn't find anything. But then last week, it's midnight? The airport's closed but there're some people there, working late. They see a guy fitting Hansen's description drive out to this private plane, load some big duffel bags into it, and take off. Unauthorized. No flight plan, just takes off. Comes back forty minutes later, lands, gets back into his car, and burns rubber out of there. No duffel bags. The witnesses give the registration number to the FAA. Turns out it's Hansen's private plane, not his company's." Rhyme said, "So he knew you were getting close and he wanted to ditch something linking him to the killings." He was beginning to see why they wanted him. Some seeds of interest here. "Air Traffic Control track him?" "LaGuardia had him for a while. Straight out over Long Island Sound. Then he dropped below radar for ten minutes or so." "And you drew a line to see how far he could get over the Sound. There're divers out?" "Right. Now, we knew that soon as Hansen heard we had the three witnesses he was gonna rabbit. So we managed to put him away till Monday. Federal Detention." Rhyme laughed. "You got a judge to buy probable cause on that?" "Yeah, with the risk of flight," Sellitto said. "And some bullshit FAA violations and reckless endangerment thrown in. No flight plan, flying below FAA minimums." "What'd Mis-ter Han-sen say?" "He knows the drill. Not a word to the arrestings, not a word to the prosecutors. Lawyer denies everything and's preparing suit for wrongful arrest, yadda, yadda, yadda...So if we find the fucking bags we go to the grand jury on Monday and, bang, he's away." "Provided," Rhyme pointed out, "there's anything incriminating in the bags." "Oh, there's something incriminating." "How do you know?" "Because Hansen's scared. He's hired somebody to kill the witnesses. He's already got one of 'em. Blew up his plane last night outside of Chicago." And, Rhyme thought, they want me to find the duffel bags...Fascinating questions were now floating into his mind. Was it possible to place the plane at a particular location over the water because of a certain type of precipitation or saline deposit or insect found crushed on the leading edge of the wing? Could one calculate the time of death of an insect? What about salt concentrations and pollutants in the water? Flying that low to the water, would the engines or wings pick up algae and deposit it on the fuselage or tail? "I'll need some maps of the Sound," Rhyme began. "Engineering drawings of his plane -- " "Uhm, Lincoln, that's not why we're here," Sellitto said. "Not to find the bags," Banks added. "No? Then?" Rhyme tossed an irritating tickle of black hair off his forehead and frowned the young man down. Sellitto's eyes again scanned the beige ECU box. The wires that sprouted from it were dull red and yellow and black and lay curled on the floor like sunning snakes. "We want you to help us find the killer. The guy Hansen hired. Stop him before he gets the other two wits." "And?" For Rhyme saw that Sellitto still had not mentioned what he was holding in reserve. With a glance out the window the detective said, "Looks like it's the Dancer, Lincoln." "The Coffin Dancer?" Sellitto looked back and nodded. "You're sure?" "We heard he'd done a job in D.C. a few weeks ago. Killed a congressional aide mixed up in arms deals. We got pen registers and found calls from a pay phone outside Hansen's house to the hotel where the Dancer was staying. It's gotta be him, Lincoln." On the screen the grains of sand, big as asteroids, smooth as a woman's shoulders, lost their grip on Rhyme's interest. "Well," he said softly, "that's a problem now, isn't it?" Copyright © 1998 by Jeffery Deaver Excerpted from The Coffin Dancer by Jeffery Deaver All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.