The Coffin Dancer by Jeffery Deaver

his heart poked out was in the science of flight and the irrefutable sense of the cockpit. He now swiped his hair off his forehead and said, “Just ask him. He’ll tell you where the killer is. He hired him.”
    “Well, I don’t think it’s quite as easy as that.”
    Another officer appeared in the doorway. “Street’s secure, sir.”
    “If you’ll come with us, please. Both of you.”
    “What about Ed’s mother?”
    “Do you live in the area?” the officer asked.
    “No. I’m staying with my sister,” Mrs. Carney answered. “In Saddle River.”
    “We’ll drive you back there, have a New Jersey trooper stay outside the house. You’re not involved in this, so I’m sure there’s nothing to worry about.”
    “Oh, Percey.”
    The women hugged. “It’ll be okay, Mother.” Percey struggled to hold back the tears.
    “No, it won’t,” the frail woman said. “It’ll never be okay ...”
    An officer led her off to a squad car.
    Percey watched the car drive off, then asked the cop beside her, “Where’re we going?”
    “To see Lincoln Rhyme.”
    Another officer said, “We’re going to walk out together, an officer on either side of you. Keep your heads down and don’t look up under any circumstance. We’re going to walk fast to that second van there. See it? You jump in. Don’t look out the windows, and get your belts on. We’ll be driving fast. Any questions?”
    Percey opened the flask and took a sip of bourbon. “Yeah, who the hell is Lincoln Rhyme?”
     
    “You sewed that? Yourself?”
    “I did,” the woman said, tugging at the embroidered vest, which, like the plaid skirt she wore, was slightly too large, calculated to obscure her substantial figure. The stitching reminded him of the rings around a worm’s body. He shivered, felt sick.
    But he smiled and said, “That’s amazing.” He’d sopped up the tea and apologized like the gentleman his stepfather could sometimes be.
    He asked if she minded if he sat down with her.
    “Uhm ... no,” she said and hid the Vogue in her canvas bag as if it were porn.
    “Oh, by the way,” Stephen said, “I’m Sam Levine.” Her eyes flickered at his surname and took in his Aryan features. “Well, it’s Sammie mostly,” he added. “To Mom I’m Samuel but only if I’ve done something wrong.” A chuckle.
    “I’ll call you ‘friend,’ ” she announced. “I’m Sheila Horowitz.”
    He glanced out the window to avoid having to shake her moist hand, tipped with five white squooshy worms.
    “Pleased to meet you,” he said, turning back, sipping his new cup of tea, which he found disgusting. Sheila noticed that two of her stubby nails were dirty. She tried unobtrusively to dig the crud from under them.
    “It’s relaxing,” she explained. “Sewing. I have an old Singer. One of those old black ones. Got it from my grams.” She tried to straighten her shiny, short hair, wishing undoubtedly that today of all days she’d washed it.
    “I don’t know any girls who sew anymore,” Stephen said. “Girl I dated in college did. Made most of her own clothes. Was I impressed.”
    “Uhm, in New York, like, nobody, and I mean nobody, sews.” She sneered emphatically.
    “My mother used to sew all the time, hours on end,” Stephen said. “Every stitch had to be just perfect. I mean perfect. A thirty-second of an inch apart.” This was true. “I still have some of the things she made. Stupid, but I kept ’em just ’cause she made them.” This was not.
    Stephen could still hear the start and stop of the Singer motor coming from his mother’s tiny, hot room. Day and night. Get those stitches right. One thirty-second of an inch. Why? Because it’s important! Here comes the ruler, here comes the belt, here comes the cock ...
    “Most men”—the stress she put on the word explained a deal about Sheila Horowitz’s life—“don’t care doodles for sewing. They want girls to do sports or know movies.” She added quickly, “And I do. I