A sudden thought came to him: she's like a Gypsy.
He realized that she was studying him too. And hers seemed to be a curious reaction. Seeing him for the first time, most people slap a dumb grin on their faces, blush red as fruit, and force themselves to stare fixedly at Rhyme's forehead so their eyes won't drop accidentally to his damaged body. But Percey looked once at his face--handsome with its trim lips and Tom Cruise nose, a face younger than its forty-some years--and once at his motionless legs and arms and torso. But her attention focused immediately on the crip equipment--the glossy Storm Arrow wheelchair, the sip-and-puff controller, the headset, the computer.
Thom entered the room and walked up to Rhyme to take his blood pressure.
"Not now," his boss said.
"Yes now."
"No."
"Be quiet," Thom said and took the pressure reading anyway. He pulled off the stethoscope. "Not bad. But you're tired and you've been way too busy lately. You need some rest."
"Go away," Rhyme grumbled. He turned back to Percey Clay. Because he was a crip, a quad, because he was merely a portion of a human being, visitors often seemed to think he couldn't understand what they were saying; they spoke slowly or even addressed him through Thom. Percey now spoke to him conversationally and earned many points from him for doing this. "You think we're in danger, Brit and me?"
"Oh, you are. Serious danger."
Sachs walked into the room and glanced at Percey and Rhyme.
He introduced them.
"Amelia?" Percey asked. "Your name's Amelia?"
Sachs nodded.
A faint smile passed over Percey's face. She turned slightly and shared it with Rhyme.
"I wasn't named after her--the flier," Sachs said, recalling, Rhyme guessed, that Percey was a pilot. "One of my grandfather's sisters. Was Amelia Earhart a hero?"
"No," Percey said. "Not really. It's just kind of a coincidence."
Hale said, "You're going to have guards for her, aren't you? Full-time?" He nodded at Percey.
"Sure, you bet," Dellray said.
"Okay," Hale announced. "Good . . . One thing. I was thinking you really ought to have a talk with that guy. Phillip Hansen."
"A talk?" Rhyme queried.
"With Hansen?" Sellitto asked. "Sure. But he's denying everything and won't say a word more'n that." He looked at Rhyme. "Had the Twins on him for a while." Then back to Hale. "They're our best interrogators. And he stonewalled completely. No luck so far."
"Can't you threaten him . . . or something?"
/> "Uhm, no," the detective said. "Don't think so."
"Doesn't matter," Rhyme continued. "There's nothing Hansen could tell us anyway. The Dancer never meets his clients face-to-face and he never tells them how he's going to do the job."
"The Dancer?" Percey asked.
"That's the name we have for the killer. The Coffin Dancer."
"Coffin Dancer?" Percey gave a faint laugh, as if the phrase meant something to her. But she didn't elaborate.
"Well, that's a little spooky," Hale said dubiously, as if cops shouldn't have eerie nicknames for their bad guys. Rhyme supposed he was right.
Percey looked into Rhyme's eyes, nearly as dark as hers. "So what happened to you? You get shot?"
Sachs--and Hale too--stirred at these blunt words but Rhyme didn't mind. He preferred people like himself--those with no use for pointless tact. He said equably, "I was searching a crime scene at a construction site. A beam collapsed. Broke my neck."