“Wasn’t anything around to ID him. No missing persons reported. Nobody saw nothing.”

“Any chance he’s a cop?”

“Naw. Nobody I know,” Jim said. “You, Earl?”

“Nup. Why?”

Sachs didn’t answer. She said, “I need to examine him.”

“Okay, miss,” Earl said. “How ’bout I give you a hand?”

“Hell,” the trooper said, “sounds like he’s the one needs a hand.” He chuckled; the medic gave another of his piggy giggles.

She climbed up in the back of the ambulance and unzipped the body bag completely.

And because she wasn’t going to tug off her jeans and have intercourse with them or at the very least flirt back, they had no choice but to torment her further.

“The thing is, this isn’t the kind of traffic detail you’re probably used to,” Earl said to her. “Hey, Jim, this as bad as the one you saw last week?”

“That head we found?” The cop mused, “Hell, I’d rather have a fresh head any day than a month-er. You ever seen a month-er, honey? Now, they’re about as unpleasant as can be. Give a body three, four months in the water, hey, not a problem – mostly just bones. But you get one’s been simmering for a month…”

“Nasty,” Earl said. “Uck-o.”

“You ever seen a month-er, honey?”

“ ’Preciate your not saying that, Jim,” she said absently to the cop.

“ ‘Month-er’?”

“ ‘Honey.’ ”

“Sure, sorry.”

“Sachs,” Rhyme snapped, “what the hell is going on?”

“No ID, Rhyme. Nobody’s got a clue as to who it is. Hands removed with a fine-bladed razor saw.”

“Is Percey safe? Hale?”

“They’re in the office. Banks’s with them. Away from the windows. What’s the word on the van?”

“Should be there in ten minutes. You’ve got to find out about that body.”

“You talking to yourself, hon – Officer?”

Sachs studied the poor man’s body. She guessed the hands had been removed just after he’d died, or as he was dying, because of the copious amount of blood. She pulled on her latex examining gloves.

“It’s strange, Rhyme. Why’s he only partially ID-proofed?”

If killers don’t have time to dispose of a body completely they ID-proof it by removing the main points of identification: the hands and the teeth.

“I don’t know,” the criminalist responded. “It’s not like the Dancer to be careless, even if he was in a hurry. What’s he wearing?”

“Just skivvies. No clothes or other ID found at the scene.”

“Why,” Rhyme mused, “did the Dancer pick him?”

“If it was the Dancer did this.”

“How many bodies turn up like that in Westchester?”

“To hear the locals tell it,” she said ruefully, “every other day.”

“Tell me about the corpse. COD?”

“You determine the cause of death?” she called to chubby Earl.

“Strangled,” the tech said.

But Sachs noticed right away there were no petechial hemorrhages on the inner surface of the eyelids. No damage to the tongue either. Most strangulation victims bite their tongue at some point during the attack.

“I don’t think so.”

Earl cast another glance at Jim and snorted. “Sure, he was. Lookit that red line on his neck. We call that a ligature mark, honey. You know, we can’t keep him here forever. They start going ripe, days like this. Now, that’s a smell you haven’t lived till you smelled.”

Sachs frowned. “He wasn’t strangled.”

They double-teamed her. “Hon – Officer, that’s a ligature mark,” Jim, the trooper, said. “I seen hundreds of ’em.”

“No, no,” she said. “The perp just ripped a chain off him.”

Rhyme broke in. “That’s probably it, Sachs. First thing you do when you’re ID-proofing a corpse, get rid of the jewelry. It was probably a Saint Christopher, maybe inscribed. Who’s there with you?”

“A pair of cretins,” she said.

“Oh. Well, what is the COD?”

After a brief search she found the wound. “Ice pick or narrow-bladed knife in the back of the skull.”

The medic’s round form eased into the doorway. “We woulda found that,” he said defensively. “I mean, we were in such an all-fire hurry to get here, thanks to you folks.”

Rhyme said to Sachs, “Describe him.”

“He’s overweight, big gut. Lotta flab.”

“Tan or sunburn?”

“On his arms and torso only. Not legs. He’s got untrimmed toenails and a cheap earring – steel posts, not gold. His briefs are Sears and they’ve got holes in them.”

“Okay, he’s looking blue collar,” Rhyme said. “Workman, deliveryman. We’re closing in. Check his throat.”

“What?”

“For his wallet or papers. If you want to keep a corpse anonymous for a few hours you shove his IDs down his throat. It doesn’t get spotted till the autopsy.”

A chortle of laughter from outside.

Which Sachs ended quickly when she grabbed the man’s jaws, pulled wide, and started reaching inside.

“Jesus,” Earl muttered. “What’re you doing?”

“Nothing there, Rhyme.”

“You better cut. The throat. Go deeper.”

Sachs had bridled at some of Rhyme’s more macabre requests in the past. But today she glanced at the grinning boys behind her and lifted her illegal but cherished switchblade from her jeans pocket, clicked it open.

Took the grins off both faces.

“Say, honey, what’re you doing?”

“Little surgery. Gotta look inside.” Like she did this every day.

“I mean, I can’t deliver no corpse to the coroner cut up by some New York City cop.”

“Then you do it.”

She offered him the handle of the knife.

“Aw, she’s shitting us, Jim.”

She lifted an eyebrow and slipped the knife into the man’s Adam’s apple like a fisherman gutting a trout.

“Oh, Jesus, Jim, lookit what she’s doing. Stop her.”

“I’m outa here, Earl. I didn’t see that.” The trooper walked off.

She finished the tidy incision and gazed inside, sighed. “Nothing.”

“What the hell is he up to?” Rhyme asked. “Let’s think… What if he isn’t ID-proofing the body? If he’d wanted to he would’ve taken the teeth. What if there’s something else he’s trying to hide from us?”

“Something on the vic’s hands?” Sachs suggested.

“Maybe,” Rhyme responded. “Something that he couldn’t wash off the corpse easily. And something that’d tell us what he was up to.”

“Oil? Grease?”

“Maybe he was delivering jet fuel,” Rhyme said. “Or maybe he was a caterer – maybe his hands smelled of garlic.”

Sachs looked around the airport. There were dozens of gasoline deliverymen, ground crews, repairmen, construction workers building a new wing on one of the terminals.

Rhyme continued, “He’s a big guy?”

“Yep.”

“He was probably sweating today. Maybe he wiped his head. Or scratched it.”

I’ve been doing that all day myself, Sachs thought, and felt an urge to dig into her hair, hurt her skin as she always did when she felt frustrated and tense.

“Check his scalp, Sachs. Behind the hairline.”

She did.

And there she found it.

“I see streaks of color. Blue. Bits of white too. On the hair and skin. Oh, hell, Rhyme. It’s paint! He’s a painting contractor. And there’re about twenty construction workers on the grounds.”

“The line on the neck,” Rhyme continued. “The Dancer pulled off his necklace ID.”

“But the picture’d be different.”

“Hell, the ID’s probably covered with paint or he faked it somehow. He’s on the field somewhere, Sachs. Get Percey and Hale down on the floor. Put a guard on ’em and get everybody else out, looking for the Dancer. SWAT’s on its way.”

Problems.

He was watching the red-haired cop in the back of the ambulance. Through the Redfield telescope he couldn’t see clearly what she was doing. But he suddenly felt uneasy.

He felt she was doing something to him. Something to expose him, to tie him down.

The worms were getting closer. The face at the window, the wormy face, was looking for him.

Stephen shuddered.