“Nup,” Dellray said. “Luck didn’t have a bitsy thing to do with it. Now, I’m gonna cuff you and you’re gonna let me. You don’t, you gonna hurt for months and months. We all together on that?”

“How’d you do it, Fred?”

“ ’Seasy,” the lanky FBI agent said to Sachs as they stood in front of the deserted subway station. He still was dressed homeless and was filthy with the mud he’d smeared on his face and hands to simulate weeks of living on the street. “Rhyme was tellin’ me ’bout the Dancer’s friend being a junkie and living downtown in the subways, knew just where I hadta come. Bought a bag of empties and talked to who I knew I oughta talk to. Just ’bout got di-rections t’his livin’ room.” He nodded toward the subway. They glanced at a squad car, where Jodie sat, cuffed and miserable, in the backseat.

“Why didn’t you tell us what you were doing?”

Dellray’s answer was a laugh and Sachs knew the question was pointless; undercover cops rarely told anyone – fellow cops included, and especially supervisors – what they were doing. Nick, her ex, had been undercover, too, and there’d been a hell of a lot he hadn’t told her.

She massaged her side where she’d fallen. It hurt like a son of a bitch, and the medics said she ought to have X rays. Sachs reached up and squeezed Dellray’s biceps. She felt uneasy receiving gratitude – she was truly Lincoln Rhyme’s protégée there – but she now had no problem saying, “You saved my life. My ass’d be capped now if it wasn’t for you. What can I say?”

Dellray shrugged, deflecting the thanks, and bummed a cigarette from one of the uniformed cops standing in front of the station. He sniffed the Marlboro and slipped it behind his ear. He looked toward a blacked-out window in the station. “Please,” he said to no one, sighing. “ ’Bout time we had some luck here.”

When they’d arrested Joe D’Oforio and flung him into the back of a car, he’d told them that the Dancer had left only ten minutes before, climbing down the stairs and vanishing along a spur line. Jodie – the mutt’s nickname – didn’t know which direction he’d gone, only that he’d disappeared suddenly with his gun and his backpack. Haumann and Dellray sent their troopers to scour the station, the tracks, and the nearby City Hall station. They were now waiting for the results of the sweep.

“Come on…”

Ten minutes later a SWAT officer pushed through the doorway. Sachs and Dellray both looked at him hopefully. But he shook his head. “Lost his prints a hundred feet down the tracks. Don’t have a clue where he went.”

Sachs sighed and reluctantly relayed the message to Rhyme and asked if she should do a search of the tracks and the nearby station.

He took the news as acerbically as she’d guessed he would. “Damnit,” the criminalist muttered. “No, just the station itself. Pointless to grid the rest. Shit, how does he do it? It’s like he’s got some kind of fucking second sight.”

“Well,” she said, “at least we’ve got a witness.”

And regretted immediately that she’d said that.

“Witness?” Rhyme spat out. “A witness? I don’t need witnesses. I need evidence! Well, get him down here anyway. Let’s hear what he has to say. But, Sachs, I want that station swept like you’ve never swept a scene before. You hear me? Are you there, Sachs? Do you hear me?”

Hour 25 of 45

“AND WHAT DO WE HAVE HERE?” Rhyme asked, giving a soft puff into the Storm Arrow control straw to scoot forward.

“An itsy piece of garbage,” offered Fred Dellray, cleaned up and back in uniform – if you could call an Irish green suit a uniform. “Uh, uh, uh. Don’t say a word. Not till we ask fo’ it.” He turned his alarming stare on Jodie.

“You fooled me!”

“Quiet, you little skel.”

Rhyme wasn’t pleased that Dellray had gone out on his own, but that was the nature of undercover work, and even if the criminalist didn’t understand it exactly he couldn’t dispute that – as the agent’s skills just proved – it could get results.

Besides, he’d saved Amelia Sachs’s hide.

She’d be here soon. The medics had taken her to the emergency room for a rib X ray. She was bruised from the fall down the stairs, but nothing was broken. He’d been dismayed to learn that his talk the other night had had no effect; she’d gone into the subway after the Dancer alone.

Damn it, he thought, she’s as pigheaded as me.

“I wasn’t going to hurt anybody,” Jodie protested.

“Hard o’ hearing? I said don’t say a word.”

“I didn’t know who she was!”

“No,” Dellray said, “that pretty silver badge of hers didn’t give nuthin’ away.” Then remembered he didn’t want to hear from the man.

Sellitto walked up close and bent over Jodie. “Tell us some more about your friend.”

“I’m not his friend. He kidnapped me. I was in that building on Thirty-fifth because -”

“Because you were boosting pills. We know, we know.”

Jodie blinked. “How’d you -”

“But we don’t care about that. Not yet, at least. Keep going.”

“I thought he was a cop but then he said he was there to kill some people. I thought he was going to kill me too. He needed to escape so he told me to stand still and I did, and this cop or somebody came to the door and he stabbed him -”

“And killed him,” Dellray spat out.

Jodie sighed and looked miserable. “I didn’t know he was going to kill him. I thought he was just going to knock him out or something.”

“Well, asshole,” Dellray spat out, “he did kill him. Killed him dead as a rock.”

Sellitto looked over the evidence bags from the subway, containing scuzzy porn magazines, hundreds of pills, clothes. A new cellular phone. A stack of money. He turned his attention back to Jodie. “Keep going.”

“He said he’d pay me to get him out of there and I led him through this tunnel to the subway. How’d you find me, man?” He looked at Dellray.

“ ’Cause you were skipping ‘long the street hawking your be-bops to everybody you came across. I even knew your name. Jee-sus, you are a mutt. I oughta squeeze your neck till you’re blue.”

“You can’t hurt me,” he said, struggling to be defiant. “I have rights.”

“Who hired him?” Sellitto asked Jodie. “He mention the name Hansen?”

“He didn’t say.” Jodie’s voice quavered. “Look, I only agreed to help him ’cause I knew he’d kill me if I didn’t. I wasn’t going to do it.” He turned to Dellray. “He wanted me to get you to help. But soon as he left I wanted you to leave. I was going to the police and telling them. I was. He’s a scary guy. I’m afraid of him!”

“Fred?” Rhyme asked.

“Yeah, yeah,” the agent conceded, “he did have a change of tune. Wanted me gone. Didn’t say anything about going to the police, though.”

“Where’s he going? What were you supposed to do?”

“I was supposed to go through the trash bins in front of that town house and watch the cars. He told me to look for a man and a woman getting into a car and leaving. I was supposed to tell him what kind of car. I was going to call on that phone there. Then he was going to follow.”

“You were right, Lincoln,” Sellitto said. “About keeping them in the safe house. He’s going for a transport hit.”

Jodie continued, “I was going to come to you -”

“Man, you’re useless when you lie. Don’t you have any dignity?”

“Look, I was going to,” he said, calmer now. He smiled. “I figured there was a reward.”

Rhyme glanced at the greedy eyes and tended to believe him. He looked at Sellitto, who nodded in agreement.

“You cooperate now,” Sellitto grumbled, “and we might just keep your ass out of jail. I don’t know about money. Maybe.”

“I’ve never hurt anybody. I wouldn’t. I -”

“Cool that tongue,” Dellray said. “We all together on that?”