“I’m on it, Officer.”

She returned to the office. There were no blinds on the windows and Banks had moved Percey and Hale into an interior office.

“What’s going on?” Percey asked.

“You’re out of here in five minutes,” Sachs said, glancing out the window, trying to guess how the Dancer would attack. She had no idea.

“Why?” the flier asked, frowning.

“We think the man who killed your husband’s here. Or on his way here.”

“Oh, come on. There’re cops all over the field. It’s perfectly safe. I need to—”

Sachs snapped to her, “No arguments.”

But argue she did. “We can’t leave. I’ve just had my chief mechanic quit. I have to—”

“Perce,” Hale said uneasily, “maybe we ought to listen to her.”

“We’ve got to get that aircraft—”

“Get back. In there. And be quiet.”

Percey’s mouth opened wide in shock. “You can’t talk to me that way. I’m not a prisoner.”

“Officer Sachs? Hellooo?” The trooper she’d spoken to outside stepped into the doorway. “I’ve done a fast visual of everybody here in uniform and the detectives too. No unknowns. And no reports of any state or Westchester officers missing. But our Central Dispatch told me something maybe you oughta know about. Might be nothing, but—”

“Tell me.”

Percey Clay said, “Officer, I have to talk to you . . . ”

Sachs ignored her and nodded to the trooper. “Go on.”

“Traffic Patrol in White Plains, about two miles away. They found a body in a Dumpster. Think he was killed about an hour ago, maybe less.”

“Rhyme, you hear?”

“Yes.”

Sachs asked the cop, “Why d’you think that’s important?”

“It’s the way he was killed. Was a hell of a mess.”

“Ask him if the hands and face were missing,” Rhyme asked.

“What?”

“Ask him!”

She did, and everyone in the office stopped talking and stared at Sachs.

The trooper blinked in surprise and said, “Yes ma’am, Officer. Well, the hands at least. The dispatcher didn’t say anything about the face. How’d you know . . . ?”

Rhyme blurted, “Where’s it now? The body?”

She relayed the question.

“In a coroner’s bus. They’re taking it to the county morgue.”

“No,” Rhyme said. “Have them get it to you, Sachs. I want you to examine it.”

“The—”

“Body,” he said. “It’s got the answer to how he’s going to come at you. I don’t want Percey and Hale moved until we know what we’re up against.”

She told the cop Rhyme’s request.

“Okay,” he said. “I’ll get on it. That’s . . . You mean you want the body here.”

“Yes. Now.”

“Tell ’em to get it there fast, Sachs,” Rhyme said. He sighed. “Oh, this is bad. Bad.”

And Sachs had the uneasy thought that Rhyme’s urgent grief was not only for the man who had died so violently, whoever he was, but for those who, maybe, were just about to.

People believe that the rifle is the important tool for a sniper, but that’s wrong. It’s the telescope.