“The grand jury might not indict him, no matter what we say,” Percey’d pointed out. “Then there’s no point in killing us.”

“It doesn’t matter. Once the Dancer’s been hired to kill someone he doesn’t stop until they’re dead. Besides, the prosecutors’ll go after Hansen for killing your husband and you’ll be a witness in that case too. Hansen needs you gone.”

“I think I see where you’re heading.”

He’d cocked an eyebrow.

“Worm on a hook,” she’d said.

His eyes had crinkled and he’d laughed. “Well, I’m not going to parade you around in public, just put you into a safe house here in town. Fully guarded. State-of-the-art security. But we’ll dig in and keep you there. The Dancer’ll surface and we’ll stop him, once and for all. It’s a crazy idea, but I don’t think we have much choice.”

Another tipple of the scotch. It wasn’t bad. For a product not bottled in Kentucky. “Crazy?” she’d repeated. “Let me ask you a question. You have your role models, Detective? Somebody you admire?”

“Sure. Criminalists. August Vollmer, Edmond Locard.”

“Do you know Beryl Markham?”

“No.”

“Aviatrix in the thirties and forties. She—not Amelia Earheart—was an idol of mine. She led a very dashing life. British upper class. The Out of Africa crowd. She was the first person—not first woman, the first person—to fly solo across the Atlantic the hard way, east to west. Lindbergh used tailwinds.” She’d laughed. “Everybody thought she was crazy. Newspapers were running editorials begging her not to try the flight. She did, of course.”

“And made it?”

“Crash-landed short of the airport, but, yeah, she made it. Well, I don’t know if that was brave or crazy. Sometimes I don’t think there’s any difference.”

Rhyme’d continued, “You’ll be pretty safe, but you won’t be completely safe.”

“Let me tell you something. You know that spooky name? That you call the killer?”

“The Dancer.”

“The Coffin Dancer. Well, there’s a phrase we use in flying jets. The ‘coffin corner.’ ”

“What’s that?”

“It’s the margin between the speed your plane stalls at and the speed it starts to break apart from Mach turbulence—when you approach the speed of sound. At sea level you’ve got a couple hundred miles per hour to play with, but at fifty or sixty thousand feet, your stall speed’s maybe five hundred knots per hour and your Mach buffet’s about five forty. You don’t stay within that forty-knots-per-hour margin, you turn the coffin corner and you’ve had it. Any planes that fly that high have to have autopilots to keep the speed inside the margin. Well, I’ll just say that I fly that high all the time and I hardly ever use an autopilot. Completely safe isn’t a concept I’m familiar with.”

“Then you’ll do it.”

But Percey hadn’t answered right away. She’d scrutinized him for a moment. “There’s more to this, isn’t there?”

“More?” Rhyme had asked, but the innocence in his voice had been a thin patina.

“I read the Times Metro section. You cops don’t go all out like this for just any murder. What’d Hansen do? He killed a couple of soldiers, and my husband, but you’re after him like he’s Al Capone.”