The burning wire lr-9 Read online

  The condescension explained some of Rhyme's distaste.

  "Who received it and how?" Rhyme asked.

  "Andi Jessen. I'll let her give you the details. I wanted to get it to you as fast as possible."

  At least the fed wasn't fighting a turf war. The dislike eased a bit.

  "I've told the mayor, Washington and Homeland Security. We conferenced about it on the way over."

  Though without our presence, Rhyme noted.

  The fed opened his briefcase and took out a sheet of paper in a clear plastic envelope. Rhyme nodded to Mel Cooper, who, in gloved hands, removed the sheet and placed it on an examining table. First, he photographed it and an instant later the handwritten text appeared on the computer screens around the room: To Andi Jessen, CEO, and Algonquin Consolidated Power:

  At around 11:30 a.m. yesterday morning there was an arc flash incident at the MH-10 substation on W 57 Street in Manhattan, this happened by securing a Bennington cable and bus bar to a post-breaker line with two split bolts. By shutting down four substations and raising the breaker limit at MH-10 an overload of close to two hundred thousand volts caused the flash.

  This incident was entirely your fault and due to your greed and selfishness. This is typical of the industry and it is reprehensable. Enron destroyed the financial lives of people, your company destroys our physical lives and the life of the earth. By exploiting electricity without regard for it's consequences you are destroying our world, you insideously work your way into our lives like a virus, until we are dependent on what is killing us.

  People must learn they do not need as much electricity as you tell them they do. You have to show them the way. You are to execute a rolling brownout across the New York City service grid today-reduce levels to fifty per cent of offpeak load for a half hour, starting at 12:30. If you don't do this, at 1 p.m. more people will die.

  Rhyme nodded toward the phone and said to Sachs, "Call Andi Jessen."

  She did and a moment later the woman's voice came through the speaker. "Detective Sachs? Have you heard?"

  "Yes, I'm here with Lincoln Rhyme and some people from the FBI and the NYPD. They've brought the letter."

  Rhyme heard exasperation and anger as the woman said, "Who's behind it?"

  "We don't know," Sachs said.

  "You have to have some idea."

  McDaniel identified himself and said, "The investigation's moving along, but we don't have a suspect yet."

  "The man in the uniform at the coffee shop yesterday morning, by the bus stop?"

  "We don't have his identity. We're going through the list you gave us. But nobody's a clear suspect yet."

  "Ms. Jessen, this is Detective Sellitto, NYPD. Can you do it?"

  "Do what?"

  "What he's asking for. You know, reduce the power."

  Rhyme didn't see any problem playing games with the bad guys, if a little negotiation gave extra time to analyze the evidence or run surveillance on a terrorist. But it wasn't his call.

  "This is Tucker again, Ms. Jessen. We strongly recommend against negotiating. In the long run, that just encourages them to up their demands." His eyes were on the large detective, who stared right back.

  Sellitto persisted, "It could buy us some breathing room."

  The ASAC was hesitating, perhaps debating the wisdom of not presenting a united front. Still he said, "I would firmly recommend against it."

  Andi Jessen said, "It's not even an issue. A citywide fifty percent decrease below off-peak load? It's not like turning a dimmer switch. It would throw off the load patterns throughout the Northeast Interconnection. We'd have dropouts and blackouts in dozens of places. And we've got millions of customers with on-off systems that'd shut down cold with that drop in power. There'd be data dumps and resets'd go to default. You can't just turn them back on again; it would take days of reprogramming, and a lot of data would be lost altogether.

  "But worse, some of the life-critical infrastructure has battery or generator backup, but not all of it. Hospitals have only so much and some of those systems never work right. People will die as a result of it."

  Well, thought Rhyme, the writer of the letter had one point right: Electricity, and Algonquin and the power companies, have indeed worked their way into our lives. We're dependent on juice.

  "There you have it," said McDaniel. "It can't be done."

  Sellitto grimaced. Rhyme looked toward Sachs. "Parker?"

  She nodded, and scrolled through her BlackBerry to find the number and email of Parker Kincaid in Washington, D.C. He was a former FBI agent and now a private consultant, the best document examiner in the country, in Rhyme's opinion.

  "I'll send it now." She dropped into a chair in front of one of the workstations, wrote an email, scanned the letter then sent them on their way.

  Sellitto snapped open his phone and contacted NYPD Anti-Terror, along with the Emergency Service Unit-the city's version of SWAT-and told them that another attack was planned for around 1 p.m.

  Rhyme turned to the phone. "Ms. Jessen, Lincoln again. That list you gave Detective Sachs yesterday? The employees?"

  "Yes?"

  "Can you get us samples of their handwriting?"

  "Everybody?"

  "As many as you can. As soon as you can."

  "I suppose. We have signed confidentiality statements from just about everybody. Probably health forms, requests, expense accounts."

  Rhyme was somewhat skeptical of signatures as representative of handwriting. Though he was no document examiner, you can't be the head of a forensics unit without developing some knowledge of the subject. He knew that people tended to scrawl their names carelessly (very bad practice, he'd also learned, since a sloppy signature was easier to forge than a precise one). But people wrote memos and took notes in a more legible way, which was more indicative of how they wrote in general. He told this to Jessen, and she responded that she'd put several assistants on the job of finding as many nonsignature examples of handwriting as she could. She wasn't happy but seemed to be softening her position that an Algonquin employee couldn't be involved.

  Rhyme turned away from the phone and called, "Sachs! Is he there? Is Parker there? What's going on?"

  She nodded. "He's at some function or something. I'm getting patched through."

  Kincaid was a single father of two children, Robby and Stephanie, and he carefully balanced his personal and professional lives-his commitment to his kids was why he'd quit the FBI to become, like Rhyme, a consultant. But Rhyme knew too that for a case like this, Kincaid would get on board instantly and do what he could to help.

  The criminalist turned back to the phone. "Ms. Jessen, could you scan them and send them to…" An eyebrow raised toward Sachs, who called out Parker Kincaid's email address.

  "I've got it," Jessen said.

  "Those are terms in the business, I assume?" Rhyme asked. " 'Rolling brownout,' 'shedding load,' 'service grid,' 'offpeak load.' "

  "That's right."

  "Does that give us any details about him?"

  "Not really. They're technical aspects of the business but if he could adjust the computer and rig a flash arc device, then he'd know those too. Anybody in the power industry would know them."

  "How did you get the letter?"

  "It was delivered to my apartment building."

  "Is your address public?"

  "I'm not listed in the phone book but I suppose it wouldn't be impossible to find me."

  Rhyme persisted, "How exactly did you receive it?"

  "I live in a doorman building, Upper East Side. Somebody rang the back delivery bell in the lobby. The doorman went to go see. When he got back, the letter was at his station. It was marked, Emergency. Delivery immediately to Andi Jessen."

  "Is there video security?" Rhyme asked.

  "No."

  "Who handled it?"

  "The doorman. Just the envelope, though. I had a messenger from the office pick it up. He would have touched it too. And I did, of course." />
  McDaniel was about to say something but Rhyme beat him to it. "The letter was time sensitive, so whoever left it knew you had a doorman. So that it would get to you immediately."

  McDaniel was nodding. Apparently that would have been his comment. The bright-eyed Kid nodded as well, like a bobble-head dog in the back window of a car.

  After a moment: "I guess that's right." The concern was obvious in her voice. "So that means he knows about me. Maybe knows a lot about me."

  "Do you have a bodyguard?" Sellitto asked.

  "Our security director, at work. Bernie Wahl. You met him, Detective Sachs. He's got four armed guards on staff, each shift. But not at home. I never thought…"

  "We'll get somebody from Patrol stationed outside your apartment," Sellitto said. As he made the call, McDaniel asked, "What about family in the area? We should have somebody look out for them."

  Momentary silence from the speaker. Then: "Why?"

  "He might try to use them as leverage."

  "Oh." Jessen's otherwise rugged voice sounded small at the implications, those close to her being hurt. But she explained, "My parents are in Florida."

  Sachs asked, "You have a brother, don't you? Didn't I see his picture on your desk?"

  "My brother? We don't stay in touch much. And he doesn't live here-" Another voice interrupted her. Jessen came back on the line. "Look, I'm sorry, the governor's calling. He's just heard the news."

  With a click she disconnected.

  "So." Sellitto lifted his palms. His eyes grazed McDaniel but then settled on Rhyme. "This makes it all pretty fucking easy."

  "Easy?" asked the Kid.

  "Yeah." Sellitto nodded at the digital clock on a nearby flat-screen monitor. "If we can't negotiate, all we gotta do is find him. In under three hours. Piece of cake."

  Chapter 27

  MEL COOPER AND Rhyme were working on the analysis of the letter. Ron Pulaski had arrived too, a few minutes earlier. Lon Sellitto was speeding downtown to coordinate with ESU, in the event they could either ID a suspect or find his possible target.

  Tucker McDaniel looked over the demand letter as if it were some type of food he'd never encountered. Rhyme supposed this was because handwriting on a piece of paper didn't fall into cloud zone law enforcement. It was the antithesis of high-tech communications. His computers and sophisticated tracing systems were useless against paper and ink.

  Rhyme glanced at the script. He knew from his own training, as well as from working with Parker Kincaid, that handwriting doesn't reveal anything about the personality of the writer, whatever the grocery store checkout-stand books and news pundits suggested. Analysis could be illuminating, of course, if you had another, identified sample to compare it with, so you could determine if the writer of the second document was the same as the one who wrote the first. Parker Kincaid would be doing this now, running a preliminary comparison with known handwriting samples of terror suspects and comparing them with the writing of those Algonquin employees who were on the company list.

  Handwriting and content could also suggest right- or left-handedness, level of education, national and regional upbringing, mental and physical illnesses and intoxication or drug-impaired states.

  But Rhyme's interest in the note was more basic: the source of the paper, source of the ink, the fingerprints and trace embedded in the fibers.

  All of which, after Cooper's diligent analysis, added up to a big fat nothing.

  The sources for both paper stock and ink were generic-they could have come from one of thousands of stores. Andi Jessen's prints were the only ones on the letter and those on the envelope were from the messenger and the doorman; McDaniel's agents had taken samples of their prints and forwarded them to Rhyme.

  Useless, Rhyme reflected bitterly. The only deduction was that the perp was smart. And had a great sense of survival.

  But ten minutes later, they had a breakthrough, of sorts.

  Parker Kincaid was on the line from his document examination office in his house in Fairfax, Virginia.

  "Lincoln."

  "Parker, what've we got?"

  Kincaid said, "First, the handwriting comparison. The control samples from Algonquin itself were pretty sparse, so I couldn't do the complete analysis I would have liked."

  "I understand that."

  "But I've narrowed it down to twelve employees."

  "Twelve. Excellent."

  "Here are the names. Ready?"

  Rhyme glanced at Cooper, who nodded. The tech jotted them down as Kincaid dictated.

  "Now, I can give you a few other things about him. First, he's right-handed. Then I picked some characteristics from the language and word choice."

  "Go ahead."

  At Rhyme's nod, Cooper walked to the profile board.

  "He's a product of high school and probably some college. And it was an American education. There are a few spelling, grammatical and punctuation mistakes but mostly with more difficult words or constructions. I put those down to the stress of what he's doing. He was probably born here. I can't say for sure that he isn't of foreign extraction, but English is his first and, I'm almost positive, only language."

  Cooper wrote this down.

  Kincaid continued, "He's also pretty clever. He doesn't write in the first person and avoids the active voice."

  Rhyme understood. "He never says anything about himself."

  "Exactly."

  "Suggesting there could be others working with him."

  "It's a possibility. Also, there's some variation on ascenders and descenders. You get that when a subject is upset, emotional. They're writing in anger or distress, and broader strokes tend to be emphasized."

  "Good." Rhyme nodded at Cooper, who jotted this too onto the profile board.

  "Thanks, Parker. We'll get to work."

  They disconnected. "Twelve…" Rhyme sighed. He looked over the evidence and profile chart, then the names of the suspects. "Don't we have any way to narrow it down faster?" he asked bitterly, watching his clock advance one more minute toward the approaching deadline.

  CRIME SCENE: ALGONQUIN SUBSTATION

  MANHATTAN-10, WEST 57TH STREET

  – Victim (deceased): Luis Martin, assistant manager in music store. -No friction ridge prints on any surface. -Shrapnel from molten metal, as a result of the arc flash. -0-gauge insulated aluminum strand cable. -Bennington Electrical Manufacturing, AM-MV-60, rated up to 60,000v. -Cut by hand with hacksaw, new blade, broken tooth. -Two "split bolts," 3 / 4 -inch holes in them. -Untraceable. -Distinctive tool marks on bolts. -Brass "bus" bar, fixed to cable with two 1 / 4 -inch bolts. -All untraceable. -Boot prints. -Albertson-Fenwick Model E-20 for electrical work, size 11. -Metal grating cut to allow access to substation, distinctive tool marks from bolt cutter. -Access door and frame from basement. -DNA obtained. Sent out for testing. -Greek food, taramasalata. -Blond hair, 1 inch long, natural, from someone 50 or under, discovered in coffee shop across the street from substation. -Sent out for tox-chem screening. -Mineral trace: volcanic ash. -Not naturally found in New York area. -Exhibits, museums, geology schools? -Algonquin Control Center software accessed by internal codes, not outside hackers.

  DEMAND NOTE

  – Delivered to Andi Jessen at home. -No witnesses. -Handwritten. -Sent to Parker Kincaid for analysis. -Generic paper and ink. -Untraceable. -No friction ridge prints, other than A. Jessen, doorman, messenger. -No discernible trace discovered in paper.

  UNSUB PROFILE

  – Male. -40's. -Probably white. -Possibly glasses and cap. -Possibly with short, blond hair. -Dark blue overalls, similar to those worn by Algonquin workers. -Knows electrical systems very well. -Boot print suggests no physical condition affecting posture or gait. -Possibly same person who stole 75 feet of similar Bennington cable and 12 split bolts. More attacks in mind? Access to the warehouse where theft occurred with key. -Likely he is Algonquin employee or has contact with one. -Terrorist connection? Relation to Justice For [unknown]? Terror group? Individual na
med Rahman involved? Coded references to monetary disbursements, personnel movements and something "big." -Algonquin security breach in Philadelphia might be related. -SIGINT hits: code word reference to weapons, "paper and supplies" (guns, explosives?). -Personnel include man and woman. -Would have studied SCADA-Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition program. And EMP-energy management programs. Algonquin's is Enertrol. Both Unix-based. -To create arc flash would probably have been or currently is lineman, troubleman, licensed tradesman, generator construction, master electrician, military. -Profile from Parker Kincaid, Re: handwriting: -Right-handed. -High school education at least, probably college. -American educated. -English first and probably only language. -Writes with passive voice, to keep from giving away accomplices? -Could match one of 12 Algonquin employees. -Emotional, angry, distressed writing the letter.

  Chapter 28

  MEL COOPER, IN front of his computer, sat up quickly. "I think I've got one."

  "One what?" Rhyme asked acerbically.

  "A way to narrow down the list." Cooper sat up straighter yet and shoved his glasses higher onto the bridge of his nose as he read an email. "The hair. That we got from the coffee shop across from the substation?"

  "No bulb so there's no DNA," Rhyme pointed out abruptly. He was still irritated that the analysis wasn't ready yet.

  "I don't mean that, Lincoln. I've just got the tox-chem screening from the hair itself. Vinblastine and prednisone in significant quantities, and traces of etoposide."

  "Cancer patient," Rhyme said, leaning his head forward-his version of Cooper's own posture adjustment. "He's on a chemotherapy regimen."

  "Has to be."

  The young FBI protege of McDaniel's barked a laugh. "How do you know that?" Then to his boss: "That's pretty good."

  "You'd be surprised," Ron Pulaski said.

  Rhyme ignored them both. "Call Algonquin and see if any of the twelve on the list made health claims for cancer treatment in the past five or six months."