The burning wire lr-9 Page 28

  I'm screwed, he thought.

  There was the chance the man was dead. Even though McDaniel's phrasing was fucked-up (symbiosis construct?), his theory might not be. It made sense that Ray Galt was the inside man seduced into helping Rahman and Johnston and their Justice For the Earth group target Algonquin and the grid. If Brent had stumbled into their cell, they'd have killed him in an instant.

  Ah, Dellray thought angrily: blind, simpleminded politics-the empty calories of terrorism.

  But Dellray'd been in this business a long time and his gut told him that William Brent was very much alive. New York City is smaller than people think, particularly the underside of the Big Apple. Dellray had called up other contacts, a lot of them: other CIs and some of the undercover agents he ran. No word about Brent. Even Jimmy Jeep knew nothing-and he definitely had a motive to track down the man again, to make sure Dellray still backed the upcoming march through Georgia. Yet nobody'd heard about anybody ordering a clip or a cleaner. And no surprised garbagemen had wheeled a Dumpster to their truck and found nestled inside the pungent sarcophagus an unidentified body.

  No, Dellray concluded. There was only the obvious answer, and he could ignore it no more: Brent had fucked him over.

  He'd checked Homeland Security to see if the snitch, either as Brent or as one of his half dozen undercover identities, had booked a flight anywhere. He hadn't, though any professional CI knows where to buy airtight identity papers.

  "Honey?"

  Dellray jumped at the sound and he looked up and saw Serena in the doorway, holding Preston.

  "You're looking thoughtful," she said. Dellray continued to be struck by the fact she looked like Jada Pinkett Smith, the actress and producer. "You were brooding before you went to bed, you started brooding when you woke up. I suspect you were brooding in your sleep."

  He opened his mouth to spin a tale, but then said, "I think I got my ass fired yesterday."

  "What?" Her face was shocked. "McDaniel fired you?"

  "Not in so many words-he thanked me."

  "But-"

  "Some thank-you's mean thank you. Others mean pack up your stuff… Let's just say I'm being eased out. Same thing."

  "I think you're reading too much into it."

  "He keeps forgetting to call me with updates on the case."

  "The grid case?"

  "Right. Lincoln calls me, Lon Sellitto calls me. Tucker's assistant calls me."

  Dellray didn't go into the part about another source of the brooding: the possible indictment for the stolen and missing $100,000.

  But more troubling was the fact that he really did believe William Brent had had a solid lead, something that might let them stop these terrible attacks. A lead that had vanished with him.

  Serena walked over and sat beside him, handed over Preston, who, grabbing Dellray's lengthy thumb in enthusiastic fingers, took away some of the brooding. She said to him, "I'm sorry, honey."

  He looked out the window of the townhouse into the complex geometry of buildings and beyond, where he could just see a bit of stonework from the Brooklyn Bridge. A portion of Walt Whitman's poem "Crossing Brooklyn Ferry" came to mind. The best I had done seem'd to me blank and suspicious; My great thoughts, as I supposed them, were they not in reality meagre?

  These words were true of him as well. The facade of Fred Dellray: hip, ornery, tough, man of the street. Occasionally thinking, more than occasionally thinking, What if I'm getting it wrong?

  The beginning lines of the next stanza of Whitman's poem, though, were the kicker: It is not you alone who know what it is to be evil; I am he who knew what it was to be evil…

  "What'm I going to do?" he mused.

  Justice For the Earth…

  He ruefully recalled turning down the chance to go to a high-level conference on satellite and data intelligence gathering and analysis. The memo had read, "The Shape of the Future."

  Slipping into street, Dellray had said aloud, "Here's the shape of the few-ture." And rolled the memo into a ball, launching it into a trash bin for a three-pointer.

  "So, you're just… home?" Serena asked, wiping Preston's mouth. The baby giggled and wanted more. She obliged and tickled him too.

  "I had one angle on the case. And it vanished. Well, I lost it. I trusted somebody I shouldn't've. I'm outa the loop."

  "A snitch? Walked out on you?"

  An inch away from mentioning the one hundred thousand. But he didn't go there.

  "Gone and vanished," Dellray muttered.

  "Gone and vanished? Both?" Serena's face grew theatrically grave. "Don't tell me he absconded and disappeared too?"

  The agent could resist the smile no longer. "I only use snitches with extra-ordinary talents." Then the smile faded. "In two years he never missed a debriefing or call."

  Of course, in those two years I never paid him till after he'd delivered.

  Serena asked, "So what're you going to do?"

  He answered honestly, "I don't know."

  "Then you can do me a favor."

  "I suppose. What?"

  "You know all that stuff in the basement, that you've been meaning to organize?"

  Fred Dellray's first reaction was to say, You've got to be kidding. But then he considered the leads he had in the Galt case, which were none, and, hefting the baby on his hip, rose and followed her downstairs.

  Chapter 56

  RON PULASKI COULD still hear the sound. The thud and then the crack.

  Oh, the crack. He hated that.

  Thinking back to his first time working for Lincoln and Amelia: how he'd gotten careless and had been smacked in the head with a bat or club. He knew about the incident though he couldn't remember a single thing about it. Careless. He'd turned the corner without checking on the whereabouts of the suspect and the man had clocked him good.

  The injury had made him scared, made him confused, made him disoriented. He did the best he could-oh, he tried hard-though the trauma kept coming back. And even worse: It was one thing to get lazy and walk around a corner when he should've been careful, but it was something very different to make a mistake and hurt somebody else.

  Pulaski now parked his squad car in front of the hospital-a different vehicle. The other one had been impounded for evidence. If he was asked, he was going to say he was here to take a statement from somebody who'd been in the neighborhood of the man committing the terrorist attacks on the grid.

  I'm trying to ascertain the perpetrator's whereabouts…

  That was the sort of thing he and his twin brother, also a cop, would say to each other and they'd laugh their asses off. Only it wasn't funny now. Because he knew the guy he'd run over, whose body had thudded and whose head had cracked, was just some poor passerby.

  As he walked inside the chaotic hospital, a wave of panic hit him.

  What if he had killed the guy?

  Vehicular manslaughter, he supposed the charge could be. Or criminally negligent homicide.

  This could be the end of his career.

  And even if he didn't get indicted, even if the attorney general didn't go anywhere with the case, he could still be sued by the guy's family. What if the man ended up like Lincoln Rhyme, paralyzed? Did the police department have insurance for this sort of thing? His own coverage sure wouldn't pay for anything like lifelong care. Could the vic sue Pulaski and take away everything? He and Jenny'd be working for the rest of their lives just to pay off the judgment. The kids might never go to college; the tiny fund they'd already started would disappear like smoke.

  "I'm here to see Stanley Palmer," he told the attendant sitting behind a desk. "Auto accident yesterday."

  "Sure, Officer. He's in four oh two."

  Being in uniform, he walked freely through several doors until he found the room. He paused outside to gather his courage. What if Palmer's entire family was there? Wife and children? He tried to think of something to say.

  But all he heard was thud. Then crack.

  Ron Pulaski took a deep breat
h and stepped into the room. Palmer was alone. He lay unconscious, hooked to all sorts of intimidating wires and tubes, electronic equipment as complicated as the things in Lincoln Rhyme's lab.

  Rhyme…

  How he'd let down his boss! The man who'd inspired him to remain a cop because Rhyme had done the same after his own injury. And the man who kept giving him more and more responsibility. Lincoln Rhyme believed in him.

  And look what I've done now.

  Pulaski stared at Palmer, lying absolutely still-even stiller than Rhyme, because nothing on the patient's body was moving, except his lungs, though even the lines on the monitor weren't doing much. A nurse passed by and Pulaski called her in. "How is he?"

  "I don't know," she replied in a thick accent he couldn't identify. "You have to talk to, you know, the doctor."

  After staring at Palmer's still form for some time, Pulaski looked up to see a middle-aged man of indeterminate race in blue scrubs. M.D. was embroidered after his name. Again because of Pulaski's own uniform, it seemed, the medico gave him information he might not otherwise have doled out to a stranger. Palmer had undergone surgery for severe internal injuries. He was in a coma and they weren't able to give a prognosis at this point.

  He didn't have any family in the area, it seemed. He was single. He had a brother and parents in Oregon and they'd been contacted.

  "Brother," Pulaski whispered, thinking of his own twin.

  "That's right." Then the doctor lowered the chart and cast a look at the cop. After a moment he said, with a knowing gaze, "You're not here to take his statement. This has nothing to do with the investigation. Come on."

  "What?" Alarmed, Pulaski could only stare.

  Then a kind smile blossomed in the doctor's face. "It happens. Don't worry about it."

  "Happens?"

  "I've been an ER doctor in the city for a long time. You never see veteran cops come in person to pay respects to victims, only the young ones."

  "No, really. I was just checking to see if I could take a statement."

  "Sure… but you could've called to see if he was conscious. Don't play all hardass, Officer. You got a good heart."

  Which was pounding all the harder now.

  The doctor's eyes went to Palmer's motionless form. "Was it a hit-and-run?"

  "No. We know the driver."

  "Good. You nailed the prick. I hope the jury throws the book at him." Then the man, in his stained outfit, was walking away.

  Pulaski stopped at the nurses' station and, once more under the aura of his uniform, got Palmer's address and social security number. He'd find out what he could about him, his family, dependents. Even though he was single, Palmer was middle-aged so he might have kids. He'd call them, see if he could help in some way. Pulaski didn't have much money, but he'd give whatever moral support he could.

  Mostly the young officer just wanted to unburden his soul for the pain he'd caused.

  The nurse excused herself and turned away, answering an incoming call.

  Pulaski turned too, even more quickly, and before he left the nurses' station, he pulled on sunglasses so nobody could see the tears.

  Chapter 57

  AT A LITTLE after 9 a.m. Rhyme asked Mel Cooper to click on the TV in the lab, though he kept the sound down.

  Since the feds had seemed slow to share up-to-the-minute information with the NYPD, at least with Rhyme, he wanted to make certain he learned the latest developments.

  What better source than CNN?

  The case was front and center, of course. Galt's picture was flashed about a million times and there were nearly as many references to the mysterious Justice for the Earth ecoterror group. And sound bites from anti-green Andi Jessen.

  But most of the coverage of the Galt attacks involved windstorms of speculation. And many anchors, of course, wondered if there was a connection to Earth Day.

  Which was also the subject of much reportage. There were a number of celebrations in the city: a parade, schoolchildren planting trees, protests, the New Energy Expo at the convention center and the big rally in Central Park, at which two of the President's key allies on the environment would be speaking, up-and-coming senators from out west. Following that would be a concert by a half dozen famous rock groups. Attendance would be close to a half million people. Several stories dealt with the increased security at all the events because of the recent attacks.

  Gary Noble and Tucker McDaniel had told Rhyme that not only were two hundred extra agents and NYPD officers assigned to security, the FBI's technical support people had been working with Algonquin to make sure that all the electrical lines in and around the park were protected from sabotage.

  Rhyme now looked up as Ron Pulaski walked into the room.

  "Where've you been, Rookie?"

  "Uhm…" He held up a white envelope. "The DNA."

  He'd been someplace else-Rhyme believed he knew where. The criminalist didn't press it but he said, "That wasn't a priority. We know who the perp is. We'll need it for the trial. But we've got to catch him first."

  "Sure."

  "You find anything else yesterday at Galt's?"

  "Went over it again top to bottom, Lincoln. But nothing, sorry."

  Sellitto too arrived, looking more disheveled than usual. The outfit seemed the same-light blue shirt and navy suit. Rhyme wondered if he'd slept in his own office last night. The detective gave them a synopsis of how things were unfolding downtown-the case had bled over into the public relations world. Political careers could be at stake and while local, state and federal officials were putting bodies on the street and bringing "resources to bear," each was also carefully suggesting that it was doing more than the others.

  Settling into a noisy wicker chair, he loudly slurped coffee and muttered, "But the bottom line is nobody knows how to run this thing. We've got portables and feebies and National Guard at the airports, subways, train stations. All the refineries and docks. Special harbor patrols around the tankers-though I don't know how the fuck he'd attack a ship with an arc flash or whatever. And they've got people on all the Algonquin substations."

  "He's not going after the substations anymore," Rhyme complained.

  "I know that. And so does everybody, but nobody knows where exactly to expect him. It's everywhere."

  "What is?"

  "This fucking juice. Electricity." He waved his hand, apparently indicating the entire city. "Everybody's goddamn house." He eyed the outlets in Rhyme's wall. Then said, "At least we haven't got any more demands. Christ, two yesterday, within a few hours. I was thinking he just got pissed off and decided to kill those guys in an elevator, no matter what." The big man sighed. "I'll be taking the stairs for a while, I'll tell you. Good for the weight, at least."

  Eyes sweeping across the evidence boards, Rhyme was in agreement about the rudderless nature of the case. Galt was smart but he wasn't brilliant, and he was leaving ample trace behind. It just wasn't leading them anywhere, other than offering general ideas of his targets.

  An airport?

  An oil depot?

  Though Lincoln Rhyme was also thinking something else: Are the paths there and am I just missing them?

  And felt again the tickle of sweat, the faint recurring headache that had plagued him recently. He'd successfully ignored it for a time but the throbbing had returned. Yes, he was feeling worse, there was no doubt about it. Was that affecting his mental skills? He would admit to no one, not even Sachs, that this was perhaps the most terrifying thing in the world to him. As he'd told Susan Stringer last night, his mind was all he had.

  He found his eyes drawn to the den across the hall. The table where Dr. Arlen Kopeski's Die with Dignity brochure rested.

  Choices…

  He then tipped the thought away.

  Just then Sellitto took a call, sitting up as he listened and setting down his coffee quickly. "Yeah? Where?" He jotted in his limp notebook.

  Everyone in the room was watching him intently. Rhyme was thinking: a new demand? />
  The phone clicked closed. He looked up from his notes. "Okay, may have something. A portable downtown, near Chinatown, calls in. Woman'd come up to him and says she thinks she saw our boy."

  "Galt?" Pulaski asked.

  Sourly: "What other boy we interested in, Officer?"

  "Sorry."

  "She thinks she recognized the picture."

  "Where?" Rhyme snapped.

  "There's an abandoned school, near Chinatown." Sellitto gave them the address. Sachs was writing.

  "The portable checked it out. Nobody there now."

  "But if he was there, he'd've left something behind," Rhyme said.

  At his nod, Sachs stood. "Okay, Ron, let's go."

  "You better take a team." Sellitto added wryly, "We've probably got a few cops left who aren't guarding fuse boxes or wires around town."

  "Let's get ESU in the area," she said. "Stage nearby but keep 'em out of sight. Ron and I'll go in first. If he's there after all and we need a takedown, I'll call. But we don't want a team running through the place, screwing up the evidence, if it's empty."

  The two of them headed out the door.

  Sellitto called Bo Haumann of Emergency Service and briefed him. The ESU head would get officers into the area and coordinate with Sachs. The detective disconnected and looked around the room, presumably for something to accompany the coffee. He found a plate of pastry, courtesy of Thom, and grabbed a bear claw pastry. Dunked it and ate. Then he frowned.

  Rhyme asked, "What?"

  "Just realized I forgot to call McDaniel and the feds and tell 'em about the operation in Chinatown-at the school." Then he grimaced and held up his phone theatrically. "Aw, shit. I can't. I didn't pay for a cloud zone SIM chip. Guess I'll have to tell him later."

  Rhyme laughed and ignored the searing ache that spiked momentarily in his head. Just then his phone rang and both humor and headaches vanished.

  Kathryn Dance was calling.

  His finger struggled to hit the keypad. "Yes, Kathryn? What's going on?"

  She said, "I'm on the phone with Rodolfo. They've found the Watchmaker's target."