The Burning Wire Page 6

  "It doesn't sound like one-second intervals, Rhyme. It might not be a timer." She was gazing over the railing, careful not to touch the metal.

  He said, "It's dark, I can't see much."

  "I'm going to find out." And then she started down the spiral staircase.

  The metal staircase.

  Ten feet, fifteen, twenty. Random shafts of light from the halogens hit portions of the walls down here, but only the upper portions. Below that everything was murky, the smoke residue thick. Her breaths were shallow and she struggled not to choke. As she approached the bottom, two full stories below the main floor, it was hard to see anything; the miner's light reflected back into her eyes. Still, it was the only illumination she had; she swung her head, with the light, from side to side, taking in the myriad boxes and machinery and wires and panels covering the walls.

  She hesitated, tapped her weapon. And stepped off the bottom of the stairs.

  And gasped as a jolt pierced her body.

  "Sachs! What?"

  Sachs had missed the fact that the floor was covered in two feet of freezing brackish water. She couldn't see it with the smoke.

  "Water, Rhyme. I wasn't expecting it. And look." She focused ten feet or so over her head at a pipe that was leaking.

  That was the sound. Not a click, but dripping water. The idea of water in an electrical substation was so incongruous--and so dangerous--that it hadn't occurred to her that this could be the source of the noise.

  "Because of the blast?"

  "No. He drilled a hole, Rhyme. I can see it. Two holes. Water's also flowing down the wall--that's what's filling up the room."

  Wasn't water as good an electrical conductor as metal? Sachs wondered.

  And she was standing in a pool of it, right next to an array of wires and switches and connections above a sign: DANGER: 138,000 VOLTS

  Rhyme's voice startled her. "He's flooding the basement to destroy evidence."

  "Right."

  "Sachs, what's that? I can't see it clearly. That box. The big one. Look to the right. . . . Yes, there. What is it?"

  Ah, finally.

  "It's the battery, Rhyme. The backup battery."

  "Is it charged?"

  "They said it was. But I don't . . ."

  She waded closer and looked down. A gauge on the battery showed that it was indeed charged. In fact, to Sachs, it looked like it was overcharged. The needle was past 100 percent. Then she remembered something else the Algonquin workers had said: not to worry because it was sealed with insulated caps.

  Except that it wasn't. She knew what battery caps looked like and this unit had none. Two metal terminals, connected to thick cables, were exposed.

  "The water's rising. It'll hit the terminals in a few minutes."

  "Is there enough current to make one of those arc flashes?"

  "I don't know, Rhyme."

  "There has to be," he whispered. "He's using an arc to destroy something that'll lead us to him. Something he couldn't take with him or destroy when he was there. Can you shut the water off?"

  She looked quickly. "No faucets that I can see. . . . Hold on a minute."

  Sachs continued to study the basement. "I don't see what he wants to destroy, though." But then she spotted it: Right behind the battery, about four feet off the ground, was an access door. It wasn't large--about eighteen inches square.

  "That's it, Rhyme. That's how he got in."

  "Must be a sewer or utility tunnel on the other side. But leave it. Pulaski can trace it from the street. Just get out."

  "No, Rhyme, look at it--it's really tight. He'd have to squeeze through. It's got some good trace on it, has to. Fibers, hair, maybe DNA. Why else would he want to destroy it?"

  Rhyme was hesitating. He knew she was right about preserving the evidence but didn't want her caught in another arc flash explosion.

  She waded closer to the access door. But as she approached, a tiny wake rose from the disturbance of her legs and the waves nearly crested the battery.

  She froze.

  "Sachs!"

  "Shhh." She had to concentrate. By moving a few inches at a time she was able to keep the waves below the top of the power source. But she could see she had no more than one or two minutes until the water hit the leads.

  With a straight-bladed screwdriver she began to remove the frame holding the access door.

  The water was now nearly to the top of the battery. Every time she leaned forward to get leverage to unscrew the paint-stuck hardware, another small tide rose and the murky water sloshed up onto the top of the battery before receding.

  The battery's voltage was certainly smaller than the hundred-thousand-volt line that had produced the arc flash outside, but the UNSUB probably didn't need to cause that much damage. His point was to create a big enough explosion to destroy the access door and whatever evidence it contained.

  She wanted the damn door.

  "Sachs?" Rhyme whispered.

  Ignoring him. And ignoring the image of the cauterized holes in the smooth flesh of the victim, the molten teardrops . . .

  Finally the last screw came out. Old paint held the door frame in place. She jammed the tip of the screwdriver into the edge and slammed her hand onto the butt of the tool. With a crack, the metal came away in her hands. The door and frame were heavier than she'd thought and she nearly dropped it. But then she steadied herself, without sending a tsunami over the battery.

  In the opening she saw the narrow utility tunnel that the suspect would have used to sneak into the substation.

  Rhyme whispered urgently, "Into the tunnel. It'll protect you. Hurry!"

  "I'm trying."

  Except the access door wouldn't fit through the opening, even diagonally, because the frame was attached. "Can't do it," she said, explaining the problem. "I'll go back up the stairs."

  "No, Sachs. Just leave the door. Get out through the tunnel."

  "It's too good a piece of evidence."

  Clutching the access door, she began her escape, wading toward the stairs, glancing back from time to time to keep an eye on the battery. She moved agonizingly slowly. Even so, every step sent another wave cresting to the edge of the battery terminals.

  "What's going on, Sachs?"

  "I'm nearly there," she whispered, as if too loud a voice would create more turbulence in the water.

  She was halfway to the steps when the water rose in tiny eddies and swirled around first one terminal, then the next.

  No arc flash.

  Nothing.

  Her shoulders sagged, heart thumping.

  "It's a dud, Rhyme. We didn't have to worr--"

  A burst of white light filled her vision, accompanied by a huge cracking roar, and Amelia Sachs was flung backward, under the surface of the grim ocean.

  Chapter 9

  "THOM!"

  The aide hurried into the room, looking Rhyme over carefully. "What's wrong? How're you feeling?"

  "It's not me," his boss snapped, eyes wide, nodding his head at the blank screen. "Amelia. She was at a scene. A battery . . . another arc flash. The audio and video are out. Call Pulaski! Call somebody!"

  Thom Reston's eyes narrowed with concern but he had practiced the art of caregiving for a long time; no matter what the crisis, he would coolly go about his necessary tasks. He calmly picked up a landline phone, regarded the number pad nearby and hit a speed-dial button.

  Panic isn't centered in the gut, and it doesn't trickle down the spine like, well, electricity in an energized wire. Panic rattles the body and soul everywhere, even if you're numb otherwise. Rhyme was furious with himself. He should have ordered Sachs out the instant they saw the battery, the rising tide. He always did this, got so focused on the case, the goal, finding the tiny fiber, the fragment of friction ridge print, anything that moved him closer to the perp . . . that he forgot the implications: He was playing with human lives.

  Why, look at his own injury. He'd been a captain in the NYPD, the head of Investigation Resources,
and was searching a crime scene himself, crouching to pick up a fiber from a body when the beam tumbled from above and changed his life forever.

  And now that same attitude--which he'd instilled in Amelia Sachs--might have done even worse: She could now be dead.

  Thom had gotten through on the line.

  "Who?" Rhyme demanded, glaring at the aide. "Who're you talking to? Is she all right?"

  Thom held up a hand.

  "What does that mean? What could that possibly mean?" Rhyme felt a trickle of sweat down his forehead. He was aware his breath was coming faster. His heart was pounding, though he sensed this in his jaw and neck, not his chest, of course.

  Thom said, "It's Ron. He's at the substation."

  "I know where the fuck he is. What's going on?"

  "There's been . . . an incident. That's what they're saying."

  Incident . . .

  "Where's Amelia?"

  "They're checking. There're some people inside. They heard an explosion."

  "I know there was an explosion. I fucking saw it!"

  The aide's eyes swiveled toward Rhyme. "Are you . . . how are you feeling?"

  "Quit asking that. What's going on at the scene?"

  Thom continued to scan Rhyme's face. "You're flushed."

  "I'm fine," the criminalist said calmly--to get the young man to focus on his phone call. "Really."

  Then the aide's head tilted sideways and to Rhyme's horror he stiffened. His shoulders rose slightly.

  No . . .

  "Okay," Thom said into the phone.

  "Okay what?" the criminalist snapped.

  Thom ignored his boss. "Give me the information." And, cradling the phone between neck and shoulder, he began to type on the keyboard of the lab's main computer.

  The screen popped to life.

  Rhyme had lost the pretense of calm and was about to lose his temper when, on the screen, up came the image of an apparently uninjured, though very wet, Amelia Sachs. Strands of her red hair were plastered around her face like seaweed on a surfacing scuba diver.

  "Sorry, Rhyme, lost the main camera when I went under." She coughed hard and wiped at her forehead, examined her fingers with a look of distaste. The motion was jerky.

  Relief immediately replaced panic, though the anger--at himself--remained.

  Sachs was staring back, somewhat eerily, her eyes focused only in his general direction. "I'm on one of the Algonquin workers' laptops. It's got a camera set up on it. Can you see me okay?"

  "Yes, yes. But you're all right?"

  "Just took in some pretty disgusting water through my nose. But I'm okay."

  Rhyme was asking, "What happened? The arc flash . . ."

  "It wasn't an arc. The battery wasn't rigged for that. The Algonquin guy told me there wasn't enough voltage. What the UNSUB did was make a bomb. Apparently you can do that with batteries. You seal the vents and overcharge it. That produces hydrogen gas. When water hits the terminals, it short-circuits and the spark ignites the hydrogen. That's what happened."

  "And have the medics looked you over?"

  "No, no need. The bang was loud but it wasn't that big. I got hit by some bits of plastic from the housing. Didn't even bruise me. The impact knocked me down but I kept the access door above the water. I don't think it's contaminated too bad."

  "Good, Ame--" His voice braked to a halt. For some reason, years ago they'd settled on an unspoken superstition: They never used their first names. He was troubled that he nearly had. "Good. So that's how he got in."

  "Had to be."

  It was then that he was aware of Thom walking toward the wall. The aide grabbed the blood pressure monitor and wrapped it around Rhyme's arm.

  "Don't do that--"

  "Quiet," Thom barked, silencing Rhyme. "You're flushed and you're sweating."

  "Because we just had a fucking incident at a crime scene, Thom."

  "You have a headache?"

  He did. He said, "No."

  "Don't lie."

  "A little one. It's nothing."

  Thom slapped the stethoscope against his arm. "Sorry, Amelia. I need him quiet for thirty seconds."

  "Sure."

  Rhyme started to protest again, but then he decided that the sooner his blood pressure was taken the sooner he could get back to work.

  Without sensation he watched the cuff inflate and Thom listened as he let the air out of the sphygmomanometer. He ripped off the Velcro noisily. "It's high. I want to make sure it doesn't get any higher. I'm going to take care of some things now."

  A polite euphemism for what Rhyme bluntly called the "piss and shit" detail.

  Sachs asked, "What's going on there, Thom? Everything okay?"

  "Yes." Rhyme was struggling to keep his voice calm. And to obscure the fact that he felt oddly vulnerable, though whether it was her near miss or his troubled condition he couldn't say.

  He was embarrassed too.

  Thom said, "He's had a spike in blood pressure. I want him off the phone now."

  "We'll bring back the evidence, Rhyme. Be there in a half hour."

  Thom was starting forward to disconnect the call when Rhyme felt a tap in his head--it was cognitive, not physical. He barked, "Wait," meaning the command for both Thom and Sachs.

  "Lincoln," his aide protested.

  "Please, Thom. Just two minutes. It's important."

  Though clearly suspicious of the polite appeal, Thom nodded reluctantly.

  "Ron was searching for the place the perp got into the tunnel, right?"

  "Yes."

  "Is he there?"

  Her jerky, grain-filled image looked around. "Yes."

  "Get him on camera."

  He heard Sachs call the officer over. A moment later he was seated, staring out of the monitor. "Yessir?"

  "You find where he got into the tunnel behind the substation?"

  "Yep."

  "Yep? You sound like a dog, Rookie. Yip, yip."

  "Sorry. Yes, I did."

  "Where?"

  "There's a manhole in an alley up the street. Algonquin Power. It was for access to steam pipes. It didn't lead to the substation itself. But about twenty feet inside, maybe thirty, I found a grating. Somebody'd cut an opening into it. Big enough to climb through. They'd stuck it back up but I could see it'd been cut."

  "Recently?"

  "Right."

  "Because there was no rust on the cut edges."

  "Yeah, I mean yes. It led to this tunnel. It was really old. Might've been for delivering coal or something a long time ago. That's what went to the access door that Amelia got. I was at the end of the tunnel and I saw the light when she took the door off. And I heard the battery blow and her scream. I got to her right away, through the tunnel."

  The gruffness fell away. "Thanks, Pulaski."

  An awkward moment. Rhyme's compliments were so rare he'd found that people didn't quite know what to do with them.

  "I was careful not to contaminate the scene too much, though."

  "To save lives, contaminate to your heart's content. Remember that."

  "Sure."

  The criminalist continued, "You walked the grid at the manhole--and where he cut through the grating? And the tunnel?"

  "Yessir."

  "Anything jump out?"

  "Just footprints. But I've got trace."

  "We'll see what it says."

  Thom whispered firmly, "Lincoln?"

  "Just a minute more. Now, I need you to do something else, Rookie. You see that restaurant or coffee shop across the street from the power station?"

  The officer looked to his right. "I've got it. . . . Wait, how'd you know there was one there?"

  "Oh, from one of my neighborhood strolls," Rhyme said, chuckling.

  "I . . ." The young man was flustered.

  "I know because there has to be one. Our UNSUB wanted to be able to see the substation for the attack. He couldn't watch from a hotel room because he'd have to register, or an office building because it would be too s
uspicious. He'd be someplace where he could sit at his leisure."

  "Oh, I get it. You mean psychologically, he gets off on watching the fireworks."

  The time for compliments was over. "Jesus Christ, Rookie, that's profiling. How do I feel about profiling?"

  "Uhm. You're not exactly a big fan, Lincoln."

  Rhyme caught Sachs, in the background, smiling.

  "He needed to see how the device was working. He'd created something unique. His arc flash gun isn't the sort of thing he could test-fire at a rifle range. He had to make adjustments to the voltage and the circuit breakers as he went along. He had to make sure it discharged at the exact moment when the bus was there. He started manipulating the grid computer at eleven-twenty and in ten minutes it was all over. Go talk to the manager at the restaurant--"

  "Coffee shop."

  "--of the coffee shop and see if anybody was inside, near a window, for a while before the explosion. He would've left right after, before police and fire got there. Oh, and find out if they have broadband and who's the provider."

  Thom, now in rubber gloves, was gesturing impatiently.

  The piss and shit detail . . .

  Pulaski said, "Sure, Lincoln."

  "And then--"

  The young officer interrupted, "Seal off the restaurant and walk the grid where he was sitting."

  "Exactly right, Rookie. Then both of you, get the hell back here ASAP."

  With a flick of one of his working fingers Rhyme ended the call, beating Thom's own digit to the button by a millisecond.

  Chapter 10

  THE CLOUD ZONE, Fred Dellray was thinking.

  Recalling when Assistant Special Agent in Charge Tucker McDaniel, newly on board in the FBI's New York office, had gathered the troops and given, in lecture form, a talk similar to what he'd just delivered at Rhyme's a few hours earlier. About the new methods of communication the bad guys were using, about how the acceleration of technology was making it easier for them and harder for us.

  The cloud zone . . .

  Dellray understood the concept, of course. You couldn't be in law enforcement now and not be aware of McDaniel's high-tech approach to finding and collaring perps. But that didn't mean he liked it. Not one bit. Largely because of what the phrase stood for; it was an emblem for fundamental, maybe cataclysmic, changes in everyone's life.

  Changes in his life too.

  Heading downtown on a subway on this clear afternoon, Dellray was thinking about his father, a professor at Marymount Manhattan College, and a writer of several books about African-American philosophers and cultural critics. The man had eased into academia at the age of thirty, and he'd never left. He died at the same desk he'd called home for decades, slumping forward on proofs of the journal he'd founded when Martin Luther King's assassination was still fresh in the world's mind.