The burning wire lr-9

by Jeffery Deaver

  The doctor eased down into the sighing leather chair. "Good coffee."

  I'm so very pleased. A cock of the head.

  "You're a busy man, so I'll get to the point."

  "I'd appreciate that."

  "Detective Rhyme… Lincoln. Are you a religious man?"

  The disability group must have a church affiliation; they might not want to honor a heathen.

  "No, I'm not."

  "No belief in the afterlife?"

  "I haven't seen any objective evidence that one exists."

  "Many, many people feel that way. So, for you, death would be equal to, say, peace."

  "Depending on how I go."

  A smile in the kind face. "I misrepresented myself somewhat to your aide. And to you. But for a good reason."

  Rhyme wasn't concerned. If the man had pretended to be somebody else to get in and kill me, I'd be dead now. A raised eyebrow meant: Fine. Confess and let's move forward.

  "I'm not with DRC."

  "No?"

  "No. But I sometimes say I'm with one group or another because my real organization sometimes gets me kicked out of people's homes."

  "Jehovah's Witnesses?"

  A chuckle. "I'm with Die with Dignity. It's a euthanasia advocacy organization based in Florida."

  Rhyme had heard of them.

  "Have you ever considered assisted suicide?"

  "Yes, some years ago. I decided not to kill myself."

  "But you kept it as an option."

  "Doesn't everybody, disabled or not?"

  A nod. "True."

  Rhyme said, "It's pretty clear that I'm not getting an award for picking the most efficient way of ending my life. So what can I do for you?"

  "We need advocates. People like yourself, with some public recognition factor. Who might consider making the transition."

  Transition. Now there's a euphemism for you.

  "You could make a video on YouTube. Give some interviews. We were thinking that someday you might decide to take advantage of our services…" He withdrew from his briefcase a brochure. It was subdued and printed on nice card stock and had flowers on the front. Not lilies or daisies, Rhyme noticed. Roses. The title above the flora was "Choices."

  He set it on the table near Rhyme. "If you'd be interested in letting us use you as a celebrity sponsor we could not only provide you with our services for free, but there'd be some compensation, as well. Believe it or not, we do okay, for a small group."

  And presumably they pay up front, Rhyme thought. "I really don't think I'm the man for you."

  "All you'd have to do is talk a bit about how you've always considered the possibility of assisted suicide. We'd do some videos too. And-"

  A voice from the doorway startled Rhyme. "Get the fuck out of here!" He noticed Kopeski jump at the sound.

  Thom stormed into the room, as the doctor sat back, spilling coffee as he dropped the cup, which hit the floor and shattered. "Wait, I-"

  The aide, usually the picture of control, was red-faced. His hands were shaking. "I said out."

  Kopeski rose. He remained calm. "Look, I'm having a conversation with Detective Rhyme here," he said evenly. "There's no reason to get upset."

  "Out! Now!"

  "I won't be long."

  "You'll leave now."

  "Thom-" Rhyme began.

  "Quiet," the aide muttered.

  The look from the doctor said, You let your assistant talk to you like that?

  "I'm not going to tell you again."

  "I'll leave when I've finished." Kopeski eased closer to the aide. The doctor, like many medical people, was in good shape.

  But Thom was a caregiver, which involved getting Rhyme's ass into and out of beds and chairs and exercise equipment all day long. A physical therapist too. He stepped right into Kopeski's face.

  But the confrontation lasted only a few seconds. The doctor backed down. "All right, all right, all right." He held his hands up. "Jesus. No need to-"

  Thom picked up the man's briefcase and shoved it into his chest and led him out the door. A moment later the criminalist heard the door slam. Pictures on the wall shook.

  The aide appeared a moment later, evidently mortified. He cleaned up the broken china, mopped the coffee. "I'm sorry, Lincoln. I checked. It was a real organization… I thought." His voice cracked. He shook his head, the handsome face dark, hands shaking.

  As Rhyme wheeled back toward the lab he said, "It's fine, Thom. Don't worry… And there's a bonus."

  The man turned his troubled eyes toward Rhyme, to find his boss smiling.

  "I don't have to waste time writing an acceptance speech for any goddamn award. I can get back to work."

  Chapter 22

  ELECTRICITY KEEPS US alive; the impulse from the brain to the heart and lungs is a current like any other.

  And electricity kills too.

  At 9 p.m., just nine and a half hours after the attack at Algonquin substation MH-10, the man in the dark-blue Algonquin Consolidated overalls surveyed the scene in front of him: his killing zone.

  Electricity and death…

  He was standing in a construction site, out in the open, but no one paid him any attention because he was a worker among fellow workers. Different uniforms, different hard hats, different companies. But one thing tied them all together: Those who made a living with their hands were looked down on by "real people," the ones who relied on their services, the rich, the comfortable, the ungrateful.

  Safe in this invisibility, he was in the process of installing a much more powerful version of the device he'd tested earlier at the health club. In the nomenclature of electrical service, "high voltage" didn't begin until you hit 70,000v. For what he had planned, he needed to be sure all the systems could handle at least two or three times that much juice.

  He looked over the site of tomorrow's attack one more time. As he did he couldn't help but think about voltage and amperage… and death.

  There'd been a lot of misreporting about Ben Franklin and that insane key-in-the-thunderstorm thing. Actually Franklin had stayed completely off damp ground, in a barn, and was connected to the wet kite string with a dry silk ribbon. The kite itself was never actually struck by lightning; it simply picked up static discharge from a gathering storm. The result wasn't a real bolt but rather elegant blue sparks that danced from the back of Franklin's hand like fish feeding at the surface of a lake.

  One European scientist duplicated the experiment not long afterward. He didn't survive.

  From the earliest days of power generation, workers were constantly being burned to death or having their hearts switched off. The early grid took down a number of horses, thanks to metal shoes on wet cobblestones.

  Thomas Alva Edison and his famous assistant Nikola Tesla battled constantly over the superiority of DC, direct current (Edison), versus AC, alternating current (Tesla), trying to sway the public by horror stories of danger. The conflict became known as the Battle of the Currents and it made front-page news regularly. Edison constantly played the electrocution card, warning that anyone using AC was in danger of dying and in a very unpleasant way. It was true that it took less AC current to cause injury, though any type of current powerful enough to be useful could also kill you.

  The first electric chair was built by an employee of Edison's, rather tactically using Tesla's alternating current. The first execution via the device was in 1890, under the direction not of an executioner but a "state electrician." The prisoner did die, though the process took eight minutes. At least he was probably unconscious by the time he caught fire.

  And then there were always stun guns. Depending on who was getting shot and in what part of the body, they could be counted on for the occasional death. And the fear of everyone in the industry: arc flashes, of course, like the attack he'd engineered this morning.

  Juice and death…

  He wandered through the construction site, feigning end-of-day weariness. The site was now staffed by a skeleton crew of night-
shift workers. He moved closer, and still no one noticed him. He was wearing thick-framed safety glasses, the yellow Algonquin hard hat. He was as invisible as electricity in a wire.

  The first attack had made the news in a big way, of course, though the stories were limited to an "incident" in a Midtown substation. The reporters were abuzz with talk of short circuits, sparks and temporary power outages. There was a lot of speculation about terrorists but no one had found any connection.

  Yet.

  At some point, somebody would have to consider the possibility of an Algonquin Power worker running around rigging traps that resulted in very, very unpleasant and painful deaths, but that hadn't happened.

  He now left the construction site and made his way underground, still unchallenged. The uniform and the ID badge were like magic keys. He slipped into another grimy, hot access tunnel and, after donning personal protective gear, continued to rig the wiring.

  Juice and death.

  How elegant it was to take a life this way, compared, say, with shooting your victim at five hundred yards.

  It was so pure and so simple and so natural.

  You could stop electricity, you could direct it. But you couldn't trick it. Once juice was created it would instinctively do whatever it could to return to the earth, and if the most direct way was to take a human life in the process, it would do so in, literally, a flash.

  Juice had no conscience, felt no guilt.

  This was one of the things he'd come to admire about his weapon. Unlike human beings, electricity was forever true to its nature.

  Chapter 23

  THE CITY CAME alive at this time of night.

  Nine p.m. was like a green flag for a car race.

  The dead time in New York wasn't night; it was when the city was spiritually numb, ironically when it was at its busiest: rush hour, mid-morning and -afternoon. Only now were people shedding the workaday numbness, refocusing, coming alive.

  Making all-important decisions: which bar, which friends, which shirt? Bra, no bra?

  Condoms?…

  And then out onto the street.

  Fred Dellray now loped through the cool spring air, sensing the energy rise like what was humming through the electrical cables beneath his feet. He didn't drive much, didn't own a car, but what he was feeling now was akin to punching the accelerator and burning gas in a frenzy, as the power flung you toward your fate.

  Two blocks from the subway, three, four…

  And something else burned. The $100,000 in his pocket.

  As he moved along the sidewalk Fred Dellray couldn't help but thinking, Have I ruined it all? Yes, I'm doing the morally right thing. I'd risk my career, I'd risk jail, if this thin thread of a lead ultimately revealed the perp, whether it was Justice For or anyone else. Anything to save the lives of citizens. Of course, the $100,000 was nothing to the entity he'd taken it from. And the cash might, thanks to bureaucratic myopia, never be missed. But even if it wasn't, and even if William Brent's lead blossomed and they were successful in stopping more attacks, would Dellray's malfeasance gnaw at him, the guilt growing larger and larger like a spiky tumor?

  Would he fall into such guilt that his life would be altered forever, turned gray, turned worthless?

  Change…

  He was close to turning around and returning to the federal building, putting the money back.

  But, no. He was doing the right thing. And he'd live with the consequences, whatever they were.

  But, goddamn, William, you better come through for me.

  Dellray now crossed the street in the Village and wandered right up to William Brent, who blinked in faint surprise, as if he'd believed Dellray wouldn't come. They stood together. This wasn't a set-an undercover operation-and it wasn't a recruiting session. It was just two guys meeting on the street to conduct business.

  Behind them an unclean teenage boy, strumming a guitar and bleeding from a recent lip piercing, moaned out a song. Dellray motioned Brent along the sidewalk. The smell and the sound faded.

  The agent asked, "You found anything more?"

  "Have, yes."

  "What?" Once again, trying not to sound desperate.

  "It wouldn't do any good to say at this point. It's a lead to a lead. I'll guarantee you something by tomorrow."

  Guarantee? Not a word you heard often in the snitch business.

  But William Brent was your Armani of CIs.

  Besides, Dellray had no choice.

  "Say," Brent said casually, "you through with the paper?"

  "Sure. Keep it." And handed the folded-up New York Post to Brent.

  They'd done this all before, of course, a hundred times. The CI slipped the newspaper into his attache case without even feeling for the envelope inside, much less opening it up and counting the money.

  Dellray watched the money disappear as if he were watching a coffin submerge into a grave.

  Brent didn't ask the source of the cash. Why should he? It wasn't relevant to him.

  The CI now summarized, half musing, "White male, a lot of mediums. Employee or inside connection. Justice For something. Rahman. Terrorism, possibly. But it could be something else. And he knows electricity. And significant planning."

  "That's all we have for now."

  "I don't think I need anything else," Brent said without a hint of ego. Dellray took the words and this attitude as encouragement. Normally, even parting with a typical snitch gratuity-$500 or so-he felt like he was getting robbed. Now, he had a gut sense that Brent would deliver.

  Dellray said, "Meet me tomorrow. Carmella's. The Village. Know it?"

  "I do. When?"

  "Noon."

  Brent further wrinkled his wrinkled face. "Five."

  "Three?"

  "Okay."

  Dellray was about to whisper, "Please," which he didn't think he'd ever said to a CI. He canned the desperation but had a tough time keeping his eyes off the attache case, whose contents might just be the ashes of his career. And, for that matter, his entire life. An image of his son's ebullient face rose. He forced it away.

  "Pleasure doing business with you, Fred." Brent smiled and nodded a farewell. The streetlight glinted off his oversized glasses and then he was gone.

  Chapter 24

  "THAT'S SACHS."

  The deep bubble of a car engine sounded outside the window and fell to silence.

  Rhyme was speaking to Tucker McDaniel and Lon Sellitto, both of whom had arrived not long before-independently-around the time the Death Doctor had exited so abruptly.

  Sachs would be throwing the NYPD Official Business placard on the dash and heading toward the house. And, yes, a moment later the door opened and her footsteps, spaced far apart because of her long legs, and because of the urgency she wore like her weapon, resounded on the floor.

  She nodded to those present and spent a second longer examining Rhyme. He noted the expression: tenderness blended with the clinical eye typical of those in relationships with the severely disabled. She'd studied quadriplegia more than he had, she could handle all the tasks involved in his intimate, day-to-day routine, and did occasionally. Rhyme was, at first, embarrassed by this but when she pointed out, with humor and maybe a little flirtation, "How's it different from any other old married couple, Rhyme?" he'd been brought up short. "Good point" was his only response.

  Which didn't mean her doting, like anyone else's, didn't rankle occasionally and he glanced at her once and then turned to the evidence charts.

  Sachs looked around. "Where's the award?"

  "There was an element of misrepresentation involved."

  "What do you mean?"

  He explained to her about Dr. Kopeski's bait and switch.

  "No!"

  Rhyme nodded. "No paperweight."

  "You threw him out?"

  "That was Thom. And a very fine job he did of it. But I don't want to talk about that now. We have work to do." He glanced at her shoulder bag. "So what do we have?"

  Pulling several la
rge files out, she said, "Got the list of people who had access to the Algonquin computer pass codes. And their resumes and employee files."

  "What about disgruntled workers? Mental problems?"

  "None that're relevant."

  She gave more details of her meeting with Andi Jessen: There was no record of employees in the steam tunnel work area near the substation on Fifty-seventh Street. There had been no obvious terrorist threats but an associate was looking into the possibility. "Now, I spoke to somebody who works in the Special Projects Division-that's alternative energy, basically. Charlie Sommers. Good guy. He gave me the profile of the sort of person who could rig an arc flash. A master electrician, military electrician, a power company lineman or troubleman-"

  "Now that's a job description for you," Sellitto remarked.

  "It's really troubleshooter, a foreman basically. You need on-the-job experience to make one of these arc flashes happen. You can't just look it up on the Internet."

  Rhyme nodded at the whiteboard and Sachs wrote her summary. She added, "As for the computer, you'd need to have classroom training or a fair amount of training on the job. That's pretty tricky too." She explained about the SCADA and EMP programs that the UNSUB would have to be competent in.

  She added these details to the chart too.

  Sellitto asked, "How many're on the list?"

  "Over forty."

  "Ouch," McDaniel muttered.

  Rhyme supposed that one of the names on the list could be the perp's, and maybe Sachs or Sellitto could narrow it down to a more reasonable number. But what he wanted at the moment was evidence. Of which there was very little, at least little that was productive.

  Nearly twelve hours had elapsed since the attack and they were no closer to finding the man who'd been in the coffee shop, or any other suspect.

  The lack of leads was frustrating, but more troubling was a simple entry in the UNSUB's profile chart: Possibly same person who stole 75 feet of similar Bennington cable and 12 split bolts. More attacks in mind?

  Was he rigging something right now? There'd been no warning about the bus attack. Maybe that was the MO for his crimes. Any moment the networks could report a story that perhaps dozens of people had been killed in a second arc flash explosion.