The burning wire lr-9

by Jeffery Deaver

  "No, it's not. It's an explanation."

  "They're both the same to me," Rhyme muttered. "Where is he?"

  The hour was after 8 p.m. "He went back to Galt's, thought he might've missed something."

  Rhyme thought this wasn't a bad idea, though he was confident that the young officer had searched the scene well the first time. He added, "Just keep an eye on him. I won't risk anybody's life because he's distracted."

  "Agreed."

  The two of them and Cooper were here alone in the lab. McDaniel and the Kid were back at the federal building, meeting with Homeland Security, and Sellitto was down at the Big Building-One Police Plaza. Rhyme wasn't sure whom he was meeting with but there'd undoubtedly be a long list of people who wanted explanations about why there was no suspect in custody.

  Cooper and Sachs were laying out the evidence that Sachs had collected at the office building. The tech then examined the cable and other items that were rigged at the base of the elevator shaft.

  "There's one other thing." Sachs probably thought her voice was casual; in fact it was tripping with meaning to Rhyme. Tough to be in love with somebody; you can read them so well when they're up to something.

  "What?" He gave her his inquisitor's gaze.

  "There was a witness. She was in the elevator when the other people died."

  "She hurt bad?"

  "Apparently not. Smoke inhalation mostly."

  "That would've been unpleasant. Burning hair." His nostrils flared slightly.

  Sachs sniffed at her red strands. Her nose wrinkled too. "I'm taking a really long shower tonight."

  "What'd she have to say?"

  "I didn't get a chance to interview her… She's coming over here as soon as she's released."

  "Here?" Rhyme asked with surprise. Not only was he skeptical of witnesses in the first place, but there was a security question about letting a stranger into the lab. If a terrorist cell was behind the attacks, they might want to sneak one of their members into the inner sanctum of the investigators.

  But Sachs laughed, deducing his thoughts. "I checked her out, Rhyme. She's clean. No record, no warrants. Longtime editor of some furniture magazine. Besides, I thought it wasn't a bad idea-I wouldn't have to spend the time getting to and from the hospital. I can stay here and work the evidence."

  "What else?"

  She hesitated. Another smile. "I was explaining too much?"

  "Uh-huh."

  "Okay. She's disabled."

  "Is she now? That's still not answering my question."

  "She wants to meet you, Rhyme. You're a celebrity."

  Rhyme sighed. "Fine."

  Sachs turned to him, eyes narrowed. "You're not arguing."

  Now he laughed. "Not in the mood. Let her come over. I'll interview her myself. Show you how it's done. Short and sweet."

  Sachs gave a cautious look.

  Rhyme then asked, "What do you have, Mel?"

  Peering through the eyepiece of a microscope, the tech said, "Nothing helpful for sourcing him."

  " 'Sourcing.' Missed that word when I was in verb school," Rhyme said sourly.

  "But I've got one thing," Cooper said, ignoring Rhyme's remark and reading the results from the chromatograph."Traces of substances that the database is saying are ginseng and wolfberry."

  "Chinese herbs, maybe tea," Rhyme announced. A case several years ago had involved a snakehead, a smuggler of illegal aliens, and much of the investigation had centered around Chinatown. A police officer from mainland China, helping in the case, had taught Rhyme about herbalism, thinking it might help his condition. The substances had no effect, of course, but Rhyme had found the subject potentially helpful in investigations. At the moment he noted the find, but agreed with Cooper that it wasn't much of a lead. There was a time when those substances would have been found only in Asian specialty shops and what Rhyme called "woo-woo stores." Now products like that were in every Rite Aid pharmacy and Food Emporium throughout the city.

  "On the board, if you please, Sachs."

  As she wrote, he looked over a series of small evidence bags lined up in a row, with her handwriting on the chain-of-custody cards. They were labeled with directions from the compass.

  "Ten little Indians," Rhyme said, intrigued. "What do we have there?"

  "I got mad, Rhyme. No, I got fucking furious."

  "Good. I find anger liberating. Why?"

  "Because we can't find him. So I took samples of substrate from where he might've been. I crawled around in some pretty lousy places, Rhyme."

  "Hence the smudge." He looked at her forehead.

  She caught his eye. "I'll wash it off later." A smile. Seductive, he believed.

  He lifted an eyebrow. "Well, get searching. Tell me what you find."

  She pulled on gloves and poured the samples into ten examining dishes. Donning magnifying goggles, she began sifting through them, using a sterile probe to search the contents of each bag. Dirt, cigarette butts, the bits of paper, the nuts and bolts, the bits of what seemed to be rodent shit, hairs, scraps of cloth, candy and fast food wrappers, grains of concrete, metal and stone. The epidermis of underground New York.

  Rhyme had learned long ago that in searching for evidence at crime scenes, the key was finding patterns. What repeated itself frequently? Objects in that category could be presumptively eliminated. It was the unique items, those that were out of place, that might be relevant. Outliers, statisticians and sociologists called them.

  Nearly everything that Sachs had found was repeated in every dish of the samples. But there was only one thing that was in a category of its own: a very tiny band of curved metal, nearly in a circle, about twice the width of a pencil lead. Though there were many other bits of metal-parts of screws and bolts and shavings-nothing resembled this.

  It was also clean, suggesting it had been left recently.

  "Where was this, Sachs?"

  Rising from her hunched-over pose and stretching, she looked at the label on the bag in front of the dish.

  "Twenty feet from the shaft, southwest. It's where he would've had a view of all the wiring connections he'd made. It was under a beam."

  So Galt would have been crouching. The metal bit could have fallen from his cuff or clothing. He asked Sachs to hold it up for him to examine closely. She put magnifying goggles on him, adjusted them. Then she took tweezers and picked up the bit, holding it close.

  "Ah, bluing," he said. "Used on iron. Like on guns. Treated with sodium hydroxide and nitrite. For corrosion resistance. And good tensile properties. It's a spring of some kind. Mel, what's your mechanical parts database like?"

  "Not as updated as when you were chief, but it's something."

  Rhyme went online, laboriously typing the pass code. He could use voice recognition, but characters like @%$*-which the department had adopted to improve security-were troublesome to interpret vocally.

  The NYPD forensic database main screen popped up and Rhyme started in the Miscellaneous Metals-Springs category.

  After ten minutes of scrolling through hundreds of samples he announced, "It's a hairspring, I think."

  "What's that?" Cooper asked.

  Rhyme was grimacing. "I'm afraid it's bad news. If it's his, it means he might be changing his approach to the attacks."

  "How?" Sachs wondered aloud.

  "They're used in timers… I'd bet he's worried we're getting close to him. And he's going to start using a timed device instead of a remote control. When the next attack happens, he could be in a different borough."

  Rhyme had Sachs bag the spring and mark a chain-of-custody card.

  "He's smart," Cooper observed. "But he'll slip up. They always do."

  They often do, Rhyme corrected silently.

  The tech then said, "Got a pretty good print from one of the remote's switches."

  Rhyme hoped it was from somebody else, but, no, it was just one of Galt's-he didn't need to be diligent about obscuring his identity now that they'd learned his name.
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  The phone buzzed and Rhyme blinked to see the country code. He answered at once.

  "Commander Luna."

  "Captain Rhyme, we have, perhaps, a development."

  "Go ahead, please."

  "An hour ago there was a false fire alarm in a wing of the building Mr. Watchmaker was observing. On that floor is an office of a company that brokers real estate loans in Latin America. The owner's a colorful fellow. Been under investigation a few times. It made me suspicious. I looked into the background of this man and he's had death threats made before."

  "By whom?"

  "Clients whose deals turned out to be less lucrative than they would have wanted. He performs some other functions too, which I cannot find out about too easily. And if I cannot find out about them the answer is simple: He's a crook. Which means he has a very large and efficient security staff."

  "So he's the sort of target that would require a killer like the Watchmaker."

  "Exactly."

  "But," Rhyme continued, "I would also keep in mind that the target could be at the exact opposite end of the complex from that office."

  "You think the fire alarm was a feint."

  "Possibly."

  "I'll have Arturo's men consider that too. He's put his best-and most invisible-surveillance people on the case."

  "Have you found anything more about the contents of the package that Logan received? The letter I with the blanks? The circuit board, the booklet, the numbers?"

  "Nothing but speculation. And, as I think you would too, Captain, I feel speculation is a waste of time."

  "True, Commander."

  Rhyme thanked the man again and they disconnected. He glanced at the clock. The time was 10 p.m. Thirty-five hours since the attack at the substation. Rhyme was in turmoil. On the one hand, he was aware of the terrible pressure to move forward with a case in which the progress was frustratingly slow. On the other, he was exhausted. More tired than he remembered being in a long time. He needed sleep. But he didn't want to admit it to anyone, even Sachs. He was staring at the silent box of the phone, considering what the Mexican police commander had just told him, when he was aware of sweat dotting his forehead. This infuriated him. He wanted to wipe it before anyone noticed, but of course that was a luxury not available to him. He jerked his head from side to side. Finally the motion dislodged the drop.

  But it also caught Sachs's attention. He sensed she was about to ask if he was feeling all right. He didn't want to talk about his condition, since he'd either have to admit that he wasn't, or lie to her. He wheeled abruptly to an evidence whiteboard and studied the script intently. Without seeing the words at all.

  Sachs was starting toward him when the doorbell rang. A moment later there was some motion from the doorway and Thom entered the room with a visitor. Rhyme easily deduced the person's identity; she was in a wheelchair made by the same company that had produced his.

  Chapter 52

  SUSAN STRINGER HAD a pretty, heart-shaped face and a singsongy voice. Two adjectives stood out: pleasant and sweet.

  Her eyes were quick, though, and lips taut, even when smiling, as befit somebody who had to maneuver her way through the streets of New York using only the power of her arms.

  "An accessible townhouse on the Upper West Side. That's a rarity."

  Rhyme gave her a smile in return-he was reserved. He had work to do, and very little of it involved witnesses; his comments to Sachs earlier about his interviewing Susan Stringer were, of course, facetious.

  Still, she'd nearly been killed by Ray Galt-in a particularly horrible way-and might have some helpful information. And if, as Sachs had reported, she wanted to meet him in the process, he could live with that.

  She nodded at Thom Reston with a knowing look about the importance of-and burdens upon-caregivers. He asked if there was anything she wanted and she said no. "I can't stay long. It's late and I'm not feeling too well." Her face had a hollow look; she'd undoubtedly be thinking of the terrible moments in the elevator. She wheeled closer to Rhyme. Susan's arms clearly worked fine; she was a paraplegic and would probably have suffered a thoracic injury, in her mid or upper back.

  "No burns?" Rhyme asked.

  "No. I didn't get a shock. The only problem was smoke-from the… from the men in the elevator with me. One caught fire." The last sentence was a whisper.

  "What happened?" Sachs asked.

  A stoic look. "We were near the ground floor when the elevator stopped suddenly. The lights went out, except for the emergency light. One of the businessmen behind me reached for the panel to hit the HELP button. As soon as he touched it he just started moaning and dancing around."

  She coughed. Cleared her throat. "It was terrible. He couldn't let go of the panel. His friend grabbed him or he brushed against him. It was like a chain reaction. They just kept jerking around. And one of them caught fire. His hair… the smoke, the smell." Susan was whispering now. "Horrible. Just horrible. They were dying, right around me, they were dying. I was screaming. I realized it was some electrical problem and I didn't want to touch the metal hand rim of the chair or the metal door frame. I just sat there."

  Susan shuddered. Then repeated, "I just sat there. Then the car moved down the last few feet and the door opened. There were dozens of people in the lobby, they pulled me out… I tried to warn them not to touch anything but the electricity was off by then." She coughed softly for a moment. "Who is this man, Ray Galt?" Susan asked.

  Rhyme told her, "He thinks he got sick from power lines. Cancer. He's out for revenge. But there may be an ecoterror connection. He might've been recruited by a group that's opposed to traditional power companies. We don't know yet. Not for sure."

  Susan blurted, "And he wants to kill innocent people to make his point? What a hypocrite."

  Sachs said, "He's a fanatic so he doesn't even register hypocrisy. Whatever he wants to do is good. Whatever stops him from doing what he wants is bad. Very simple universe."

  Rhyme glanced at Sachs, who caught the cue and asked Susan, "You said there was something that might help us?"

  "Yes, I think I saw him."

  Despite his distrust of witnesses, Rhyme said encouragingly, "Go ahead. Please."

  "He got onto the elevator at my floor."

  "You think it was him? Why?"

  "Because he spilled some water. Accidentally, it seemed, but now I know he did it on purpose. To improve the connection."

  Sachs said, "The water that Ron found on the soles of their shoes. Sure. We wondered where that came from."

  "He was dressed like a maintenance man with a watering can for the plants. He was wearing brown overalls. Kind of dirty. It seemed odd. And the building doesn't have plants in the hall and we don't in our office."

  "There's still a team there?" Rhyme asked Sachs.

  She said that there would be. "Fire, maybe. Not PD."

  "Have them call the building manager, wake him up if they have to. See if they have a plant maintenance service. And check video security."

  A few minutes later they had their answer: no plant waterers for the building or any of the companies on the eighth floor. And security cameras were only in the lobby, with wide-angle lenses uselessly showing "a bunch of people coming, a bunch of people going," one of the fire marshals reported. "Can't make out a single face."

  Rhyme called up the DMV picture of Galt on the screen. "Is that him?" he asked Susan.

  "Could be. He didn't look at us and I didn't look at him really." A knowing glance toward Rhyme. "His face wasn't exactly at eye level."

  "Anything else you remember about him?"

  "When he was walking toward the car and then when he first got in, he kept looking at his watch."

  "The deadline," Sachs pointed out. Then added, "He set it off early, though."

  "Only a few minutes," Rhyme said. "Maybe he was worried that somebody'd recognized him in the building. He wanted to finish up and get out. And he was probably monitoring Algonquin's electrical transmissions and
knew the company wasn't going to shut down the juice by the deadline."

  Susan continued, "He was wearing gloves. Tan gloves. They were leather… Those were at eye level. And I remember them because I was thinking his hands must be sweating. It was hot in the car."

  "Did the uniform have any writing on it?"

  "No."

  "Anything else?"

  She shrugged. "Not that it's helpful, but he was rude."

  "Rude?"

  "When he got on the elevator he pushed past me. Didn't apologize or anything."

  "He actually touched you?"

  "Not me." She nodded down. "The chair. It was kind of a tight squeeze."

  "Mel!"

  The tech's head swiveled toward them.

  "Susan," Rhyme asked. "Do you mind if we examine that spot on your chair?"

  "No, not at all."

  Cooper carefully looked over the side of the chair she indicated, using a magnifying glass. Rhyme couldn't see exactly what he found but the tech lifted away two items from bolts at joints in the upright pieces.

  "What?"

  "Fibers. One dark green and one brown." Cooper was examining them through the microscope, then turned to a computer database of similar fiber. "Cotton, heavy duty. Could be military, army surplus."

  "Enough to test?"

  "Plenty." The tech and Sachs ran a portion of each of the samples through the gas chromatograph/mass spectrometer.

  Finally, as Rhyme waited impatiently, she called, "Got the results." A printout eased from the machine and Cooper looked it over.

  "More aviation fuel on the green fiber. But something else. On the brown fiber there's diesel fuel. And more of those Chinese herbs."

  "Diesel." Rhyme was considering this. "Maybe it's not an airport. Maybe it's a refinery he's after."

  Cooper said, "That'd be one hell of a target, Lincoln."

  It sure would. "Sachs, call Gary Nobel. Tell him to step up security in the ports. Refineries and tankers especially."

  She grabbed the phone.

  "Mel, add everything we've got so far to the chart."

  CRIME SCENE: OFFICE BUILDING

  AT 235 W. 54TH STREET