Jeffery Deaver - The burning wire

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."

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.