Jeffery Deaver - The burning wire

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.

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.

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?"