Jeffery Deaver - The burning wire

"He checks out."

"What about the other one?"

"Yessir, well, he's a possibility. Raymond Galt, forty. He's made health claims for leukemia treatment over the past year."

Rhyme shot a glance to Sachs, who knew instinctively what the look meant. They communicated this way often. She dropped into a chair and began keyboarding.

"His history?" Rhyme said.

Wahl answered, "Started with a competitor in the Midwest and then joined Algonquin."

"Competitor?"

He paused. "Well, not really competitor, like carmakers are. That's just how we refer to other power companies."

"What does Galt do for you now?"

"He's a troubleman," Wahl said.

Rhyme was staring at the profile on his computer screen. A troubleman would have enough experience to put together an arc flash weapon like the sort at the substation, according to Charlie Sommers. He asked, "Mel, take a look at Galt's file. Would he know SCADA and the energy management program?"

Cooper opened the man's personnel file. "Doesn't say specifically. Just that he's taken a lot of continuing education courses."

"Mr. Wahl, is Galt married, single?" Rhyme asked the security chief.

"Single. Lives in Manhattan. You want his address, sir?"

"Yes."

Wahl gave it to them.

"This is Tucker McDaniel. What about whereabouts, Mr. Wahl?" McDaniel asked urgently.

"That's the thing. He called in sick two days ago. Nobody knows where he is."

"Any chance he's done some traveling lately? Maybe to Hawaii or Oregon? Someplace where there's a volcano?"

"Volcano? Why?"

Struggling to be patient, Rhyme asked, "Just, has he traveled?"

"According to his time sheets, no. He's taken a few days' medical-I guess for the cancer treatment-but he hasn't been on a vacation since last year."

"Could you check with his fellow employees and see if they know about places he goes, friends outside of the company, any groups he's in?"

"Yessir."

Thinking of the Greek food connection, Rhyme asked, "And anybody he goes to lunch with regularly."

"Yessir."

"Mr. Wahl, what about Galt's next of kin?" McDaniel asked.

Wahl reported that Galt's father was dead but his mother and a sister lived in Missouri. He recited the names, addresses and phone numbers.

Rhyme-and McDaniel too-could think of nothing else to ask the security chief. The criminalist thanked him and they disconnected.

McDaniel instructed his underling to contact the FBI's resident agency in Cape Girardeau, Missouri, and have them start surveillance.

"Probable cause to get a tap?" the Kid asked.

"Doubt it. But push for one. Get a pen register, at least."

"I'm on it."

"Rhyme," Sachs called.

He looked up at the screen, which revealed the fruits of Sachs's frantic keyboarding. The DMV picture showed a pale man, gazing unsmiling at the camera. He was blond, hair trimmed short. About an inch long.

"So," McDaniel said, "we've got a suspect. Good job, Lincoln."

"We'll congratulate ourselves when he's in custody."

He then squinted at the DMV information, which confirmed the address. "His place is on the Lower East Side?… Not many colleges or museums there. I think the volcanic ash must've come from the place he's going to attack. Maybe the next target. And he'd want a public location, lots of people."

Lots of victims…

A glance at the clock. It was ten-thirty.

"Mel, check again with your geology person at HQ. We need to move!"

"I'm on it."

McDaniel said, "I'll call a magistrate for a warrant and get a tac team ready to hit Galt's place."

Rhyme nodded and called Sellitto, still en route to city hall.

The detective's voice rattled from the speaker, "I've just blown through about five hundred traffic lights, Linc. I'm thinking if this asshole shuts down the grid and the lights go, we're fucked. No way to-"

Rhyme cut him off. "Lon, listen, we've got a name. Raymond Galt. He's a troubleman at Algonquin. Not absolute but it looks likely. Mel's going to email you the particulars."

Cooper, juggling the phone call about the lava search, began typing the relevant information about the suspect into a text.

"I'll get ESU down there now," Sellitto called.

"We're sending our tac team," McDaniel said quickly.

Like schoolkids, Rhyme thought. "Whoever it is, I don't think matters. But the point is now."

Via speaker conference, the detective and the agent agreed to task-force the raid and each arranged to assemble and deploy teams.

Rhyme then warned, "We're getting close to the deadline, so he probably won't be there. If not, then I want only my person running the scene at Galt's apartment."

"No problem," McDaniel said.

"Me?" Sachs lifted an eyebrow.

"No. If we get any leads to the next attack, I want you there." He glanced at Pulaski.

"Me?" Same pronoun, different tone.

"Get going, Rookie. And remember-"

"I know," Pulaski said. "Those arc things're five thousand degrees Fahrenheit. I'll be careful."

Rhyme grunted a laugh. "What I was going to say was: Don't fuck up… Now, move!"

PLENTY OF METAL. Metal everywhere.

Ron Pulaski glanced at his watch: eleven a.m. Two hours until another attack.

Metal… wonderfully conductive, and possibly connected to wires that ran to one of the invisible sources of juice in the bowels of the lousy apartment building he was standing in.

Armed with a warrant, the FBI and ESU teams had found-to everyone's disappointment but no one's surprise-that Galt wasn't there. Pulaski then shooed the officers out. And was now surveying the dim apartment, the basement unit in an old decrepit brownstone on the Lower East Side. He and three tactical officers had cleared the place-only the four of them, as Rhyme had ordered, to minimize contamination of the scene.

The team was now outside and Pulaski was examining the small place by himself. And seeing a lot of metal that could be rigged, the way the battery was rigged in the substation-the trap that had nearly killed Amelia.

Also picturing the metal disks on the sidewalk, seeing the scars in the concrete and in the body of poor young Luis Martin. And he recalled something else too, something even more troubling: Amelia Sachs's eyes looking spooked. Which they never did. If this electricity crap could scare her…

Last night, after his wife, Jenny, had gone to bed, Ron Pulaski went online to learn what he could about electricity. If you understand something, Lincoln Rhyme had told him, you fear it less. Knowledge is control. Except with electricity, with power, with juice, that wasn't quite the case. The more he learned, the more uneasy he grew. He could grasp the basic concept but he kept coming back to the fact it was so damn invisible. You never knew exactly where it was. Like a poisonous snake in a dark room.

He then shook himself out of these thoughts. Lincoln Rhyme had entrusted the scene to him. So get to work. On the drive here, he'd called in and asked if Rhyme wanted him to hook up via radio and video and walk him through the scene like he sometimes did with Amelia.

Rhyme had said, "I'm busy, Rookie. If you can't run a scene by now there's no damn hope for you."

Click.

Which to most people would've been an insult, but it put a big grin on Pulaski's face and he wanted to call his twin brother, a uniform down in the Sixth Precinct, and tell him what had happened. He didn't, of course; he'd save that for when they went out for beers this weekend.

And so, solo, he started the search, pulling on the latex gloves.

Galt's apartment was a cheesy, depressing place, clearly the home of a bachelor who cared zero about his environment. Dark, small, musty. Food half fresh and half old, some of it way old. Clothes piled up. The immediate search, as Rhyme had impressed on him, was not to gather evidence for trial-though he "better not fuck up the chain of custody cards"-but to find out where Galt might be going to attack again and what, if any, connection he had with Rahman and Justice For…