Jeffery Deaver - The burning wire

– Sent via email. -Untraceable; used a proxy in Europe.

But it turned out that Rhyme was wrong.

It was true that, as he'd felt all along, the evidence-as much else in this case-just didn't add up. But he was wrong in that the key to unraveling the mystery wasn't to be found on the charts surrounding him. Rather, it came blustering into the lab just now, accompanied by Thom, in the form of a tall, lanky sweating man, skin black, clothing bright green.

Catching his breath, Fred Dellray nodded fast to everybody in the room, then proceeded to ignore them as he strode up to Rhyme. "I need to throw something out, Lincoln. And you gotta tell me if it works or not."

"Fred," McDaniel began. "What the hell-"

"Lincoln?" Dellray persisted.

"Sure, Fred. Go ahead."

"What do you think of the theory that Ray Galt's a fall guy. He's dead, been dead for a couple of days, I think. It's somebody else who's put this whole thing together. From the beginning."

Rhyme paused for a moment-the disorientation from the attack was slowing his analysis of Dellray's idea. But finally he offered a faint smile and said, "What do I think? It's brilliant. That's what."

TUCKER MCDANIEL'S RESPONSE, however, was, "Ridiculous. The whole investigation's based on Galt."

Sellitto ignored him. "What's your theory, Fred? I want to hear it."

"My CI, a guy named William Brent. He was following up on a lead. He was on to somebody who was connected with-maybe behind-the grid attacks. But then he vanished. I found out that Brent was interested in somebody who'd just come to town, was armed with a forty-five and was driving a white van. He'd recently kidnapped and killed somebody. He'd been staying at an address on the Lower East Side for the past couple of days. I found out where. It turned out to be a crime scene."

"Crime scene?" Rhyme asked.

"You betcha. It was Ray Galt's apartment."

Sachs said, "But Galt didn't just come to town. He's lived here all his adult life."

"Ex-actly."

"So what's this Brent have to say?" McDaniel asked skeptically.

"Oh, he ain't tellin' anybody anything. 'Cause yesterday he was in the alley behind Galt's and got himself run over by an NYPD patrolman. He's in the hospital, still unconscious."

"Oh my God," Ron Pulaski whispered. "St. Vincent's?"

"Right."

Pulaski said in a weak voice, "That was me who hit him."

"You?" Dellray asked, voice rising.

The officer said, "But, no, it can't be. The guy I hit? His name's Stanley Palmer."

"Yep, yep… That's him. 'Palmer' was one of Brent's covers."

"You mean, he didn't have warrants on him? He didn't do time for attempted murder, aggravated assault?"

Dellray shook his head. "The rap sheet was fake, Ron. We put it into the system so anybody who checked'd find out he had a record. The worst we got him for was conspiracy and then I turned him. Brent's a stand-up guy. He snitched for the money mostly. One of the best in the business."

"But what was he doing with groceries? In the alley?"

"Undercover technique a lot of us use. You cart around groceries or shopping bags, you look less suspicious. Baby carriage is the best. With a doll in it, course."

"Oh," Pulaski muttered. "I… Oh."

But Rhyme couldn't be concerned about his officer's psyche. Dellray had raised a credible theory that explained the inconsistencies that Rhyme had been sensing in the case all along.

He'd been looking for a wolf, when he should have been hunting a fox.

But could it be? Was somebody else behind the attacks and Galt just a fall guy?

McDaniel looked doubtful. "But there've been witnesses…"

His brown eyes locked on his boss's blue ones, Dellray said, "Are they reliable?"

"What do you mean, Fred?" An edge now in the slick ASAC's voice.

"Or were they people who believed it was Galt because we told the media that's who it was? And the media told the world?"

Rhyme added, "You wear safety goggles, you wear a hard hat and a company uniform… If you're the same race and same build, and you've got a fake name badge with your own picture on it and Galt's name… sure, it could work."

Sachs too was considering the evidence. "The lineman in the tunnel, Joey Barzan, said he identified him because of the name badge. He'd never met Galt. And it was real dark down there."

"And the security chief, Bernie Wahl," Rhyme added, "never saw him when he delivered the second demand note. The perp got him from behind."

Rhyme said, "And Galt was the one he kidnapped and killed. Like your CI found out."

"That's right," Dellray said.

"But the evidence?" McDaniel persisted.

Rhyme stared at the board, shaking his head. "Shit. How could I've missed it?"

"What, Rhyme?"

"The boots in Galt's apartment? A pair of Albertson-Fenwicks."

"But they matched," Pulaski said.

"Of course they matched. But that's not the point, Rookie. The boots were in Galt's apartment. If they were his, they wouldn't've been there; he'd be wearing them! Workers wouldn't have two pairs of new boots. They're expensive and employees usually have to buy their own… No, the real perp found out what kind Galt wore and bought another pair. Same with the bolt cutter and hacksaw. The real perp left them in Galt's apartment to find. The rest of the evidence implicating Galt, like the hair in the coffee shop across from the substation on Fifty-seventh Street? That was planted too.

"Look at the blog posting," Rhyme continued, nodding at the documents Pulaski had wrested from Galt's printer. My story is typical of many. I was a lineman and later a troubleman (like a supervisor) for many years working for several power companies in direct contact with lines carrying over one hundred thousand volts. It was the electromagnetic fields created by the transmission lines, that are uninsulated, that led to my leukemia, I am convinced. In addition it has been proven that power lines attract aerosol particles that lead to lung cancer among others, but this is something that the media doesn't talk about.

We need to make all the power companies but more important the public aware of these dangers. Because the companies won't do anything voluntarily, why should they? if the people stopped using electricity by even half we could save thousands of lives a year and make them (the companies) more responsible. In turn they would create safer ways to deliver electricity. And stop destroying the earth too.

People, you need to take matters into your own hands! -Raymond Galt

"Now look at the first couple of paragraphs of the first demand letter." At around 11:30 a.m. yesterday morning there was an arc flash incident at the MH-10 substation on W 57 Street in Manhattan, this happened by securing a Bennington cable and bus bar to a post-breaker line with two split bolts. By shutting down four substations and raising the breaker limit at MH-10 an overload of close to two hundred thousand volts caused the flash.

This incident was entirely your fault and due to your greed and selfishness. This is typical of the industry and it is reprehensable. Enron destroyed the financial lives of people, your company destroys our physical lives and the life of the earth. By exploiting electricity without regard for it's consequences you are destroying our world, you insideously work your way into our lives like a virus, until we are dependent on what is killing us.

"What's distinctive?" Rhyme asked.

Sachs shrugged.

Pulaski pointed out, "No misspellings in the blog."

"True, Rookie, but that's not my point; the computer's spell checker would have picked up any mistakes in the blog and corrected them. I'm talking about word choice."

Sachs nodded vigorously. "Sure. The blog language is a lot simpler."