Jeffery Deaver - The burning wire

"Exactly. The blog was written by Galt himself. The letters were transcribed by him-it was his handwriting-but they were dictated by the real perp, the man who kidnapped Galt and forced him to write what he was saying. The perp used his own language, which Galt wasn't familiar with so he misspelled the big words. In the blog he never used any words like 'reprehensible.'… And in the other letters there're similar misspellings. In the last letter-no misspellings because the perp wrote that himself in an email."

Sellitto paced; the floor creaked. "Remember what Parker Kincaid said? Our handwriting guy? That the letter was written by somebody who was emotional, upset-because he was being threatened to take the dictation. That'd make anybody upset. And he also forced Galt to handle the switches and hard hat so they'd have his prints on them."

Rhyme nodded. "In fact, I'll bet the blog postings were real. Hell, they were probably how the perp picked Galt in the first place. He'd read how angry Galt was about the power industry."

A moment later his eyes took in the physical evidence itself: the cables, the nuts and bolts.

And the generator. He gazed at it for a moment.

Then he called up word processing software on his computer and began to type. His neck and temple throbbed-this time, though, not as a prelude to an attack, but a sign that his heart was pounding hard with excitement.

Hunt lust.

Foxes, not wolves…

"Well," McDaniel muttered, ignoring an incoming phone call. "If that's right, I don't think it is, but if it's right, who the hell's behind it?"

Typing slowly, the criminalist continued, "Let's think about the facts. We'll discount all the evidence specifically implicating Galt; for the moment let's assume it's been planted. So, the short blond hair is out, the tools are out, the boots are out, his uniform, gear bag, hard hat, friction ridges. All of those are out.

"Okay, so what else do we have? We've got a Queens connection-the taramasalata. He tried to destroy the access door we found it on so we know that evidence is real. We've got the handgun. So the real perp has access to weapons. We've got a geographic connection to the City Hall area-the trace we found in the generator. We've got hair-long blond and short brown. That suggests two perps. One definitely male, rigging the attacks. The other unknown, but probably a woman. What else do we know?"

"He's from out of town," Dellray pointed out.

Pulaski said, "Knowledge of arc flashes and how to create the booby traps."

"Good," Rhyme said.

Sellitto said, "One of them has access to Algonquin facilities."

"Possibly, though they could have used Galt for that."

Hums and clicks from the forensic instruments filled the parlor, coins jingled in somebody's pocket.

"A man and a woman," McDaniel said. "Just what we learned from T and C. Justice For the Earth."

Rhyme exhaled a sigh. "Tucker, I could buy that if we had any evidence about the group. But we don't. Not a single fiber, print, bit of trace."

"It's all cloud zone."

"But," the criminalist snapped, "if they exist they have a physical presence. Somewhere. I don't have any proof of that."

"Well, then what do you think's going on?"

Rhyme smiled.

Almost simultaneously Amelia Sachs was shaking her head. "Rhyme, you don't think it could be, do you?"

"You know what I say: When you've eliminated all the other possibilities, the remaining one, however outlandish it seems, has to be the answer."

"I don't get it, Lincoln," Pulaski said. McDaniel's expression echoed the same. "What do you mean?"

"Well, Rookie, you might want to ask yourself a few questions: One, does Andi Jessen have blond hair about the length of what you found? Two, does she have a brother who's a former soldier who lives out of town and who might have access to weapons like a nineteen eleven Colt army forty-five? And, three, has Andi spent any time in City Hall in the last couple of days, oh, say, giving press conferences?"

As he continued to type, Rhyme replied to McDaniel, "And her brother's doing the legwork. Randall. He's the one who's actually staged the attacks. But they coordinated them together. That's why the transfer of evidence. She helped him move the generator out of the white van to the back of the school in Chinatown."

Sachs crossed her arms as she considered this. "Remember: Charlie Sommers said that the army teaches soldiers about arc flashes. Randall could've learned what he needed to know there."

Cooper said, "The fibers we found in Susan's wheelchair? The database said they might've come from a military uniform."

Rhyme nodded at the evidence board. "There was that report of an intrusion at a company substation in Philadelphia. We heard on TV that Randall Jessen lives in Pennsylvania."

"That's right," Sachs confirmed.

"He's got dark hair?" Pulaski asked.

"Yes, he does. Well, he did when he was a kid-from the pictures on Andi's desk. And Andi went out of her way to say he didn't live here. And there's something else. She told me she didn't come out of the technical side of the business. She said she got her father's talent-the business side of the energy industry. But remember that news story about her? Before the press conference?"

Cooper nodded. "She was a lineman for a while before she moved into management and succeeded her father." He pointed to the perp profile on the whiteboard. "She was lying."

Sachs said, "And the Greek food-could have come from Andi herself. Or maybe she met her brother at a restaurant near the company."

Eyes on what he was typing, Rhyme's brow furrowed as he considered something else. "And why is Bernie Wahl still alive?"

"The security chief at Algonquin?" Sellitto mused. "Fuck, I never thought about it. Sure, it would have made sense for Galt-well, the perp-to kill him."

"Randall could've delivered the second demand letter a dozen different ways. The point was to make Wahl believe it was Galt. He never saw the perp's face."

Dellray chimed in, "No wonder nobody spotted the real Galt, even after all the pictures on TV and the Internet. It was a different goddamn perp altogether."

McDaniel now looked less skeptical. "So where's Randall Jessen now?"

"All we know is he's planning something big for six-thirty tonight."

Eyeing the recent evidence, Rhyme was lost in thought for a moment, then continued to type-it was a list of instructions on how to proceed from here, one slow letter at a time.

Then the assistant special agent in charge's skeptical gaze returned. "I'm sorry, time-out here. I can see what you're saying, but what's her motive? She's screwing up her own company. She's committing murder. That makes no sense."

Rhyme corrected a typo and kept going.

Click, click…

Then he looked up and said softly, "The victims."

"What?"

Rhyme explained, "If the perp was just making a statement, like it seemed, he could have rigged a timed device-and not risked being nearby. We know he could have done that; we found the timer spring at one of the crime scenes. But he didn't. He was using a remote control and he was nearby when the victims died. Why?"

Sellitto barked a laugh. "Goddamn, Linc. Andi and her brother were after somebody in particular. She was just making it look, you know, random. That's why the attacks happened before the deadlines."

"Exactly!… Rookie, bring the whiteboards over here. Now!"

He did.

"The vics. Look at the vics."

Luis Martin, assistant store manager.

Linda Kepler, Oklahoma City, tourist.

Morris Kepler, Oklahoma City, tourist.

Samuel Vetter, Scottsdale, businessman.

Ali Mamoud, New York City, waiter.

Gerhart Schiller, Frankfurt, Germany, advertising executive.