The Burning Wire

by Jeffery Deaver

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?"

  Chapter 70

  "ANDI JESSEN?"

  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 manager in music store.

  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.

  Larry Fishbein, New York City, accountant.

  Robert Bodine, New York City, attorney.

  Franklin Tucker, Paramus, New Jersey, salesman.

  "Do we know anything about the injured?"

  Sachs said she didn't.

  "Well, one of them might've been the intended victim too. We should find out. But what do we know about them, at least, the deceased?" Rhyme asked, staring at the names. "Is there any reason Andi would want any of them dead?"

  "The Keplers were tourists in town on a package tour," Sachs said. "Retired ten years ago. Vetter was the witness. Maybe that's why they killed him."

  "No, this was planned a month ago. What was the business?"

  Sachs flipped through her notebook. "President of Southwest Concrete."

  "Look 'em up, Mel."

  In a minute Cooper was saying, "Well, listen to this. Based in Scottsdale. General construction, with a specialty in infrastructure projects. On the website it says that Vetter was attending an alternative energy financing seminar at the Battery Park Hotel." He looked up. "Recently they've been involved in constructing the foundations for photovoltaic arrays."

  "Solar power." Rhyme's eyes continued to take in the evidence. He said, "And the victims in the office building? Sachs, call Susan Stringer and see if she knows anything about them."

  Sachs pulled out her phone and had a conversation with the woman. When she hung up she said, "Okay, she doesn't know the lawyer or the man who got on at the sixth floor. But Larry Fishbein was an accountant she
knew a little. She overheard him complaining that there was something odd about the books of a company where he'd just done an audit. Some money was disappearing. And wherever it was, the place was really hot. Too hot to golf."

  "Maybe Arizona. Call and find out."

  Sellitto got the number of the man's firm from Sachs and called. He spoke for a few minutes and then disconnected. "Bingo. Fishbein was in Scottsdale. He got back Tuesday."

  "Ah, Scottsdale . . . Where Vetter had his company."

  McDaniel said, "What is this, Lincoln? I still don't see the motive."

  After a moment Rhyme said, "Andi Jessen's opposed to renewable energy, right?"

  Sachs said, "That's a little strong. But she's definitely not a fan."

  "What if she was bribing alternative energy companies to limit production or doing something else to sabotage them?"

  "To keep demand for Algonquin's power high?" McDaniel asked. A motive in his pocket, he seemed more on board now.

  "That's right. Vetter and Fishbein might've had information that would've sunk her. If they'd been murdered in separate incidents, just the two of them, the investigators might've wondered if there was a connection. But Andi arranged this whole thing to make it look like they were random victims so nobody'd put the pieces together. That's why the demands were impossible to comply with. She didn't want to comply with them. She needed the attacks to take place."

  Rhyme said to Sachs, "And get the names of the injured and check out their histories. Maybe one of them was a target too."

  "Sure, Rhyme."

  "But," Sellitto said with unusual urgency in his voice, "there's the third demand letter, the email. That means she still needs to kill somebody else. Who's the next victim?"

  Rhyme continued to type as quickly as he could on his keyboard. His eyes rose momentarily to the digital clock on the wall nearby. "I don't know. And we've got less than two hours to figure it out."

  Chapter 71

  DESPITE THE HORROR of Ray Galt's attacks, Charlie Sommers couldn't deny the exhilaration that now, well, electrified him.

  He'd taken a coffee break, during which he'd spent the time jotting diagrams for a possible invention (on a napkin, of course): a way to deliver hydrogen gas to homes for fuel cells. He was now returning to the main floor of the New Energy Expo in the Manhattan Convention Center on the West Side, near the Hudson River. It was filled with thousands of the most innovative people in the world, inventors, scientists, professors, the all-important investors too, each devoted to one thing: alternative energy. Creating it, delivering it, storing it, using it. This was the biggest conference of its sort in the world, timed to coincide with Earth Day. It brought together those who knew the importance of energy but knew too the importance of making and using it in very different ways from what we'd been used to.

  As Sommers made his way through the halls of the futuristic convention center--finished just a month or so ago--his heart was pounding like that of a schoolboy at his first science fair. He felt dizzy, head swiveling back and forth as he took in the booths: those of companies operating wind farms, nonprofits seeking backers to create microgrids in remote parts of Third World countries, solar power companies, geothermal exploration operations and smaller outfits that made or installed photovoltaic arrays, flywheel and liquid sodium storage systems, batteries, superconductive transport systems, smart grids . . . the list was endless.

  And utterly enthralling.

  He arrived at his company's ten-foot-wide booth at the back end of the hall.

  ALGONQUIN CONSOLIDATED POWER

  SPECIAL PROJECTS DIVISION

  THE SMARTER ALTERNATIVETM

  Although Algonquin was probably bigger than the five largest exhibitors here put together, his company had bought only the smallest booth available for the new-energy show, and he was the only one manning it.

  Which was a pretty clear indication of how CEO Andi Jessen felt about renewables.

  Still, Sommers didn't care. Sure, he was here as a company representative, but he'd also come here to meet people and make contacts on his own. Someday--soon, he hoped--he'd leave Algonquin and spend all his time on his own company. He was very up front with his supervisors about his private work. Nobody at Algonquin had ever had a problem with what he did on his own time. They wouldn't be interested in the inventions he created at home anyway, things like the Sink-Rynicity water-saving system for kitchens, or the Volt-Collector, a portable box that used the motion of vehicles to create power and store it in a battery you could plug into a fixture in your house or office, thus reducing demand from your local company.

  The king of negawatts . . .

  Already incorporated, Sommers Illuminating Innovations, Inc., was his company's name and it consisted of himself, his wife and her brother. The name was a play on Thomas Edison's corporation, Edison Illuminating Company, the first investor-owned utility and the operator of the first grid.

  While he may have had a bit--a tiny bit--of Edison's genius, Sommers was no businessman. He was oblivious when it came to money. When he'd come up with the idea of creating regional grids so that smaller producers could sell excess electricity to Algonquin and other large power companies, a friend in the industry had laughed. "And why would Algonquin want to buy electricity when they're in the business of selling it?"

  "Well," Sommers replied, blinking in surprise at his friend's naivete, "because it's more efficient. It'll be cheaper to customers and reduce the risk of outages." This was obvious.

  The laugh in response suggested that perhaps Sommers was the naive one.

  Sitting down at the booth, he flicked on light switches and removed the BE BACK SOON sign. He poured more candy into a bowl. (Algonquin had vetoed hiring a model in a low-cut dress to stand in front of the booth and smile, like some of the exhibitors had.)

  The special project manager kept his guard up, though. There's a seamy side to invention. The creation of the lightbulb had been a fierce battle--not only technologically but legally. Dozens of people were involved in knockdown, drag-out battles for credit for--and the profit from--the lightbulb. Thomas Edison and England's Joseph Wilson Swan emerged as the victors but from a field littered with lawsuits, anger, espionage and sabotage. And destroyed careers.

  Sommers was thinking of this now because he'd seen a man in glasses and a cap not far from the Algonquin booth. He was suspicious because the guy had been lingering at two different booths nearby. One company made equipment for geothermal exploration, devices that would locate hot spots deep in the earth. The other built hybrid motors for small vehicles. But Sommers knew that someone interested in geothermal would likely have no interest in hybrids.

  True, the man was paying little attention to Sommers or Algonquin, but he could easily have been taking pictures of some of the inventions and mockups on display at the booth. Spy cameras nowadays were extremely sophisticated.

  Sommers turned away to answer a woman's question. When he looked back, the man--spy or businessman or just curious attendee--was gone.

  Ten minutes later, another lull in visitors. He decided to use the restroom. He asked the man in the booth next to his to keep an eye on things and then headed down a nearly deserted corridor to the men's room. One advantage of being in the cheaper, small-booth area was that you had the toilets largely to yourself. He stepped into a corridor whose stylish steel floor was embossed with bumps, presumably to simulate the flooring of a space station or rocket.

  When he was twenty feet away his cell phone started to ring.

  He didn't recognize the number--from a local area code. He thought for a moment then hit the IGNORE button.

  Sommers continued toward the toilet, noticing the shiny copper handle on the door and thinking, They sure didn't spare any expense here. No wonder it's costing us so damn much for the booth.

  Chapter 72

  "PLEASE," SACHS MUTTERED out loud, hovering over the speakerphone. "Charlie, pick up! Please!"

  She'd called Sommers just a moment befor
e but the phone rang only once and then went to voice mail.

  She was trying again.

  "Come on!" Rhyme too said.

  Two rings . . . three . . .

  And finally, in the speaker, a click. "Hello?"

  "Charlie, it's Amelia Sachs."

  "Oh, did you call a minute ago? I was on my way--"

  "Charlie," she broke in, "you're in danger."

  "What?"

  "Where are you?"

  "In the convention center, about to . . . What do you mean, danger?"

  "Are you near anything metal, anything that could produce an arc flash or something that could be rigged with a hot line?"

  He gave an abrupt laugh. "I'm standing on a metal floor. And I was just about to open a bathroom door with a metal handle." Then the humor faded from his voice. "Are you saying they might be booby-trapped?"

  "It's possible. Get off the metal floor now."

  "I don't understand."

  "There's been another demand and a deadline. Six-thirty. But we think the attacks--the hotel, the elevator--don't have anything to do with the threats or demands. They're cover-ups to target certain people. And you might be one of them."

  "Me? Why?"

  "First of all, get someplace safe."

  "I'll go back to the main floor. It's concrete. Hold on." A moment later he said, "Okay. You know, I saw somebody here, watching me. But I don't think it was Galt."

  Rhyme said, "Charlie, it's Lincoln. We think Ray Galt was set up. He's probably dead."

  "Somebody else is behind the attacks?"

  "Yes."

  "Who?"

  "Andi Jessen. The man you saw might've been her brother, Randall. The evidence shows that they're working together."

  "What? That's crazy. And why'm I in danger?"

  Sachs continued, "Some of the people killed in the other attacks were involved in alternative energy production. Like you. We think that she may have been bribing renewable power companies to cut back generation, to keep up demand for Algonquin's electricity."

  There was a pause. "Well, it's true, one of my projects's been to consolidate regional grids so that they could be more self-sufficient--and start supplying juice to the big interconnections, like Algonquin. I guess that could be a problem for her."

  "Have you been to Scottsdale recently?"

  "I'm working on some solar farm projects near there, yes, among other places. California, it's wind farms and geothermal. Arizona is mostly solar farms."