The Burning Wire

Christ, two yesterday, within a few hours. I was thinking he just got pissed off and decided to kill those guys in an elevator, no matter what.” The big man sighed. “I’ll be taking the stairs for a while, I’ll tell you. Good for the weight, at least.”
    Eyes sweeping across the evidence boards, Rhyme was in agreement about the rudderless nature of the case. Galt was smart but he wasn’t brilliant, and he was leaving ample trace behind. It just wasn’t leading them anywhere, other than offering general ideas of his targets.
    An airport?
    An oil depot?
    Though Lincoln Rhyme was also thinking something else: Are the paths there and am I just missing them?
    And felt again the tickle of sweat, the faint recurring headache that had plagued him recently. He’d successfully ignored it for a time but the throbbing had returned. Yes, he was feeling worse, there was no doubt about it. Was that affecting his mental skills? He would admit to no one, not even Sachs, that this was perhaps the most terrifying thing in the world to him. As he’d told Susan Stringer last night, his mind was all he had.
    He found his eyes drawn to the den across the hall. The table where Dr. Arlen Kopeski’s Die with Dignity brochure rested.
    Choices. . .  .
    He then tipped the thought away.
    Just then Sellitto took a call, sitting up as he listened and setting down his coffee quickly. “Yeah? Where?” He jotted in his limp notebook.
    Everyone in the room was watching him intently. Rhyme was thinking: a new demand?
    The phone clicked closed. He looked up from his notes. “Okay, may have something. A portable downtown, near Chinatown, calls in. Woman’d come up to him and says she thinks she saw our boy.”
    “Galt?” Pulaski asked.
    Sourly: “What other boy we interested in, Officer?”
    “Sorry.”
    “She thinks she recognized the picture.”
    “Where?” Rhyme snapped.
    “There’s an abandoned school, near Chinatown.” Sellitto gave them the address. Sachs was writing.
    “The portable checked it out. Nobody there now.”
    “But if he was there, he’d’ve left something behind,” Rhyme said.
    At his nod, Sachs stood. “Okay, Ron, let’s go.”
    “You better take a team.” Sellitto added wryly, “We’ve probably got a few cops left who aren’t guarding fuse boxes or wires around town.”
    “Let’s get ESU in the area,” she said. “Stage nearby but keep ’em out of sight. Ron and I’ll go in first. If he’s there after all and we need a takedown, I’ll call. But we don’t want a team running through the place, screwing up the evidence, if it’s empty.”
    The two of them headed out the door.
    Sellitto called Bo Haumann of Emergency Service and briefed him. The ESU head would get officers into the area and coordinate with Sachs. The detective disconnected and looked around the room, presumably for something to accompany the coffee. He found a plate of pastry, courtesy of Thom, and grabbed a bear claw pastry. Dunked it and ate. Then he frowned.
    Rhyme asked, “What?”
    “Just realized I forgot to call McDaniel and the feds and tell ’em about the operation in Chinatown—at the school.” Then he grimaced and held up his phone theatrically. “Aw, shit. I can’t. I didn’t pay for a cloud zone SIM chip. Guess I’ll have to tell him later.”
    Rhyme laughed and ignored the searing ache that spiked momentarily in his head. Just then his phone rang and both humor and headaches vanished.
    Kathryn Dance was calling.
    His finger struggled to hit the keypad. “Yes, Kathryn? What’s going on?”
    She said, “I’m on the phone with Rodolfo. They’ve found the Watchmaker’s target.”
    Excellent, he reflected, though part of him was also thinking: Why now? But then he decided: The Watchmaker’s the priority, at least for the moment. You’ve got Sachs and Pulaski and a dozen ESU troops after Galt. And the last time you had a chance at the Watchmaker, you turned away from the search to focus on something else, and he killed his victim and got away.
    Not this time. Richard Logan isn’t escaping this time.
    “Go ahead,” he told the CBI agent, forcing himself to turn away from the evidence boards.
    There was a click.
    “Rodolfo,” Dance said. “Lincoln’s on the line. I’ll leave you two to talk. I’ve got to see TJ.”
    They said good-bye to her.
    “Hello, Captain.”
    “Commander. What do you have?”
    “Arturo Diaz has four undercover officers in the office complex I was telling you