The Burning Wire

Communications. To run the surveillance. And warrant specialists to get taps if we need them. Two DOJ lawyers. And we’re getting two hundred extra agents.”
    Rhyme and Sellitto glanced each other’s way. This was a surprisingly substantial task force for a single incident that wasn’t part of an ongoing investigation. And mobilized with incredible speed. The attack had happened less than two hours ago.
    The Bureau man noticed their reaction. “We’re convinced there’s a new profile to terrorism. So we’vegot a new approach to fighting it. Like the drones in the Middle East and Afghanistan? You know the pilots are next to a strip mall in Colorado Springs or Omaha.”
    The cloud zone . .  .
    “Now, T and C’s in place, so we’ll be able to hook more signals soon. But we’ll still need traditional approaches.” A look around the lab. Meaning forensics, Rhyme supposed. And then the ASAC looked toward Dellray. “And street-level work. Though Fred tells me he hasn’t had much luck.”
    Dellray’s talent as an undercover op was exceeded only by his skills as a handler of confidential informants. Since 9/11 he’d curried favor with a large group of CIs in the Islamic community and taught himself Arabic, Indonesian and Farsi. He worked regularly with the NYPD’s impressive anti-terror unit. But the agent confirmed his boss’s comment. Grim-faced, he said, “Haven’t heard anything about Justice For or Rahman. Ran it past my boys in Brooklyn, Jersey, Queens, Manhattan.”
    “Just happened,” Sellitto reminded.
    “Right,” McDaniel said slowly. “Of course something like this would’ve been planned for, what would you guess? A month?”
    Noble said, “I’d imagine. At least.”
    “See, that’s this damn cloud zone.”
    Rhyme could also hear McDaniel’s criticism of Fred Dellray: The point of informants was to learn about things before they happened.
    “Well, keep at it, Fred,” McDaniel said. “You’re doing a good job.”
    “Sure, Tucker.”
    Noble had given up fidgeting with the pen. He was consulting his watch. “So Homeland’ll coordinatewith Washington and the State Department, embassies too, if we need to. But the police and the Bureau’ll run the case like any other. Now, Lincoln, everybody knows your expertise with crime scene work, so we’re hoping you’ll work point on analysis of the trace. We’re assembling a CS team now. They should be on location at the substation in twenty minutes. Thirty, tops.”
    “Sure, we’ll help,” Rhyme said. “But we run the entire scene. Entrance to exit. And all secondary scenes. Not just trace. The whole ball of string.” He glanced at Sellitto, who nodded firmly, meaning, I’m backing you up.
    In the ensuing awkward moment of silence, everybody was aware of the subtext: who would ultimately be in charge of the investigation. The nature of police work nowadays was such that whoever controlled the forensics basically ran the case. This was a practical consequence of the advancements in crime scene investigative techniques in the past ten years. Simply by searching the scenes and analyzing what was found, forensic investigators had the best insights into the nature of the crime and possible suspects and were the first to develop leads.
    The triumvirate—Noble and McDaniel on the federal side and Sellitto for the NYPD—would be making strategic decisions. But, if they accepted Rhyme as key in the crime scene operation, he would be in effect the lead investigator. This made sense. He’d solved crimes in the city longer than any of them had, and since there were no suspects or other significant leads at this point, other than evidence, a forensic specialist was the way to go.
    Most important, Rhyme wanted the case bad. The boredom factor . . .
    Okay, some ego too.
    So he offered the best argument he could: He said nothing. Just settled his eyes on the face of the Homeland Security man, Gary Noble.
    McDaniel fidgeted a bit—it was his crime scene people who would be demoted—and Noble lobbed a glance toward him, asking, “What do you think, Tucker?”
    “I know Mr. Rhyme’s . . . I know Lincoln’s work. I don’t have a problem with him running the scene. Provided there’s one hundred percent coordination with us.”
    “Of course.”
    “And we’ve got somebody present. And we get the findings as soon as possible.” He looked into Rhyme’s eyes, not at his body. “The most important thing is fast response