The Burning Wire

before. And then he wasn’t spooked at all.
    Ron Pulaski was angry.
    Galt had gotten sick. Well, sorry. Well, too goddamn bad. Hell, Pulaski had had his head trauma, and he didn’t blame anybody for it. Just like Lincoln Rhyme didn’t sit around and mope. And Galt might very well be fine, all the new cancer treatments and techniques and everything. But here this whiny little shit was taking out his unhappiness on the innocent. And, Jesus Lord, what was he doing to that woman inside? She must’ve had information Galt needed. Or maybe she was a doctor who’d missed a diagnosis or something and he was getting revenge on her too.
    At this thought he moved a little more quickly. He glanced back and saw Sachs waiting beside a half-open door, Glock drawn and pointed down, extended in a combat grip.
    The anger growing, Pulaski came to a solid brick wall, where he couldn’t be seen. He sped up further, heading toward the fire escape ladder. It was old and most of the paint had worn off, replaced by rust. He paused at the puddle of standing water surrounding the concrete around the base of the ladder. Water . . . electricity. But there was no electricity. And, anyway, there was no way to avoid the water. He sloshed through it.
    Ten feet away.
    Looking up, picking the best window to go through. Hoping the stairs and platform wouldn’t clank. Galt couldn’t be more than forty feet from them.
    Still, the sound of the diesel engine would cover up most squeaks.
    Five feet.
    Pulaski examined his heart and found its beat steady. He was going to make Lincoln Rhyme proud of him again.
    Hell, he was going to collar this sick bastard himself.
    He reached for the ladder.
    And the next thing he knew he heard a snap and every muscle in his body contracted at once. In his mind he was looking at all the light of heaven, before his vision dissolved to yellow then black.

Chapter 63
    STANDING TOGETHER BEHIND the school, Amelia Sachs and Lon Sellitto watched the place being swept by ESU.
    “A trap,” the lieutenant said.
    “Right,” she replied grimly. “Galt hooked up a big generator in a shed behind the school. He started it and then left. It was connected to the metal doors and the fire escape.”
    “The fire escape. That’s the way Pulaski was going.”
    She nodded. “Poor kid. He—”
    An ESU officer, a tall African American, interrupted them. “We’ve finished the sweep, Detective, Lieutenant. It’s clean. The whole place. We didn’t touch anything inside, like you asked.”
    “A digital recorder?” she asked. “That’s what I’m betting he used.”
    “That’s right, Detective. Sounded like a scene from a TV show or something. And a flashlight hanging by a cord. So it looked like somebody was holding it.”
    No hostage. No Galt. Nobody at all.
    “I’ll run the scenes in a minute.”
    The officer asked, “There was no portable called it in?”
    “Right,” Sellitto muttered. “Was Galt. Probably on a prepaid mobile, I’d bet. I’ll check it.”
    “And he just did this”—a wave at the school—“to kill some of us.”
    “That’s right,” Sachs said somberly.
    The ESU officer grimaced and headed off to gather his team. Sachs had immediately called Rhyme to give him the news about the school. And about Ron Pulaski.
    But, curiously, the phone went right to voice mail.
    Maybe something had heated up in the case, or in the Watchmaker situation in Mexico.
    A medic was walking toward her, head down, picking his way through the trash; the yard behind the school looked like a beach after a garbage spill. Sachs walked forward to meet him.
    “You free now, Detective?” he asked her.
    “Sure.”
    She followed him around to the side of the building, where the ambulances waited.
    There, sitting on a concrete stoop, was Ron Pulaski, head in his hands. She paused. Took a deep breath and walked up to him.
    “I’m sorry, Ron.”
    He was massaging his arm, flexing his fingers. “No, ma’am.” He blinked at his own formality. Grinned. “I should say, thank you .”
    “If there’d been any other way, I would’ve done it. But I couldn’t shout. I assumed Galt was still inside. And had his weapon.”
    “I figured.”
    Fifteen minutes earlier, as Sachs had waited at the door, she’d decided to use Sommers’s current detector once more to double-check that there was no electricity in the school.
    To her horror she saw the metal door she was inches away from contained 220 volts. And the concrete she was