The Burning Wire

time.”
    Meaning, Rhyme suspected, can somebody in your condition deliver? Sellitto stirred, but this wasn’t a crip put-down. It was a legitimate question. One that Rhyme himself would have asked.
    He answered, “Understood.”
    “Good. I’ll tell my Evidence Response people to help however you want,” the ASAC assured him.
    Noble said, “Now, for the press, we’re trying to downplay the terror angle at this point. We’ll be making it sound like an accident. But the news leaked that it may be more than that. People are freaked out.”
    “I’ll say they are.” McDaniel nodded. “I’ve got monitors in my office checking Internet traffic. Huge increases in hits in search engines for ‘electrocution,’ ‘arc flash’ and ‘blackouts.’ YouTube viewings of arc flash videos are through the roof. I went online myself. They’re scary as hell. One minute there’re two guys working on an electric panel, then all of asudden there’s a flash that fills the whole screen and a guy’s on his back, with half his body on fire.”
    “And,” Noble said, “people’re real nervous that arc flashes might happen someplace other than a substation. Like their houses and offices.”
    Sachs asked, “Can they?”
    McDaniel apparently had not learned all there was to know about arc flashes. He admitted, “I think so, but I’m not sure how big the current has to be.” His eyes strayed to a 220v outlet nearby.
    “Well, I think we better get moving,” Rhyme said, with a glance at Sachs.
    She headed for the door. “Ron, come with me.” Pulaski joined her. A moment later the door closed, and soon he heard the big engine of her car fire up.
    “Now, one thing to keep in mind, one scenario we ran on the computers,” McDaniel added, “was that the UNSUB was just testing the waters, checking out the grid as a possible terror target. It was pretty clumsy and only one person died. We fed that into the system and the algorithms are suggesting that they might try something different next. There’s even a potential that this was a singularity.”
    “A . . . ?” Rhyme asked, exasperated at the language.
    “Singularity—a onetime occurrence. Our threat analysis software assigned a fifty-five percent nonrepeatability factor to the incident. That’s not the worst in the world.”
    Rhyme said, “But isn’t that just another way of saying there’s a forty-five percent chance that somebody else somewhere in New York City’s going to get electrocuted? . . . And it could be happening right now.”

Chapter 5
    ALGONQUIN CONSOLIDATED POWER substation MH-10 was a miniature medieval castle in a quiet area south of Lincoln Center. It was made of unevenly cut limestone, dingy and pitted from decades of New York City pollution and grime. The cornerstone was worn but you could easily read, 1928 .
    It was just before 2 p.m. when Amelia Sachs skidded her maroon Ford Torino Cobra up to the curb in front of the place, behind the ruined bus. The car and its bubbling exhaust drew glances of curiosity or admiration from bystanders, cops and firemen. She climbed out of the driver’s seat, tossed an NYPD placard on the dash and stood with hands on hips, surveying the scene. Ron Pulaski exited from the passenger door and slammed it with a solid clunk.
    Sachs regarded the incongruity of the setting. Modern buildings, at least twenty or so stories high, bracketed the substation, which for some reason had been designed with turrets. The stone was streaked with white, thanks to the resident pigeons, a number of which had returned after the excitement. The windows were of jaundiced glass and covered with bars painted black.
    The thick metal door was open and the room inside was dark.
    With a bleat of an electronic siren a rapid response vehicle from the NYPD Crime Scene Unit eased into the area. The RRV parked, and three technicians from the main operation in Queens climbed out.Sachs had worked with them on a number of occasions and she nodded to the Latino man and the Asian woman under the direction of a senior officer, Detective Gretchen Sahloff. Sachs nodded to the detective, who waved a greeting and with a somber look at the front of the substation walked to the rear of the large van, where the newly arrived officers began to unload equipment.
    Sachs’s attention then moved to the sidewalk and street, cordoned off with yellow tape, beyond which a crowd of fifty or so watched the action. The bus that had been the object of the