The Burning Wire

edge now in the slick ASAC’s voice.
    “Or were they people who believed it was Galt because we told the media that’s who it was? And the media told the world?”
    Rhyme added, “You wear safety goggles, you wear a hard hat and a company uniform . . . If you’re the same race and same build, and you’ve got a fake name badge with your own picture on it and Galt’s name . . . sure, it could work.”
    Sachs too was considering the evidence. “The lineman in the tunnel, Joey Barzan, said he identifiedhim because of the name badge. He’d never met Galt. And it was real dark down there.”
    “And the security chief, Bernie Wahl,” Rhyme added, “never saw him when he delivered the second demand note. The perp got him from behind.”
    Rhyme said, “And Galt was the one he kidnapped and killed. Like your CI found out.”
    “That’s right,” Dellray said.
    “But the evidence?” McDaniel persisted.
    Rhyme stared at the board, shaking his head. “Shit. How could I’ve missed it?”
    “What, Rhyme?”
    “The boots in Galt’s apartment? A pair of Albertson-Fenwicks.”
    “But they matched,” Pulaski said.
    “Of course they matched. But that’s not the point, Rookie. The boots were in Galt’s apartment. If they were his, they wouldn’t’ve been there; he’d be wearing them! Workers wouldn’t have two pairs of new boots. They’re expensive and employees usually have to buy their own. . . . No, the real perp found out what kind Galt wore and bought another pair. Same with the bolt cutter and hacksaw. The real perp left them in Galt’s apartment to find. The rest of the evidence implicating Galt, like the hair in the coffee shop across from the substation on Fifty-seventh Street? That was planted too.
    “Look at the blog posting,” Rhyme continued, nodding at the documents Pulaski had wrested from Galt’s printer.
    My story is typical of many. I was a lineman and later a troubleman (like a supervisor) for many years working for several power companies in direct contactwith lines carrying over one hundred thousand volts. It was the electromagnetic fields created by the transmission lines, that are uninsulated, that led to my leukemia, I am convinced. In addition it has been proven that power lines attract aerosol particles that lead to lung cancer among others, but this is something that the media doesn’t talk about .
    We need to make all the power companies but more important the public aware of these dangers. Because the companies won’t do anything voluntarily, why should they? if the people stopped using electricity by even half we could save thousands of lives a year and make them (the companies) more responsible. In turn they would create safer ways to deliver electricity. And stop destroying the earth too .
    People, you need to take matters into your own hands!
    —Raymond Galt
    “Now look at the first couple of paragraphs of the first demand letter.”
    At around 11:30 a.m. yesterday morning there was an arc flash incident at the MH-10 substation on W 57 Street in Manhattan, this happened by securing a Bennington cable and bus bar to a post-breaker line with two split bolts. By shutting down four substations and raising the breaker limit at MH-10 an overloadof close to two hundred thousand volts caused the flash .
    This incident was entirely your fault and due to your greed and selfishness. This is typical of the industry and it is reprehensable. Enron destroyed the financial lives of people, your company destroys our physical lives and the life of the earth. By exploiting electricity without regard for it’s consequences you are destroying our world, you insideously work your way into our lives like a virus, until we are dependent on what is killing us .
    “What’s distinctive?” Rhyme asked.
    Sachs shrugged.
    Pulaski pointed out, “No misspellings in the blog.”
    “True, Rookie, but that’s not my point; the computer’s spell checker would have picked up any mistakes in the blog and corrected them. I’m talking about word choice.”
    Sachs nodded vigorously. “Sure. The blog language is a lot simpler.”
    “Exactly. The blog was written by Galt himself. The letters were transcribed by him—it was his handwriting—but they were dictated by the real perp, the man who kidnapped Galt and forced him to write what he was saying. The perp used his own language, which Galt wasn’t familiar with so he misspelled the big words. In the blog he never used any words like