The Burning Wire

‘reprehensible.’ . . . And in the other letters there’re similar misspellings. In the last letter—no misspellings because the perp wrote that himself in an email.”
    Sellitto paced; the floor creaked. “Remember whatParker Kincaid said? Our handwriting guy? That the letter was written by somebody who was emotional, upset—because he was being threatened to take the dictation. That’d make anybody upset. And he also forced Galt to handle the switches and hard hat so they’d have his prints on them.”
    Rhyme nodded. “In fact, I’ll bet the blog postings were real. Hell, they were probably how the perp picked Galt in the first place. He’d read how angry Galt was about the power industry.”
    A moment later his eyes took in the physical evidence itself: the cables, the nuts and bolts.
    And the generator. He gazed at it for a moment.
    Then he called up word processing software on his computer and began to type. His neck and temple throbbed—this time, though, not as a prelude to an attack, but a sign that his heart was pounding hard with excitement.
    Hunt lust.
    Foxes, not wolves . .  .
    “Well,” McDaniel muttered, ignoring an incoming phone call. “If that’s right, I don’t think it is, but if it’s right, who the hell’s behind it?”
    Typing slowly, the criminalist continued, “Let’s think about the facts. We’ll discount all the evidence specifically implicating Galt; for the moment let’s assume it’s been planted. So, the short blond hair is out, the tools are out, the boots are out, his uniform, gear bag, hard hat, friction ridges. All of those are out.
    “Okay, so what else do we have? We’ve got a Queens connection—the taramasalata. He tried to destroy the access door we found it on so we know that evidence is real. We’ve got the handgun. So the real perp has access to weapons. We’ve got a geographic connection to the City Hall area—the trace we foundin the generator. We’ve got hair—long blond and short brown. That suggests two perps. One definitely male, rigging the attacks. The other unknown, but probably a woman. What else do we know?”
    “He’s from out of town,” Dellray pointed out.
    Pulaski said, “Knowledge of arc flashes and how to create the booby traps.”
    “Good,” Rhyme said.
    Sellitto said, “One of them has access to Algonquin facilities.”
    “Possibly, though they could have used Galt for that.”
    Hums and clicks from the forensic instruments filled the parlor, coins jingled in somebody’s pocket.
    “A man and a woman,” McDaniel said. “Just what we learned from T and C. Justice For the Earth.”
    Rhyme exhaled a sigh. “Tucker, I could buy that if we had any evidence about the group. But we don’t. Not a single fiber, print, bit of trace.”
    “It’s all cloud zone.”
    “But,” the criminalist snapped, “if they exist they have a physical presence. Somewhere. I don’t have any proof of that.”
    “Well, then what do you think’s going on?”
    Rhyme smiled.
    Almost simultaneously Amelia Sachs was shaking her head. “Rhyme, you don’t think it could be, do you?”
    “You know what I say: When you’ve eliminated all the other possibilities, the remaining one, however outlandish it seems, has to be the answer.”
    “I don’t get it, Lincoln,” Pulaski said. McDaniel’s expression echoed the same. “What do you mean?”
    “Well, Rookie, you might want to ask yourself a few questions: One, does Andi Jessen have blond hairabout the length of what you found? Two, does she have a brother who’s a former soldier who lives out of town and who might have access to weapons like a nineteen eleven Colt army forty-five? And, three, has Andi spent any time in City Hall in the last couple of days, oh, say, giving press conferences?”

Chapter 70
    “ANDI JESSEN?”
    As he continued to type, Rhyme replied to McDaniel, “And her brother’s doing the legwork. Randall. He’s the one who’s actually staged the attacks. But they coordinated them together. That’s why the transfer of evidence. She helped him move the generator out of the white van to the back of the school in Chinatown.”
    Sachs crossed her arms as she considered this. “Remember: Charlie Sommers said that the army teaches soldiers about arc flashes. Randall could’ve learned what he needed to know there.”
    Cooper said, “The fibers we found in Susan’s wheelchair? The database said they might’ve come from a military uniform.”
    Rhyme nodded at