The Burning Wire

honest cops left in Mexico. Diaz wanted to hire me to kill him. But I was too busy. For a fee, though, I did agree to pretend I was behind it, to keep suspicion off him. It served my purposes too. I needed everyone—especially you—to believe I was someplace other than New York City.”
    “But at the airport . . .” Rhyme’s voice fell to a confused whisper. “You were on the plane. The security tape. We saw you get in that truck, hide underthe tarp. And you were spotted in Mexico City and on the road there from the airport. You were seen in Gustavo Madero an hour ago. Your fingerprints and . . .” The words dissolved. The criminalist shook his head and gave a resigned smile. “My God. You never left the airport at all.”
    “No, I didn’t.”
    “You picked up that package and got onto the truck in front of the camera, on purpose, but it just drove out of view. You handed the package off to somebody else and got a flight headed to the East Coast. Diaz’s men kept reporting you in Mexico City—to make everybody think you were there. How many of Diaz’s people were on the take?”
    “About two dozen.”
    “There was no car fleeing to Gustavo Madero?”
    “No.” Pity was an emotion that to Logan was inefficient and therefore pointless. Still, he could recognize, without being moved personally, that there was something pitiable about Lincoln Rhyme at the moment. He also looked smaller than when last they met. Nearly frail. Perhaps he’d been sick. Which was good, Logan decided; the electricity coursing through his body would take its toll more quickly. He certainly didn’t want Rhyme to suffer.
    He added, as if in consolation, “You anticipated the attack on Luna. You stopped Diaz from killing him. I never thought you’d figure it out in time. But, on reflection, I shouldn’t have been surprised.”
    “But I didn’t stop you .”
    Logan had killed a number of people in his lengthy career as a professional. Most of them, if they were aware they were about to die, grew calm, as they understood the inevitability of what was about to happen. But Rhyme went even further. The criminalistnow almost looked relieved. Perhaps that was what Logan saw in Rhyme’s face: the symptoms of a terminal illness. Or maybe he’d just lost the will to live, given his condition. A fast death would be a blessing.
    “Where’s Galt’s body?”
    “The Burn—the boiler furnace at Algonquin Power. There’s nothing left.” Logan glanced at the laptop. Still all clear. He took out a length of Bennington medium-voltage cable and attached one end to the hot line in a nearby 220-volt outlet. He’d spent months learning all about juice. He felt as comfortable with it now as with the fine gears and springs of clocks and watches.
    Logan felt in his pocket the weight of the remote control that would turn the power back on and send sufficient amperage into the criminalist to kill him instantly.
    As he wound part of the cable around Rhyme’s arm, the man said, “But if you bugged the generator you must’ve heard what we were saying before. We know Raymond Galt isn’t the real perp, that he was set up. And we know that Andi Jessen wanted to kill Sam Vetter and Larry Fishbein. Whether or not it was her brother who rigged the traps or you, she’ll still get collared and . . .”
    Logan did no more than glance at Rhyme, on whose face appeared a look of both understanding and complete resignation. “But that’s not what this is about, is it? That’s not what this is about at all.”
    “No, Lincoln. It’s not.”

Chapter 77
    A BIRD NOT on, but above, a wire.
    Dangling in the air in the deepest subbasement of the convention center, Charlie Sommers was in an improvised sling exactly two feet away from a line carrying 138,000 volts, swathed in red insulation.
    If electricity were water, the pressure in the cable in front of him would be like that at the bottom of the sea, millions of pounds per square inch, just waiting for any excuse to crush the submarine into a flat, bloody strip of metal.
    The main line, suspended on insulated glass supports, was ten feet off the ground running from the wall across the basement to the convention center’s own substation, at the far end of the dim space.
    Because he couldn’t touch both the bare wire and anything connected to the ground at the same time, he’d improvised a sling from fire hose, which he’d tied to a catwalk above the high-voltage cable. Using all his