The Burning Wire

control from his pocket, stood back from the wheelchair.
    Lincoln Rhyme was studying him calmly. He sighed and said, “I guess that’s about it, then.”
    Logan hesitated and his eyes narrowed, staring at Rhyme. There was something very different about the criminalist’s tone as he’d spoken those words. His facial expression too. And the eyes . . . the eyes were suddenly a predator’s.
    Richard Logan actually shivered as he suddenly understood that that incongruous sentence, delivered so incongruously, was not directed toward him at all.
    It was a message. To somebody else.
    “What’ve you done?” Logan whispered, heart pounding. He stared at the small computer monitor. There was no sign that anybody was returning to the town house.
    But . . . but what if they’d never left in the first place?
    Oh, no. . . .
    Logan stared at Rhyme and then jammed his finger onto the two buttons of the remote control switch.
    Nothing happened.
    Rhyme said matter-of-factly, “As soon as you came upstairs one of our officers disconnected it.”
    “No,” Logan gasped.
    A creak sounded on the floor behind him. He spun around.
    “Richard Logan, do not move!” It was that police detective they’d just been talking about, Amelia Sachs. “Keep your hands in view. If you move your hands you will be shot.”
    Behind her were two other men. Logan took them to be police too. One was heavy and wearing a wrinkled blue suit. The other, skinnier, was in shirtsleeves, wearing black-framed glasses.
    All three officers trained weapons on him.
    But Logan’s eyes were on Amelia Sachs, who seemed the most eager to shoot. He realized that Rhyme had asked the question about Sachs to alert them that he was ready to say the magic words and spring the trap.
    I guess that’s about it, then. . .  .
    But the consequence was that she would have heard Logan’s comment about her, her inferior skills.
    Still, when she stepped forward to cuff him, it was with utmost professionalism, gently almost. Then she eased him to the floor with minimal discomfort.
    The heavy officer stepped forward and reached for the wires coiled around Rhyme.
    “Gloves, please,” said the criminalist calmly.
    The big cop hesitated. Then pulled on latex gloves and removed the cables. He said into his radio, “It’s clear up here. You can put the power back on.”
    A moment later lights filled the room and, surroundedby the clicks of the equipment returning to life and the diodes flickering red, green and white, Richard Logan, the Watchmaker, was read his rights.

Chapter 79
    IT WAS TIME for the heroics.
    Not generally the bailiwick of inventors.
    Charlie Sommers decided he had removed enough insulation from the lightweight cable so that he was ready to try for the short circuit.
    In theory this should work.
    The risk was that, in its desperation to get to the ground, the instant he moved it closer to the return, the massive voltage in the feeder line would arc to the cable then consume his body in a plasma spark. He was only ten feet above the concrete; Sommers had seen videos of arc flashes that were fifty feet in length.
    But he’d waited long enough.
    First step. Connect the cable to the main line.
    Thinking of his wife, thinking of his children—and his other children: the inventions he’d fathered over the years—he leaned toward the hot wire and with a deep breath touched the lightweight cable to it, using his hands.
    Nothing happened. So far, so good. His body and the wires were now at the same potential. In effect, Charlie Sommers was simply a portion of a 138,000v line.
    He worked the bare section of the cable around the far side of the energized line and caught the end underneath. He twisted it so there was tight contact.
    Gripping the insulated part of the lightweight cable, he eased back, in his unsure fire-hose sling, and stared at the place he’d decided to close the connection: a girder that rose to the ceiling but, more important for his purposes, descended deep into the earth.
    To which all juice had a primal instinct to return.
    The girder was about six feet away.
    Charlie Sommers gave a faint laugh.
    This was fucking ridiculous. The minute the exposed end of the other wire neared the metal beam, the current would anticipate the contact and lunge outward in a huge explosion of arc flash. Plasma, flame, molten metal drops flying at three thousand feet per second . . .
    But he saw no other choice.
    Now!
    Cut its head off . . .