The Burning Wire

her head back, she saw high above her the four towers of the smokestacks, also grimy red and sooty gray, blinking with warning lights bright in the hazy dusk. She’d been aware of the stacks for years, of course; no one who’d been to New York even once missed them, the dominant feature of the bland industrial shore of the East River. But she’d never been this close and they now captivated her, piercing the dull sky. She remembered, in winter, seeing exhaust of smoke or steam, but now there was nothing escaping except heat or invisible gas, distorting with ripples the smooth plain of the heavens above.
    Sachs heard some voices and looked over the parking lot to see a crowd of maybe fifty protesters standing in a large cluster. Posters were held aloft and there was a little amiable chanting, probably complaining about the big bad wolf of the oil-guzzling power company. They didn’t notice that she’d arrived here in a car that used five times as much black gold as one of their Priuses.
    Underneath her feet she believed she could feel a rumbling like massive nineteenth-century engines groaning away. She heard a low hum.
    She closed the car door and approached the main entrance. Two guards were watching her. They were clearly curious about the tall redhead, curious about her arrival in an old ruddy muscle car, but they also seemed amused at her reaction to the building. Their faces said, Yeah, it’s really something, isn’t it? After all these years here you never get over it .
    Then, with her ID and shield flashed, their expressions became alert and—apparently expecting a cop, though not in this package—they ushered her immediately through the halls of what was the executive headquarters portion of Algonquin Consolidated.
    Unlike the slick office building in Midtown of a massive data mining company involved in a case she’d recently worked, Algonquin seemed like a museum diorama of life in the 1950s: blond wood furniture, framed gaudy photographs of the facility and transmission towers, brown carpet. The clothing of the employees—nearly all of them men—was ultra-conservative: white shirts and dark suits.
    They continued down the boring halls, decorated with pictures of magazines that featured articles about Algonquin. Power Age. Electricity Transmission Monthly. The Grid .
    The time was nearly six-thirty and yet there were dozens of employees here, ties loosened, sleeves rolled up, faces troubled.
    At the end of the corridor the guard delivered her to the office of A. R. Jessen. Although the drive here had been eventful—involving speeds close to seventy on one stretch of highway—Sachs had managed to do a bit of research. Jessen was not an Andy but an Andi , for Andrea. Sachs always made it a point to do homework like this, learn what she could about the principals. It was important in maintaining control of interviews and interrogations. Ron had assumed that the CEO was a man. She imagined how her credibility would have fallen had she arrived and asked for Mr . Jessen.
    Inside, Sachs paused just inside the doorway of the anteoffice. A secretary, or personal assistant, in a tight black tank top and wearing bold high heels,rose on precarious toes to dig into a filing cabinet. The blonde, in her early forties or late thirties, Sachs reckoned, was frowning, frustrated at being unable to find something her boss wanted.
    In the doorway to the main office stood an imposing woman with salt-and-pepper hair and wearing a severe brown suit and high-neck blouse. She frowned as she watched the file cabinet excavation and crossed her arms.
    “I’m Detective Sachs, I called earlier,” she said when the dour woman turned her way.
    It was then that the younger woman plucked a folder from the cabinet and handed it to the older, then said, “I found it, Rachel. My mistake, I filed it when you were at lunch. If you could make five copies, I’d appreciate it.”
    “Yes, Ms. Jessen,” she said. And stepped to a copier.
    The CEO strode forward on the dangerous heels, looked up into Sachs’s eyes and shook her hand firmly. “Come on inside, Detective,” she said. “Looks like we have a lot to talk about.”
    Sachs glanced over at the brown-suited assistant and followed the real Andi Jessen into her office.
    So much for homework, she reflected ruefully.

Chapter 17
    ANDREA JESSEN SEEMED to catch on to the near faux pas. “I’m the second youngest and the only woman head of a major power company in the