The Burning Wire

country.Even with me having the final say on hiring, Algonquin has a tenth the women as in most other big companies in the United States. It’s the nature of the industry.”
    Sachs was about to ask why Jessen had gone into the field when the CEO said, anticipating her, “My father was in the business.”
    The detective nearly told her that she was a cop exclusively because of her own father, a “portable,” or foot patrolman, with the NYPD for many years. But she refrained.
    Jessen’s face was angular, with the slightest dusting of makeup. Wrinkles were present but subdued, radiating timidly from the corners of her green eyes and bland lips. Otherwise the skin was smooth. This was not a woman who got outside much.
    She in turn examined Sachs closely, then nodded toward her large coffee table, surrounded by office chairs. The detective sat while Jessen grabbed the phone. “Excuse me for a moment.” Her manicured but unpolished nails clacked against the number pad.
    She called three different people—all about the attack. One, to a lawyer, the detective could tell, one to the public relations department or an outside PR firm. She spent most of the time on the third call, apparently making sure extra security personnel were on site at all the company’s substations and other facilities. Jotting tiny notes with a gold-plated pencil, Jessen spoke in clipped tones, using staccato words with not a single filler like “I mean,” or “you know.” As Jessen rattled off instructions, Sachs took in the office, noting on the broad teak desk a picture of a teenage Andi Jessen and her family. She deduced from the series of photos of the children that Jessen had onebrother, a few years younger. They resembled each other, though he was brown-haired and she blond. Recent pictures showed him to be a handsome, fit man in an army uniform. There were other pictures of him on travels, occasionally with his arm around a pretty woman, different in every shot.
    There were no pictures of Jessen with any romantic partners.
    The walls were covered with bookcases and pictures of old-time prints and maps that might have come out of a museum display about the history of power. One map was labeled The First Grid , and showed a portion of lower Manhattan around Pearl Street. She saw in legible script, Thomas A. Edison , and she guessed that was the inventor’s actual signature.
    Jessen hung up and sat forward, elbows on her desk, eyes bleary but jaw and narrow lips firm. “It’s been over seven hours since the . . . incident. I was hoping you’d have somebody in custody. I guess if you’d caught them,” she muttered, “I would’ve had a phone call. Not a visit in person.”
    “No, I’m here to ask you some questions about things that have come up in the investigation.”
    Again a careful appraisal. “I’ve been talking with the mayor and the governor and the head of the FBI’s New York office. Oh, Homeland Security too. I was expecting to see one of them, not a police officer.”
    This wasn’t a put-down, not intentionally, and Sachs took no offense. “NYPD is running the crime scene portion of the case. My questions have to do with that.”
    “That explains it.” Her face softened slightly. “Woman to woman, I get a bit defensive. I was thinking the big boys weren’t taking me seriously.” Afaintly conspiratorial smile. “It happens. More than you’d think.”
    “I understand that.”
    “I imagine you do. A detective, hm?”
    “That’s right.” Then Sachs, feeling the urgency of the case, asked, “We get to those questions?”
    “Of course.”
    The phone kept ringing, but according to Jessen’s instructions to her PA, who’d returned to the anteoffice a moment ago, the unit chirped only once and fell silent as the woman fielded the calls.
    “First of all, just a preliminary matter. Have you changed the access codes to the grid software?”
    A frown. “Of course. That’s the first thing we did. Didn’t the mayor or Homeland Security tell you?”
    No, they hadn’t, Sachs reflected.
    Jessen continued, “And we’ve put in an extra set of firewalls. The hackers can’t get in any longer.”
    “It’s probably not hackers.”
    Jessen cocked her head. “But this morning Tucker McDaniel was saying that it was probably terrorists. The FBI agent?”
    “We have more recent information.”
    “How else could it have happened? Somebody from the outside was rerouting the supply and altering the circuit