The Burning Wire

PROPERTY
DANGER. HIGH VOLTAGE.
TRESPASS PROHIBITED.
    He rarely paid attention to the place but today something had caught his eye, something, he believed, out of the ordinary. Dangling from the window, about ten feet off the ground, was a wire, about a half inch in diameter. It was covered with dark insulation up to the end. There, the plastic or rubber was stripped away, revealing silvery metal strands bolted to a fitting of some kind, a flat piece of brass. Damn big hunk of wire, he thought.
    And just hanging out the window. Was that safe?
    He braked the bus to a complete stop and hit the door release. The kneeling mechanism engaged and the big vehicle dipped toward the sidewalk, the bottom metal stair inches from the ground.
    The driver turned his broad, ruddy face toward the door, which eased open with a satisfying hydraulic hiss. The folks began to climb on board. “Morning,” the driver said cheerfully.
    A woman in her eighties, clutching an old shabby Henri Bendel shopping bag, nodded back and, using a cane, staggered to the rear, ignoring the empty seats in the front reserved for the elderly and disabled.
    How could you not just love New Yorkers?
    Then sudden motion in the rearview mirror. Flashing yellow lights. A truck was speeding up behind him. Algonquin Consolidated. Three workers stepped out and stood in a close group, talking among themselves. They held boxes of tools and thick gloves and jackets. They didn’t seem happy as they walked slowly toward the building, staring at it, heads close together as they debated something. One of those heads was shaking ominously.
    Then the driver turned to the last passenger about to board, a young Latino clutching his MetroCard and pausing outside the bus. He was gazing at thesubstation. Frowning. The driver noticed his head was raised, as if he was sniffing the air.
    An acrid scent. Something was burning. The smell reminded him of the time that an electric motor in the wife’s washing machine had shorted out and the insulation burned. Nauseating. A wisp of smoke was coming from the doorway of the substation.
    So that’s what the Algonquin people were doing here.
    That’d be a mess. The driver wondered if it would mean a power outage and the stoplights would go out. That’d be it for him. The crosstown trip, normally twenty minutes, would be hours. Well, in any event, he’d better clear the area for the fire department. He gestured the passenger on board. “Hey, mister, I gotta go. Come on. Get on—”
    As the passenger, still frowning at the smell, turned around and stepped onto the bus, the driver heard what sounded like pops coming from inside the substation. Sharp, almost like gunshots. Then a flash of light like a dozen suns filled the entire sidewalk between the bus and the cable dangling from the window.
    The passenger simply disappeared into a cloud of white fire.
    The driver’s vision collapsed to gray afterimages. The sound was like a ripping crackle and shotgun blast at the same time, stunning his ears. Though belted into his seat, his upper body was slammed backward against the side window.
    Through numb ears, he heard the echoes of his passengers’ screams.
    Through half-blinded eyes, he saw flames.
    As he began to pass out, the driver wondered if he himself might very well be the source of the fire.

Chapter 3
    “ I HAVE TO tell you. He got out of the airport. He was spotted an hour ago in downtown Mexico City.”
    “No,” Lincoln Rhyme said with a sigh, closing his eyes briefly. “No . . .”
    Amelia Sachs, sitting beside Rhyme’s candy apple red Storm Arrow wheelchair, leaned forward and spoke into the black box of the speakerphone. “What happened?” She tugged at her long red hair and twined the strands into a severe ponytail.
    “By the time we got the flight information from London, the plane had landed.” The woman’s voice blossomed crisply from the speakerphone. “Seems he hid on a supply truck, snuck out through a service entrance. I’ll show you the security tape we got from the Mexican police. I’ve got a link. Hold on a minute.” Her voice faded as she spoke to her associate, giving him instructions about the video.
    The time was just past noon and Rhyme and Sachs were in the ground-floor parlor turned forensic laboratory of his town house on Central Park West, what had been a gothic Victorian structure in which had possibly resided—Rhyme liked to think—some very unquaint Victorians. Tough businessmen,