The Burning Wire

something that could be helpful. Maybe even key. But if he unplugged the unit, the memory would dump the remaining pages of the job.
    He started to reach in carefully. Then he pictured the molten bits of metal again.
    Five thousand degrees . .  .
    A glance at his watch.
    Shit. Amelia had told him not to go near electricity with anything metallic on. He’d forgotten about it. Goddamn head injury! Why couldn’t he think straighter? He pulled the watch off. Put it in his pocket. Jesus our Lord, what good is that going to do? He put the Seiko on the desk, far away from the printer.
    One more attempt, but the fear got to him again. He was furious with himself for hesitating.
    “Shit,” he muttered, and returned to the kitchen.He found some bulky pink Playtex gloves. He pulled them on and, looking around to make sure no FBI agents or ESU cops were peering in at the ridiculous sight, walked back to the printer.
    He opened the evidence collection kit and selected the best tool to clear the jam and get the printer working again: tweezers. They were, of course, metal ones, just the ticket to make a nice, solid connection to any exposed electric wires Galt had rigged inside the printer.
    He glanced at his watch, six feet away. Less than an hour and a half until the next attack.
    Ron Pulaski leaned forward and eased the tweezers between two very thick wires.

Chapter 30
    NEWS STATIONS WERE broadcasting Galt’s picture, former girlfriends were being interviewed, as was his bowling team and his oncologist. But there were no leads. He’d gone underground.
    Mel Cooper’s geology expert at Queens CS had found twenty-one exhibits in the New York metropolitan area that might involve volcanic ash, including an artist in Queens who was using lava rock to make sculpture.
    Cooper muttered, “Twenty thousand dollars for something the size of a watermelon. Which is what it looks like, by the way.”
    Rhyme nodded absently and listened to McDaniel,now back at Federal Plaza, explain on speakerphone that Galt’s mother hadn’t heard from him for a few days. But that wasn’t unusual. He’d been upset lately because he’d been sick. Rhyme asked, “You get a Title Three on them?”
    The agent explained testily that the magistrate hadn’t been persuaded to issue a wiretap on Galt’s family members.
    “But we’ve got a pen.” A pen register phone tap wouldn’t allow agents to listen to the conversation but would reveal the numbers of anyone who called them and of anybody they phoned. Those could then be traced.
    Impatient, Rhyme had contacted Pulaski again, who’d responded immediately and with a shaking voice, saying the buzzing phone had scared the “you know what out of me.”
    The young officer told Rhyme he was extracting information from Raymond Galt’s computer printer.
    “Jesus, Rookie, don’t do that yourself.”
    “It’s okay, I’m standing on a rubber mat.”
    “I don’t mean that. Only let experts go through a computer. There could be data-wipe programs—”
    “No, no, there’s no computer. Just the printer. It’s jammed and I’m—”
    “Nothing about addresses, locations of the next attack?”
    “No.”
    “Call the minute, call the second you find something.”
    “I—”
    Click .
    The joint task force had had little luck in canvassing people on Fifty-seventh Street and in Ray Galt’sneighborhood. The perp—no longer an UNSUB—had gone underground. Galt’s mobile was “dead”: The battery had been removed so it couldn’t be traced, his service provider reported.
    Sachs was on her own phone, head down, listening. She thanked the caller and disconnected. “That was Bernie Wahl again. He said he’d talked to people in Galt’s department—New York Emergency Maintenance—and everybody said he was a loner. He didn’t socialize. Nobody regularly had lunch with him. He liked the solitude of working on the lines.”
    Rhyme nodded at this information. He then told the FBI agent about the sources for the lava. “We’ve found twenty-one locations. We’re—”
    “Twenty-two,” Cooper called, on the phone with the CS woman in Queens. “Brooklyn art gallery. On Henry Street.”
    McDaniel sighed. “That many?”
    “Afraid so.” Then Rhyme said, “We should let Fred know.”
    McDaniel didn’t respond.
    “Fred Dellray.” Your employee, Rhyme added silently. “He should tell his CI about Galt.”
    “Right. Hold on. I’ll conference him in.”
    There were some clicks and a few