The Burning Wire

the subway. What if he’s rigged it to hit a car? I’ll have to search there too.”
    “We’re still on the horn with Algonquin, trying to narrow it down, Sachs. I’ll call you back.” He shouted to Mel Cooper, “Anything?”
    The tech was speaking with a supervisor in the Algonquin control center. Following Andi Jessen’s orders, he and his staff were trying to find if there had been any voltage fluctuation in specific parts of the line. This might be possible to detect, since sensors were spaced every few hundred feet to alert them if there were problems with insulation or degradation in the electric transmission line itself. There was a chance they could pinpoint where Galt had tapped into the line to run his deadly cable to the surface.
    But from Cooper: “Nothing. Sorry.”
    Rhyme closed his eyes briefly. The headache he’d denied earlier had grown in intensity. He wondered if pain was throbbing elsewhere. There was always that concern with quadriplegia. Without pain, you never know what the rebellious body’s up to. A tree falls in the forest, of course it makes a sound, even if nobody’s there. But does pain exist if you don’t perceive it?
    These thoughts left a morbid flavor, Rhyme realized. And he understood too that he’d been having similar ones lately. He wasn’t sure why. But he couldn’t shake them.
    And, even stranger, unlike his jousting with Thom yesterday at this same time of day, he didn’t want any scotch. Was nearly repulsed by the idea.
    This bothered him more than the headache.
    His eyes scanned the evidence charts but theyskipped over the words as if they were in a foreign language he’d studied in school and hadn’t used for years. Then they settled on the chart again, tracing the flow of juice from power generation to household. In decreasing voltages.
    One hundred and thirty-eight thousand volts . .  .
    Rhyme asked Mel Cooper to call Sommers at Algonquin.
    “Special Projects.”
    “Charlie Sommers?”
    “That’s right.”
    “This is Lincoln Rhyme. I work with Amelia Sachs.”
    “Oh, sure. She mentioned you.” In a soft voice he said, “I heard it was Ray Galt, one of our people. Is that true?”
    “Looks that way. Mr. Sommers—”
    “Hey, call me Charlie. I feel like I’m an honorary cop.”
    “Okay, Charlie. Are you following what’s happening right now?”
    “I’ve got the grid on my laptop screen right here. Andi Jessen—our president—asked me to monitor what’s going on.”
    “How close are they to fixing the, what’s it called? Switchgear in the substation where they had that fire?”
    “Two, three hours. That line’s still a runaway. Nothing we can do to shut it down, except turn off the switch to most of New York City. . . . Is there anything I can do to help?”
    “Yes. I need to know more about arc flashes. It looks like Galt’s spliced into a major line, a transmission level line, and hooked his wire to the water main, then—”
    “But why’re you asking about arcs?” Sommers wondered.
    “Because,” Rhyme said absently, “Galt’s going to kill somebody with one in less than an hour.”
    “Oh, did Galt’s note say something about an arc?”
    Rhyme realized that it didn’t. “No.”
    “So you’re just assuming that’s what he’d do.”
    Rhyme hated the word “assumption” and all its derivatives. He was furious with himself, wondering if they’d missed something important. “Go on, Charlie.”
    “An arc is spectacular but it’s also one of the least efficient ways to use electricity as a weapon. You can’t control it very well, you’re never sure where it’s going to end up. Look at yesterday morning. I mean, Galt had a whole bus for a target and he missed. . . . You want to know how I’d kill somebody with electricity?”
    Lincoln Rhyme said quickly, “Yes, I very much would,” and tilted his head to the phone to listen with complete concentration.

Chapter 34
    THOMAS EDISON INTRODUCED overhead transmission, those ugly towers, in New Jersey in 1883, but the first grid ran beneath the streets of Lower Manhattan, starting from his generating station on Pearl Street. He had a grand total of fifty-nine customers.
    Some linemen hated the underground grid—the dark grid, as it was sometimes called—but Joey Barzanloved it down here. He’d been with Algonquin Power for only a couple of years but had been in the electrical trades for ten years, since he’d started working at eighteen. He’d worked