The Burning Wire

conference call. Her blond hair stiff, oversprayed. Or perhaps she’d spent the night in the office and hadn’t showered that morning.
    “ Another one?” Rhyme glanced at Lon Sellitto, Cooper and Sachs, all frozen in various places and attitudes around the lab.
    The big detective tossed down half the muffin that he’d snagged from a plate Thom had brought in. “We just had an attack, and he’s hitting us again?”
    “He wasn’t happy we ignored him, I suppose,” Jessen said brittlely.
    “What does he want?” Sachs asked, at the same time as Rhyme said, “I’d like the note here. ASAP.”
    Jessen answered Rhyme first. “I gave it to Agent McDaniel. It’s on its way to you now.”
    “What’s the deadline?”
    “Six p.m.”
    “Today?”
    “Yes.”
    “Jesus,” Sellitto muttered. “Two hours.”
    “And the demand?” Sachs repeated.
    “He wants us to stop all the DC—the direct current—transmissionto the other North American grids for an hour, starting at six. If we don’t he’ll kill more people.”
    Rhyme asked, “What does that mean?”
    “Our grid is the Northeastern Interconnection, and Algonquin’s the big energy producer in it. If a power company in another grid needs supply, we sell it to them. If they’re more than five hundred miles away, we use DC transmission, not AC. It’s more cost effective. Usually it goes to smaller companies in rural areas.”
    “What’s the, you know, significance of the demand?” Sellitto asked.
    “I don’t know why he’s asking. It doesn’t make any sense to me. Maybe his point is reducing cancer risk to people near the transmission lines. But I’d guess fewer than a thousand people in North America live near DC lines.”
    Rhyme said, “Galt isn’t necessarily behaving rationally.”
    “True.”
    “Can you do it? Meet his demand?”
    “No, we can’t. It’s impossible. It’s just like before, with the grid in New York City, except worse. It would cut out service to thousands of small towns around the country. And there are direct feeds into military bases and research facilities. Homeland Security’s saying to shut it down would be a national security risk. The Defense Department concurs.”
    Rhyme added, “And presumably you’d be losing millions of dollars.”
    A pause. “Yes. We would. We’d be in breach of hundreds of contracts. It would be a disaster for the company. But, anyway, the argument about complying is moot. We physically couldn’t do this in the timehe’s given us. You don’t just flip a wall switch with seven hundred thousand volts.”
    “All right,” Rhyme said. “How did you get the note?”
    “Galt gave it to one of our employees.”
    Rhyme and Sachs exchanged glances.
    Jessen continued, explaining that Galt accosted security chief Bernard Wahl as the man was returning from lunch.
    “Is Wahl there with you?” Sachs asked.
    “Hold on a minute,” Jessen said. “He was being debriefed by the FBI. . . . Let me see.”
    Sellitto whispered, “They didn’t fucking bother to even tell us they were talking to him, the feebies? It had to come from her ?”
    A moment later solid-shouldered Bernard Wahl appeared on the screen and sat down next to Andi Jessen. His round, black scalp glistened.
    “Hello,” Sachs said.
    The handsome face nodded.
    “Are you all right?”
    “Yes, Detective.”
    He wasn’t all right, though, Rhyme could see. His eyes were hollow. They were avoiding the webcam.
    “Tell us what happened.”
    “I was coming back from lunch. And Galt came up behind me with a gun and took me to an alleyway. Then he shoved the letter into my pocket and said get it to Ms. Jessen right away. Then he was gone.”
    “That’s all?”
    A hesitation. “Pretty much. Yes, ma’am.”
    “Did he say anything that might lead us to where he’s hiding out or where the next target might be?”
    “No. Mostly he just rambled about electricity causing cancer and being dangerous and how nobody cares.”
    Rhyme was curious about something. “Mr. Wahl? Did you see the weapon? Or was he bluffing?”
    Another hesitation. Then the security man said, “I caught a look. A forty-five. Nineteen-eleven. The old army model.”
    “Did he grab you? We could get some trace evidence off your clothes.”
    “No. Only his gun.”
    “Where’d this happen?”
    “Somewhere in an alley near B and R Auto Repair. I don’t really remember, sir. I was pretty shaken up.”
    Sachs asked, “And that was it? He didn’t ask