Rhyme looked around the parlor. "Where the hell's the rookie?" he grumbled. "That other case?"
"That's right." Sachs was nodding. But offered nothing more.
"Somebody just find this Gutierrez and shoot him, please."
For some reason Sachs smiled at this. Rhyme was not amused.
Sachs itemized the evidence. "Not much. Wire, electricians' tape on the circuit breaker panel. He rigged a lamp with this." She held up a plastic bag with a small electric circuit board inside. "When he triggered it, two wires in the lamp crossed and that blew the breaker. It was to get Mom downstairs to the box. Ambient trace. Naturally, no friction ridges or hairs other than mine or Mom's. Some fibers. He's wearing flesh-colored cotton gloves."
"You found copper bits earlier but now we have the actual wire," Cooper said.
It was eight-gauge, according to the American wire gauge standard, about 0.128 inch in diameter.
Rhyme said, "Can carry pretty high voltage. What, Mel? Forty amps?"
"That's right, at sixty degrees Celsius."
"What about the manufacturer?"
There were, Rhyme could see, letters on the black insulation.
Cooper looked up the initials. "Hendrix Cable. Popular brand. Sold a lot of places."
Rhyme scoffed. "Why don't perps shop at unique stores?... And he used a razor knife again to strip it?"
"Right."
"And electricians' tape?"
"Probably good quality," the tech said, touching part of it with a steel needle probe. "Good adhesive, strong. Cheaper tape tends to have uneven coverage and it's thin."
"Burn a bit. See if we can get a brand name."
After the gas chromatograph worked its magic, Cooper looked over the results and displayed them to the room on a monitor.
Archer said, "They seem generic. Aren't those ingredients found in every brand of electrical tape?"
"Quantity," Rhyme said. "Quantity is everything."
Cooper explained further, "I'm running the amounts of each of those substances through a database. Micrograms make all the difference. It should give us an answer in... Ah, here we go now. It's one of these."
On the screen:
Ludlum Tape and Adhesive
Conoco Industrial Products
Hammersmith Adhesives
"Good, good," Rhyme muttered.
Sachs was examining the bag she'd held up earlier. The remote relay that had shorted out Rose's lights. Cooper mounted the device on the reflecting stage of a low-power microscope. They examined the monitor. He said, "Antenna here." He pointed. "Signal comes in and closes the switch here. It's not an off-the-shelf switch. It's a component part of something else. See? The base? He fatigued through the circuit board. Got a code number on it," he announced. Rhyme hadn't been able to see it.
Keeping his eyes on the monitor, Cooper touch-typed as fast as falling marbles. A moment later they turned to the screen.
"Home-Safe Products Atlas garage door opener, extended-reach model. Opens the door from fifty yards. He took the switch out and threw the rest away, I'd guess."
The remaining trace revealed more walnut sawdust, some glass fragments from Rose's town house, more glue associated with adhesive from an earlier scene, but nothing else new.