The Burning Wire (Lincoln Rhyme 9)

"Somebody here?" He appeared dismayed.

"It's looking that way. Or at least they were working with the perp. Now, he's probably a man, though he could be working with a woman. He or she had access to the computer codes that let them get into grid control software. He kept shutting down substations so that the electricity was rerouted into the substation on Fifty-seventh Street. And he reset the circuit breakers higher than they should have been."

"So that's how it happened." His face was troubled. "The computers. I wondered. I didn't know the details."

"Some of them will have alibis--we'll take care of checking that out. But I need you to give me some idea of who'd have the ability to reroute the electricity and rig the arc flash."

Sommers seemed amused. "I'm flattered. I didn't know Andi even knew much about what happens down here." Then the cherubic look was gone, replaced by a wry smile. "Am I a suspect?"

She'd spotted his name when Jessen had first mentioned him. She held his eye. "You're on the list."

"Hm. You're sure you want to trust me?"

"You were on conference call from ten-thirty until nearly noon today, when the attack happened, and you were out of town during the window when the perp could have gotten the computer codes. The key data show you didn't log into the safe file room at any other time."

Sommers was lifting an eyebrow.

She tapped her BlackBerry. "That's what I was texting about on the way here. I had somebody in the NYPD check you out. So you're clean."

She supposed she sounded apologetic for not trusting him. But Sommers said, his eyes sparkling, "Thomas Edison would have approved."

"What do you mean?"

"He said a genius is just a talented person who does his homework."

Chapter 20

AMELIA SACHS DIDN'T want to show Sommers the list itself; he might know some of the employees and be inclined to dismiss the possibility of their being suspects, or, on the other hand, he might call her attention to somebody simply because he thought they were otherwise suspicious.

She didn't explain her reluctance but said simply she just wanted a profile of somebody who could have arranged the attack and used the computer.

He opened a bag of Doritos, offered Sachs some. She declined and he chomped down a handful. Sommers didn't seem like an inventor. He seemed more like a middle-aged advertising copywriter, with his tousled hair and slightly untucked bl

ue-and-white-striped shirt. Bit of a belly. His glasses were stylish, though Sachs suspected that on the frames were the words "Made in" preceding some Asian Rim country. Only up close could you see the wrinkles near his eyes and mouth.

He washed the food down with soda and said, "First, rerouting the juice to get it to the substation on Fifty-seventh Street? That'll narrow things down. Not everybody who works here could do it. Not many people could at all, in fact. They'd need to know SCADA. That's our Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition program. It runs on Unix computers. He'd also probably have to know EMP--energy management programs. Ours is Enertrol. It's Unix-based too. Unix is a pretty complicated operating system. It's used in the big Internet routers. It's not like Windows or Apple. You couldn't just look up online how to do it. You'd need somebody who'd studied SCADA and EMP, taken courses in it or, at the very least, apprenticed in a control room for six months, a year."

Sachs jotted notes, then asked, "And about the arc flash. Who'd know about rigging that?"

"Tell me how he did it exactly."

Sachs explained about the cable and the bus bar.

He asked, "It was aimed out the window? Like a gun?"

She nodded.

Sommers went silent for a moment. He focused elsewhere. "That could've killed dozens of people. . . . And the burns. Terrible."

"Who could do it?" Sachs persisted.

Sommers was looking off again, which he did a lot, she'd noticed. After a moment: "I know you're asking about Algonquin employees. But you ought to know that arc flashes are the first thing that all electricians learn about. Whether they're working as licensed tradesmen, in construction, for manufacturing companies, the army or navy . . . any field at all, as long as they're around electrical service lines with enough juice for arcs to be a problem, they'll learn the rules."

"So you mean that anybody who knows how to avoid arcs or prevent them knows how to create them."

"Exactly."

Another note in her quick handwriting. Then she looked up. "But let's just talk for the moment about employees."