The Burning Wire (Lincoln Rhyme 9)

Via speaker conference, the detective and the agent agreed to task-force the raid and each arranged to assemble and deploy teams.

Rhyme then warned, "We're getting close to the deadline, so he probably won't be there. If not, then I want only my person running the scene at Galt's apartment."

"No problem," McDaniel said.

"Me?" Sachs lifted an eyebrow.

"No. If we get any leads to the next attack, I want you there." He glanced at Pulaski.

"Me?" Same pronoun, different tone.

"Get going, Rookie. And remember--"

"I know," Pulaski said. "Those arc things're five thousand degrees Fahrenheit. I'll be careful."

Rhyme grunted a laugh. "What I was going to say was: Don't fuck up. . . . Now, move!"

Chapter 29

PLENTY OF METAL. Metal everywhere.

Ron Pulaski glanced at his watch: eleven a.m. Two hours until another attack.

Metal . . . wonderfully conductive, and possibly connected to wires that ran to one of the invisible sources of juice in the bowels of the lousy apartment building he was standing in.

Armed with a warrant, the FBI and ESU teams had found--to everyone's disappointment but no one's surprise--that Galt wasn't there. Pulaski then shooed the officers out. And was now surveying the dim apartment, the basement unit in an old decrepit brownstone on the Lower East Side. He and three tactical officers had cleared the place--only the four of them, as Rhyme had ordered, to minimize contamination of the scene.

The team was now outside and Pulaski was examining the small place by himself. And seeing a lot of metal that could be rigged, the way the battery was rigged in the substation--the trap that had nearly killed Amelia.

Also picturing the metal disks on the sidewalk, seeing the scars in the concrete and in the body of poor young Luis Martin. And he recalled something else too, something even more troubling: Amelia Sachs's eyes looking spooked. Which they never did. If this electricity crap could scare her . . .

Last night, after his wife, Jenny, had gone to bed, Ron Pulaski went online to learn what he could about electricity. If you understand something, Lincoln Rhyme had told him, you fear it less. Knowledge is control. Except with electricity, with power, with juice, that wasn't quite the case. The more he learned, the more uneasy he grew. He could grasp the basic concept but he kept coming back to the fact it was so damn invisible. You never knew exactly where it was. Like a poisonous snake in a dark room.

He then shook himself out of these thoughts. Lincoln Rhyme had entrusted the scene to him. So get to work. On the drive here, he'd called in and asked if Rhyme wanted him to hook up via radio and video and walk him through the scene like he sometimes did with Amelia.

Rhyme had said, "I'm busy, Rookie. If you can't run a scene by now there's no damn hope for you."

Click.

Which to most people would've been an insult, but it put a big grin on Pulaski's face and he wanted to call his twin brother, a uniform down in the Sixth Precinct, and tell him what had happened. He didn't, of course; he'd save that for when they went out for beers this weekend.

And so, solo, he started the search, pulling on the latex gloves.

Galt's apartment was a cheesy, depressing place, clearly the home of a bachelor who cared zero about his environment. Dark, small, musty. Food half fresh and half old, some of it way old. Clothes piled up. The immediate search, as Rhyme had impressed on him, was not to gather evidence for trial--though he "better not fuck up the chain of custody cards"--but to find out where Galt might be going to attack again and what, if any, connection he had with Rahman and Justice For . . .

Presently he was searching fast through the unsteady, scabby desk and the battered filing cabinets and boxes for references to motels or hotels, other apartments, friends, vacation houses.

A map with a big red X and a note: Attack here!

But of course there wasn't anything that obvious. In fact, there was very little helpful at all. No address books, notes, letters. The call log, in and out, on the phone had been wiped and, hitting REDIAL, he heard the electronic voice ask what city and state he needed a number for. Galt had taken his laptop with him and there was no other computer here.

Pulaski found sheets of paper and envelopes similar to what had been used for the demand note. A dozen pens too. He collected these and bagged them.

When he found nothing else helpful he began walking the grid, laying the numbers, photographing. And collecting samples of trace.

He moved as quickly as he could, though, as often, wrestling with the fear, which was always with him. Afraid that he'd get hurt again, which made him timid and want to pull back. But that in turn led to another fear: that if he didn't do 100 percent, he wouldn't live up to expectations. He'd disappoint his wife, his brother, Amelia Sachs.

Disappoint Lincoln Rhyme.