"Did she? Hm. Interesting." Then Sommers added, "But I don't think the issue is safety. Any troubleman knows how to splice wires safely. He did this for another reason."
Rhyme understood. "To time the attack--he'd turn on the juice the moment when most victims were exposed."
"I think that's it, yes."
Sachs added, "One of the workers who saw him said he was watching the scene on his laptop--it was probably hooked into a nearby security camera. I couldn't find where he cut in, though."
"Maybe that's why he hit the switch a few minutes early," Rhyme said. "He had the chance to get the most victims, and he knew Algonquin wasn't going to give in to his demand at that point anyway."
Sommers sounded impressed when he said, "He's talented. That's a clever piece of work. The switch seems simple but it was a lot harder to make than you'd think. There's a lot of electromagnetic power in voltage lines that big and he'd have to shield the electronics. He's smart. Which, I guess, is bad news."
"Where could he get the parts, the solenoid, the receiver, the fan?"
"In any one of a hundred electrical supply stores in the area. Two hundred . . . Any serial numbers?"
Cooper examined them carefully. "No. Model numbers, that's all."
"Then you're out of luck."
Rhyme and Sachs thanked Sommers and they hung up.
Sachs and Cooper examined Galt's gear kit and the Algonquin overalls and hard hat. No notes or maps, nothing to indicate where he might be hiding out or what his next target might be. That didn't surprise them, since Galt had intentionally ditched the items and would know they'd been discovered.
Detective Gretchen Sahloff, from Crime Scene HQ, had collected samplars of Galt's fingerprints from his office and a thumbprint on file from Algonquin Human Resources. Cooper now examined all of the items collected, against these prints. He found only Galt's on the collected evidence. Rhyme was frustrated at this. Had they found others, that could have led them to a friend of Galt's or an accomplice or someone in the Justice For cell, if it was involved in the attacks.
Also Rhyme noted that the hacksaw and bolt cutter weren't in the bag, but this didn't surprise him. The kit was for smaller hand tools.
The wrench, however, was, and it had tool marks that were identical to those on the bolts at the substation on Fifty-seventh Street.
The crime scene team from the arson incident at the substation in Harlem arrived. They had very little. Galt had used a simple Molotov cocktail--a glass bottle filled with gasoline and a cloth rag stuck into the top. It had been thrown against the barred but open window and the burning gas had flowed inside, igniting rubber and plastic insulation. The bottle was for wine--there were no threads for a screw-top cap--and was manufactured by a glassworks that sold to dozens of wineries, which in turn sold to thousands of retail outlets. The label had been soaked off. Untraceable.
The gasoline was BP, regular grade, and the cloth was from a T-shirt. None of these items could be traced to a specific location, though a rat-tail file was found in Galt's gear bag with glass dust that could be associated with the bottle--from scoring it, so that it would be certain to break.
There was no security camera outside or in the substation.
A knock on the door sounded.
Thom went to open it and a moment later Ron Pulaski entered, with the evidence he'd gathered at Galt's apartment, several milk crates full of items, the bolt cutter and the hacksaw, along with a pair of boots.
Well, at last, Rhyme thought, irritated at the delay, though pleased at the arrival of the evidence.
Unsmiling, Pulaski looked at no one as he stacked up the evidence on the table. Then Rhyme noticed that his hand was shaking.
"Rookie, you all right?"
The young man, his back to them all, paused, looking down, hands on the table in front of him. Then he turned. Took a breath. "There was an accident at the scene. I hit somebody with my car. Somebody innocent, just happened to be there. He's in a coma. They think he might die."
Chapter 42
THE YOUNG OFFICER told them what had happened.
"I just wasn't thinking. Or maybe I was thinking too much. I got spooked. I was worried Galt might've gotten to my car and rigged a trap or something."
"How could he have done that?" Rhyme asked.
"I don't know," Pulaski said emotionally. "I didn't remember I'd already started the engine. I turned the key again and the noise . . . well, it scared me. I guess my foot slipped off the brake."
"Who was he?"