The Burning Wire (Lincoln Rhyme 9)

Earth Day

III

JUICE

"I haven't failed. I've just found ten thousand ways that won't work."

--THOMAS ALVA EDISON

Chapter 55

"PLEASE LEAVE A message at the tone."

Sitting in his Brooklyn town house at 7:30 a.m., Fred Dellray stared at his phone, flipped it closed. He didn't bother to leave another message, though, not after leaving twelve earlier ones on William Brent's cold phone.

I'm screwed, he thought.

There was the chance the man was dead. Even though McDaniel's phrasing was fucked-up (symbiotic construct?), his theory might not be. It made sense that Ray Galt was the inside man seduced into helping Rahman and Johnston and their Justice For the Earth group target Algonquin and the grid. If Brent had stumbled into their cell, they'd have killed him in an instant.

Ah, Dellray thought angrily: blind, simpleminded politics--the empty calories of terrorism.

But Dellray'd been in this business a long time and his gut told him that William Brent was very much alive. New York City is smaller than people think, particularly the underside of the Big Apple. Dellray had called up other contacts, a lot of them: other CIs and some of the undercover agents he ran. No word about Brent. Even Jimmy Jeep knew nothing--and he definitely had a motive to track down the man again, to make sure Dellray still backed the upcoming march through Georgia. Yet nobody'd heard about anybody ordering a clip or a cleaner. And no surprised garbagemen had wheeled a Dumpster to their truck and found nestled inside the pungent sarcophagus an unidentified body.

No, Dellray concluded. There was only the obvious answer, and he could ignore it no more: Brent had fucked him over.

He'd checked Homeland Security to see if the snitch, either as Brent or as one of his half dozen undercover identities, had booked a flight anywhere. He hadn't, though any professional CI knows where to buy airtight identity papers.

"Honey?"

Dellray jumped at the sound and he looked up and saw Serena in the doorway, holding Preston.

"You're looking thoughtful," she said. Dellray continued to be struck by the fact she looked like Jada Pinkett Smith, the actress and producer. "You were brooding before you went to bed, you started brooding when you woke up. I suspect you were brooding in your sleep."

He opened his mouth to spin a tale, but then said, "I think I got my ass fired yesterday."

"What?" Her face was shocked. "McDaniel fired you?"

"Not in so many words--he thanked me."

"But--"

"Some thank-you's mean thank you. Others mean pack up your stuff. . . . Let's just say I'm being eased out. Same thing."

"I think you're reading too much into it."

"He keeps forgetting to call me with updates on the case."

"The grid case?"

"Right. Lincoln calls me, Lon Sellitto calls me. Tucker's assistant calls me."

Dellray didn't go into the part about another source of the brooding: the possible indictment for the stolen and missing $100,000.

But more troubling was the fact that he really did believe William Brent had had a solid lead, something that might let them stop these terrible attacks. A lead that had vanished with him.

Serena walked over and

sat beside him, handed over Preston, who, grabbing Dellray's lengthy thumb in enthusiastic fingers, took away some of the brooding. She said to him, "I'm sorry, honey."