The Burning Wire (Lincoln Rhyme 9)

Rhyme knew the answer instantly. "Copper cleaner."

"Copper wires?" Pulaski suggested. "Galt is cleaning them?"

"Good idea, Rookie. But I'm not sure." He didn't think electricians cleaned wires. Besides, he explained, "Mostly it's used for cleaning copper on buildings. What else, Mel?"

"Some stone dust you don't usually see in Manhattan. Architectural terra-cotta." Cooper was now looking into the eyepieces of a microscope. He added, "And some granules that look like white marble."

Rhyme blurted, "The police riots of fifty-seven. That's eighteen fifty-seven."

"What?" McDaniel asked.

"A few years ago. The Delgado case?"

"Oh, sure," Sachs said.

Sellitto asked, "Did we work it?"

Rhyme's grimace conveyed his message: It didn't matter who worked a case. Or when. Crime scene officers--hell, every officer on the force--had to be aware of all major cases in the city, present and past. The more you put into the brain, the more likely you were to make connections that solved your crime.

Homework . . .

He explained: A few years ago Steven Delgado, a paranoid schizophrenic, planned a series of murders to mimic deaths that occurred during the infamous New York City Police Riots of 1857. The madman picked the same locale as the carnage 150 years earlier: City Hall Park. He was captured after his first kill because Rhyme had traced him to an apartment on the Upper West Side, where he'd left trace that included copper cleaner, terra-cotta residue from the Woolworth building and white marble dust from the city courthouse, which was undergoing renovations, then as now.

"You think he's going to hit City Hall?" McDaniel asked urgently, the phone in his hand drooping.

"I think there's a connection. That's all I can say. Put it on the board and we'll think about it. What else do you have from the generator?"

"More hair," Cooper announced, holding up a pair of tweezers. "Blond, about nine inches long." He slipped it under the microscope and slid the specimen tray up and down slowly. "Not dyed. Natural blond. No color degradation and not desiccated. I'd say it's from somebody younger than fifty. Also refraction variation on one end. I could run it through the chromatograph, but I'm ninety percent sure it's--"

"Hair spray."

"Right."

"Woman probably. Anything else?"

"Another hair. Brown. Shorter. Crew cut. Also under fifty."

"So," Rhyme said, "not Galt's. Maybe we've got our Justice For the Earth connection. Or maybe some other players. Keep going."

The other news wasn't so encouraging. "The flashlight he could've bought in a thousand places. No trace or prints. The string was generic too. The cable he used to wire the doors at the school? Bennington, the same he's been using all along. Bolts are generic but similar to the others."

Eye on the generator, Rhyme was aware his thoughts were spinning dizzily. Part of this was the attack he'd experienced a short time ago. But some of it had to do with the case itself. Something was wrong. Pieces of the puzzle were missing.

The answer had to be in the evidence. And just as important: what wasn't in the evidence. Rhyme now scanned the whiteboards, trying to stay calm. This wasn't to stave off another episode of dysreflexia, per doctor's orders; it was because nothing made you blind faster than desperation.

PROFILE

* * *

--Identified as Raymond Galt, 40, single, living in Manhattan, 227 Suffolk St.

--Terrorist connection? Relation to Justice For the Earth? Suspected ecoterror group. No profile in any U.S. or international database. New? Underground? Individual named Rahman involved. Also Johnston. Coded references to monetary disbursements, personnel movements and something "big."

--Algonquin security breach in Philadelphia might be related.

--SIGINT hits: code word reference to weapons, "paper and supplies" (guns, explosives?).

--Personnel include man and woman.