The Burning Wire (Lincoln Rhyme 9)

Sellitto got the number of the man's firm from Sachs and called. He spoke for a few minutes and then disconnected. "Bingo. Fishbein was in Scottsdale. He got back Tuesday."

"Ah, Scottsdale . . . Where Vetter had his company."

McDaniel said, "What is this, Lincoln? I still don't see the motive."

After a moment Rhyme said, "Andi Jessen's opposed to renewable energy, right?"

Sachs said, "That's a little strong. But she's definitely not a fan."

"What if she was bribing alternative energy companies to limit production or doing something else to sabotage them?"

"To keep demand for Algonquin's power high?" McDaniel asked. A motive in his pocket, he seemed more on board now.

"That's right. Vetter and Fishbein might've had information that would've sunk her. If they'd been murdered in separate incidents, just the two of them, the investigators might've wondered if there was a connection. But Andi arranged this whole thing to make it look like they were random victims so nobody'd put the pieces together. That's why the demands were impossible to comply with. She didn't want to comply with them. She needed the attacks to take place."

Rhyme said to Sachs, "And get the names of the injured and check out their histories. Maybe one of them was a target too."

"Sure, Rhyme."

"But," Sellitto said with unusual urgency in his voice, "there's the third demand letter, the email. That means she still needs to kill somebody else. Who's the next victim?"

Rhyme continued to type as quickly as he could on his keyboard. His eyes rose momentarily to the digital clock on the wall nearby. "I don't know. And we've got less than two hours to figure it out."

Chapter 71

DESPITE THE HORROR of Ray Galt's attacks, Charlie Sommers couldn't deny the exhilaration that now, well, electrified him.

He'd taken a coffee break, during which he'd spent the time jotting diagrams for a possible invention (on a napkin, of course): a way to deliver hydrogen gas to homes for fuel cells. He was now returning to the main floor of the New Energy Expo in the Manhattan Convention Center on the West Side, near the Hudson River. It was filled with thousands of the most innovative people in the world, inventors, scientists, professors, the all-important investors too, each devoted to one thing: alternative energy. Creating it, delivering it, storing it, using it. This was the biggest conference of its sort in the world, timed to coincide with Earth Day. It brought together those who knew the importance of energy but knew too the importance of making and using it in very different ways from what we'd been used to.

As Sommers made his way through the halls of the futuristic convention center--finished just a month or so ago--his heart was pounding like that of a schoolboy at his first science fair. He felt dizzy, head swiveling back and forth as he took in the booths: those of companies operating wind farms, nonprofits seeking backers to create microgrids in remote parts of Third World countries, solar power companies, geothermal exploration operations and smaller outfits that made or installed photovoltaic arrays, flywheel and liquid sodium storage systems, batteries, superconductive transport systems, smart grids . . . the list was endless.

And utterly enthralling.

He arrived at his company's ten-foot-wide booth at the back end of the hall.

ALGONQUIN CONSOLIDATED POWER

SPECIAL PROJECTS DIVISION

THE SMARTER ALTERNATIVETM

Although Algonquin was probably bigger than the five largest exhibitors here put together, his company had bought only the smallest booth available for the new-energy show, and he was the only one manning it.

Which was a pretty clear indication of how CEO Andi Jessen felt about renewables.

Still, Sommers didn't care. Sure, he was here as a company representative, but he'd also come here to meet people and make contacts on his own. Someday--soon, he hoped--he'd leave Algonquin and spend all his time on his own company. He was very up front with his supervisors about his private work. Nobody at Algonquin had ever had a problem with what he did on his own time. They wouldn't be interested in the inventions he created at home anyway, things like the Sink-Rynicity water-saving system for kitchens, or the Volt-Collector, a portable box that used the motion of vehicles to create power and store it in a battery you could plug into a fixture in your house or office, thus reducing demand from your local company.

The king of negawatts . . .

Already incorporated, Sommers Illuminating Innovations, Inc., was his company's name and it consisted of himself, his wife and her brother. The name was a play on Thomas Edison's corporation, Edison Illuminating Company, the first investor-owned utility and the operator of the first grid.

While he may have had a bit--a tiny bit--of Edison's genius, Sommers was no businessman. He was oblivious when it came to money. When he'd come up with the idea of creating regional grids so that smaller producers could sell excess electricity to Algonquin and other large power companies, a friend in the industry had laughed. "And why would Algonquin want to buy electricity when they're in the business of selling it?"

"Well," Sommers replied, blinking in surprise at his friend's naivete, "because it's more efficient. It'll be cheaper to customers and reduce the risk of outages." This was obvious.

The laugh in response suggested that perhaps Sommers was the naive one.

Sitting down at the booth, he flicked on light switches and removed the BE BACK SOON sign. He poured more candy into a bowl. (Algonquin had vetoed hiring a model in a low-cut dress to stand in front of the booth and smile, like some of the exhibitors had.)