The Steel Kiss (Lincoln Rhyme 12)

Rhyme had no idea such a ubiquitous device could be so dangerous.

Sachs's phone hummed and she read a text. "He's published another message." A few keystrokes and an email appeared on the high-def monitor near them.

Greetings! Are you learning about the EVIL results of your unbrideled lust for convenience?? Now, everytime you want to heat up some soup or coffee, you'll run the risk of five hundred degree steam and deadly bits of ceramic and glass piercing your bodies! Will it be the microwave in you're home? Or office? Or your son's dorm room?

Are you finally seeing that I'm doing nothing more to you than what your doing to Mother Earth! Do you know the impact your obsene love of THINGS have on the atmasphere, the waters? The land-fills, You are injecting our environment with toxins.

As yee buy, so shall yee reap.

Until tomorrow, I remain--

The People's Guardian

Nothing to be drawn from the message, other than he was continuing to front he was more ignorant than he actually was, Rhyme concluded.

Yee...

Nothing that is, except the substance of the rant: that more attacks were planned.

Mel Cooper said, "An exploding microwave... That's going to get attention."

It already was.

Since the first story appeared, written up by the reporter Sachs had spoken to, a flurry of coat-tail articles and broadcast news stories had appeared, looking at the danger of Internet of Things products. A number of writers and talking heads speculated that sales of smart appliances and equipment would soon be slumping, returns rising, and people simply not using products that might turn on them.

Rhyme, Sachs and the team were perhaps protecting some potential targets but Unsub 40 was also winning battles in his war against consumerism.

Sachs and Rhyme had had a follow-up conversation with Vinay Chaudhary, of CIR Micro, and he told them that every one of its customers had again received the security patch that would stop anyone's hacking into the network and taking control of the embedded product. The chief executive himself had personally sent a memo or called to remind them of the importance of updating.

In addition he was ordering that the code of all of his future products be modified to provide for automatic updates from CIR's own server.

"What else do we have?" Rhyme asked, gazing at the evidence bags Sachs had brought from the Times Square scene.

"A rich contact site," she told him. Referring to the place where their unsub had escaped from the jobsite, after reprogramming the microwave. This had been on the opposite side of the site, on 47th Street, where he'd had to use a crowbar to break through a padlock and chain. In crime scene work a rich contact is anywhere the perp engages in multiple or time-consuming activities. A victim or police officer, for instance, wrestling with a perp, an unsub dismembering a body (it takes time and effort) or an escapee breaking through a well-protected door or window.

"Friction ridges?"

"A hundred," Sachs said, but she'd already sent them through IAFIS. She'd gotten back a few hits but the prints belonged to individuals arrested for minor violations long ago--workers employed by the construction company or delivery people.

"Footprints?"

"Yes. One matches his. We got a bit of trace from the treads."

"What was it?" Rhyme wheeled closer to Mel Cooper, who was on the optical microscope. A low magnification. One mistake Rhyme had found was common among newbies in crime labs: cranking the 'scope to 100 power. That kind of voyeurism generally got you nowhere. Examining a bit of trace at 5X or, at most, 10X was all you needed. If you wanted a more micro view there was always the scanning electron microscope.

Looking at the screen, Cooper said, "More sawdust."

Sachs: "I got it at the jobsite, where he was standing, but it's different from the rough-cut particles indigenous to the site. It's much finer. Very similar to the mahogany at the earlier scene. Sanded again. Different wood, though."

Rhyme looked it over. "Walnut, I'd guess. No, I'm sure. Cellular structure and color temperature. Five thousand Kelvin."

Cooper agreed.

Archer asked Sachs, "Did you search the workshop at the theater?"

"No."

Rhyme observed that Sachs glanced at her closely, eyes settling briefly on the gold Celtic bracelet encircling her left wrist, strapped to the armrest of the Storm Arrow wheelchair. Sachs's gaze returned to the evidence chart.