"You free now, Detective?" he asked her.
"Sure."
She followed him around to the side of the building, where the ambulances waited.
There, sitting on a concrete stoop, was Ron Pulaski, head in his hands. She paused. Took a deep breath and walked up to him.
"I'm sorry, Ron."
He was massaging his arm, flexing his fingers. "No, ma'am." He blinked at his own formality. Grinned. "I should say, thank you."
"If there'd been any other way, I would've done it. But I couldn't shout. I assumed Galt was still inside. And had his weapon."
"I figured."
Fifteen minutes earlier, as Sachs had waited at the door, she'd decided to use Sommers's current detector once more to double-check that there was no electricity in the school.
To her horror she saw the metal door she was inches away from contained 220 volts. And the concrete she was standing on was soaking wet. She realized that whether or not Galt was inside, he'd rigged wires to the metal infrastructure of the school. Probably from a diesel-powered generator; that was the racket they'd heard.
If Galt had rigged the door he would have rigged the fire escape as well. She'd leapt to her feet then and charged after Pulaski as he approached the ladder. She didn't dare call his name, even in a whisper, because if Galt was in the school, he'd hear and start shooting.
So she'd used Taser on Pulaski.
She carried an X26 model, which fired probes that delivered both high-and low-voltage charges. The X26 had a range of about thirty-five feet, and when she saw that she couldn't tackle the officer in time, she'd hit him with the double probes. The neuromuscular incapacitation dropped him where he stood. He'd fallen hard on his shoulder, but, thank God, hadn't struck his head again. Sachs dragged him, gasping and quivering, to cover. She'd found and shut the generator off just as the ESU officers arrived, blowing open the chain on the front gate and storming the school.
"You look a little woozy."
"Was quite a rush," Pulaski said, breathing deeply.
She said, "Take it easy."
"I'm okay. I'm helping the scene." He blinked like a drunk. "I mean helping you search the scene."
"You're up for it?"
"Long as I don't move too fast. But, listen, keep that thing of yours, that box that Charlie Sommers gave you? Keep it handy, okay? I'm not touching anything until you go over it."
The first thing they did was walk the grid around the generator behind the school. Pulaski collected and bagged the wires that had carried the charge to the door and fire escapes. Sachs herself searched around the generator. It was a big unit several feet high and about three long. A placard on the side reported that its maximum output was 5,000 watts, producing 41 amps.
About four hundred times what was needed to kill you.
Nodding at the unit. "Could you pack it up and get it to Rhyme's?" she asked the crime scene team from Queens, who'd just joined them. It weighed about two hundred pounds.
"You bet, Amelia. We'll get it there ASAP."
She said to Pulaski, "Let's walk the grid inside."
They were heading into the school when Sachs's phone rang. "Rhyme" popped up on caller ID.
"About time," she said good-naturedly as she answered. "I've got some--"
"Amelia." It was Thom's voice, but the tone was one she'd never heard before. "You better come back here. You better come now."
Chapter 64
BREATHING HARD, SACHS hurried up the ramp and pushed open the door to Rhyme's town house.
Jogging across the foyer, boots slapping hard, she ran into the den, to the right, opposite the lab.