"I'm just tired."
"I'll be back in a half hour."
Faint steps sounded on the floor. The door opened again then closed.
He listened for a moment more and then rose. He pulled on a cable TV repairman's uniform. He slipped the 1911 Colt into a gear bag, which he slung over his shoulder.
He checked the front windows and mirrors of the van and, noting that the alley was empty, climbed out. He verified there were no security cameras and walked to the back door of Lincoln Rhyme's town house. In three minutes he'd made sure the alarm was off and had picked the lock, slipping into the basement.
He found the electrical service panel and silently went to work, rigging another of his remote control switchgear units to the incoming service line, 400 amps, which was double that of most other residences in the area.
This was interesting to note but not particularly significant, of course, since he knew that all he needed to cause virtually instant death was a tiny portion of that.
One tenth of one amp . . .
Chapter 75
RHYME WAS LOOKING over the evidence boards when the electricity went off in his town house.
The computer screen turned black, machinery sighed to silence. The red, green and yellow eyes of the LEDs on the equipment surrounding him vanished.
He swiveled his head from side to side.
From the basement, the creak of a door. Then he heard footsteps. Not the footfalls themselves, but the faint protest of human weight on old, dry wood.
"Hello?" he shouted. "Thom? Is that you? The power. There's something wrong with the power."
The creaking grew closer. Then it vanished. Rhyme turned his chair in a circle. He scanned the room, eyes darting the way they used to dart at crime scenes upon first arrival, taking in all the relevant evidence, getting the impression of the scene. Looking for the dangers too: the places where the perp might still be hiding, maybe injured, maybe panicked, maybe coolly waiting for a chance to kill a police officer.
Another creak.
He spun the wheelchair around again, three-sixty, but saw nothing. Then he spotted, on one of the examination tables at the far end of the room, a cell phone. Although the power was off in the rest of the town house, of course, the mobile would be working.
Batteries . . .
Rhyme pushed the controller touch pad forward and the chair responded quickly. He sped to the table and stopped, his back to the doorway, and stared down at the phone. It was no more than eighteen inches from his face.
Its LCD indicator glowed green. Plenty of juice, ready to take or send a call.
"Thom?" he called again.
Nothing.
Rhyme felt the pounding of his heart through the telegraph of his temples and the throbbing veins in his neck.
Alone in the room, virtually immobile. Less than two feet away from the phone, staring. Rhyme turned the chair slightly sideways and then back, quickly, knocking into the table, rocking the phone. But it remained exactly where it was.
Then he was aware of a change in the acoustics of the room, and he knew the intruder had entered. He banged into the table once again. But before the phone skidded closer to him, he heard footsteps pound across the floor behind him. A gloved hand reached over his shoulder and seized the phone.
"Is that you?" Rhyme demanded of the person behind him. "Randall? Randall Jessen?"
No answer.
Only faint sounds behind him, clicks. Then jostling, which he felt in his shoulders. The wheelchair's battery indicator light on the touch pad went black. The intruder disengaged the brake manually and wheeled the chair to an area illuminated by a band of pale sunlight falling through the window.
The man then slowly turned the chair around.
Rhyme opened his mouth to speak but then his eyes narrowed as he studied the face before him carefully. He said nothing for a moment. Then, in a whisper: "It can't be."