Rhyme liked that metaphor.
But then all thoughts of awards, and royalty, vanished as Rhyme's phone blared and Detective Lieutenant Lon Sellitto's number showed up on caller ID.
Rhyme used a working finger on his right hand to answer. "Lon."
"Linc, listen, here's the thing." He was harried and, to judge from the surround-sound acoustics piping through the speaker, apparently driving somewhere quickly. "We may have a terrorist situation going on."
"Situation? That's not very specific."
"Okay, how's this? Somebody fucked with the power company, shot a five-thousand-degree spark at a Metro bus and shut down the electric grid for six square blocks south of Lincoln Center. That specific enough for you?"
Chapter 4
THE ENTOURAGE ARRIVED from downtown.
Homeland Security's representative was a typically young but senior officer, probably born and bred among the country clubs of Connecticut or Long Island, though that was, for Rhyme, merely a demographic observation and not, necessarily, a fault. The man's shine and sharp eyes belied the fact that he probably wouldn't quite know where he fit in the hierarchy of law enforcement, but that was true of nearly everybody who worked for HS. His name was Gary Noble.
The Bureau was here too, of course, in the incarnation of a special agent whom Rhyme and Sellitto worked with frequently: Fred Dellray. FBI founder J. Edgar Hoover would have been dismayed at the African-American agent, only partly because his roots were clearly not in New England; rather, the consternation would come from the agent's lack of "Ninth Street Style," a reference to FBI headquarters in Washington, D.C. Dellray donned a white shirt and tie only when his undercover assignments called for such an outfit, and he treated the garb like any other costume in his player's wardrobe. Today, he was wearing authentic Dellray: a dark green plaid suit, the pink shirt of a devil-may-care Wall Street CEO and an orange tie that Rhyme couldn't have thrown out fast enough.
Dellray was accompanied by his newly named boss--assistant special agent in charge of the New York office of the FBI, Tucker McDaniel, who'd begun his career in Washington, then taken assignments in the Middle East and South Asia. The ASAC was compactly built with thick dark hair and a swarthy complexion, though with bright blue eyes that focused on you as if you were lying when you said, "Hi."
It was a helpful expression for a law enforcement agent and one that Rhyme affected himself as the occasion merited.
The NYPD's chief presence was stout Lon Sellitto, in a gray suit and, unusual for him, powder blue shirt. The tie--splotchy by design, not spillage--was the only unwrinkled article of clothing swathing the man. Probably a birthday present from live-in girlfriend Rachel or his son. The Major Cases detective was backed up by Sachs and Ron Pulaski, a blond, eternally youthful officer from Patrol, who was officially attached to Sellitto, but who unofficially worked mostly with Rhyme and Sachs on the crime scene side of investigations. Pulaski was in a standard dark blue NYPD uniform, T-shirt visible in the V at his throat.
Both of the feds, McDaniel and Noble, had heard about Rhyme, of course, but neither had met him and they exuded various degrees of surprise, sympathy and discomfort seeing the paralyzed forensic consultant, who tooled around the lab deftly in his wheelchair. The novelty and uneasiness soon wore off, though, as they usually did with all but the most ingratiating guests, and soon they were struck by the more bizarre presence here: a wainscoted, crown-molded parlor chockablock with equipment that a crime scene unit in a medium-size town might envy.
After introductions, Noble took the point position, Homeland Security carting the bigger umbrella.
"Mr. Rhyme--"
"Lincoln," he corrected. Rhyme grew irritated when anyone deferred to him, and he considered the use of his surname a subtle way of patting him on the head and saying, Poor thing; sorry you're confined to a wheelchair for the rest of your life. So we'll be extra-special polite.
Sachs caught the weight behind his correction and rolled her eyes in a gentle arc. Rhyme tried not to smile.
"Sure, Lincoln, then." Noble cleared his throat. "Here's the scenario. What do you know about the grid--the electricity grid?"
"Not much," Rhyme admitted. He'd studied science in college but never paid much attention to electricity, other than electromagnetics' appearance in physics as one of the four fundamental forces in nature, along with gravity and the weak and the strong nuclear forces. But that was academic. On a practical level Rhyme's main interest in electricity involved making sure enough of it got pumped into the town house to power the equipment in his lab here. It was extremely thirsty and he'd twice had to have the place rewired to bring in additional amperage to support the load.
Rhyme was very aware too that he was alive and functioning now solely because of electricity: the ventilator that had kept oxygen pumping through his lungs right after the accident and now the batteries in his wheelchair and the current controlled by the touch pad and voice-activated ECU, his environmental control unit. The computer too, of course.
He wouldn't have had much of a life without wires. Probably no life at all.
Noble continued, "The basic scenario is our UNSUB got into one of the power company's substations and ran a wire outside the building."
" 'Unknown subject' singular?" Rhyme asked.
"We don't know yet."
"Wire outside. Okay."
"And then got into the computer that controls the grid. He manipulated it to send more voltage through the substation than it was meant to handle." Noble fiddled with cuff links in the shape of animals.
"And the electricity jumped," the FBI's McDaniel put in. "It was basically trying to get into the ground. It's called an arc flash. An explosion. Like a lightning bolt."
A 5,000 degree spark . . .
The ASAC added, "It's so powerful it creates plasma. That's a state of matter--"