"Charlie Sommers?"
"That's right."
"This is Lincoln Rhyme. I work with Amelia Sachs."
"Oh, sure. She mentioned you." In a soft voice he said, "I heard it was Ray Galt, one of our people. Is that true?"
"Looks that way. Mr. Sommers--"
"Hey, call me Charlie. I feel like I'm an honorary cop."
"Okay, Charlie. Are you following what's happening right now?"
"I've got the grid on my laptop screen right here. Andi Jessen--our president--asked me to monitor what's going on."
"How close are they to fixing the, what's it called? Switchgear in the substation where they had that fire?"
"Two, three hours. That line's still a runaway. Nothing we can do to shut it down, except turn off the switch to most of New York City. . . . Is there anything I can do to help?"
"Yes. I need to know more about arc flashes. It looks like Galt's spliced into a major line, a transmission level line, and hooked his wire to the water main, then--"
"But why're you asking about arcs?" Sommers wondered.
"Because," Rhyme said absently, "Galt's going to kill somebody with one in less than an hour."
"Oh, did Galt's note say something about an arc?"
Rhyme realized that it didn't. "No."
"So you're just assuming that's what he'd do."
Rhyme hated the word "assumption" and
all its derivatives. He was furious with himself, wondering if they'd missed something important. "Go on, Charlie."
"An arc is spectacular but it's also one of the least efficient ways to use electricity as a weapon. You can't control it very well, you're never sure where it's going to end up. Look at yesterday morning. I mean, Galt had a whole bus for a target and he missed. . . . You want to know how I'd kill somebody with electricity?"
Lincoln Rhyme said quickly, "Yes, I very much would," and tilted his head to the phone to listen with complete concentration.
Chapter 34
THOMAS EDISON INTRODUCED overhead transmission, those ugly towers, in New Jersey in 1883, but the first grid ran beneath the streets of Lower Manhattan, starting from his generating station on Pearl Street. He had a grand total of fifty-nine customers.
Some linemen hated the underground grid--the dark grid, as it was sometimes called--but Joey Barzan loved it down here. He'd been with Algonquin Power for only a couple of years but had been in the electrical trades for ten years, since he'd started working at eighteen. He'd worked private construction before joining the company, moving his way up from apprentice to journeyman. He was thinking of going on and becoming a master electrician, and he would someday, but for now he liked working for a big company.
And what bigger outfit could he find than Algonquin Consolidated, one of the top companies in the country?
A half hour earlier he and his partner had gotten a call from his troubleman that there'd been a curious fluctuation in power in the supply to a subway system near Wall Street.
A gauge in a nearby MTA substation reported that for a fraction of a second there'd been a dropout. Not enough to cause any disruption of subway service but enough to be concerned--considering the incident at the bus station early yesterday.
And, damn, an Algonquin employee was the one behind it. Ray Galt, a senior troubleman in Queens.
Barzan had seen arc flashes--everyone in the business had at one time or another--and the spectacle of the burning lightning, the explosion, the eerie hum was enough to make him promise himself he'd never take a chance with juice. PPE gloves and boots, insulated hot sticks, no metal on the job. A lot of people thought they could outthink juice.
Well, you can't. And you can't outrun it either.
Now--his partner up top briefly--Barzan was looking for anything that might've caused the current to dip. It was cool here and deserted, but not quiet. Motors hummed and subways shook the ground like earthquakes. Yep, he liked it here, among the cables and the smell of hot insulation, rubber, oil. New York city is a ship, with as much structure under the surface as above. And he knew all the decks as well as he knew his neighborhood in the Bronx.