The computer surveillance center down at One Police Plaza.
He held up his phone. “And look who got videoed slipping into and out of Claire Porter’s building last week. The basement.”
It was a screenshot of a man in dark clothing and a stocking cap, carrying an orange vest and yellow hard hat. A bag was slung over his shoulder. It appeared heavy.
Identical to the image of Unsub 47 as he’d left the geothermal site later that same day, heading for the subway—minus the bag.
Sellitto said, “I had RTCC pull all the videos from her apartment to the drilling site. He walks right to the construction site, puts on his hat and vest and vanishes inside. It was an hour before he left and walked to the subway. And then I ordered videos near the sites of all the other gas fires. Within the space of two hours, Unsub Forty-Seven broke into every single one of them.”
Jesus. The unsub planted gas line bombs meant to mimic fires after the quakes? What was this about? Rhyme said, “I want to see the device. Get it here fast.”
“Already ordered. I thought you would. It’ll be here any minute.”
“And have an ECT crew walk the grid around where it was found in Ms. Porter’s building. Probably contaminated as hell but we’ll give it a shot.”
“K. Will do. Thanks. I gotta go. Mayor wants a briefing. You’ll copy me on all your brilliant insights, right?”
Rhyme grunted.
Sellitto pulled his jacket off the hook and left. Just as he stepped through the door, Ron Pulaski arrived, nodded to the lieutenant and continued into the hallway. Rhyme wheeled into the hallway to greet him.
The young officer sniffed the air and said, “I smell gas.”
Rhyme realized he did too, very faint. “It was Lon.” He explained about the IED that ate through the line at Claire Porter’s apartment. “Disarmed before it ignited. But anybody nearby would’ve picked up some odorant.” Since explosive—and suffocating—natural gas was odorless, sulfur-based chemicals, reeking of rotten eggs, were added to warn of leaks.
He explained they’d learned that the fires after the earthquakes were actually arson.
The young officer frowned at this. “Who set them?”
“It appears…and note that word. It appears to be Unsub Forty-Seven.”
“No way,” Pulaski muttered.
“We’ll see.” Rhyme nodded toward the box of files that Carreras-López’s driver had delivered. “Those’re the files in the El Halcón. Can you run the analysis tonight?”
Not really a question.
“Sure.”
“And I’m going to need you to walk the grid at the scene.”
“What scene?”
“Long Island. The warehouse where the El Halcón shoot-out took place. It’ll all be in the file. And remember—”
The Rookie whispered, “Not a word to anyone.”
Rhyme winked. Pulaski blinked at the alien expression,
The young officer collected the box for his furtive assignment and left.
Back to the parlor—where nobody seemed to have noticed Pulaski’s arrival, sans box, or his departure with it.
The buzzer rang yet again and Rhyme recognized the caller. He instructed the security system to open the door.
Into the parlor walked an officer from the Bomb Squad, based out of the 6th Precinct in Greenwich Village.
“Brad.”
“Lincoln.” Lieutenant Bradley Geffen, a compact, gray-haired man, walked forward and had no hesitation shaking Rhyme’s somewhat functioning right hand. Often people were intimidated by the disability but this was a man who would lie on his belly with tweezers and screwdriver and dismantle IEDs that could turn him into red vapor. Not much fazed him. If he resembled anyone, it would be a drill sergeant, with his sinewy, etched face, crew cut, piercing eyes.
He nodded a greeting to the others and stepped to an examination table in the parlor.
“What do we have?” Rhyme asked.
“Our boys and gals went over it.” He extracted an evidence bag from the attaché case he carried. “Never seen anything like it. But it’s pretty damn smart.”
He held it out for Rhyme to look at. Inside the bag was what appeared to be a typical white plastic thermostat housing along with some other metallic and plastic parts, none of which he recognized.
Turning it over, Geffen said, “There. See that hole? A timer opened a little spigot. Acid dripped out and melted the gas line. About ten minutes later, this part…” He touched a small gray box with two electrodes on it. “It would strike a spark. That would ignite both the gas and the solvent—it’s very flammable. Now, the delay was smart. It let the room build up with gas but not force all the air out.”
A room filled with gas only will sometimes not blow up. As with all fires, both air and fuel are required.
“We’ll take over, Bradley. Thanks.”
Geffen nodded and stepped out of the room. He moved stiffly, the result of an IED that detonated at a woman’s health clinic during the render-safe operation. (There was grim irony in the fanatics’ tactic: They’d planted the bomb between two buildings—the clinic and what they hadn’t realized was a church’s daycare center. If the structures hadn’t been evacuated, the daycare center would have sustained far more damage and injuries than the clinic.)
Cooper filled out the chain-of-custody card and began his analysis. He found no prints, and sent swabs out for DNA testing. He took a sample of the acid and ran it through the gas chromatograph. It would take some minutes for the results.
“Detonates by digital timer,” Cooper said as he examined the components with tweezers and a probe. “Battery life about two months.”
“It doesn’t look handmade,” Rhyme observed.
“No. Professionally assembled. Sold on the arms market, I’d imagine.”
“Any idea where it would’ve come from?”
“Nope. Nothing I’ve ever come across.” Cooper looked over the chromatograph/spectrometer. “Got the acid used to melt the line. Well, it’s not acid. It’s trichlorobenzene. Gas pipes are usually polyethylene and impervious to most acids. But benzene derivatives will melt them. And—”
“No. Can’t be.” Rhyme was staring at the evidence charts.
“What, Lincoln?”
What he was thinking seemed impossible. Or would have, if he hadn’t just learned about Unsub 47’s likely planting of the gas line IEDs.
“Get Lon back here. And do you have Edward Ackroyd’s number?”
“Somewhere.”
“Find it. I want him here. Now.”
“Sure.”
“Dial Sachs,” he commanded his phone.
She answered a minute later. “Rhyme.”
“I need you to run another scene, Sachs. Well, to be accurate, to run a scene you’ve run before but to look for something else.”
“Where?”
“It’s the geothermal site. The drilling shafts again.”
Where, he deduced, though she hadn’t mentioned it, she’d nearly been buried alive.
Sachs was silent.
There were plenty of competent evidence collection techs who could walk the grid and could probably find what he needed. But no one was better than Amelia Sachs. He wanted her, and only her.
“Sachs?”
“I’ll run it,” she said in a flat voice. “Tell me what I’m looking for.”
Chapter 40
Forty minutes later Sellitto and Ackroyd were in the parlor, along with Mel Cooper. Amelia Sachs was joining them, walking through the elegant archway that separated the hallway from the parlor.
Rhyme noted that she didn’t seem troubled to have revisited her near-burial ground. The hollow look on her face was gone completely and she wore the keen expression of a hunter. He noticed mud speckling her jeans.
Sellitto asked, “What’s this all about, Linc?”
“Let me try this out on you. Theory only. But let’s see. Whatever our unsub’s interest in diamonds is, he’s got another mission. He’s behind the earthquakes.”
Edward Ackroyd gave a brief laugh. “Behind the earthquakes? You mean…somehow he’s caused them?”
“Exactly.”