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.”
Sellitto said, “Better keep going on this one, Linc. Fill in the gaps. I see a lot of ’em.”
Rhyme was staring at the ceiling. His face knotted. “We... I should’ve thought better. Why would Forty-Seven go to the trouble to get a hard hat and go into the jobsite to buy a weapon from somebody? They’d meet in a bar or on the street somewhere. No, he needed access to the site itself.”
“Why?” the detective asked.
Rhyme looked at Sachs, who said, “I was just down to the site again. I found traces of RDX near several of the shafts.”
The main ingredient in C4 plastic explosive.
“At a construction site?” Sellitto asked. “C4’s never used commercially.”
It was a military explosive.
“And the site manager told me that one of his workers has gone missing. It was right after Unsub Forty-Seven was in the site. And there was a half ton of grout missing from the pallets in Area Seven.”
“Grout?” Cooper asked.
Rhyme explained, “It’s Forty-Seven’s plan. It’s why he’s here: planting gas line bombs and C4 charges to mimic earthquakes. Last week he placed the gas line IEDs in buildings near the geothermal site. Then he goes to the site, in his hard hat and vest, and meets the now-missing worker, who takes him to Area Seven. He drops C4 charges down some or all of the shafts, and the worker pours grout down them so that when the charges blow, you won’t hear the explosion. Then Forty-Seven ditches the empty shoulder bag and leaves — where we see him on the subway. Later that night, I’m guessing, he kills the worker and disposes of the body.”
“Pretty fucking bizarre, Linc. But can that even happen, explosions causing earthquakes?”
“That’s why I asked our expert here.” He looked at Edward Ackroyd. “You know if there’ve ever been any insurance claims because explosions in mines caused earthquakes?”
The Englishman reminded them of his earlier thoughts, about fracking and geothermal drilling potentially leading to quakes. “But as for explosions? I’ve never heard of that. But I’ll ask my research associate again. Somebody here or in London could have a look, I’m sure.”
“Do that, if you would.”
Ackroyd stepped to the corner and pulled out his phone. After a brief conversation he returned. “Sorry to report, our head researcher’s never heard of an earthquake induced through explosions. She’ll ask at headquarters in London and our other offices when they’re open. My initial thought is that it’s rather unlikely.”
Rhyme noticed Sachs open her purse. She withdrew a business card, read a number and placed a call.
Waiting for the connection, she said to the room, “Don McEllis, the state mining inspector.”
A voice answered, “Hello, Amelia. How are you feeling?”
“Fine,” she said shortly. “Listen, you’re on speaker here with Lincoln Rhyme, an NYPD consultant, and a few other people.”
“Oh. Sure.”
“Dan, this is Lincoln.”
“Don,” Sachs corrected.
“We need to know if somebody can induce an earthquake by explosion.”
There was a pause. “You think these quakes in the past few days aren’t naturally occurring?”
“We aren’t sure. Can explosives cause an earthquake?”
“Well, in theory, yes, but you’d need a nuclear device, in just the right place, just the right megatons. But short of that, no.”
“C4 couldn’t do it? Do you know C4?”
“Plastic explosives, sure. But, no, it’d be impossible. Even a ton or two placed right on a fault line. That’s not how quakes work. But...”
Silence.
“Hello?” Rhyme asked.
They heard fast keyboarding. “Okay, okay. Give me an email address. I want you to see this.”
Cooper did so and a moment later a tone announced the arrival of a message.
McEllis said, “I’ve sent two seismograms.”
Cooper’s astute fingers typed on the keyboard, and the charts — with the familiar waves anyone with a TV and a love of natural disaster blockbusters would recognize — appeared on the screen. “Got them.”
The inspector continued, “The top one is from the most recent tremor here.”