At the far left, the stylus’s black line rose and fell only a little as it moved to the right over the course of several minutes. Then halfway along the chart the line jumped up and down in series of broad, sharp waves. As time passed, they tapered and grew smaller and smaller until the line returned to what it had been before the tremor.
“Now look at the second chart. It’s a record of a real earthquake, one in California. It seems similar but there’s one subtle difference. In the real quake, we can see just a bit of pre-quake ground motion a few seconds before the main disturbance. There’s none of that in the tremors here.”
Rhyme said, “So the explosions weren’t inducing an earthquake; they were mimicking one.”
“Exactly.” A moment later McEllis said, “But then how do you explain the fires... Ah, wait: Unless they were caused by charges too — separate ones, to make it more credible that it was a quake.”
When no one answered, he asked in an uncertain voice, “What exactly is this all about, Amelia?”
“We’re not sure yet, Don. But if you could — please keep it to yourself.”
“Of course. Sure.”
She looked at Rhyme, meaning: Anything else?
He shook his head. She thanked McEllis and they disconnected the call.
Rhyme echoed, “And what is this all about? What’s our unsub up to?”
“Terrorism,” Sachs suggested, then shook her head. “But nobody’s come forward. And why make an attack look like a natural disaster? That’s not the terrorist profile.”
Sellitto said, “One idea: He staged the quakes to cover up the arson. Maybe he’s working for a landlord wants to torch his buildings for insurance.”
Ackroyd said, “With respect, Lieutenant, it’d be the most elaborate insurance scam in history. And, besides, professional arsonists never risk murder or assault charges. They only torch buildings when they’re empty.”
“Granted.”
Rhyme said, “Well, there’s another way to look at it. What McEllis suggested: The fires were cosmetic. Just to give more credibility to the quakes — so that nobody would look too closely at suspicious seismograms. He wants them to seem real... How’s this: He wants to stop the geothermal operation.”
Sellitto offered, “Who’s on that list? Energy industry companies would see geothermal as a threat. Somebody wants the drilling site land. It’s prime real estate.”
“Environmentalists,” Cooper suggested. “That One Earth crowd? Though I don’t think tree huggers use C4 very much... or burn down buildings with people inside.”
Sachs said, “Whatever he’s up to, Forty-Seven seems like a triggerman or mercenary to me. Access to the arms market for the C4 and gas devices. Knows weapons. Doesn’t hesitate to kill. Somebody hired him, I’ll bet.”
Rhyme was inclined to agree. He then said, “One thing: We’ve got a decision to make.”
Sachs was nodding. “To tell or not to tell.”
“Announce the fact they’re fake?” Cooper asked.
“Right. He could have a dozen more IEDs planted in the shafts.”
Sellitto said, “There’ll be some panic. Everybody’ll think terrorism.”
“So, they think terrorism,” Rhyme countered. “I think we have to. And tell people in the general area of the drilling site that there might be a bomb on their gas lines. They should look for them. And announce that if there’s another tremor, they should evacuate or check for gas immediately.”
“It’ll be the commissioner’s and City Hall’s call, but if we do announce, we tip our hand,” Sellitto said. “The perp might book on out of town. Evidence’ll disappear.”
As for the last concern, Rhyme was amused: It was very difficult to make evidence disappear from him.
“If I may make an observation?” Ackroyd said.
“Yeah, sure,” Sellitto offered.
“I don’t doubt this fellow is deranged and has some perverse obsession with diamonds. But if he’s basically a mercenary, hired to sabotage the drilling, well, as soon as he finds out we’re onto him, he could sell my client’s rough as soon as he can and leave town. I think I should contact dealers again and explore that possibility.”
Sellitto and Rhyme agreed. Ackroyd pulled on his overcoat and, looking even more like a stolid British detective inspector, left to pursue that lead.
Sellitto too slipped on his jacket. “I’ll go talk to the commissioner and the mayor, recommend we announce the whole thing is probably fake. And I’ll have ESU and Bomb Squad set up a staging area down there. They’ll send a robot down the shafts, see if they can find any more IEDs and render safe.”
For his part, Rhyme had a task too. He placed another call to his spy down in the nation’s capital.
Chapter 41
Trooper J. T. Boyle had had, over the course of his fourteen-year career with the Pennsylvania State Police, some bizarre assignments. Chasing an Amish horse and buggy hijacked by a very non-Amish drunk college kid. The typical cats up trees (“Not our job, ma’am, but I’ll do the best I can”). Birthing babies.
But he’d never pulled over a whole bus before.
This job came as a courtesy to the NYPD, whom Boyle had worked with before and generally liked, though the language of some officers he didn’t approve of. On board the Greyhound he was now trailing was a witness on the run — and, no less, a witness from a case that’d made the news. WKPK, at least. The Promisor — the serial perp murdering young couples who’d just bought their engagement rings. That’d be one sick pup.
A New York detective was sure this witness was on the bus. Their computer department had found his phone and done some kind of high-tech thing so that its GPS kept working, and beaming the location, while incoming and outgoing calls were disabled, so no one could warn him that the police were after him if someone was inclined to do so. The screen showed No Service. He’d get suspicious after a while but after a while didn’t matter; Boyle had him now.
He lit up the Greyhound, which was on its way to Indianapolis. There, according to the ticket the witness, one Vimal Lahori, had bought, he would transfer to a bus for St. Louis. And onward and onward to Los Angeles. They knew his itinerary because they had tracked the phone to the Port Authority bus station in New York and run a scan of the CCTVs in the ticket seller’s cubicles, noting that a young man who fit the description of Vimal had bought such a ticket.
Except he wasn’t going to get any farther than the county lockup ten miles from here. Solely for his own protection. This Promisor knew about him and had already killed one witness. Though Trooper Boyle had to admit that the odds of the suspect getting all the way out here were pretty slim.
The bus eased to the side of the road and Boyle climbed out of his car. He wore the standard PSP trooper outfit: dark slacks, gray shirt, black tie. He pulled on his gray Smokey-Bear hat, with chin strap, and strode to the bus.
The door sha-hushed open.
Eyes scanning the passengers. No obvious threats. Not that he expected any. “Looking for somebody you got on board,” he said softly to the driver, a slim African American whose face registered concern. The decision had been made by the NYPD to not radio or call him earlier; they didn’t know what kind of actor he was and were concerned that the boy would catch any wary behavior, jump off the bus and flee. “He’s not armed. There’ll be no issue there.”
“’Kay. Feel free.”
At least the New York detective, a gruff-sounding guy, said he wasn’t armed. Witnesses generally weren’t but sometimes they were. This kid seemed like he fell into the unarmed category. Besides, he was Indian, as in overseas Indian, and in Boyle’s admittedly limited experience there didn’t seem to be a lot of firepower packed by people of that extraction.