6
The lights left little doubt as to where the incident had happened.
Hundreds of them, white, blue, red.
Sachs piloted her ancient Ford Torino, painted an urgent crimson, fast along the cross street toward the macabre spectacle, whipping through and around traffic. She nearly resorted to the sidewalk when several trucks refused to part and let her pass. At Third Avenue, the impatient honking resulted in a man’s raised middle finger, which was instantly joined by its three companions and thumb to offer friendly greeting — the sort you’d give to a baby — when he saw the portable blue flasher unit and the NYPD placard on the dash.
Finally, a vehicular break, thanks to uniforms diverting cars and trucks elsewhere. She gunned the engine and made the finish line, skidding to a stop at the edge of the massive construction site on East 89th Street.
The vids on the news hadn’t come close to depicting the carnage. The crane — made of blue pipes, much thicker than they appeared from a distance — lay between the two buildings it had narrowly missed, a tornado track of debris and damage extending from the base — a slab of concrete — to the park, where the tip of the boom had dug itself deep into the earth. Everything beneath it was flattened. The strip of disaster was a clutter of piping, metal parts, papers, slabs of cement, machinery, girders, concrete dust, bits of plastic, wire and cables, bent ladders and twisted stairs and landings. Apparently you didn’t climb straight up to the top of a crane but ascended a ladder twenty feet or so, then turned and climbed once more, the rungs staggered so a slip-and-fall would be injurious but not fatal.
She looked at the cab, metal crushed and glass shattered. The damage was extensive. The operator would have died instantly — impact must have been at a hundred miles an hour — but what a terrible last few seconds he must have had, thinking of his fate as he saw the ground race toward him through the large windows.
Smoke rose, though there did not seem to have been a fire.
Like all New Yorkers, Sachs had seen hundreds of cranes in her years in the city, but had paid little attention to them. She’d heard of some accidents, but they were rare. To her, the machinery signaled another problem: they were flags of construction sites, which meant street lanes would be closed, further slowing the city’s already decelerated traffic.
Another fact she knew about cranes from her job: they were referred to by organized crime triggermen and bosses as “headstones,” because they rose over construction sites, which were popular places to dump hit victims when concrete was being poured.
She retrieved her crime scene gear from the trunk and started into the site, passing onlookers and a homeless man in a filthy brown three-quarter-length overcoat. On his head was perched a fuzzy hat, dark brown and orange, in the shape of those worn by Taliban warlords. Oblivious to the loss of life, he was nosing along the yellow tape, pointing his blue-and-white coffee cup toward the growing crowd and begging for change. But only half-heartedly. He spent more time looking over the debris. A scavenger, probably happy to pocket the dead operator’s wallet or cash that had fallen from his pocket. Pathetic.
He glanced her way briefly, noting the badge and her cold glare, and moved on.
Sachs ducked under the tape and oriented herself, finding the base of the crane. Before she started toward it, a large woman in a yellow vest that read Safety Supervisor approached and handed her a white hard hat. She shook her head, thinking that the hat would, even if in a small way, contaminate the scene. “I don’t—”
“Required.” The woman steamed away to deliver another hat to someone who might be an executive or a government inspector. They were armed with a clipboard and briefcase.
Sachs asked a uniform, awkwardly trying to adjust a too-large hard hat, “Where’s the IC?”
The uniform pointed to another officer, middle-aged, also in a hat, his yellow. She walked up to the incident commander.
“Captain.”
“You’re Sachs. Detective out of Major Cases, right? You work with Lincoln Rhyme.”
A nod.
“These’re weird.” He tapped the plastic on his skull.
“Any more news on the injured?”
“Nothing new. One fatality, five in the hospital. Two critical. Oh, and one heart attack. He’ll live.”
Her phone purred with a text.
Lon Sellitto had written:
The Project sent a post to 13Chan. Said they think the city is trying to keep this quiet. Bad faith. So they posted publicly that the crane was sabotaged and more R coming down until the properties R transferred. The shits. F’ing panic.
Well, so much for blaming the feds for the shutdown.
Of course, panic would happen sooner or later anyway, so it was just as well word went out. The news might prompt witnesses to come forward.
Her eyes were on the tangled metal and mounds of debris. The tower of the crane was about fifteen feet square, with the bottom segment set in that concrete slab. All four feet were still mounted there; the tower had bent or snapped about thirty feet up.
She said to the IC, “Lon said he sabotaged the counterweights.” A glance at the huge concrete slabs, lying sideways like discarded children’s building blocks. “Have any idea how?” She scanned the trolley mechanism they were attached to. “No sign of IED residue.”
“First thing I thought of, but I couldn’t find any either. And nobody heard a bang. Waiting to talk to the foreman. He’s been, you know, on the phone with the families. And corporate.”
“Where is he?”
He nodded to a heavyset man of about fifty, in light blue slacks and blue shirt, whose pocket bristled with pens. His yellow hard hat was tilted forward at a jaunty angle and was covered with stickers from equipment manufacturers and unions.
She sympathized with him having to make the difficult calls to the family members, but she needed to start on the scene.
She approached. “Sorry, sir. I need to talk to you. Now, please.” She held up her ID. He looked at her weapon first, then the fine print.
“I’ll call you back.” He disconnected and turned his red eyes toward her. From the smoke? From crying? Probably both.
“You know this was intentional.”
S. Nowak — the name stitched on his blue shirt — was taut with anger, his teeth locked firmly together as he stared at the disaster. He nodded. “That officer over there told me, yeah. I can’t believe somebody’d do something like this.”
“Did you or anybody on your crews see anyone who might’ve been involved?”
He shook his head. “I’ve asked everybody. Nobody saw a thing.”
She continued, “The detective you talked to earlier, Detective Sellitto?”
“Yeah, big guy. Brown suit.”
“That’s him. He said they sabotaged the counterweights. It threw the balance off.”
“That’s right.”
“You have any idea how they did it?”
A shake of his head. “Somehow unhooked a couple of them. None of us can figure out how. They’re made to stay on their tracks whatever happens. Impossible to fall. Except... I guess not.” His eyes were staring at the slabs. “You know physics?”