The Cutting Edge (Lincoln Rhyme #14)(120)

Sachs had also found the keys to the now-infamous Toyota—though its whereabouts weren’t known—and Rostov’s residence.

Mel Cooper said, “I’ve got some things on the mining company in Guatemala. New World. Big outfit with diamond mines throughout Latin America, producing mostly industrial-grade. Not the nicest crew on earth. They’ve been accused by environmentalists and the government of destroying rain forests with strip mining, clear-cutting, things like that. They pay small miners, garimpeiros, to raid indigenous lands. There’re battles—real battles. Dozens of miners and Indians have been killed.”

Rhyme called Fred Dellray at the FBI once again, and asked if he could tap some of his State Department contacts to have security and the U.S. embassy or consulate in Guatemala City talk to executives at the mining company.

As if they’d cooperate, he thought sardonically.

“Let’s look over the trace,” Rhyme said.

Among the items found by Sachs were raw honey, rotting felt, clay soil, shreds of old electrical wire insulation, bits of insect wings, probably from genus Apis (bees—the honey helped in this speculation, though they might be unrelated). Also, on a pair of boots in the motel she’d found traces of unusual agricultural soil—lightweight, absorbent shale and clay and compost containing flecks of straw and hay—and organic fertilizer.

“Ah.”

“What, Lincoln?”

He didn’t respond to Cooper but went online and gave the Google microphone a command. “Composition of Rooflite.” Sometimes you needed esoteric databases, sometimes you didn’t.

The answer came back in milliseconds.

“Yes!”

Sachs, Cooper and McEllis turned his way.

Rhyme said, “It’s sketchy but we don’t have much else to go with. I think he planted one device, at least, north of the government buildings in Cadman Plaza. In Vinegar Hill.”

This was an old area of Brooklyn, adjacent to the old Navy Yard. Named after the battle in Ireland in 1798 between Irish rebels and British troops, the neighborhood was a curious mix: quaint residences from Victorian times encircled by grim, imposing industrial structures.

“How do you know?” Cooper asked.

He knew because, though he couldn’t prowl the streets as he used to when he was mobile, Lincoln Rhyme still studied every borough, every neighborhood, every block of his city. “A criminalist is only as good as his or her knowledge of the locale where the crime occurs,” he wrote in his forensics textbook.

The specific answer to the question was the combination of bee wings, honey, that Rooflite soil, fertilizer and felt. He believed those materials had come from the Brooklyn Grange at the old Navy Yard. It was the largest rooftop farm in the world, two and a half acres devoted to raising organic fruits and vegetables. Rooflite was a soil substance in which vegetables could grow quite well but that weighed far less than regular soil, which would be too heavy for rooftop gardening. The Grange also was a major producer of honey.

The closest residential area to it was Vinegar Hill, filled with old wooden structures. Perfect targets for Krueger, whose goal had been to rouse the city and state into banning the drilling. The more deadly fires the “earthquakes” caused, the better.

Don McEllis hunched over the map of the city and with a red marker drew exactly where the fault line ran under Vinegar Hill. It headed northwest then jogged north into the harbor.

“Here. I’d look about three blocks on either side of that.”

It would be a much more concise search than the entire fault, but there were still scores of buildings whose basements might contain the gas line devices.

“Scan the map, Mel, and get a copy to the supervisors—fire and police—in the area. Do it now.”

“Sure.”

“Sachs, you and Pulaski get down there.”

As they hurried out the door, Rhyme said, “Mel, call Fire…and the local precinct. Get as many bodies as they can spare, checking basements. Oh, and call the Detective Bureau, too. Larceny. Have somebody pull recent break-ins where nothing was taken.”

Cooper nodded and picked up his phone.

Rhyme called: “And not just Patrol. I want anybody with a badge. Anybody!”





Chapter 64



Almost impossible.

That was Sachs’s impression as she sped her Torino, a deep-red blur, along the Manhattan Bridge into Brooklyn. She was glancing to her left—at Vinegar Hill. Ron Pulaski was probably feeling the same.

How could anyone possibly find the devices? Dominated by a single, towering smokestack from Algonquin Power’s electrical substation, the neighborhood was bigger than she’d expected. Six square blocks, the precinct commander had told her. But small blocks they were not.

She downshifted and tore off the exit ramp, skidding onto Jay Street, drawing a faint gasp from Ron Pulaski, though after all these years he was pretty immune to her Danica Patrick approach to driving. The blue flasher cut silently but urgently through the shadowy street, lined with industrial buildings, houses, apartments and residential lofts. The brick and stucco and stone walls were scuffed and scraped but largely graffiti-free. The trash cans were battered and cracked but the garbage remained inside.

The muscle car had bad-girl suspension and she felt the road in her back and knee, still sore from the abuse of the past few days. And the streets of Vinegar Hill were not all fully paved. The original Belgian block, sometimes erroneously called cobblestones, had worn through in many stretches. In others the granite rectangles, smoothed by centuries of horse, foot and wheel traffic, had never been asphalted over and were the only roadway.