The Cutting Edge (Lincoln Rhyme #14)(63)
A couple in their sixties, Arnold and Ruth Phillips, residents of Brooklyn, had died of smoke inhalation. They had escaped the flames and made it to the garage but there was no electricity in the house to power the opener. Weakened by the smoke and injuries, they couldn’t lift the door themselves.
Soon two talking heads were on the split screen, along with a dark-haired male anchor. One of the guests was a middle-aged man in a dark-blue suit, white shirt, and red tie. He was a bit pudgy and his head was crowned with trim black hair. He was Dennis Dwyer, the CEO of Northeast Geo Industries, the company building the plant.
The other interviewee was a twitchy disheveled man in his mid-fifties. He wore a blue work shirt with sleeves rolled up. His gray hair and beard were wild. He was Ezekiel Shapiro. The type on the screen identified him as Director of the One Earth movement.
“I saw him down there today,” Sachs said. “They’ve been harassing the workers. He’s a bit of a—” She turned to Ackroyd. “What did you say? Crazy guy?”
“Nutter.”
“Good word.”
The two men on-screen were engaged in a fierce verbal duel. The wide-eyed and broadly gesticulating Shapiro was positive that the earthquake had resulted from the geothermal drilling. And apart from gas line breakage and the risk of buildings collapsing from quakes during construction, the finished plant could lead to groundwater pollution and other environmental risks. He praised the city for stopping the drilling but criticized the mayor and city council for allowing the project in the first place.
Dwyer, much calmer, said the ban was a huge mistake, asserting that drilling could not cause earthquakes. The New York area was far more seismologically stable than most parts of the country, certainly nothing like California. And Shapiro was misinformed about the geothermal process if he thought there was a risk of contaminating groundwater; the system was self-contained, and even a crack in a pipe would result only in a release of inert solution. Shapiro countered that the technology was still unknown.
The anchor added gasoline to the discussion by inviting a third interviewee. He was an even more perfectly assembled businessman than Dwyer. His name was C. Hanson Collier and he was the CEO of Algonquin Consolidated Power—the big electricity provider in the New York area. You would think he’d be against the geothermal project—it seemed to make Northeast Geo a competitor to Algonquin. But Collier was pro. He was saying that near-surface drilling, like Northeast’s Brooklyn project, was far safer than deep drilling in volcanic regions to tap steam and high-temperature reserves for the generation of electricity. “We have to embrace all forms of energy the earth provides,” he said.
As the debate grew increasingly testy and, to Rhyme, uninteresting, the image on the screen switched to the Northeast Geo construction site in Brooklyn, depicting a number of green-fenced rectangular pens. Apparently these were where the shafts were located.
Sachs took one look and rose. “I’d better go. I need to check on Mom.”
Rose Sachs, who’d had heart surgery recently, was doing fine. Rhyme knew this for a fact since he and the funny, and feisty, woman had had a conversation just a few hours ago. Her reluctance at her daughter’s dating a disabled man had faded years ago and she and Rhyme had become good friends. He couldn’t ask for a better mother-in-law.
But there was more. Rhyme knew that while Sachs might end up at her mother’s house—it was in Brooklyn—she would first take to the road. She was going to jump into her Torino and find an appropriate roadway, out in the burbs, to muscle the car up to eighty or ninety.
This would be in an effort to shed whatever still clung to her from the crime scene. What the shower had not been able to remove: the gut-clenching horror she’d undoubtedly experienced.
If anything could distract her, it was the act of downshifting out of a hairpin, fourth to second, then skidding onto a straightaway and urging the screaming engine to push the needle of the speedometer into three digits.
Rhyme knew and accepted without qualification that she was a risk taker. But speed was a diversion, not a remedy.
“Sachs?” he asked. And he said this in a certain tone, rare for him. She would understand: It was an invitation to talk to him about what had happened at the site. He wasn’t going to offer advice, probably not even solace. Just give her a chance to talk.
But the invitation was declined.
Amelia Sachs said only, “Night. See you in the morning.” She said this to everybody.
Pulaski and Cooper left. Ackroyd pulled his raincoat on. He was hesitating to leave, Rhyme noted.
In a soft voice, the Brit said, “It’s hardly my business. But…is she all right?”
“Not really,” Rhyme said. “She has some issues.” His face wrinkled. “If that isn’t the most useless of assessments. Amelia needs to move, to be free, all the time. I think she was in a cave-in, or got trapped. Wouldn’t be a firefight, wouldn’t be a pursuit, sniper. Anything like that. She lives for moments like those. But being trapped, caught, not moving: That’s hell.”
“I could see her eyes. It must’ve been bad.”
“I think it was.”
“She’ll tell you about it, sooner or later.”
“Probably not. And I know because we’re similar that way.” He gave a smile as he realized he was sharing more of himself than usual. “A magnet. Opposites attract? Well, in most ways, we’re opposite. This, keeping things inside? We’re the same pole.”