The Cutting Edge (Lincoln Rhyme #14)(95)

“Rattle his cage,” Sachs said. “Let him know you found the memo. Watch his reaction.”

Sometimes you closed a case through DNA and trace evidence. Sometimes through a blink and a bead of sweat. A friend and colleague of Sachs and Rhyme was a state police investigator in California. Kathryn Dance. Her expertise was body language. Though not as savvy in the art of kinesics as Dance, Sachs, as a former street cop, had some talent at this esoteric skill.

They didn’t have many options, in any case. No forensics linked the CEO to the earthquakes or to Unsub 47. In fact, she knew that, if he was the mastermind, he would not personally be involved—other than making payment arrangements to the perp. And even that wasn’t certain. The oppo firm might have hired him themselves and sent Collier the bill for “media analysis and story placement.”

A precise young woman, in a brown suit, stepped into the doorway and asked Sachs and Pulaski to follow her. They navigated another long corridor, arriving finally at the CEO’s office. The assistant gestured them inside.

Collier looked like a former coal miner—a career guess that would not have been unreasonable, given that he now headed up a power company. But Sachs had done some homework and learned that prior to this gig he’d been CEO of a major clothing manufacturer. She supposed the principles of business apply equally whether you’re selling bras or voltage.

“Come on in, Detective. Officer.”

Hands were shaken and Collier gestured for them to sit. Same chairs, couches and coffee table as a few years ago.

“Now, what can I do for you?”

Sachs took the lead. “Mr. Collier, are you familiar with the stories about the earthquakes in Brooklyn?”

“Of course. Very odd.” He unbuttoned his dark-gray suit. The American flag pin in the buttonhole of his lapel was upside down. “Speculation that somebody’s using explosives to mimic quakes. Nobody’s sure why. Maybe to get the geothermal plant shut down. That’s what the journalists are saying. Industrial sabotage.” More wrinkles folded into his creased, pale face; it was naturally patterned, not from the sun. It was as if he still worked—and even lived—deep underground. “And why are you here exactly, Detective? Is it why I think?”

“The memo. The FTC complaint against Algonquin.”

Collier was nodding. “You know, those dead birds? Nobody killed them. Our firm hired somebody to drive around and find dead seagulls. Can you imagine some intern, first day on the job? ‘Need dead birds, kid.’ Though the fact is the windmill blades do kill them. The firm just added a few extras—for effect. And the fires with solar panels? That’s a known fact. The pictures weren’t exactly of ceilings that collapsed because of the panels. But what’s a little license among capitalists? You’re thinking we’re setting the explosions to make it look like the drilling was causing earthquakes.”

“Are you? Your oppo firm researched it. That was in the memo.”

“It was in the memo. But if you heard me on TV, which I guess you did, you’ll recall I was defending Northeast and geothermal drilling.”

“That’s not answering my question. Are you sabotaging the site?”

“No. Is that enough of an answer for you?”

“What about the oppo firm?”

“Fired them a year ago. The bad publicity wasn’t worth it. A couple of dead seagulls. Died of natural causes. You should have seen the hate mail we got.”

“Which,” Pulaski said, “might have taught you to be more careful.”

“No, Officer, it taught us to be smarter—in how we deal with alternative energy. We don’t try to run them out of business.”

He dug up a company brochure from his desk drawer and dropped it in front of them. Opening to the first page he tapped a passage. Algonquin’s wholly owned subsidiaries included three wind farms in Maine and a solar panel manufacturing operation.

“We buy them.” He opened another drawer, extracted a thick legal document and dropped it with a loud smack in front of her. “We’ll keep this one secret, you don’t mind. It’s not public yet.”

Sachs looked at the front page of the document.





Purchase Agreement




WHEREAS, Algonquin Consolidated Power and Light, Inc. (“Algonquin”), desires to purchase twenty percent (20%) of the outstanding common stock (the “Shares”) of Northeast Geo Industries, Inc. (“Northeast”), and Northeast desires to sell the Shares to Algonquin,

NOW THEREFORE, in consideration of the mutual obligations herein recited, the parties hereto do agree as follows:



She didn’t bother to flip through it. “You’re buying stock in the company?”

“Eventually, if it’s profitable, we’ll buy the rest. It has to prove itself. Deep-drilling geothermal—tapping into volcanic reserves—for electrical generation is profitable. Near-surface drilling on a large scale? The jury’s still out on that. Do you have a furnace at home or a heat pump?”

“Furnace.”

“Exactly. Heat pumps’re for wimps. Geothermal’s a heat pump. But there’re a lot of ecological wimps out there. So I’m hoping our investment will pay off. We’ll see.”

Sachs’s phone hummed with a text. She looked down at it.