Chapter 38 Chapter Thirty-eight

Bob Kavanaugh yelled, "Power cut!" Sachs nodded, and led the ambulance crews to the dead and wounded, then scanned the crowd standing outside the hotel, looking for Gort. "Detective!" Emilia Sachs turned around as a man in Algonquin Power Company overalls came running in her direction.Seeing the white man in the dark blue coat, she immediately thought it might be Gott.The witness at the hotel did report that the suspect had been nearby, and police had only a blurry photo of the assailant from the Department of Motor Vehicles to identify the killer. However, when the man got closer, he was clearly much younger than Gott.

"Detective," he said breathlessly, "the officer over there said I should talk to you. I think you should know about this." When he saw a plume of smoke drifting from the hotel , could not help squinting his eyes. "go on." "I'm an employee of the Algonquin Power Company. You see, my partner, he's in one of the company's tunnels, right under us." He nodded at the Amsterdam Academy. "I've been trying to contact him, but he No answer. However, the walkie-talkie is working fine." underground.That is where the electric service is located.

"I was thinking maybe this Raymond Gott went into the tunnel down there and Joey just happened to run into him. You know, I'm concerned for his safety." Sachs called two patrolmen to join her.Together with the worker from the Algonquin Power Company, they hurried to the Amsterdam Academy. "We have an easement entrance in the college basement. That's the best way to get into the tunnel." In this way, Gort was contaminated with volcanic ash trace evidence, and the college's exhibition hall was full of volcanic ash.Sachs called Rhyme, explained what happened, and said, "Ryme, I'm going to go down and have a look. He might be in the tunnel. I'll call you when I have information. Are you in the physical evidence?" Find any clues that might be useful?"

"Nothing else found, Sachs." "I'm going in now." Before Rhyme could answer, Sachs hung up the phone.She and two other police officers followed the workers to the door that led to the basement.The power supply in the building had been cut, but the emergency lights were still shining like a red eye and a white eye.Workers started walking towards the door. "No," Sachs said, "you wait here." "Okay. You go down two flights of stairs, and you'll see a red door. It says 'Algonquin Power Company'. Behind that door, there are some stairs, and further down, you enter the service pipe. Hall. Here's the portkey." The worker handed the key to Sachs.

"What's your partner's name?" "Joy. Joey Bazin." "Where should he be?" "Turn left at the bottom of the access stairs. He's working about a hundred to a hundred and fifty feet away. Probably under the hotel." "How's the visibility down there?" "Even if the power goes out, there will be some work lights that run on battery power." Battery.great. "But it's really dark down there. We always use flashlights." "Are there live wires there?" "Yes, this is a transmission tunnel. Now, the feeder line here is cut off, but the other lines are still powered."

"Are the lines exposed?" The worker blinked in surprise. "Those wires carry 130,000 volts. No, they're not exposed." Unless Gort exposes them. Sachs hesitated, then waved the voltage detector on the doorknob, drawing curious eyes from the Algonquin Power Company workers.Instead of explaining the invention, she motioned the crowd back and opened the door quickly, her hand on the pistol.There was nothing behind the door. Sachs and two other officers began descending the dark stairwell—her claustrophobia set in immediately, but here at least the sickening stench of burnt rubber, skin, and hair was less overwhelming.

Sachs went first, followed by two patrolmen.She clutched the key tightly, but when they got to the red door leading into the tunnel, she realized it was ajar.They exchanged glances.Sachs drew a pistol.The two officers also raised their weapons, and Sachs motioned for the patrolman to come up slowly from behind her, then quietly pushed the door open with his shoulder. She stopped at the door and looked at the ground. damn it.The stairs leading to the tunnel are about two stories high and appear to be made of metal.Not painted. Her heart was beating fast again. Avoid electricity if possible.

If you cannot avoid it, do a good job of anti-electric protection. If you can't avoid electricity and can't take protective measures, then cut off the current. But here none of Charlie Somers' tricks and tricks could be of use. She was sweating profusely.She remembered that wet skin was a much better conductor of electricity than dry skin.Did Somers say that salty sweat adds fuel to the flames? "Detective, what do you see?" an officer whispered. "Do you want me to move forward?" another officer asked. Sachs did not answer their questions, but ordered in a low voice: "Don't touch anything metallic."

"Okay, why not touch it?" "One hundred thousand volts. That's why." "Oh well." She made her way down the stairs, half expecting to hear a horrific explosion, blinding electric sparks filling her vision.Go to the bottom of the first flight of stairs, then go down the second flight of stairs. Her predictions were wrong.The trip ends after three more steep flights of stairs. As the party approached the bottom of the stairs, they too heard the rumbling and humming.Deafening sound.It's twenty degrees hotter here than outside.Every time you walk down the stairs, the temperature rises slightly.

Another layer of hell. The tunnel was larger than she had expected, about six feet wide and seven feet high, but much darker than she had expected.Many of the emergency lights have gone out.Looking to the right, she could just make out the end of the tunnel about fifty feet away.There was no door through which Gott could escape, no place to hide.However, looking to the left, where Joey Bazin should be, the corridor seems to disappear behind some bends. Sachs motioned for two other officers to follow her, and the three walked toward the first bend in the tunnel.There they stop.She didn't believe Gott was still here—he could go as far as he could—but she worried about a trap.

However, Gort's escape from here is just an opinion, not a conclusive fact.So, as she turned the corner and looked across, she bent down, and the Glock was ready to fire, but she didn't hold it up in front of her, in case Gott might have fired it aside, or snatched it away. Pass the pistol. As a result, nothing happened. She looked down and saw pools of water on the concrete floor.water.Nature is an extremely good conductor. She looked at the tunnel walls, where thick black cables hung. She remembered what the workers at the Algonquin Power Company had just said about voltage. "No danger." She said softly. At the same time, she motioned for the other two police officers to follow her quickly.She must have been worried about that Algonquin Electric worker, Joey Bazin, but more importantly, she hoped to find some clues to deduce the possible whereabouts of Gott. But can they find clues?The tunnels stretched for miles, she guessed.Tunnels would be perfect escape routes.The concrete floor is dirty so that footprints are not noticeable.The walls are pitch black.She may have to collect trace evidence for several days, but she can't come up with a single piece of physical evidence that may be able to deduce the whereabouts of Gott.Maybe-- There was a scratching sound. She froze in place.Where is the sound coming from?Was it from a fork where Gort might be hiding? A police officer raised his hand.He pointed to his eyes, then pointed to the front.Sachs nodded, though she thought the military gesture was unnecessary here. But whatever it is, as long as it makes you feel comfortable in the situation... However, there isn't much that makes Sachs comfortable in the moment.The image of particles of molten metal whizzing past played again in her mind. However, she cannot back down. Take a deep breath. Another look...the tunnel in front of them was still empty.It's also darker here than elsewhere.She also saw why: Most of the light bulbs here were broken, but they were knocked out. She realized that this was a trap. When they came to a ninety-degree turn, to the right, she figured they must be directly under the hotel. She took another quick look, but this time she couldn't see anything at all because of the increasingly dark surroundings. Then she heard the noise again. A patrolman stepped forward. "Is it a human voice?" Sachs nodded. "Bend down," she whispered. They rounded the bend, stooped, and walked toward the front of the tunnel. Then she shivered.It was not a human voice, but a groan, a moan of despair, a human groan. "Give me the flashlight!" she whispered.As a detective, Sacks wore no police belt, only a pistol and handcuffs, and she felt a painful slap when the officer behind her handed her a flashlight. "I'm sorry," the policeman muttered. "Get down," she softly told the two patrolmen, "prone position. Get ready to shoot. But don't fire until I order it...unless the killer kills me first." They crawled slowly to the dirty ground, their pistols pointed at the tunnel. Sachs is also aiming in that direction.She held the flashlight at her side, keeping it at an arm's length so she wouldn't be an obvious target, and she switched it on, flooding the rough hallway with a blinding beam. No gunshots, no arc flashes. But Gott has another victim to his name. About thirty feet away, an Algonquin Power Company worker lay on his side, with waterproof tape over his mouth and his hands bound behind his back.He was bleeding from his temples and behind his ears. "Go forward!" The other two officers stood up, and the three of them hurried towards the front of the tunnel to the man.Sacks speculates that this is Joey Bazin.With the help of the flashlight beam, she saw that it was not Gort.The worker was badly wounded and bleeding profusely.Bazin shook his head violently, screaming from his taped mouth, as a patrolman hurried up to him to stop the bleeding. At first, Sachs thought it was Bazin who was dying, and the fear of death made his body tremble.But as she got closer to the workers, she looked into their wide eyes and looked down, following the path they were walking.The workers are not lying on the bare ground, but on a thick piece of material, what appears to be Teflon or plastic. "Stop!" Sachs yelled at the policeman who was reaching out to help Bazin. "It's a trap!" The patrolman froze in place. Sachs remembered what Somers had told her, that wounds and blood would greatly reduce the body's resistance to electrical current. Then, without touching the worker, she went around behind him. His hands were indeed tied behind his back.But it wasn't tape or rope—it was bare copper wire, which was spliced ​​to a wire in the wall.She grabbed Somers' voltage detector and aimed it at the copper wire wrapped around Bazin's wrist. The number on the detector exceeds the maximum measurement range by ten thousand volts.If the patrolman touched Bazin, the electricity would go into Bazin, pass through the officer, and flow down to the ground, killing them both instantly. Sachs stepped back, turned up the volume on the radio, called Nancy Simpson, told her to find Bob Kavanaugh, and told the operations executive that he needed to cut another line.