Chapter 52 Chapter 52

Susan Stringer had a small heart-shaped face and spoke in a cadence.Two adjectives jumped out: cordial and sweet. Yet her eyes are piercing and her lips are tight, even when she smiles, befitting a person who navigates the streets of New York deftly with only arm strength. "A house on the Upper West Side of Manhattan. A rarity." Rhyme smiled back—he was reserved.He had a job to do and had very little to do with witnesses; his earlier comments to Sacks about questioning Susan Stringer were, of course, in jest. However, she was nearly killed by Ray Gott - again in an exceptionally horrific way - and there may be some useful information.If Susan wanted to meet him, as Sachs had reported, then he could bear it.

She nodded to Tom Reston with a look of understanding. She understood the importance and burden of the orderly.Rhyme asked her if she wanted something to eat, and she said no: "I can't stay long. It's late at night, and I'm not feeling well." There was a blank look on her face; she must have recalled the elevator Horrible moment.She pushed the wheel and moved closer to Rhyme.Susan's arm was apparently normal; she was only paralyzed in the lower body, presumably from a chest injury in the middle or upper spine. "No burns?" Rhyme asked. "No, I didn't get an electric shock. Just inhaled smoke—smoke from... a couple of people who came out of the elevator with me. Someone was on fire." The last words were whispered.

"What happened?" Sachs asked. Susan showed a look of determination after suffering. "We were almost on the ground floor when the elevator stopped suddenly. The lights went out, except for the emergency lights. A man behind him reached for the help button on the panel. As soon as he touched the button, he started moaning, convulsing and dancing. .” She coughed and cleared her throat. "It was horrible. His hands couldn't get off the panel. His friends grabbed him, or brushed against him. It was like a chain reaction. They kept twitching. One was on fire. His hair... ...that smoke, that smell." Susan whispered now, "it was horrible, horrible. They were dying one by one, right next to me, one by one. I screamed. I realized that this It was an electrical accident, and I didn't want to touch the handle on the rim of the wheelchair, or the metal door frame. I just sat where I was."

Susan shuddered and repeated. "I just sat there. Then the car moved the last few feet down and the elevator doors opened. There were a dozen people in the lobby on the ground floor, and they pulled me out... I tried to warn them not to touch anything, but that The electricity has been cut off." She coughed lightly for a while, "Ray Gott, who is this man?" Susan asked. Rhyme told her. "This man thinks he's sick from the power lines, he's got cancer. He's trying to get revenge. But maybe with links to eco-terrorism. Maybe he's been recruited by a group that's against traditional power companies. We don't know the details yet, we can't say for sure." .”

Susan blurted out, "He wants to kill innocent people to make his point? What a hypocrite." "He's a fanatic, so he's not even a hypocrite," Sachs said. "Whatever he wants to do, it's a good thing. Anyone who stops him from doing what he wants to do is a bad guy. In his world Black and white right and wrong is very simple." Rhyme looked at Sachs, and Sachs understood the hint in his eyes, and asked Susan, "You said there might be something that can help us?" "Yes, I think I saw him." Rhyme, despite his distrust of the witnesses, said encouragingly, "Keep on, please."

"He boarded the elevator on my floor." "You think it's him? Why?" "Because he spilled a little bit of water. It seemed careless, but I now know he did it for a purpose. It was to increase conductivity." Sachs said, "Ron found water on the soles of their shoes. Okay. We want to know where the water came from." "He was dressed like a maintenance man with a watering can ready to water potted plants. He was wearing a set of brown overalls. It was kind of dirty. It looked weird. There were no plants in the corridors of the office building, nor in our offices. No."

"Is there a team out there?" Rhyme asked Sachs. Sachs said there was indeed a squad. "Maybe it's the fire department, not the NYPD." "Tell them to call the office management and wake him up if necessary. See if the management has maintenance services for potted plants. Check the video surveillance." A few minutes later, they received a reply: There were no workers in the office building or any company on the eighth floor to water the potted plants.Surveillance cameras are only installed in the lobby, and use wide-angle lenses to uselessly show "a group of people coming in and a group of people going out".One firefighter reported: "Not a single face is recognizable."

Rhyme remembered the photo of Gott's driver's license on the screen. "Is that him?" he asked Susan. "Maybe. He didn't look at us, and I didn't look at him seriously." She looked at Rhyme with sympathetic eyes, "His head is always down." "Do you remember anything about him?" "He walked to the car and then as he stepped into the elevator, he kept looking at his watch." "Deadline." Sachs pointed out, and added, "But he triggered the mechanism early." "Only a few minutes early," Rhyme said. "Maybe he was worried that someone in the office would recognize him. He wanted to finish early, get out early. He probably also monitored the power transmission of the Algonquin Power Company, Knowing that the company does not intend to shut down when the cutoff time is reached."

Suzanne went on: "He was wearing gloves, tan leather gloves . .” "Is there any writing on the overalls?" "No." "do you have anything else?" She shrugged. "Don't know if this one worked, but he was being rude at the time." "rude?" "He pushed past me as he got into the elevator. No apology, nothing else." "He bumped into you?" "It didn't touch me." She nodded, "I touched the wheelchair. Squeezed it tightly." "Mel!" Mel Cooper's head turned towards them. "Susan," Rhyme asked, "do you mind where we check your wheelchair?"

"Never mind, not at all." Cooper held up his magnifying glass and looked carefully at the side of the wheelchair that Susan pointed to.Rhyme couldn't see exactly what he had found, but Cooper had taken two samples from the bolts where the wheelchair's vertical parts joined. "what?" "Fibers. One dark green fiber, one brown fiber." Cooper inspected the samples through the microscope, then turned to the database of similar fibers in the computer, "It's cotton fibers, very strong, probably military products, sold outside Army surplus." "Is it enough for the test?"

"Enough." Cooper and Sacks cut a small portion of each sample and analyzed it by gas chromatography and mass spectrometry. Rhyme waited impatiently, and Sachs finally yelled, "Here's the result." A printout came out of the printer, and Cooper looked at it carefully. "There's aviation fuel on the green fibers, but there's something else. There's diesel fuel on the brown fibers, and those herbal ingredients." "Diesel," Rhyme mused, "probably wasn't attacking the airport, maybe he was targeting the refinery." Cooper said, "Lincoln, that would be a big target." It must be so. "Sachs, call Gary Noble. Tell him to increase security at ports, especially refineries and cruise ships." She grabbed the phone: "Mel, record all the clues we have found so far on the physical evidence form." Crime scene: 235 West 54th Street office building - Victim (deceased): —Larry Fishbain, New York City, accountant —Robert Bodin, New York City, Attorney —Franklin Tucker, Paramus, NJ, salesman —A fingerprint of Raymond Gaut -Bennington brand cables and split bolts, identical to other crime scene evidence - Two handmade remote relay switches - a power supply to turn off the elevator - one is used to close the circuit and make the elevator car live - Bolts and thinner cables connect the control panel to the elevator, the source cannot be traced -Water stains on the soles of the victim's shoes ——Micro-trace certificate: ——Chinese herbal medicine, ginseng and wolfberry - Gossamer (future raids going to use a timer instead of a remote?) ——Dark green high-strength cotton fiber - Contains traces of alternative aviation fuel — Attacking a military base? ——Brown high-strength cotton fiber - Contains traces of diesel fuel - Contains more Chinese herbal ingredients profile ——The perpetrator was identified as Raymond Gott, 40 years old, single, living at 227 Suffolk Street, Manhattan — Terrorist contact?Relationship to Justice For (Unknown)?Terrorist group?Was someone named Raman involved?Encrypted messages mentioning funding distributions, personnel transfers, and some "big event" -- Algonquin Power's security breach in Philadelphia may have been linked to the case - "Letters" system discovery: code words alluding to weapons, "paper and supplies" (guns, explosives?) - Perpetrators included both men and women ——The details of Gao Te’s participation in the crime are unknown —Cancer patient; found a lot of vinblastine and prednisone, a little etoposide.leukemia —Gault is equipped with a military 1911 .45 Colt pistol —disguised as a maintenance worker in brown overalls.Maybe dark green overalls? —Wearing tan leather gloves As Cooper assembled the exhibits and tagged them with chain-of-custody cards, Sachs called the Department of Homeland Security to inform New York and New Jersey of the risks to the ports. Rhyme and Susan Stringer found themselves left alone.When he looked at the physical evidence form, he clearly knew that Susan was looking at him carefully.Feeling uncomfortable, he turned to Susan, trying to figure out how to get her to leave.She came, helped, met a famous paralyzed person.Time to get on with the work. Susan asked, "You're a C4 paralyzed, aren't you?" This indicated that his injury was in the fourth cervical vertebra, the fourth bone in the spine from the base of the skull. "Yes, but I can move my hands a little. But I can't feel them." He had technically suffered a "complete" injury, meaning he had lost all sensory function below the injury site (patients with "incomplete" injuries were able to move quite a bit).But the human body is quirky, and some electrical impulses can escape barricades.The wiring is faulty, but not completely broken. "You're in good shape," she said, "with a lot of muscle." Rhyme looked back at the whiteboard and said absently, "I do exercises every day, I get functional electrical stimulation, and I build my muscles." Rhyme has to admit, he enjoys these workouts.He explained that he does his exercises on a stationary bike.The bike moved his body, rather than him moving the equipment, but it still built muscle and seemed to allow him to move his right hand again recently. After the accident, Rhyme only had the ring finger of his left hand. Can move. He's in better shape now than he was before the injury. Rhyme told Susan this, and from her face he could see that Susan understood; she tensed and said, "I wanted you to wrestle with me, but..." A heartfelt laugh escaped Rhyme's throat. Then Susan's expression became serious, and she looked around to see if anyone else would hear.When she was sure there was no one else, she turned back, looked him in the eye, and said, "Lincoln, do you believe in fate?"