Rhyme turned away from the phone and called, "Sachs! Is he there? Is Parker there? What's going on?"

She nodded. "He's at some function or something. I'm getting patched through."

Kincaid was a single father of two children, Robby and Stephanie, and he carefully balanced his personal and professional lives-his commitment to his kids was why he'd quit the FBI to become, like Rhyme, a consultant. But Rhyme knew too that for a case like this, Kincaid would get on board instantly and do what he could to help.

The criminalist turned back to the phone. "Ms. Jessen, could you scan them and send them to…" An eyebrow raised toward Sachs, who called out Parker Kincaid's email address.

"I've got it," Jessen said.

"Those are terms in the business, I assume?" Rhyme asked. " 'Rolling brownout,' 'shedding load,' 'service grid,' 'offpeak load.' "

"That's right."

"Does that give us any details about him?"

"Not really. They're technical aspects of the business but if he could adjust the computer and rig a flash arc device, then he'd know those too. Anybody in the power industry would know them."

"How did you get the letter?"

"It was delivered to my apartment building."

"Is your address public?"

"I'm not listed in the phone book but I suppose it wouldn't be impossible to find me."

Rhyme persisted, "How exactly did you receive it?"

"I live in a doorman building, Upper East Side. Somebody rang the back delivery bell in the lobby. The doorman went to go see. When he got back, the letter was at his station. It was marked, Emergency. Delivery immediately to Andi Jessen."

"Is there video security?" Rhyme asked.

"No."

"Who handled it?"

"The doorman. Just the envelope, though. I had a messenger from the office pick it up. He would have touched it too. And I did, of course."

McDaniel was about to say something but Rhyme beat him to it. "The letter was time sensitive, so whoever left it knew you had a doorman. So that it would get to you immediately."

McDaniel was nodding. Apparently that would have been his comment. The bright-eyed Kid nodded as well, like a bobble-head dog in the back window of a car.

After a moment: "I guess that's right." The concern was obvious in her voice. "So that means he knows about me. Maybe knows a lot about me."

"Do you have a bodyguard?" Sellitto asked.

"Our security director, at work. Bernie Wahl. You met him, Detective Sachs. He's got four armed guards on staff, each shift. But not at home. I never thought…"

"We'll get somebody from Patrol stationed outside your apartment," Sellitto said. As he made the call, McDaniel asked, "What about family in the area? We should have somebody look out for them."

Momentary silence from the speaker. Then: "Why?"

"He might try to use them as leverage."

"Oh." Jessen's otherwise rugged voice sounded small at the implications, those close to her being hurt. But she explained, "My parents are in Florida."

Sachs asked, "You have a brother, don't you? Didn't I see his picture on your desk?"

"My brother? We don't stay in touch much. And he doesn't live here-" Another voice interrupted her. Jessen came back on the line. "Look, I'm sorry, the governor's calling. He's just heard the news."

With a click she disconnected.

"So." Sellitto lifted his palms. His eyes grazed McDaniel but then settled on Rhyme. "This makes it all pretty fucking easy."

"Easy?" asked the Kid.

"Yeah." Sellitto nodded at the digital clock on a nearby flat-screen monitor. "If we can't negotiate, all we gotta do is find him. In under three hours. Piece of cake."

MEL COOPER AND Rhyme were working on the analysis of the letter. Ron Pulaski had arrived too, a few minutes earlier. Lon Sellitto was speeding downtown to coordinate with ESU, in the event they could either ID a suspect or find his possible target.

Tucker McDaniel looked over the demand letter as if it were some type of food he'd never encountered. Rhyme supposed this was because handwriting on a piece of paper didn't fall into cloud zone law enforcement. It was the antithesis of high-tech communications. His computers and sophisticated tracing systems were useless against paper and ink.

Rhyme glanced at the script. He knew from his own training, as well as from working with Parker Kincaid, that handwriting doesn't reveal anything about the personality of the writer, whatever the grocery store checkout-stand books and news pundits suggested. Analysis could be illuminating, of course, if you had another, identified sample to compare it with, so you could determine if the writer of the second document was the same as the one who wrote the first. Parker Kincaid would be doing this now, running a preliminary comparison with known handwriting samples of terror suspects and comparing them with the writing of those Algonquin employees who were on the company list.

Handwriting and content could also suggest right- or left-handedness, level of education, national and regional upbringing, mental and physical illnesses and intoxication or drug-impaired states.

But Rhyme's interest in the note was more basic: the source of the paper, source of the ink, the fingerprints and trace embedded in the fibers.

All of which, after Cooper's diligent analysis, added up to a big fat nothing.

The sources for both paper stock and ink were generic-they could have come from one of thousands of stores. Andi Jessen's prints were the only ones on the letter and those on the envelope were from the messenger and the doorman; McDaniel's agents had taken samples of their prints and forwarded them to Rhyme.

Useless, Rhyme reflected bitterly. The only deduction was that the perp was smart. And had a great sense of survival.

But ten minutes later, they had a breakthrough, of sorts.

Parker Kincaid was on the line from his document examination office in his house in Fairfax, Virginia.

"Lincoln."

"Parker, what've we got?"

Kincaid said, "First, the handwriting comparison. The control samples from Algonquin itself were pretty sparse, so I couldn't do the complete analysis I would have liked."

"I understand that."

"But I've narrowed it down to twelve employees."

"Twelve. Excellent."

"Here are the names. Ready?"

Rhyme glanced at Cooper, who nodded. The tech jotted them down as Kincaid dictated.

"Now, I can give you a few other things about him. First, he's right-handed. Then I picked some characteristics from the language and word choice."

"Go ahead."

At Rhyme's nod, Cooper walked to the profile board.

"He's a product of high school and probably some college. And it was an American education. There are a few spelling, grammatical and punctuation mistakes but mostly with more difficult words or constructions. I put those down to the stress of what he's doing. He was probably born here. I can't say for sure that he isn't of foreign extraction, but English is his first and, I'm almost positive, only language."

Cooper wrote this down.

Kincaid continued, "He's also pretty clever. He doesn't write in the first person and avoids the active voice."

Rhyme understood. "He never says anything about himself."

"Exactly."

"Suggesting there could be others working with him."

"It's a possibility. Also, there's some variation on ascenders and descenders. You get that when a subject is upset, emotional. They're writing in anger or distress, and broader strokes tend to be emphasized."

"Good." Rhyme nodded at Cooper, who jotted this too onto the profile board.

"Thanks, Parker. We'll get to work."

They disconnected. "Twelve…" Rhyme sighed. He looked over the evidence and profile chart, then the names of the suspects. "Don't we have any way to narrow it down faster?" he asked bitterly, watching his clock advance one more minute toward the approaching deadline.