“I appreciate the urgency, detective. But I don’t know how I can help you. We use bolts all over the city. Oil lines, gas lines…”

“All right,” Rhyme said tersely and asked the Con Ed supervisor at the company’s headquarters on Fourteenth Street, “Do you insulate wiring with asbestos?”

A hesitation.

“We’ve cleaned up ninety percent of that,” the woman said defensively. “Ninety- five.”

People could be so irritating. “I understand that. I just need to know if there’s still any asbestos used for insulation.”

“No,” she said adamantly. “Well, never for electricity. Just the steam and that’s the smallest percentage of our service.”

Steam!

It was the least-known and the scariest of the city’s utilities. Con Ed heated water to 1,000 degrees then shot it through a hundred-mile network of pipes running under Manhattan. The blistering steam itself was superheated – about 380 degrees – and rocketed through the city at seventy-five miles an hour.

Rhyme now recalled an article in the paper. “Didn’t you have a break in the line last week?”

“Yessir. But there was no asbestos leak. That site had been cleaned years ago.”

“But there is asbestos around some of your pipes in the system downtown?”

She hesitated. “Well…”

“Where was the break?” Rhyme continued quickly.

“Broadway. A block north of Chambers.”

“Wasn’t there an article in the Times about it?”

“I don’t know. Maybe. Yes.”

“And did the article mention asbestos?”

“It did,” she admitted, “but it just said that in the past asbestos contamination’d been a problem.”

“The pipe that broke, was it… does it cross Pearl Street farther south?”

“Well, let me see. Yes, it does. At Hanover Street. On the north side.”

He pictured T.J. Colfax, the woman with the thin fingers and long nails, about to die.

“And the steam’s going back on at three?”

“That’s right. Any minute now.”

“It can’t!” Rhyme shouted. “Somebody’s tampered with the line. You can’t turn that steam back on!”

Cooper looked up uneasily from his microscope.

The supervisor said, “Well, I don’t know…”

Rhyme barked to Thom, “Call Lon, tell him she’s in a basement at Hanover and Pearl. The north side.” He told him about the steam. “Get the fire department there too. Heat-protective outfits.”

Rhyme shouted into the speakerphone. “Call the work crews! Now! They can’t turn that steam back on. They can’t!” He repeated the words absently, detesting his exquisite imagination, which showed, in an endless loop, the woman’s flesh growing pink then red then splitting apart under the fierce clouds of sputtering white steam.

In the station wagon the radio crackled. It was three minutes to three by Sachs’s watch. She answered the call.

“Portable 5885, K-”

“Forget the officialese, Amelia,” Rhyme said. “We don’t have time.”

“I -”

“We think we know where she is. Hanover and Pearl.”

She glanced over her shoulder and saw dozens of ESU officers running flat-out toward an old building.

“Do you want me to -”

“They’ll look for her. You have to get ready to work the scene.”

“But I can help -”

“No. I want you to go to the back of the station wagon. There’s a suitcase in it labeled zero two. Take it with you. And in a small black case there’s a PoliLight. You saw one in my room. Mel was using it. Take that too. In the suitcase marked zero three you’ll find a headset and stalk mike. Plug it into your Motorola and get over to the building where the officers are. Call me back when you’re rigged. Channel thirty-seven. I’ll be on a landline but you’ll be patched through to me.”

Channel thirty-seven. The special ops citywide frequency. The priority frequency.

“What? -” she asked. But the dead radio did not respond.

She had a long black halogen flashlight on her utility belt so she left the bulky twelve-volter in the back of the wagon and grabbed the PoliLight and the heavy suitcase. It must have weighed fifty pounds. Just what my damn joints need. She adjusted her grip and, teeth clamped together against the pain, hurried toward the intersection.

Sellitto, breathless, ran to the building. Banks joined them.

“You hear?” the older detective asked. Sachs nodded.

“This is it?” she asked.

Sellitto nodded toward the alley. “He had to take her in this way. The lobby’s got a guard station.” They now trotted down the shadowy, cobblestoned canyon, steaming hot, smelling of piss and garbage. Battered blue Dumpsters sat nearby.

“There,” Sellitto shouted. “Those doors.”

The cops fanned out, running. Three of the four doors were locked tight from the inside.

The fourth had been jimmied open and was now chained shut. The chain and lock were new.

“This’s it!” Sellitto reached for the door, hesitated. Thinking probably about fingerprints. Then he grabbed the handle and yanked. It opened a few inches but the chain held tight. He sent three of the uniforms around to the front to get into the basement from the inside. One cop worked a cobblestone loose from the alley floor and began pounding on the door handle. A half-dozen blows, a dozen. He winced as his hand struck the door; blood gushed from a torn finger.

A fireman ran up with a Halligan tool – a combination pickax and crowbar. He rammed the end into the chain and ripped the padlock open. Sellitto looked at Sachs expectantly. She gazed back.

“Well, go, officer!” he barked.

“What?”

“Didn’t he tell you?”

“Who?”

“Rhyme.”

Hell, she’d forgotten to plug in the headset. She fumbled it, finally got it plugged in. Heard: “Amelia, where -”

“I’m here.”

“Are you at the building?”

“Yes.”

“Go inside. They shut the steam off but I don’t know if it was in time. Take a medic and one ESU trooper. Go to the boiler room. You’ll probably see her right away, the Colfax woman. Walk to her but not directly, not in a straight line from the door to her. I don’t want you to disturb any footprints he might’ve left. Understand?”

“Yes.” She nodded emphatically, not thinking that he couldn’t see her. Gesturing the medic and an Emergency Services trooper after her, Sachs stepped forward into the murky corridor, shadows everywhere, the groan of machinery, dripping water.

“Amelia,” Rhyme said.

“Yes.”

“We were talking about ambush before. From what I know about him now I don’t think that’s the case. He’s not there, Amelia. That would be illogical. But keep your shooting hand free.”

Illogical.

“Okay.”

“Now go! Fast.”

A MURKY CAVERN. HOT, BLACK, DAMP.

The three of them moved quickly down the filthy hallway toward the only doorway Sachs could see. A sign said BOILER ROOM. She was behind the ESU officer, who wore full body armor and helmet. The medic was in the rear.

Her right knuckles and shoulder throbbed from the weight of the suitcase. She shifted it to her left hand, nearly dropped it and readjusted her grip. They continued to the door.

There, the SWAT officer pushed inside and swung his machine gun around the dimly lit room. A flashlight was attached to the barrel and it cast a line of pale light in the shreds of steam. Sachs smelled moisture, mold. And another scent, loathsome.

Click. “Amelia?” The staticky burst of Rhyme’s voice scared the absolute hell out of her. “Where are you, Amelia?”

With a shaking hand she turned down the volume.

“Inside,” she gasped.

“Is she alive?”

Sachs rocked on her feet, staring at the sight. She squinted, not sure at first what she was seeing. Then she understood.

“Oh, no.” Whispering. Feeling the nausea.

The sickening boiled-meat smell wafted around her. But that wasn’t the worst of it. Neither was the sight of the woman’s skin, bright red, almost orange, peeling off in huge scales. The face completely stripped of skin. No, what brought the dread home was the angle of TJ Colfax’s body, the impossible twisting of her limbs and torso as she’d tried to get away from the spray of ravaging heat.