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"Linc," Sellitto said patiently.
"It's radioactive, produces renal failure and acute tubular necrosis. It's also explosive and highly unstable. But my exclamation was positive, Lon. I'm delighted that our perp may have trod in this stuff."
Dellray said, "'Cause it's highly and extremely and deliciously rare."
"Bingo, Fred."
Rhyme explained that the substance had been used to create weapons-grade uranium for the Manhattan Project--the effort to make the first atomic bomb in World War II. While the project's engineering headquarters had been based, temporarily, in Manhattan, hence the name, most of the work in constructing the bombs had occurred elsewhere, notably Oak Ridge, Tennessee; Los Alamos, New Mexico; and Richland, in Washington State.
"But there was some actual construction and assembly in the New York area. A company in Bushwick, Brooklyn, made uranyl nitrate. They couldn't produce enough, though, and gave up the contract. The company's long gone but the site still has residual radiation."
"How do you--" Sellitto began.
Rhyme said smoothly, "EPA waste sites. Wonderful, Lon. Don't you study them? You don't collect them?"
A sigh. "Linc."
"I do. They tell us such wonderful things about our neighborhoods."
"Where is it?" Cooper asked.
"Well, I don't have the address memorized. It's an EPA waste site, designated as such. Bushwick, Brooklyn. How many could there be? Look it up!"
Only a moment later Cooper said, "Wyckoff, not far from Covert Street."
"Near Knollwood Park Cemetery," said Sachs, a Brooklyner born and bred. She stripped off her lab jacket and gloves and started out of the parlor, calling, "Lon, get a tac team together. I'll meet them there."
Chapter 6
Stefan froze at the sound.
A sound nearly as troubling as a Black Scream, though it was soft, meek: a beep on his mobile phone.
It told him that someone had entered the factory complex. An app was connected via Wi-Fi to a cheap security camera, mounted at the facility's entrance.
Oh, no, he thought. I'm sorry! He silently pleaded to Her not to be angry.
A glance into the next room, where Robert Ellis was balancing so precariously on the wooden crate. Then back to his phone. The webcam--high-def and color--showed a red sports car, one of those from the sixties or seventies, parked at the entrance, and a woman was climbing out. He saw a badge on the redhead's hip. Behind her, police cars were pulling up fast.
His jaw quivered. How had they gotten here, and so quickly?
He closed his eyes, at the throbbing, the ocean roar, in his head.
Not a Black Scream, not now. Please!
Move! You have to move.
He looked over his gear. None of this could be found. Stefan had been careful, but connections could be made, evidence could be discovered, and he absolutely could not afford to be stopped.
He could not, under any circumstances, disappoint Her.
I'm sorry, he repeated. But Euterpe, of course, did not reply.
Stefan stuffed his computer into his backpack, and from the canvas sports bag he'd brought he extracted two other items. A quart jar of gasoline. And a cigarette lighter.
Stefan loved fire. Absolutely loved it. Not the jerky dance of orange and black flames, not the caress of heat. No, what he loved was, not surprisingly, the sound.
His only regret was that he would not be around to hear the crackle and moan as fire turned what is into what is not.
