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that?”
    “Don’t know. Never seen anything like it, all my years.”
    And Sachs realized something else. The wounds were all distinct and clearly visible. “There’s no blood.”
    “Whatever it was cauterized the wounds. That’s why . . .” Her voice went soft. “That’s why he stayed conscious for as long as he did.”
    Sachs couldn’t imagine the pain. “How?” she asked, half to herself.
    And then she got the answer.
    “Amelia,” Ron Pulaski called.
    She glanced toward him.
    “The bus sign pole. Take a look. Brother . . .”
    “Jesus,” she muttered. And walked closer to the edge of the crime scene tape. About six feet from the ground a hole had been blasted clean through the metal pole, five inches wide. The metal had melted like plastic under a blowtorch. She then focused on the windows of the bus and a delivery truck parked nearby. She’d thought the glass was frosted from the fire. But, no, small bits of shrapnel—the same that had killed the passenger—had hit the vehicles. The sheet-metal skins were also punctured.
    “Look,” she whispered, pointing at the sidewalkand the facade of the substation. A hundred tiny craters had been dug into the stone.
    “Was it a bomb?” Pulaski asked. “Maybe the respondings missed it.”
    Sachs opened a plastic bag and removed blue latex gloves. Pulling them on, she bent down and collected a small disk of metal shaped like a teardrop at the base of the post. It was so hot it softened the glove.
    When she realized what it was, she shivered.
    “What’s that?” Pulaski asked.
    “The arc flash melted the pole.” She looked around and saw a hundred or more drops on the ground or sticking to the side of the bus, buildings and nearby cars.
    That’s what had killed the young passenger. A shower of molten metal drops flying through the air at a thousand feet a second.
    The young officer exhaled slowly. “Getting hit by something like that . . . burning right through you.”
    Sachs shivered again—at the thought of the pain. And at the thought of how devastating the results of the attack might have been. This portion of street was relatively empty. Had the substation been closer to the center of Manhattan, easily ten or fifteen passersby would have died.
    Sachs looked up and found herself staring at the UNSUB’s weapon: From one of the windows overlooking Fifty-seventh Street about two feet of thick wire dangled. It was covered in black insulation but the end was stripped away and the bare cable was bolted to a scorched brass plate. It looked industrial and mundane and not at all the sort of thing that could have produced such a terrible explosion.
    Sachs and Pulaski joined the cluster of two dozen Homeland Security, FBI and NYPD agents and officersat the FBI’s command post van. Some were in tactical gear, some in crime scene coveralls. Others, just suits or regulation uniforms. They were dividing up the labor. They’d be canvassing for witnesses and checking for post-incident bombs or other booby traps, a popular terrorist technique.
    A solemn, lean-faced man in his fifties stood with his arms crossed, staring at the substation. He wore an Algonquin Consolidated badge on a chain around his neck. He was the senior company representative here: a field supervisor in charge of this portion of the grid. Sachs asked him to describe what Algonquin had learned about the event in detail, and he gave her an account, which she jotted into her notebook.
    “Security cameras?”
    The skinny man replied, “Sorry, no. We don’t bother. The doors are multiple locked. And there’s nothing inside to steal, really. Anyways, all that juice, it’s sort of like a guard dog. A big one.”
    Sachs asked, “How do you think he got in?”
    “The door was locked when we got here. They’re on number-pad locks.”
    “Who has the codes?”
    “All the employees. But he didn’t get in that way. The locks have a chip that keeps records of when they’re opened. These