Flu

Chapter 55

Kate props herself up on one elbow as Rick thrashes beside her. "Babe, after a day slinging stuffing and eating all that turkey, you should have fallen asleep when your head hit the pillow."

"I thought I would," Rick confides, "and then in the morning, we might – you know. But I can't stop thinking about what Lanie told us she found and how it fits in with what you dug up."

Kate grunts. "What I dug up wouldn't make much more than a paragraph in a report."

"Still, you discovered that the victim Lanie autopsied wasn't even supposed to be there. The run-up to the parade was all messed up and confused because of the flu. We both noticed that there's been stuff on the conspiracy sites for years about terrorists putting bombs in laptops."

"Except that BSU didn't find anything suggesting a bomb in what's left of the floats that blew up. And I don't know that anyone knew laptops would be there, either. They were supposed to be for diagnosing or fixing problems. No one I talked to was sure how that would work."

"Did Lanie's victim bring them?" Castle wonders.

"I don't think so. A witness described his arrival to me, saying he almost crawled out of his car and wobbled into the warehouse area with the floats. She didn't notice him carrying anything. Those floats were put together in the same place they were last year."

"And probably by most of the same people," Rick adds. "Alexis and I used to watch specials on the parade. Even before Santa arrives as the pièce de résistance, the planners start figuring out the next one. A lot of equipment could still have been around."

"Including laptops that missed a recall," Kate realizes. "But what could have set them off at the same time? Tell me you've got a story for that, Babe."

"I've got nothing," Rick confesses. "But perhaps something will come to me in slumber – if I can manage to get any sleep."

The faces of the supervillains keep changing, but every costumed creep repeats the same phrase over and over, "More power!" Explosions rock the ground as debris is hurled skyward. Caught in an imagined shock wave, Rick jolts awake to find Kate shaking his shoulder. "Babe, you were having a nightmare."

Kicking the covers aside, Rick sits up. "That wasn't a nightmare; it was a revelation. Or at least I think it was. I remember being suspicious of what might lurk beneath the innocent pink of Alexis' laptop, not to mention what might have been waiting to rear its ugly head from my more masculine-looking machine. I read up on what makes batteries explode. It happens when they overheat, but usually, if they're damaged in some way. I believe Morpheus gave me a clue to a possible scenario."

"What scenario?" Kate presses, settling herself atop the covers to sit cross-legged facing Rick.

"Remember the heatwave we had last summer?" Rick asks.

Kate rolls her eyes. "How could I forget it? It was even sweltering in the archives. The uniformed units were scrambling to transport the homeless anywhere they could get cool. Muggings fell off for a while because no one could stand to be out in the heat. And Con Ed had to do rolling brownouts, so we kept losing air conditioning. Alexis said if it weren't for the generator, a bunch of samples at CSU would have been ruined."

"I imagine a lot of things were ruined during the outages. What if," Rick speculates, "those laptops were stored in the buildings where the parade people build floats. Maybe they were set aside for recycling or something. No one would have wanted to be there during a brownout, but they might not have thought twice about some old equipment they probably wouldn't have used anyway. Some of those buildings are constructed with metal roofs. Without air conditioning, they would be like cars in the sun, when the steering wheel and the seats get so hot you can't touch them. If I remember right, and I'm pretty sure I do, it only takes 140 degrees to damage those batteries. After that, any surge could make them blow."

"Where would a surge come from that would affect both laptops?" Kate questions.

"Want to hear a stupid answer?" Rick asks.

"No one's come up with any smart ones. What have you got, Babe?"

"The villains in my dream kept craving more power. Perhaps an unintentional villain on the float crew thought they needed the same."

"That's not so stupid. If Con Ed can come up with the power usage record, we can see if it spiked before the explosion. If it did, there are people I need to talk to again. At least I'll be asking better questions."

With his elbows on Kate's desk, Rick is drowsing in his chair when Kate rouses him with the crackle of a sheaf of papers. "From our esteemed electric company?" he inquires.

"Uh-huh. It sent a 24-hour record for the float building. We'll have to go through it to see what might be a surge. It looks like the numbers go up and down."

"I don't suppose the company was kind enough to provide us with an average?"

Kate pushes back a lock of hair that flopped in Rick's eyes. "No such luck. You want a coffee?"

"That's supposed to be my line."

"You just look like you can use one. Did you dream about more power-hungry villains last night?"

"How did you guess?"

Ground coffee scatters from Kate's dry measure as Rick pounds into the break room. "I found it! It was there, Kate, right before the explosions. The building started using almost twice as much power as it had before!"

Kate reaches for the dustpan in the corner of the room to sweep up the spill. "Now, we'll have to find out why."

"Your computer gave one of those little diddle-ee-doos it does when you get a report. Maybe there's something in there. If you want to have a look, I can finish making coffee for both of us."

"Babe, I was going to do that,' Kate protests.

I know, and I love you for it. But this way, you won't see the sugar jolt I sneak into mine."

Kate winks. "I didn't hear that."

Doing his best not to mess up the foam heart he crafted on top, Rick hands Kate a vanilla latte and points to the document displayed on her screen. "Find anything good in there?"

Kate exhales a deep breath. "Not good for the people who got killed. This is from the fire department. The inspector found what he believed to be the remains of a long extension cord, one of those things on a reel. It went from the other end of the building to near the floats. According to this, that area wasn't rated to handle that much power."

"So if anything else had been plugged in there, it would have flipped a circuit breaker. Maybe it did. So someone thought they figured out a way around the problem. But," Rick adds, "having the power go off and then come on again stronger would have caused a surge, enough to make already damaged batteries explode."

Kate cups her warm mug in her hands for comfort. "There's more. The animated parts of the float used compressed gas and hydraulic fluid. The initial explosion caused the gas canisters to blow apart, puncturing hydraulic lines. This says hydraulic fluid has a high flashpoint. It wouldn't burn easily, but the heat of the fire eventually caused it to catch. The place became an inferno."

Rick sinks into his chair. "Damn! Who needs terrorists when you've got people who are sick or tired but totally dedicated to making magic?"

Kate shakes her head. "It becomes the blackest kind of magic. But even if no one meant any harm, we've still got to confirm what happened. It's going to be a sh*t of a day."