The Watchmaker’s Hand

“No. It’s when there’s force but no movement. Cranes stay upright because of moment. There’s downward force on the front jib — the boom that carries the load. The counterweights in the back have to equal the force in front. That’s moment — like balance. Maintaining moment is what operators — well, and the computers they use — do.” He repeated almost reverently, “Balance. There’s a trolley in the front that holds the hook for the load, and a trolley in the back with the weights. We’re constantly moving the weights back and forth to counterbalance the load.

“Moment is so important that nobody ever screws up. It’s like how pilots just don’t forget to lower the landing gear. So that’s what they attacked. Without the counterweights, there was no way the jib wasn’t going down.” He wiped his eyes. “What is this I heard? Some bullshit about fair housing or something? Jesus Christ.”

“Affordable housing.”

“Hell of a way to pitch your cause.”

“Could he have hacked into that computer?”

“Naw. You can’t hack it. The system’s not online. And that wasn’t the problem,” he said angrily. “They just disconnected the counterweights.” His jaw tightened again as his eyes locked on to a cluster of rebar — the steel rods that reinforce concrete. These, a dozen of them, extended upward about six feet from the concrete slab they were anchored in. There was no mistaking the dried blood and tissue on them and the stains on the concrete.

Jesus...

Nowak was breathing deeply, fast, nearly hyperventilating. “He fell.” A whisper. “All the way, headfirst. Hit the rebar. His body just... quivered. It wouldn’t stop. He was stuck there, upside down. It took three firemen to get him free. Jesus. Three of them... I’ll see that forever...”

So that was how the operator died. Not in the cab. He’d gotten out before it fell and tried to climb down.

Impaled...

“How could the suspect get up there?”

He checked back tears. “Climb, like everybody else. But nobody saw him, or them. We’ve got security during the day. A guard at night, but he’d be at the entrance. He didn’t see anything. I asked him. As for the back, anybody could get over the walls if they wanted to.” He nodded to the eight-foot-high wooden panels with holes cut in some of them for the curious to watch the building go up. “As for the tower, he’d have a hell of a climb, but my boys do it every day.”

“You gave Detective Sellitto some SD cards of security footage. Did you find any others?”

“No.”

“Could it’ve been an inside job?”

“What? You mean one of my people?” He simmered at the suggestion.

She didn’t respond. It was a question that needed to be asked.

And she saw in his eyes the dawning understanding that the idea was reasonable and that he was considering it. Yet his reply was the very thing that Sachs was thinking: “Not impossible, I guess. But think about it. Somebody in this terror outfit joins a union, gets his card, works a site for weeks just to do something like this? And I heard they’ve threatened to do it again. So, what? They have inside people on other jobsites in town?” His voice faded and he took in the brown-stained rods again. Sachs couldn’t help herself; she had to look too.

It took three firemen to get him free...

Then it was time for her to get to work. She had enough background of the scene. She began thinking forensically. Glancing around at the workers huddled together near the entrance, waiting for word if they could return to work or go home. The unsub would have worn what they wore so he could blend in: hard hat, work boots and gloves. Therefore, no latent prints and whatever boot prints he left would be mixed with hundreds of others.

As for facial recognition, the hard hats, dust masks and bandannas made that impossible — even if they lifted a clean capture from a video. And she noticed another problem with FR.

“A lot of sunglasses.”

“You do beam work facing east in the morning and west in the afternoon, you need to see where exactly you’re putting your boots when you’re a hundred feet in the air.”

Sachs looked at the counterweights.

“Where’re the ones that fell first?”

They’d be the ones that the terrorists had sabotaged.

He pointed to a ragged hole in the wooden floor. “Temporary cover over the first basement. Went through it like butter.”

Sachs walked to the hole and looked down. “Anybody down there?” She saw what might have been a flashlight beam.

“I sent somebody to see if anybody was hurt. I didn’t hear, so I guess not.”

So there’d be some contamination of the few things they knew for certain the suspect had touched — the cement blocks and the mechanism affixing them to the crane. But that was crime scene work — aiding casualties had to take priority over evidence.

“Hey, Nowak!”

They both looked toward the site’s entrance. Two middle-aged women, crying, were standing beside another worker, the man who’d called.

“Family. I gotta talk to ’em.”