Archer offered no opinion about Schenectady but the stillness in her face suggested she appreciated the hardship that loomed. He described the additional issue of Frommer’s complicated employment history. “The attorney’s building the case to prove that this was a temporary slump. But that might be hard to do.”
Archer’s eyes shone. “But if you can prove the defendant did something particularly egregious or careless, there may be punitive damages.”
Maybe, as Whitmore suggested of Rhyme himself, Archer should have gone to law school as well.
Boston Legal . . .
“To threaten them with punitive damages,” Rhyme reminded. “We want to settle, and settle quickly.”
Archer asked, “When can we have access to the real deal? And all the evidence?”
“Could be months.”
“But can we make a case for liability from just the mock-up?”
Rhyme said, “We’ll see.” He explained what Whitmore had told him about strict products liability and negligence, the possibility of an intervening cause that would shift liability away from the manufacturer.
“Our job, first, is to pinpoint the defect.”
“And find a very careless and a very rich defendant,” she said wryly.
“That’s the strategy. Thom!”
The aide appeared.
Rhyme said to Archer, “Why don’t you explain your situation to him?”
She did. Unlike Rhyme, she had not suffered a trauma to her spine; doctors had discovered a tumor that wound around the fourth and fifth cervical vertebrae (Rhyme’s injury had been at the fourth). Archer explained about the series of treatments and surgery that would ultimately render her as disabled as Rhyme, if not more so. Her life at the moment was consumed with adapting to the condition by changing careers to one more suitable to a quadriplegic and learning from an experienced patient—Lincoln Rhyme—what to expect and how to cope.
Thom said, “I’m happy to play the role of your caregiver too if you like, while you’re here.”
“Would you?”
“Delighted to,” he said.
She wheeled about and faced Rhyme. “Now what can I do?”
“Research escalator accidents, particularly this model. See if similar accidents have ever happened before. Whitmore said that might be admissible. And get the maintenance manuals. A contractor leased us a part of the escalator but they haven’t delivered the documents yet. I want to know everything about it.”
“Let’s see if the company or the city is ordering inspections of similar models.”
“Yes, good.” He hadn’t thought of this.
“Computer I can use?”
Rhyme pointed out a desktop nearby. He knew she could use her right hand on the controller but keyboarding was not a possibility. “Could you set Juliette up with a headset and microphone. For computer three.”
“Sure. Over here.”
Her self-confidence suddenly dimmed and for the first time since he’d met her, Archer seemed uneasy, presumably for having to rely on someone else’s help, other than her brother’s. She was looking at the computer as if it were a stray dog whose tail was not wagging. Arguing with Rhyme about starting her internship had been different. They were equals. Here she was having to rely on an able-bodied person. “Thank you. I’m sorry.”
“This is the least of my trials and tribulations.” Thom fitted her with the headset and a touchpad for her right hand. Then he booted up the computer. “You can print out anything you find. But we don’t do that much. Easier for everybody to use the monitors.” Rhyme used a page-turning frame but that was mostly for books, magazines or documents that arrived already in hard-copy form.
“Those are some of the biggest screens I’ve ever seen.” Archer’s good cheer had returned in part. She murmured something into the headset and Rhyme saw the screen change as a search engine popped up. “I’ll get to work. First, everything I can find about the escalator itself.”
Mel Cooper called, “Do you want the model and serial number?”
“Model is MCE-Seventy-Seven,” Archer said absently, staring at the screen, “I’ve got the serial too. Memorized them from the manufacturer’s info plate when I came in just now.”
And she slowly recited the lengthy numbers into the microphone. The computer responded dutifully to her low, melodic voice.
CHAPTER 11
Still playing infrastructure paparazzo with his digital camera, Mel Cooper continued to prowl about within the scaffolding enshrouding the escalator.
“How did they get it in?” he called. “This thing is huge.”
“Removed the roof, cut holes in all the floors, lowered it in by helicopter. Or maybe it was angels or superheroes. I forget.”
“Legitimate question, Lincoln.”
“Irrelevant question. Therefore illegitimate. What are you seeing?”
“Give me a minute.”
Rhyme sighed.
Speed. They needed to move fast. To help Sandy Frommer, of course. But also, as Archer had thought and Whitmore had confirmed, to get a settlement before spurious plaintiffs appeared, hoping for a windfall. He had explained: “The other passengers on the escalator who leapt off. The injuries were minor—or nonexistent—but that doesn’t mean they won’t sue. And then,” the lawyer had added, “there’ll be those who claim emotional distress because they simply saw a gruesome accident and their lives will be changed forever. They’ll never get on an escalator again . . . Nightmares. Eating disorders. Loss of income from taking workdays off. Yes, it’s true. Nonsense, but true. This is the world of personal injury law.”
Archer now called from the computer station she was parked in front of: “The city’s suspended the operation of all MCE-Seventy-Seven models pending inspection. Reading from the Times. There are fifty-six installed in New York City. No other reports of malfunctions.”
Interesting. Rhyme wondered if an inspection might find something beneficial to their case. He wondered how fast it would be concluded.
Finally Cooper joined Rhyme and slipped the SD memory card out of the Sony camera. He loaded it into a computer slot and called up the pictures on a high-def monitor. The screen was big enough that dozens of images fit side by side.
Rhyme moved closer.
“Here’re the parts that seem relevant.” The tech stepped to the screen and pointed. “The panel that popped up. It serves as both a step—the top, immobile step—and an access panel for maintenance and repairs. Hinged on the far side, away from the escalator stairs. I’d guess the weight about forty or so pounds.”
Archer called, “Forty-two.” She’d found specifications, she explained, in a Midwest Conveyance installation and maintenance manual.
Cooper continued, “And it’s assisted by a spring so when the catch is released the door pops up about sixteen inches.”
Consistent with Sachs’s observation and photos.
“A worker can lift it all the way from there and use a rod to keep it open—like the sort used to support car hoods.” Pointing, Cooper indicated images he’d taken. “To close the door workers lower it by pushing it down or, I’d guess, standing on it, until a triangular bracket on the bottom of the door meets a spring-fed pin on a fixed bar. Here. The bracket pushes the pin in until the panel’s all the way down and the pin snaps into a hole to lock it closed.”
“How is it released?” Rhyme asked.
“Push-button switch in a receptacle behind a locked cover on the side of the escalator. Here. Circuit runs to the servo motor here. It retracts the pin, releasing the access panel.”
“So,” Rhyme mused. “What could have caused it to pop? Ideas? Come on, think.”
Archer: “The latching bracket broke off.”
But an examination of Sachs’s pictures seemed to show that it was still attached to the bottom of the access panel.
“Maybe the pin snapped,” Rhyme said. “The de Havilland Comet. Nineteen fifties.”
Both Archer and Cooper looked his way.
He explained: “First commercial jetliner. Three of them exploded in midair because metal fatigue—a window failed at high altitude. Fatigue is one of the main mechanical failure modes. Other modes are buckling, corrosion, fouling, fracture, impact, stress, thermal shock, a few more. Fatigue occurs when a material—could be metal or anything else—is subject to cyclical loading.”
“The jetliner,” Archer offered. “Pressurization over and over.”
“That’s what happened. Right. In that case, there were square windows or doors where the stress was concentrated in the corners. The redesigned planes had round ports and windows. Less stress and fatigue. So the question here is, did the opening and closing of the access panel on the escalator lead to fatigue on the part of the latching pin?”
Cooper highlighted the latch. “No signs of wear on this one but it’s new. I wonder how old the original was, how many times the door had been opened and closed.”
Rhyme felt once more the frustration at not having the actual evidence before him.
He heard a sound of a jostled table as Juliette Archer maneuvered closer to him, again clumsily manipulating the chair’s controller with her right finger; handling a two-hundred-pound wheelchair deftly took considerable practice.
New to the game . . .
“The one that failed, in the mall, was six years old,” she said.
“How did you find that out?”
“Press releases from Midwest Conveyance, announcing they’d been awarded the contract for the escalators at the mall. Seven years ago. Construction occurred the next year. According to maintenance recommendations, the unit is inspected and lubricated five times a year. Allowing for breakdowns and unplanned repairs, I’d say the door was opened and closed fifty times.”
Rhyme looked at Cooper’s picture of the pin holding the triangular bracket that kept the panel shut. It was only about an inch long but thick. It seemed unlikely that the pin would fatigue with that limited number of openings.
Archer added, “And one of the maintenance steps is to examine the pin for excessive wear. Presumably for fatigue too.”
“What’s it made of? Steel?”
Archer said, “That’s right. All the parts are steel, except for a few housings that had nothing to do with the accidents. And the exterior pieces. They’re aluminum and carbon fiber.”
She certainly had attacked the manual and specification sheet quickly.
Rhyme said, “Even if it was in good shape, the latch might have come loose and the pin might not have fully reseated itself. Vibrations could have worked it loose.”
Maybe . . . Lot of speculation in this case.
“Who made the locking mechanism?”
Without looking at the documents she’d loaded onto her screen she said, “The manufacturer. Midwest Conveyance. Wasn’t a separate company.”
Rhyme said, “Possibly metal fatigue and maintenance issues. What else might’ve caused it to open?”
“Could somebody,” Archer asked, “have hit the switch accidentally or as a prank?”
Cooper called up some pictures. “Here’s the switch. It’s on the outside of the unit, on the bottom, near the emergency cutoff.” He pointed. “But it’s behind a small locked door.”
“Was it open or closed in the mall itself?” Archer asked.
Rhyme said, “Amelia looked over the CCTV of the mall, trying to find out where her perp had gone. She said nobody was near the access switch when the panel opened.”
Archer’s face screwed up with an ironic frown. “And that video?”
“The Department of Investigations impounded it.”
She cocked her head as her eyes slipped to Cooper. “We’re civilians but you’re NYPD, right?”
“I’m not here,” he said quickly.
“You’re—”
“I’m unofficial. On vacation. If I were to get official investigative material now I’ll be sent on permanent vacation.”
Scanning the photographs. “What else could be the culprit?” Rhyme mused.
“Let’s say no one pushed the button intentionally. Maybe a short circuit or other electrical problem activated the switch. It tripped the motor—it’s called a servo—and that retracted the pin and popped the door.”
“Let’s look at the wiring.”
Mel expanded the pictures he’d taken inside the escalator. Rhyme noted that a wire ran along the interior wall from the push-button switch on the outside. The switch wire ended in a plug inserted in one of the outlets on the side of the servo unit inside.
“The connections’re exposed,” Cooper said.
“They are indeed,” Rhyme said. He gave a brief smile.
An instant later Archer too grinned. “I get it. A bit of metal or foil or something conductive might’ve drifted onto the plug and completed the connection. The servo pulled the pin back and the door popped up.” She added, “I couldn’t find any similar incidents involving this model escalator. Escalators can be dangerous. But usually it’s getting clothes or shoes caught in the mechanism. That happens more than you’d think. A hundred and thirty-seven people died last year in escalator accidents around the world. The worst single disaster was an explosion in the London Underground. Dust and particles accumulated and then caught fire and blew up. Like a grain elevator explosion. Have you ever seen those?”
“They don’t happen in New York very often,” Rhyme said absently, mulling over what she’d told him.
“I have,” offered Mel Cooper. “Seen one.”
Rhyme grimaced at the irrelevance. “And the defect is—”
“That Midwest Conveyance didn’t shield the plugs,” Archer said. “Would have been easy. Recess them, put them under a covering. Something like that.”
Cooper offered, “Or they shouldn’t use plugs at all. Hardwire the switch and the servo motor. Maybe the manufacturer wanted to save money.”
The first hint there might have been punitive-level behavior on the part of the manufacturer.
“Who—?”
Archer answered his question before he finished it. “Just like the locking mechanism. Both the servo motor and the switch were made by Midwest Conveyance. Their component parts unit. And a division. Not a subsidiary. They can’t hide behind the corporate veil.”
Cooper said, “I thought you were an epidemiologist.”
“Boston Legal. Believe me. It’s really very good. I also like Better Call Saul.”
Cooper said, “L.A. Law too.”
“Oh, it’s good.”
Please . . .
Rhyme was puzzling out how foreign substances could have tricked the servo motor into opening the door.
“I have an idea,” Archer said.
“What’s that?”
“You’re a scientist. You like empirical evidence.”
“The highest deity in my pantheon,” Rhyme said, not much caring how pretentious it sounded.
She nodded toward the escalator. “Does it work?”
“The drive motor, gears, servo motor and switch do. And it’s plugged in.”
“So let’s experiment. Turn it on and try to get the panel to open.”
Rhyme had a thought. He turned toward the kitchen and shouted, “Thom! Thom! I need a drink.”
The aide appeared in the doorway. “A little too early, as I recently pointed out.”
“Too early for a Coke?”
“You never drink soda. There isn’t any in the house.”
“But if I recall, there’s a deli right around the corner.”
The hardware stores—there were two of them within hoofing distance of the White Castle—had been a bust.
