The Steel Kiss

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—?”