Shock Wave (26 page)

They had seven more hits among the twenty names they checked, fewer than Virgil expected, given that all those named were, in the mind of some sober citizen, capable of multiple murder.

Ahlquist came by and looked at the list, and the hits, and said, “The problem I see with most of the hits is that they involve guys right at the bottom of things—they've hardly got a stake in the town, so why would they do something as weird as attack a PyeMart? If anything, these guys would want to take revenge on the town, not defend it.”

Of the two people with direct ties to Butternut Tech, one came back clean, the other had a drunk driving conviction. The first one had served in the army, and Virgil called a BCA researcher and asked her to get in touch with the army and see if he'd had any training in explosives.

They were still looking for returns when Davenport called and said, “Your press conference made all the news shows. You looked pretty straight, with that black-on-black coat and shirt.”

“Pain in the ass,” Virgil said.

“I've got a bet for you—and I'll take either side,” Davenport said. “Do you think only one, or both, of the major papers will use the phrase ‘witch hunt' in an editorial tomorrow?”

“Both,” Virgil said.

“Damnit, I was hoping you'd pick ‘one.' ”

“I can't help it, Lucas. I'm doing the best I can,” Virgil said.

“I know it, but everybody's watching now. It'd be best if you wrapped this up in the next couple of days.”

“Did Ruffe call the governor and ask him about the Constitution?”

“Everybody called the governor,” Davenport said. “I think this is what us liberals call ‘a teaching moment.' ”

 

 

GOOD THUNDER CALLED:
“I took down Pat Shepard this morning, early, because he had a summer school class. He freaked. He cried. You know what? This isn't going to be any fun.”

“It never is, when you go after people who think of themselves as honest, upright citizens,” Virgil said. “Because down in their heart, they feel the guilt.”

“And because he's going to lose both his wife and his job.”

“Yeah, it
is
brutal,” Virgil said.

“I'm waiting for you to do the ‘Don't do the crime if you can't do the time.' ”

“Be a long wait,” Virgil said. “Will he flip?”

“Yeah, I think so. He wasn't as enthusiastic about it as his wife suggested he'd be,” Good Thunder said. “In fact, I'm a little worried. I don't want to find him at the end of a rope, or with his head in the oven.”

“Where is he?” Virgil asked.

“Last time I saw him, he was with his lawyer. I've told him that he'll be arrested, but I haven't arrested him yet. I've laid out the deal. They're talking, and if he's not crazy, he'll go for it. We're going to need the wire, and the monitoring gear.”

“I'll talk to Davenport,” Virgil said.

“Boy, that survey thing . . . the shit really hit the fan, huh? Pardon my French.”

VIRGIL AND GOOD THUNDER
were talking about who they'd go after first, if Shepard cooperated, to see if they could triangulate on the mayor, when Ahlquist ran in the door and blurted, “We've got another one, another bomb.”

Virgil said into the phone, “Shirley, I gotta go. Earl says we've got another bomb.”

“Talk to you later,” she said. “Be careful.”

 

 

AHLQUIST WAS IN A HURRY.
“Follow me out of the lot. You got lights?”

“Yeah.”

They trotted out of the courthouse and into the parking lot, and Virgil saw a TV truck moving fast. The TV already knew. “Okay, stick close, we're going west and south,” Ahlquist said.

“What's the deal?”

“Something different—could even be a break,” Ahlquist said. “The bomb blew in a guy's garage. Henry Erikson. Big trout guy, one of the loudmouths. Not a bad guy, but pretty hard-core. Car salesman out at the Chevy dealer.”

“I'll follow you,” Virgil said, and jogged to the truck.

 

 

THEY GOT ACROSS TOWN
in a hurry, but never did catch the TV truck, which, when they arrived, was already unloading behind a couple of wooden barricades that said “Butternut Public Works.” Ahlquist didn't slow much for the barricades, just put two wheels of his truck up on the curb and went around, and Virgil did the same. The Erikson house was a long half-block down from the barricades, where three deputies, including O'Hara, were standing in the yard talking, and looking into a wrecked garage, with a twisted SUV sitting inside. Two fire trucks were parked in the street, but there was no fire.

A scent of explosive and shattered pine and drywall lingered in the air, as Virgil climbed out of the truck. He and Ahlquist headed across the lawn.

O'Hara said, as they came up, “We got a situation here. Henry was hurt bad. He could die. It looks like the bomb was under his car seat, and blew when he sat down.”

“No fire?”

“No fire, the scene is still pretty much intact,” O'Hara said.

Ahlquist: “When was this?”

“Fifteen minutes ago,” O'Hara said, looking at her watch. “The first guys were mostly interested in getting Henry out of here, getting the ambulance, but one of them . . .” She turned, looking for the right deputy, spotted him and yelled, “Hey, Jim. Jimmy. Come over here.”

The deputy was a young, fleshy guy wearing mirrored sunglasses, with a white sidewall haircut, and he hurried over.

O'Hara said, “Tell them what you saw in there.”

The deputy said, “Erikson was a mess, he was lying on the ground by the wall over there. We did what we could, got the ambulance going. Don't think he's going to make it, though, looked like both legs are gone, looked like his balls . . . looked like stuff blew up into his stomach. . . .”

“Anyway,” O'Hara said, prompting him.

“Anyway, when he was gone, I was looking around the mess in there, and noticed over there by his workbench, it's all blown up, but there's a pipe over there. It looks like the pipes that were used in the bombs.”

Ahlquist: “You mean . . . from the bomb? Or another pipe?”

“It looks like an unused pipe from these bombs. I saw the piece of pipe that the feds had, and it looks like the same pipe.”

“Let's see it,” Virgil said, and, as they stepped toward the wrecked garage, “Did you touch it?”

“Absolutely not. We knew you'd want prints or DNA. As soon as I saw it, I cleared everybody away.”

Virgil nodded. “You did good.”

 

 

THE DEPUTY TOOK THEM
into the garage, close to the front fender of the wrecked truck, and pointed out the pipe: it was lying against one wall of a cabinet, where the cabinet intersected with a workbench. A trashed table saw was overturned on the other side of the bench, along with a toolbox and a bunch of tools. The place smelled of blood—a lot of blood, a nasty, cutting odor, like sticking your head in the beef case at a butcher shop.

The pipe looked right.

The deputy said, “We're trying to find his wife, but a neighbor said she's in the Cities, buying some fabric. She's a decorator. We haven't been able to get in touch.”

Ahlquist said, “Speaking of the feds, here they are.”

 

 

BARLOW WAS HURRYING UP
the driveway, O'Hara at his elbow. Inside the garage, Virgil pointed, wordlessly, and Barlow moved up to the pipe, peering at it, and then into it, and said, “There's something in there. I think we might have another bomb. Better get everybody out of here until we can have a tech look at it.”

Virgil asked, “Is this the guy?”

“I'd be willing to bet that the pipe is right,” Barlow said, as they backed away. “This kind of thing happens, too, especially with new guys. They don't really know what they're doing. They screw something up, and
boom.
”

O'Hara stepped away to take a cell phone call, and Barlow said, “The guy's got a lot of tools.”

Virgil nodded. The garage was double-deep, three cars wide. The back half had been set up as a workshop, with storage cabinets in the corner and a long stretch of Peg-Board on the back wall. There were a half-dozen old Snap-on tool calendars on one wall—collector's items, now—photos of cars, an airplane propeller with one end broken off, a bunch of blocks of wood, most with oil on them, a half-dozen cases of empty beer bottles along one wall.

The back wall was taken up with mechanics and woodworking tools, the side wall with garden implements. Most of the tools still hung on the Peg-Board, though some had been knocked to the floor.

“The question is,” Barlow said, “with this kind of setup, why'd he go to the college to cut that pipe? He could have cut it all right here.”

“Good question,” Virgil said. “But Jesus, talk about looking a gift horse in the mouth.”

“I hate gift horses,” Barlow said. “Half the time, they wind up biting you on the ass.”

 

 

O'HARA CAME BACK:
“Erikson died. Never even got him on the operating table.”

“Ah, man,” Virgil said.

Then Barlow said, “Hey . . .” He stepped down the length of the garage and pointed to the floor. He was pointing at a thin silver cylinder a couple of inches long, with two wires coming out the bottom—it looked like a stick man with thin legs. “We got a blasting cap.”

“Okay,” Virgil said.

They looked at it for a moment and Barlow half-tiptoed around the rest of the garage, looking at the debris, and under it, and then Virgil asked, “How many bombers are married?”

“I don't know,” Barlow said. “Some of them. Most of them, not—that's what I think, but I don't know for sure.”

“I always had the idea that they were like crazy loners, working in their basements.”

“Not always.”

“I really don't like this,” Virgil said. “The guy's been so smart, and then he blows himself up?”

“You hardly ever meet any longtime bombers who aren't missing a few chunks, a couple fingers,” Barlow said. “They fool around with the explosive. Sometimes they blow themselves up.”

“With Pelex?”

“Not so much with Pelex,” Barlow admitted. “Pelex is really pretty safe, you don't even have to be especially careful with it. But if you'd already rigged it as a bomb, with a sensitive switch . . .”

One of the ATF techs came up carrying a tool chest, and Barlow pointed him at the pipe. “Take a look in there with your flashlight. Don't touch it. But is it a bomb? Is it wired?”

The tech took a heavy LED flash from his box and stepped over to the pipe, bent over it, and shone the flash down the interior. Then he stepped away: “Better get Tim over here, with his gear.”

“It's a bomb?” Virgil asked.

“It looks like it's stuffed with Pelex. I don't see any wiring, but I can't see in the bottom end—it could be booby-trapped.”

 

 

BARLOW MOVED EVERYBODY AWAY
from the garage, then asked Virgil, “Is Erikson's name on your list? In your survey?”

“No, he's not,” Virgil said. “But I can't tell you what that means. Is he in your bomber database?”

“Give me two minutes on that,” he said.

“I'll get to the NCIC,” Virgil said. He walked to his truck, sat in the driver's seat, and called Davenport, told him what had happened. Davenport tracked down their researcher, who found Erikson's driver's license, and used the birth date to check his records with the National Crime Information Center.

Davenport came back and said, “She says he's clean.”

“Goddamnit. This complicates things,” Virgil said. “We've got two TV trucks here now, and they're going to start saying that we might have gotten the bomber. Maybe we did, but I don't believe it yet.”

“What about your survey?” Davenport asked. “You started pushing the list yet?”

“Not yet. I'll do that now.”

 

 

BARLOW CAME BACK.
“He's not in our database.”

“Nothing with the NCIC,” Virgil said.

Neighbors were starting to gather on the lawns adjacent to Erikson's house, and Virgil left Barlow and walked over to two women. “You guys friends with the Eriksons?”

“Is he really the bomber?” one woman asked.

“Well, a bomb went off, but we really don't know anything yet,” Virgil said.