Shock Wave

  “I got O’Hara organizing that,” Ahlquist said. “She and her crew are talking to everybody for a couple blocks around.”

  “What about the letters?”

  “We’re delivering them right now. We should be done by noon.”

  BEFORE HE WENT to the sheriff ’s office, he walked around the block and found O’Hara.

  She jogged up, smiling, squeezed him on the upper arm, and said, “Man, you got bigger balls than anybody I ever heard of.”

  “Huh?”

  She stepped back and said, “I heard all about it. Your boat got blown up right behind you, and you got knocked out of your truck, and then, then, you went out and got breakfast. That is cold, dude.”

  Virgil said, “That’s not exactly . . . hmmm . . . Anybody see anything?”

  She shook her head. “Nobody saw nuthin’. The thing is, this guy is very smart, and he’s careful. I’m really interested to see who it’s going to be.”

  “If you find out, call me,” Virgil said.

  VIRGIL LEFT HER and drove to the sheriff ’s department, and looked at a Xerox copy of the note sent to the newspaper. It was couched in a faintly ridiculous faux-lefty cant:

  The bombing campaign against PyeMart, Willard T. Pye, city officials who support the PyeMart’s oppressive action against our people, and state and federal Gestapo agents will continue until PyeMart steps back from its current plans and the Butternut City Council withdraws permits to build the PyeMart store.

  To ensure this gets done, we demand:

  -A public statement from Willard T. Pye that store construction will be abandoned.

  -Destruction of the footings already laid for the store.

  -Reversal of the zoning changes made to allow the store to be built.

  -Elimination of the sewer and water lines to the store site.

  -Resignation of those members of the city council who voted to allow the changes.

  -Resignation of Mayor Geraldine Gore.

  - Withdrawal of federal and state Gestapo agents investigating the case on behalf of PyeMart.

  Until this is done, we will continue to deliver our bombs to those who support PyeMart. To prove that this note is legitimate, we will reveal that another attack will take place today, and another boot will be removed from our necks.

  “I’M SAYING THAT ‘another boot will be removed from our necks’ hooks up with ‘Gestapo agents.’ He didn’t want to say that you specifically were going to be attacked, in case you hadn’t been by the time the note got here,” Ahlquist said. “But the hint is strong enough, after the fact, for us to know what he was talking about.”

  “I see that,” Virgil said. “I’d say you’re right. That’s clever—a clever guy. Do we know where it was mailed from?”

  “Here in town. It went through the post office, but there are lots of places where it could have been dropped.”

  “Fingerprints . . . ?”

  “We sent the original letter and envelope down to St. Paul, to your lab, to see if they can get anything off it. It looked pretty clean, just eyeballing it. No watermark on the paper, or anything—it looked like standard copy paper.”

  THE NOTE WAS INTERESTING, in a way, helping to build a better mental image of the bomber, but there wasn’t much real information in it. The scariest thing, Virgil thought, was that the guy was picking targets and turning out the bombs so quickly. He told Ahlquist, “If I were you, I’d have a serious talk with the city council people, and tell them they’re at risk. I told Gore, but she didn’t want to hear it.”

  “All right. Are you just waiting for your letters to come back?”

  “I got another thing I’m working on,” Virgil said. “I’m going to spend a little time with that. I’ll see you again this evening. I want to get going on those letters as soon as we start getting them back.”

  “Already got two,” Ahlquist said. “I’m looking at the names, and I’m thinking, Yeah, this might work. Some people I didn’t think of, but you see their name, and you think, You know . . . that might be right.”

  “All right. Maybe it’ll be something,” Virgil said. Then, “Do you know a woman named Marilyn Oaks?”

  “Marilyn Oaks . . . that seems . . . Just a minute.” He stuck his head out in the hall and called, “Hey, Helen? Could you step in here?”

  A clerk came in, an older woman with silvery hair: “Yes?”

  “Marilyn Oaks. I’m thinking, the country club. Like the . . . dining lady, the caterer . . .”

  Helen bobbed her head at her boss: “That’s right. Thin woman. Dark hair.”

  “Got her,” Ahlquist said. “Thanks, Helen.” When Helen was gone, he said to Virgil, “Now you know everything I know about her.”

  “Is she hot?”

  Ahlquist’s eyes narrowed, then he said, “Nooo . . . I guess I wouldn’t call her hot, exactly. She does have a look about her. Like, you know, she’d fuck back at you. Is that sexist?”

  “No, I don’t think so, but I’m not totally up on my feminist theory.”

  FIVE MINUTES LATER, after getting directions from Ahlquist, Virgil was on his way to Doug Mackey’s house, the schoolteacher who’d phoned the tip to Thor, the desk clerk. Mackey wasn’t home, but a neighbor said, “He’s probably out at Cottonwood. He’s the pro there, in the summers.”

  Cottonwood was a privately owned public golf course five minutes south of town. After inquiring in the pro shop, Virgil found Mackey by himself, on the driving range, working on a half-swing pitch out to a fifty-yard can.

  He turned to Virgil with a golf pro’s inquiring smile, which faded when Virgil introduced himself and said, “I need to talk to you about how you know that Pat Shepard took twenty-five thousand dollars from Pye—and how you know he’s nailing Marilyn Oaks.”

  Mackey’s mouth dropped open: “You were . . . Did you . . . Was there a tap on my phone?”

  “No, nothing like that. But you know how word gets around, especially in a small town,” Virgil said.

  “What?”

  “You know how word gets around,” Virgil repeated. “Anyway, we do know, and lying to me is a crime, called obstruction of justice, but knowing what you know isn’t a crime, so it’d be best if you just told me the truth. If you tell the truth, you don’t get arrested, get to keep your job, and so on.”

  Mackey stared at him for a second, did a baton twirl with his sand wedge, stuck it back in his bag, and then said, “I gotta have a beer.”

  THE CLUB HAD A PORCH overlooking the eighteenth green, and they got a Bud Light for Mackey and Virgil got a Diet Coke, and they sat down at the far end, away from a foursome that had just come off the course.

  “This is pretty awful,” Mackey said, after a couple of swallows. “They’re friends of mine. I feel like I’m betraying them.”

  “Things were going to get awful the minute you picked up that phone,” Virgil said. “The other way to look at it is that you’re an honest citizen, doing your duty.”

  “Doesn’t feel that way,” Mackey said. They sat looking at each other for a moment, then he asked, “Do they have to know that I’m the one who turned them in?”

  “I don’t know,” Virgil said, though he thought it would probably all come out, if the case ever got to court. “It depends what happens. I was talking to a psychologist about all of this, and explained that you were all teachers in the same school. He suggested that this might involve some personal relationship between you and Jeanne Shepard.”

  Mackey didn’t say anything, but took another hit on his beer. Virgil took one, and finally Mackey said, “Pat’s a golfer. Not very good, but he works at it. He asked me to give Jeanne some lessons, so they could play together.”

  “Something happened there?”

  Mackey shook his head. “Jeez. You know? It didn’t take long. A little kissy-squeezy stuff. Then one day she came out for a lesson, and we saw Pat teeing off with his regular foursome, knew he’d be gone for at least five hours. We dropped my car off at Walmart, and took her car
over to her place.”

  “Is she the one who told you about Pat taking the money?”

  “Yeah . . . I’m not sure why. I kind of think she wouldn’t mind if somebody spilled the beans and Pat went away,” Mackey said. “She could get a divorce, probably get the house. They’ve got a fifteenyear mortgage, almost paid off. Start over, maybe have another kid. She’d like to focus on her art.”

  “She a good painter?”

  “If you like sunsets,” Mackey said. “I never cared that much for them, myself.”

  “You think she’d talk to me?”

  Mackey said, “If you came onto her, like you came onto me—like you already knew about it, and like lying would get her in trouble, too . . . Yeah, she’d tell you about it. Things haven’t been good between her and Pat for quite a while.”

  “Does she know about Marilyn Oaks?” Virgil asked.

  “No. Pat told me about that. I think he might be lining her up as the next Mrs. Shepard.”

  His affair with Jeanne Shepard, Mackey said, had begun right after golf season started, the second week of April. It had been going hot and heavy through May, but in the last couple of weeks Jeanne Shepard seemed to be cooling off. Then, he said, he found out that “she’d blabbed to her friend Bernice, who’s got the biggest mouth in Butternut Falls. No way she was going to keep the secret, and we got in an argument over that.”

  Bernice, he said, had already outed one affair at the school, which had ended with resignations and divorces.

  “Huh. Sounds like you’ve got a little rats’ nest over at the high school.”

  “Nah. You know, it’s just pretty human,” Mackey said. “People getting to be middle-aged, and rearranging their lives. Pat and Jeanne have a ten-year-old daughter. Pat doesn’t care much for her, and I do, and we’d make a nice little family.”

  “Well . . . might still happen,” Virgil said.

  “I don’t think so, really,” Mackey said. “It all looks pretty bleak, with you figuring me out. I would never have made the call if it hadn’t seemed to be slipping away.”

  Jeanne Shepard, Mackey said, was at home. Pat Shepard, he said, was out on the golf course, “probably on number three. He and his friends aren’t fast, they’ll be out there for another three hours.”

  VIRGIL CALLED DAVENPORT, to tell him about the political break, but Davenport was out of touch. He called Ahlquist and said, “I need an honest prosecutor to come talk to a woman with me. Like right now.”

  “You got a break?”

  “Not on the bomber; something else. I need a prosecutor who can keep his mouth shut, and isn’t much interested in politics.”

  “I’d have to think about that for a couple days,” Ahlquist said.

  “C’mon, man—it’s something I don’t want to talk about yet. I could do it on my own, but it’d be better if I had a guy.”

  “Let me talk to Theodore Wills. He’s the county attorney. Get back to you in five.”

  MORE LIKE TEN. In the meantime, Virgil took a call from a blocked number.

  “Lucas told me about the bomb. You okay?”

  “I’m good,” Virgil said. “My boat is a smoking ruin.”

  “But you’ve got insurance.”

  “Yeah, with State Farm,” Virgil said. “I’m a little worried about that clause that says they won’t pay if there’s a war or civil insurrection.”

  “Who’s your agent?”

  “A woman named Mary Trail, down in Mankato,” Virgil said.

  “I’ll give her a call. Tell her I’m worried about it.”

  “I’m not sure that would be appropriate,” Virgil said, but he couldn’t keep the hope out of his voice.

  “Sure it is. I’m just a friend making an inquiry for you, since you’re busy with this investigation.”

  “Well . . .”

  “Relax, Virgil,” said the governor of Minnesota. “It’s just fine. You take care of yourself, hear? I mean, goddamnit, you’re my thirdmost-favorite troublemaker.”

  “ I GOT YOU A PROSECUTOR, ” Ahlquist said, when he called back. “We’re all curious about what you’ve got going.”

  “I’ll tell you this evening,” Virgil said. “What’s the guy’s name, and where do I find him?”

  “Her name is Shirley Good Thunder, and she’s at the courthouse. Let me give you her number.”

  GOOD THUNDER WAS A SIOUX—a Dakota, for sticklers—a good-looking, dark-eyed woman about Virgil’s age, with long legs and a large briefcase. When she climbed into the truck, she asked, “Are you okay? I mean, after the bomb.”

  “Yeah, I’m fine,” Virgil said. He was a little tired of the question; it wasn’t like he was bleeding from the ears. “Are you any relation to Larry Good Thunder, from Marshall? I played basketball with him.”

  “Probably, somehow, like a great-uncle-fifth-cousin or something,” she said. “Quite a few Good Thunders running around.”

  “Terrific ball player, but he didn’t shoot enough,” Virgil said. “He was too good not to put it up more often.”

  “Tell me more about basketball,” she said. “I find it almost as fascinating as soil management.” But she said it with a smile.

  “I’m happy to hear you’re interested in soil management, ’cause we’re out to dig up some dirt,” Virgil said.

  THE SHEPARDS LIVED all the way across town, on a wide, well-treed peninsula that stuck out into the lake. On the way over, Virgil told her about the tip from the kid at the Holiday Inn, and about his conversation with Mackey. When he finished, she said, “All right. I’m now officially nervous.”

  “About what?”

  “Oh. Let me think,” she said, putting an index finger at the corner of her mouth and cocking her head. “Okay, uh, how about, if you’re right, we’re about to set Butternut Falls on fire, and I have to live here, and my boss is the most political guy in the county.”

  “One good thing about it,” Virgil said.

  “What’s that?”

  “I live in Mankato,” Virgil said. “I won’t have to listen to it.”

  That didn’t make her laugh. Instead, she got busy with her briefcase, pulled out a yellow pad, and said: “All right: give me the names, and tell me the story again. I gotta say, I hate the idea of people taking money under the table. Especially when a whole bunch of people are going to get hurt by it.”

  “That’s my attitude,” Virgil said. “Though, I feel kind of sleazy, getting it this way.”

  “I feel a whole bunch sleazy, and we’re not even at the Shepards’ place yet.”

  WHEN THEY GOT to the Shepards’ place, a minivan was sitting in the driveway, with the side doors open. A young blond girl was pulling out a bag of groceries, and Virgil said, “Damnit. That’s their kid, I think. I hate to hit her with the kid around.”

  “Go on past,” Good Thunder said. She took her phone out of her pocket, asked Virgil if he had the Shepards’ phone number, and he said he didn’t. She pushed a single button on the phone, then said into it, “This is Shirley. I need a phone number for a Mrs. Pat Shepard, a Jeanne Shepard, on Bayview.”

  She got the number, punched it into her phone, got an answer, identified herself, asked if she was speaking to Mrs. Shepard, got a “yes,” and said, “We have to talk to you about a legal matter. We just went by and saw your daughter in the driveway. We’d prefer to talk to you alone—we don’t want to upset your child.”

  After a minute of back-and-forth, in which Good Thunder refused to say why they wanted to talk, she listened, and then said, “That would be best. We’ll see you in ten minutes.”

  She hung up and said, “She can leave the kid with a sister, but has to take her over there. Her sister lives south of the highway, less than a mile. She said she’ll be back in five minutes.”

  “Good enough,” Virgil said. They sat at the end of the block and watched Shepard, in sunglasses, a short-sleeved shirt and slacks, usher her daughter into the van and take off. She was too far away for Virgil to tell for sure, but he thought T
hor, the desk clerk, might have been right: she did look fairly hot.

  “What? Did you say something?” Good Thunder asked.

  “I said, it’s gonna be hot out.”

  She laughed. “Oh, jeez. I thought you were looking at her ass, and said, ‘hot.’”

  “Hey, c’mon,” Virgil said.

  SHE WAS GONE not five minutes, but twenty, and Virgil and Good Thunder were getting a little itchy before she showed up. They were still sitting down the block, and after Shepard had parked, and had gone inside, Virgil started the truck and pulled into the driveway behind the minivan.

  The front door was open, and they could hear Shepard inside. Virgil rang the doorbell and Shepard called, “Come in.” They went in, and found her dragging a second suitcase into the living room. The first one lay open on the couch.

  Virgil asked, “Are you, uh . . .”

  “Going over to my sister’s,” Shepard said. She was a tall, busty blonde with a narrow waist and a slender, foxy face, with downslanting eyebrows. No makeup; she didn’t need any, with a face as smooth as a peach, and gray-green eyes. She said, “I need to get out of here before Pat gets back.”

  Virgil introduced Good Thunder, and then himself, and asked, “You know why we’re here?”

  “I think so. I’m going to need a lawyer before I talk to you,” Shepard said.

  “That might not be a bad idea,” Good Thunder said. “I would want to get that going as quickly as possible. If you don’t have a lawyer of your own, I can recommend one, and I can get you a public defender if you can’t afford one—”