Shock Wave

  Ahlquist pointed at a deputy and told him to get some cops and start walking the field. Barlow walked over and looked in the hole, the former cellar. He shook his head. “Damn good thing we didn’t go down that basement. The thing must have been unstable—or maybe it was set to blow if anyone found it.”

  Virgil: “You think the bomb was in the basement?”

  Barlow nodded. “I know it was. If it had been upstairs, the floor would have been blown into the basement. But the explosion was below the floor, and everything went straight up. That’s why the basement’s so clean. The whole building, including the floor, went out.”

  He added, “You two were lucky. You were down below the shrapnel line and partly sheltered by that foundation. About nine thousand pounds of shrapnel blew right over your heads.”

  “And you think that was the whole stash of Pelex,” Ahlquist said.

  “Just about had to be, to do this kind of damage,” Barlow said. He looked around and shook his head. “I need to get pictures of this. This is something we don’t see very often.”

  THE COPS WERE WALKING the field, slowly, looking behind every cornstalk. Virgil got his Nikon and a short zoom, and walked around the blast zone, documenting the effects of the explosion at Barlow’s direction—and Barlow wanted three shots of everything, at slightly different exposures.

  They’d been at it for fifteen minutes when the cops found a piece of a human body, what looked like a hip joint. Virgil took a couple shots of it, and then, a minute later, the ragged remains of a foot.

  “No question now,” Shrake said, his face grim.

  “Never was a question,” O’Hara said. She’d been tagging Virgil and Barlow around the field. “He walked through that door and it was about a count of one . . . two . . . and boom. He didn’t have time to walk halfway through the house.”

  VIRGIL WAS TIRED of taking photos of body parts, but there wasn’t anyone else to do it, and for what it might somehow be worth, he kept at it, as more and more body parts were found. Wyatt’s head was eventually found, only seventy feet from the house, under a piece of the roof. There were no features remaining: nothing but a bloody skull.

  Virgil thought, F8 and be there, and took the shot.

  “Must’ve gone straight up,” Jenkins said. “Like a baseball.”

  “Another cop said like a basketball,” Virgil said. He turned away from the mess, sick at heart. “Doesn’t look like any kind of sport, at all.”

  A PATROL CAR ARRIVED, in a two-car set with a civilian car, a Toyota Corolla, and a woman got out of the Corolla and looked up the hill.

  Ahlquist said, “Mrs. Wyatt. It’s Jennifer, I think. I better get down there to meet her.” He turned to a deputy: “I want tarps or something over all the body remains. There’s nothing for her to identify, and I don’t want her to see the scraps.” When the deputy seemed to hesitate, Ahlquist snapped, “Get going! Get going!”

  Barlow came up and said, “We’ll have to do DNA. Just to make sure.”

  O’Hara was getting testy: “I told you: he didn’t have time to get out.”

  Barlow shook his head. “Time is strange, after something like that. You think it was two seconds, but you were almost killed. Things speed up under those conditions. If it were ten seconds—”

  “Then where did the body come from?” O’Hara demanded.

  “That’s something we’d have to determine,” Barlow said. O’Hara said, “Oh, bullshit,” and Barlow put up his hands. “I think it’s ninetynine percent you’re right. But, we check.”

  Virgil walked around with his camera, shaking his head, and O’Hara asked, “Are you all right?”

  “No,” he said.

  AHLQUIST AND JENNIFER WYATT WALKED around the house, talking, and Wyatt began to cry, and Ahlquist put an arm around her shoulders. Virgil watched. Barlow came up and said, “Her house and his apartment are both crime scenes. I’m talking to my ADA to make sure we don’t need search warrants, and if we do, to get them. We’re going down and taking her house apart.”

  “I’ll come along, too,” O’Hara said.

  “Ah, you can go on home,” Virgil said. “Get cleaned up. You’re sorta a mess.”

  “Nope. I’m going,” she said. “Either I ride with you or I’ll ride with somebody else.”

  “Better go with somebody else,” he said. She stalked off and Virgil looked at the weeping Mrs. Wyatt, and told Shrake and Jenkins, “You guys hang tight. I gotta get out of here and get something to eat.”

  “To eat,” Shrake said, doubtfully.

  “Yeah. Food,” Virgil said.

  HE TOLD BARLOW that he was going, and that he would e-mail all the photos that evening; and he walked down to his truck.

  Bunson’s was almost empty. He got the French toast—it was still more or less morning—and told the waitress to keep bringing the Diet Cokes, and he sat and worked it through.

  One thing didn’t fit, and he couldn’t make it fit. He closed his eyes and took himself back to the Pye Pinnacle visit. Thought about all the explanations, about the dead and wounded, about the boardroom explosion, about the ludicrous sight of the birthday pies smeared all over the ceiling....

  He thought about how Pye had a “sanctum sanctorum” where he worked out his problems, and where not even the cleaning lady was welcome. Not that the cleaning lady would have been there, early on a Monday morning.

  So here was a question: Why didn’t the bomber, coming down from above, put the bomb in Pye’s office? If he’d used some kind of mousetrap trigger, and stuck the bomb in the desk leg hole, he would have gotten Pye. Why would he do something so uncertain as to stick the bomb in the credenza? In the credenza, any number of things could have led to its discovery.

  He thought about it, and thought about it, and eventually came up with an answer, in the best tradition of Sherlock Holmes. Once you’ve eliminated all the other possibilities, whatever was left had to be the answer.

  What was left was simple enough, Virgil thought. It should, he thought, have been apparent to anyone with half a brain.

  Even with half a brain, Virgil thought he was probably correct.

  He made a phone call to St. Paul, to Sandy, the researcher, told her what he wanted, and asked her to make some phone calls.

  HE FINISHED THE FRENCH TOAST, and the waitress came over, a young girl with dark hair and big black eyes, and smiled at him and said, “You’re Virgil Flowers.’ ”

  “Yes.”

  “Your two friends said I should ask you why you’re called ‘that fuckin’ Flowers.’”

  “They said you should ask because they’re assholes,” Virgil said.

  She was taken aback, a stricken look on her face, and Virgil touched her arm as she turned away and said, “Wait, look . . . I’m sorry. I was up at that bomb this morning, and I’m still a little shook up. That’s why I’m sitting here stuffing my face.”

  She put her hand to her face and said, “Oh, jeez . . .” and, “You’ve got stuff all in your hair, is that from . . .”

  “Yeah, it is. And really, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to sound like a jerk,” he said. “They call me that because . . . well, because I’m so good with women.”

  Now she ventured a tiny smile, and said, “That’s what I thought,” and she left him.

  VIRGIL GOT AN ADDRESS for Wyatt’s house from the sheriff’s dispatcher, went that way, and found Barlow’s truck outside, and a couple sheriff’s cars. Barlow was inside, with O’Hara and two other deputies. He’d found some bow-hunting equipment and some camo, and showed it to Virgil.

  “Not Realtree,” Virgil said.

  “But he had some, and he could have had some more, someplace else.”

  “Could have, but probably didn’t,” Virgil said.

  “How do you know that?” O’Hara asked.

  “Because he wasn’t the bomber. He was murdered.”

  Barlow said, “Aw, man, don’t start this shit again. First Erikson, now Wyatt . . .”

  “Erikson led
to Wyatt,” Virgil said. “The bomber led us down the garden path. He wanted us to look hard at the first setup, so we’d buy the second one.”

  O’Hara was curious. “You know who it is?”

  “Yeah, but I need another piece of the puzzle. I should get it this afternoon. I want you both to get down on your hands and knees, praying that the call comes through.”

  “Well, who is it?”

  “I don’t want to slander anyone,” Virgil said. “Wait until the call comes through.”

  THEY ALL GOT PISSED at him, so he slouched out to his truck, drove out to the PyeMart site, intending to do some fishing. When he got there, he found Pye looking at the footings; Chapman was looking over his shoulder.

  Pye saw him getting out of the truck and said, “Well, you fucked me. And, I still gotta kiss your ass, for nailing down this Wyatt guy.”

  “Wyatt’s not the guy,” Virgil said.

  Pye took a step back. “So, you fucked me, and then you fucked me again?”

  “I didn’t think you used that kind of language, Willard,” Virgil said.

  “I don’t, unless somebody really fucks me,” Pye said.

  “I’ll get the guy this afternoon. Or maybe tomorrow, depending.”

  “Depending on what?”

  “I’ll let you know about that,” Virgil said. “In the meantime, keep your mouth shut about this. I only told you, because he tried to kill you.”

  Pye bobbed his head, and Chapman nodded.

  Virgil said, “So, you’re pulling the store out?”

  “Sounds like it. I been all over Ahlquist, and what he says is, three city councilmen and the mayor have been suspended, and under state law, the governor is going to appoint replacements until there can be an election. The first order of bidness is gonna be to reverse the zoning changes on grounds that the former council was bribed. I don’t believe it, I still gotta talk to my boy.”

  “Tell you what, Willard: just between you and I and Marie’s potential two million readers, you bribed their asses. You know it, I know it, and Marie’s two million readers know it. There’s gonna be a trial, and it’s all gonna come rolling out.”

  “Well, there will be if there’s a trial—but who knows what might happen, between now and then?” Pye said, showing the slightest crinkle of a smile. “Anyway, it’s time for me to get the crap outa town.”

  “You’re not gonna stay for the ass-kissing ceremony?”

  Pye looked at his watch, then asked, “When you gonna get him again?”

  “Today or tomorrow. Tomorrow at the latest.”

  “And you won’t tell me who it is?”

  “Not yet,” Virgil said.

  “Can you tell me how you knocked it down?” Pye asked.

  “Two things. You almost had a birthday party, and I was in the right place at the right time. I’ll tell you the rest of it tomorrow.”

  VIRGIL WAS GETTING his fly rod out of the truck when he took a phone call from Sandy the researcher. “You were right,” she said. “We’ve got a receipt, but they’ve got no video.”

  “Goddamnit. I don’t suppose he signed his own name,” Virgil said.

  Sandy said, “Not unless his real name is Mick E. Maus.”

  25

  VIRGIL PUT THE FLY ROD away and called Ahlquist from his truck, and said, “I’m coming over. I can tell you who the bomber is, but we have to talk about how to catch him. Probably ought to have Good Thunder there, if you can get her. Somebody from the county attorney’s office, anyway. Anybody you think should know. I’ll call Barlow, get him in, and my two guys from the BCA.”

  “Fifteen minutes?” Ahlquist asked.

  “Yeah, that’s good. I’ll see you there.”

  He called Jenkins and told him to bring Shrake, and Barlow. “I got my call. I think I can tell you how it happened, and who did it.”

  VIRGIL PULLED INTO THE PARKING LOT outside the county courthouse, left his car in a slot near the door. Shrake and Jenkins went by in Shrake’s Cadillac, Jenkins lifting a hand to Virgil, and found a spot farther down the lot. Preoccupied with his thoughts about the bomber, Virgil didn’t see Geraldine Gore come through the courthouse door until she shouted at him, “You dirty sonofabitch.”

  She was accompanied by a man in a gray suit, white shirt, and pink tie; he might as well have had an ID patch on his back that said, “Lawyer.” He said, “Geraldine, Geraldine,” and tried to catch her arm, but she twisted away and came steaming toward Virgil. She was carrying a big leather purse and Virgil had the feeling that she was going to swing it at his head.

  She did. He stepped outside the swing, and said, “Take it easy, Mayor, for Christ’s sakes.”

  She said, “You motherfucker,” and came back in, angrier and angrier, swung again and missed. Shrake and Jenkins came up and Shrake said, “I bet she takes him.”

  Jenkins said, “You’re on for five. That fuckin’ Flowers has got the reach on her and twenty pounds. Okay, three pounds.”

  Her attorney was on her by then, shouting, “Geraldine, Geraldine, stop it, stop it!” He wrestled her away, then turned to Virgil and said, “I hope you’re not offended.”

  Jenkins jumped in: “Offended? You mean, because she committed aggravated assault, assault on an officer of the law, extortion of a witness, obstruction of justice? And those are just the felonies.”

  Gore screamed, “Shut up, you asshole.”

  Virgil said, “I forgot you guys had been introduced.”

  Shrake said, “Oh yeah, the three of us go way back.”

  The attorney: “Agent Flowers . . .”

  Virgil said, “Just don’t let her shoot me, when I turn my back, okay? I’m going inside.”

  “So we’re okay?” the lawyer asked.

  “Yeah, except now I need an aspirin,” Virgil said.

  Gore shouted, “You’re gonna need more than an aspirin, you shit, you shit, you shithead, you peckerhead, you . . .”

  The lawyer hauled her away, sputtering and screaming.

  Shrake watched them go, then said to Virgil, “You find the most interesting crooks.”

  “You got an aspirin?”

  THEY GATHERED IN A COURTROOM, Virgil, Ahlquist, Barlow, Good Thunder, Shrake, Jenkins, O’Hara, and a tall fat deputy that Virgil didn’t know, but who turned out to be the chief deputy, and whose name was Jeneret.

  “So who is it?” Ahlquist asked. They were sitting in the court pews, with Virgil on a chair in front of them.

  Virgil held up a finger. “We thought, when we started, that we could figure out who did it if we could only figure out how he got the bomb in the Pye Pinnacle. If it was an accomplice, finding the name would give us a human tie. If he placed it himself, he had to have some special skill.”

  “Like flying in with a motorized paraglider,” Barlow said.

  “Exactly,” said Virgil. “A brilliant way to get in there. There was only one big problem with it.”

  Ahlquist: “What was that?”

  “That we’d figure it out sooner or later, and it’d take us straight to the bomber. And we would figure it out. We looked right at a clue at Erikson’s house: a garage with a pipe, Pelex, and some detonators, plus, it had a broken propeller hanging right there on the wall. A propeller from a motorized paraglider, right in front of our eyes. That, all by itself, would hang it on Erikson, except for one thing—the real bomber couldn’t know where Erikson was the day before the Pye Pinnacle bombing. And he couldn’t ask, because then somebody would wonder why he asked. But, it would point us at the idea of a motorized paraglider. Shrake, here, mentioned the paragliders to me, and I jumped in my truck and hauled ass out to the soaring center. One minute later, we had Erikson, and one minute after that, Wyatt.”

  “What about Wyatt’s motive? All that money?” Barlow asked.

  “Great motive, the best motive of all,” Virgil said. “And hard to see. But, once we had Wyatt’s name, we’d go scouting around, and we’d findthe motive. Just a matter of time. See, the thing is, we w
ere supposed to see that Erikson was a setup. Because that would take us to Wyatt, and nobody would believe that there were two setups.”

  “So who is it?” Ahlquist asked again.

  Virgil held up his finger again. “So we’ve got means and motive. A paraglider, and land that would be worth a fortune, if PyeMart went away. Wyatt was known to be something of an asshole and something of an adrenaline junkie, somebody who could fly a glider onto the Pinnacle. I bought it. I did. But then, we searched his house, and we searched the old farmhouse out at the farm, and we found nothing at all. Nothing.

  “So we send John Haden to Wyatt, with a tip that we were looking at him, hoping he’d move. We followed him around the clock, and the day after John tipped him off, Wyatt goes out to the old farmhouse, and . . . boom.

  “I can tell you several things about that boom,” Virgil continued. “First, the bomber had no idea that Jim and I had been inside the farmhouse. Second, Wyatt went in there empty-handed. Third, the bomb was in the basement—Jim says it was, anyway.”

  “It was,” Barlow said. “Easy to read, if you know what you’re looking for.”

  “I believe you,” Virgil said. “And Wyatt had no time to get to the basement. O’Hara knows it, and I know it. He wasn’t in there more than two or three seconds, tops, when the place blew. And there were no basement steps. Getting down in that hole would have been tricky. Also, when we went in the house, I lay down on that floor and looked down the basement, and there were all kinds of spiderwebs down there. Nobody had been in the basement for a long time.

  “What I think is, the bomber went down there, rigged his bomb, and then set some kind of trap that blew when you stepped on a board, or hit a trigger string, or something. There’s an item here: Wyatt’s head was found right in the backyard, under a piece of the roof. So, it went almost straight up. He was standing on top of the bomb when it blew.”