John Sandford - Shock Wave

“You think?”

“I’d bet you a thousand American dollars,” Peck said. He finished putting the last fly in a fly case, put it in another pocket.

“You got a thousand dollars?” Virgil asked.

“I do.”

Virgil said, “I like the concept, but it’d be pretty unorthodox. My boss would have a hernia.”

Peck said, “Because he’s stuck in the past.” He nodded to Virgil and said, “Don’t fall in,” and went on his way, back upstream.

Virgil went downstream, for a quarter mile, then back up, ambling along the bank, looking for anything, not finding much. The riverbanks saw quite a bit of foot traffic, Virgil thought, judging from the beaten-down brush. He got back to the spot where he’d met Peck, and continued upstream after him, but never saw him again.

Fifty yards above the place where they’d talked, he saw another trail cutting into the brush toward the PyeMart, and he followed it. Toward the end of it, fifteen yards from the edge of the raw earth of the construction zone, he found a nest beaten down in the weeds-a spot were somebody, or something, had spent some time. It could have been a deer bed, he thought, although it might be a little short for that, and he’d seen none of the liver-colored deer poop he would have expected around a bedding area.

On the other hand, even if it wasn’t a deer bed, there wasn’t anything about it that would point toward a particular human being. He walked along the edge of the construction line, back to the point where he’d first stepped into the brush, but saw nothing else that looked like a bed, or a nest.

If somebody were still watching the PyeMart, would he be coming back? Might it be worthwhile to ask the sheriff to have a deputy camp out here for a while? Get a sleeping bag and a book or two, and simply lie back in the weeds and see who came along?

He’d think about that.

He’d also think about market research; and about the man who suggested profiling. Wouldn’t market research just be a mass profiling? Didn’t the FBI believe in profiling, even if the ATF didn’t?

In the meantime, he had people to interview.

Ernie Stanton was working in his office behind Ernie’s Oil #1-the office was one of the modest, prefab brick-and-corrugated-metal buildings that could be thrown up in a couple of weeks, and that dotted the back streets of small working towns. His secretary, with a plaque that said “Office Manager,” sat next to the door, a delicate, slightly fleshy prairie flower with honey-blond hair and pink cheeks. Stanton, a squarish man with deep lines cutting his wind-burned face on either side of his prominent nose, sat at a desk in the back. Virgil introduced himself and Stanton said, “I wondered when you’d be around, me being the town radical and all.”

He smiled, but there was nothing funny or happy about his face, which was getting redder by the second.

Virgil said, “Well, you said it. I mean, everybody I talk to says, ‘Ernie Stanton.’ They say that not only do you want to stop PyeMart, any way you can, but you’ve got the brains and the background to do it.”

“You mean I’m a shitkicker,” Stanton said.

“Hell, I’m a shitkicker,” Virgil said. He dropped in a chair in front of Stanton’s desk. “But I don’t go around blowing people up with pipe bombs.”

“Neither do I,” Stanton said. “Though, if somebody’s got to get blown up, Pye would be a good place to start. That damn store is going to tear this town up. Hell, it already has. Everybody knows that Pye bought the city council and the mayor. They’ll be leaving town right after the next election.”

“So you didn’t blow anybody up, and you don’t know who’s doing it?”

“If I knew, I’d tell the cops,” Stanton said. He hesitated, then added, “Maybe.”

“Maybe?”

“Pye’s killing me. I won’t even be able to sell my businesses when he gets through. Probably won’t even be able to sell the buildings-what’d you use them for? Art studios? If he got killed and they pulled the plug on this store, it’d be like I got a reprieve from the death penalty.”

Virgil looked at him for a moment, and from behind him, the secretary said, “I second everything Ernie just said.”

“Where were you last night?” Virgil asked.

“At home. Ate dinner down at Bunson’s with my wife and my youngest kid, got home about seven, watched a ball game until about nine o’clock or so. Put the kids to bed, watched TV with my wife until eleven, went to bed. Of course, that alibi’s no good, because it’s only my wife and kids, and this whole deal will drag them down, just as much as me.”

“You been out of town in the last month?”

“No, sir. I been here every day,” Stanton said.

“And you’ve got people who aren’t in your family… aren’t your secretary… who’ll say that?”

“Well, hell, I don’t know,” Stanton said. “Probably. I use my credit card for most everything I buy, and I usually buy something every day. Groceries, or something. But, how’d I know I’d have to prove I was here every day? If I’d known that, I could have set something up.”

“Good answer,” Virgil said.

He saw Stanton relax just a notch, his shoulders folding back and down into his office chair. From behind Virgil, the secretary said, “I also have a calendar which gives you his appointments every day. Like he went to the dentist twice last week.”

Virgil swiveled around and said, “Don’t throw it away.”

Going back to Stanton, he asked, “You know about the car bombing this morning?”

Stanton nodded. “Yeah, I went out and looked at it. It’s still sitting there. Didn’t hear the boom, but my wife was down at County Market, shopping, and she heard it, and saw it, and called me.”

Virgil said, “The bomb was probably triggered when the limo went over a bump or something. Something that jarred the car. About a minute before it went off, the driver went past a bunch of elementary school kids on a field trip. If it had gone off next to them, you’d be missing a few kids.”

Stanton leaned forward and said, “That’s why I wouldn’t be a bomber. If I was going to kill Pye, I’d figure out a way to shoot the sonofabitch. But a bomb… this bomb in Michigan, killed that gal, the secretary. Why would you take a chance of doing that? Then our first bomb, he killed the construction super. That won’t stop the store-they’ll just get another supervisor. I mean, what the guy is doing is nuts.”

“But shooting him with a gun wouldn’t be?”

“Be a hell of a lot less nuts,” Stanton said. “Wouldn’t it?”

“I wouldn’t make that kind of judgment,” Virgil said.

“You would if you were a real shitkicker, and not some phoniedup city cowboy in crocodile boots and a Rolling Stones tongue shirt.”

“Listen-”

“Come on, admit it,” Stanton said. “You got a guy like Pye, wrecking a town, and you might not like him getting shot, but it’s a hell of a lot less nuts than taking a chance of blowing up some schoolkids. Isn’t it?”

“Well…”

“C’mon, say it,” Stanton said.

“All right. It’s less nuts,” Virgil said. “I still don’t hardly approve of it.”

“Neither do I,” Stanton said. “That’s one reason I didn’t do it. Shoot him, I mean.”

Stanton said he’d thought about the bomber, but the more he thought, the more bewildered he became. “I know guys around town who could do it, but they wouldn’t. I mean, they’ve got the skills. Hell, I could probably do it. Me and my friends, we sit around talking about it-we’re asking each other, who’s nuts enough? We really don’t know anybody like that.”

With that, Virgil left.

As he was going out the door, the prairie flower said, “If you see that cocksucker Pye, tell him I hope he roasts in hell.”