John Sandford - Shock Wave

“Lucas… thanks. I’m more pissed off than hurt. I’m so mad, I

… Now it’s personal.”

“Glad to hear it,” Davenport said. “Things move quicker that way.”

Virgil went back to the scene of destruction: because of the mess caused by fire suppression, preservation of the crime scene wasn’t as important as it otherwise might have been, and the boat and trailer had been towed out of the street and parked at the far end of the Holiday Inn lot, where one of the ATF crime-scene techs was working through it.

“The guy’s giving us a lot of business,” he said, when Virgil walked up.

“You find anything good?”

“Got one end of the pipe. It blew right through the front sidewall on that locker, and the wall of the next locker, but then the hull stopped it. Same pipe as before. The guy went into that college and cut it up, and he’s using it one piece at a time. If we can find him, we can hang him with the rest of it.”

“We’ll find him,” Virgil said.

“Sorry about your boat. I thought maybe you could salvage the engine, but some shrapnel went right through the cowling. The electronics are toast.”

“Wonderful.” Made him want to cry.

The boat was an older Alumacraft Classic single-console model with a fifty-horse Yamaha hung off the back; a decent boat, usable on big water only on calmer days, but fine for most smaller Minnesota lakes. Virgil had bought it used, with a state credit union loan, and had only just finished paying it off. He wasn’t sure, but if he remembered correctly his insurance policy had some kind of caveat about payment in case of “war or civil insurrection.”

Was a bomb the same as war?

He was still looking at the boat when he got a call from Ahlquist: “The paper got a crazy note, supposedly from the bomber. You need to come take a look at it. We’ve got it down at my office.”

“Are they sure it’s from the bomber?”

“Yeah. They’re sure. It mentions, I quote, ‘state Gestapo agents.’ The state Gestapo agents would be you,” Ahlquist said.

“I’ll be over,” Virgil said. “Listen, have you had anybody checking the motel and the other buildings around here for witnesses?”

“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.”