John Sandford - Shock Wave

She was hesitant: “He’s gotta keep his mouth shut.”

“He can do that,” Virgil said. “We’ve worked together in the past, and he’s good at that, when he needs to be.”

Virgil followed her toward the courthouse, but swung into a McDonald’s drive-through for a shot of calories, talked to Davenport about the Shepards, while he waited for the food, then went on to the courthouse. Ahlquist had just left, going home for dinner. Virgil got one of the deputies to call him, and Ahlquist said he’d come back.

When he arrived, Virgil was finishing his cheeseburger while looking at the hundred and seven letters that they’d already gotten back from the survey group. Twenty-two had declined to participate, for reasons ranging from a lack of time to concerns about civil rights, leaving eighty-five lists of names. More were arriving every few minutes. They’d asked for ten names, and had gotten back as few as four, on a few lists, to as many as twenty-one on the longest list. Most were ten.

Virgil had opened his laptop, set up an Excel spreadsheet, and started entering names. In the first five letters, he’d had three duplicates, a Lyle McLachlan.

Ahlquist came in, looked over his shoulder, stole a couple of Virgil’s french fries.

“McLachlan isn’t smart enough to pull this off,” he said. “He’s crazy enough, and violent enough, but he’s not the guy.”

“Bummer.”

“So what’s up?” Ahlquist asked. He took a couple more fries.

“These rumors about the city council being bribed,” Virgil said. “Uh, they’re true.”

“You say that like a cop,” Ahlquist said.

“Yeah.”

“Ah, shit.” Ahlquist dropped in a chair. “How bad?”

“We got at least one, Pat Shepard. He’s gone, unless Good Thunder decides to flip him.”

“Ah, man. He teaches civics up at the high school. How to be a good citizen.”

“Yeah, well… I got Good Thunder to agree that I could tell you about this, on the basis that you not mention it to a single person,” Virgil said. “We don’t want Pye shoveling dirt on it, we don’t want people hiding cash in coffee cans out in the woods. When we move on it, we want it all raw.”

“I can keep my mouth shut,” Ahlquist said.

“That’s what I told her,” Virgil said. “I just thought you oughta know, so you don’t wind up standing too close to Pye.”

“I appreciate that, Virgil. You’re a good egg,” Ahlquist said. “So how’d you bag him? Shepard?”

Virgil filled him in on the details-the affairs, the probable divorce, the money, and the immunity agreement with Jeanne Shepard.

“Ah, Jesus. I dread all of this, what’s going to happen,” Ahlquist said, when Virgil finished. “We’ll be busting old friends. Or acquaintances, anyway.”

“It won’t be pretty,” Virgil said. “If you want, I can talk to my boss, bring in a BCA crew. Keep you out of it.”

“That’d make it look like you guys thought I couldn’t handle it,” Ahlquist said. “Or maybe was involved.”

“You can handle it, Earl, but the question is, do you want to?” Virgil asked.

“I gotta think.”

Virgil said, “We could fix it for you to make the announcement, along with the county attorney. You could say something like, ‘I’ve recused myself and the sheriff ’s department to avoid any appearance of a conflict of interest.’ ”

He bobbed his head: “That might be the way to go. Once you say I can talk, I’ll tell Mary Alice about it, ask her what she thinks. She’s my brain trust.” Mary Alice was his wife.

“We’ll probably move in the next day or two, so you gotta decide what you’re gonna do, and pretty fast. You think Mary Alice can keep her mouth shut?”

“When she needs to,” Ahlquist said.

“Then talk to her,” Virgil said. “Let me know tomorrow morning what you’re gonna do.”

“I’ll tell you tonight,” Ahlquist said. “I want to see your final list, so I’ll be back anyway.”

Virgil went back to work on the list, pushing hard. Lyle McLachlan, he thought, must be an enormous asshole, because he was on about every other list. George Peck was on one list. Virgil checked the number of the letter that nominated Peck, against the secret numbered list, and found that Peck had nominated himself.

Interesting.

The desk officer came in and handed him more letters. He put them in the pile, and went back to sorting names.

Time went by. He was fifteen minutes from finishing when he glanced at his watch and realized he didn’t have fifteen minutes: it was time to get back to LaRouche’s office.

He went out past the front desk, and found he had sixteen more letters. “Hang onto these, will you?” he asked the desk officer. “I’ll be back in a couple hours to finish up.”

When he got to Larouche’s, the office window was dark, and the door locked, but Good Thunder’s Camaro was parked outside. He knocked, and pushed a doorbell, and a minute later, a clerk-like woman came to the door and asked, “Are you Agent Flowers?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

She let him in, said, “I’m Coral Schmidt, I’m the reporter,” and he followed her down a hall past LaRouche’s office, to a conference room, where LaRouche and Good Thunder were chatting, while Shepard sat next to LaRouche, listening and toying with her purse. Schmidt sat down next to a black steno machine and, as Virgil took a chair, nodded to Good Thunder and said, “Anytime.”

Good Thunder dictated some time and date stuff to the reporter, the identities and offices of those present, then she and LaRouche agreed that they would abide by the terms of an agreement reached earlier that day, with copies to everyone, etc. With the bureaucratic bullshit out of the way, they started.

Good Thunder said to Shepard, “Mrs. Shepard, you’ve asserted that your husband, Patrick Shepard, a member of the Butternut Falls City Council, received a bribe of twenty-five thousand dollars to change his vote on a zoning application from PyeMart Corporation, in regard to a PyeMart store to be built on Highway 12 West in Butternut Falls. When did you become aware of the offer from PyeMart?”

Shepard unrolled the story: the first contact with a PyeMart expediter named John Dunn, a series of discussions between Dunn and other members of the council. The discussions had the effect of softening up the council members, she said, and when an offer came to “help” Shepard with some credit card and income tax debt, it was not unexpected.

The offer, she said, had not come directly from Dunn, but from Mayor Geraldine Gore, who had also delivered the money. Pat Shepard, she said, had come home and told her excitedly that their problems were over: they might even have enough left to buy a home theater system.

“Did he buy one of those?” Good Thunder asked.

Shepard bit her lip, looked away: “No. I have reason to believe that he’d begun a relationship with another woman, Carol Anne Moore, who works for the county clerk, and that he spent a good deal of money on her.”

Virgil: “Was this a serious relationship? Was this a fling, or did you consider your marriage endangered or over?”

“The marriage was over. I was just picking a time to leave,” she said. “I don’t know how serious the relationship was. Is. I don’t know if it’s still going on; I assume it is. Why would it make any difference?”

Virgil asked, “I wonder if he would confide in Miz Moore.”

She shook her head: “I don’t know.”

Good Thunder: “In regards to your own personal life, I would suggest that you act with discretion. If it comes to a jury trial, it will be… less difficult.”

“You mean, ‘Don’t fuck anyone new’?” Then, with a quick glance at the stenographer, “Oh my God, I’m sorry I said that, I just…”