John Sandford - Shock Wave

They went on for a while, and Virgil outlined what he thought about the bomber, and the TV people finally went away, apparently satisfied. Back in Ahlquist’s office, the sheriff said, “You see? She never stopped jiggling.” And, he added, “You’re goldarned near as good on TV as I am.”

Virgil got Ahlquist to assign him an assistant, Dick Pruess, and between them, they began running the list of names through the National Crime Information Center. Lyle McLachlan, the leading candidate in the survey, had thirty NCIC returns, varying from resisting arrest without violence at the bottom end, to felony theft and aggravated assault at the high end. He was thirty-eight, and had spent fourteen years in prison.

“Not him,” Pruess said. “Be nice if it was, but the guy can barely make a sandwich. He could never figure this out.”

They had seven more hits among the twenty names they checked, fewer than Virgil expected, given that all those named were, in the mind of some sober citizen, capable of multiple murder.

Ahlquist came by and looked at the list, and the hits, and said, “The problem I see with most of the hits is that they involve guys right at the bottom of things-they’ve hardly got a stake in the town, so why would they do something as weird as attack a PyeMart? If anything, these guys would want to take revenge on the town, not defend it.”

Of the two people with direct ties to Butternut Tech, one came back clean, the other had a drunk driving conviction. The first one had served in the army, and Virgil called a BCA researcher and asked her to get in touch with the army and see if he’d had any training in explosives.

They were still looking for returns when Davenport called and said, “Your press conference made all the news shows. You looked pretty straight, with that black-on-black coat and shirt.”

“Pain in the ass,” Virgil said.

“I’ve got a bet for you-and I’ll take either side,” Davenport said. “Do you think only one, or both, of the major papers will use the phrase ‘witch hunt’ in an editorial tomorrow?”

“Both,” Virgil said.

“Damnit, I was hoping you’d pick ‘one.’ ”

“I can’t help it, Lucas. I’m doing the best I can,” Virgil said.

“I know it, but everybody’s watching now. It’d be best if you wrapped this up in the next couple of days.”

“Did Ruffe call the governor and ask him about the Constitution?”

“Everybody called the governor,” Davenport said. “I think this is what us liberals call ‘a teaching moment.’ ”

Good Thunder called: “I took down Pat Shepard this morning, early, because he had a summer school class. He freaked. He cried. You know what? This isn’t going to be any fun.”

“It never is, when you go after people who think of themselves as honest, upright citizens,” Virgil said. “Because down in their heart, they feel the guilt.”

“And because he’s going to lose both his wife and his job.”

“Yeah, it is brutal,” Virgil said.

“I’m waiting for you to do the ‘Don’t do the crime if you can’t do the time.’ ”

“Be a long wait,” Virgil said. “Will he flip?”

“Yeah, I think so. He wasn’t as enthusiastic about it as his wife suggested he’d be,” Good Thunder said. “In fact, I’m a little worried. I don’t want to find him at the end of a rope, or with his head in the oven.”

“Where is he?” Virgil asked.

“Last time I saw him, he was with his lawyer. I’ve told him that he’ll be arrested, but I haven’t arrested him yet. I’ve laid out the deal. They’re talking, and if he’s not crazy, he’ll go for it. We’re going to need the wire, and the monitoring gear.”

“I’ll talk to Davenport,” Virgil said.

“Boy, that survey thing… the shit really hit the fan, huh? Pardon my French.”

Virgil and good thunder were talking about who they’d go after first, if Shepard cooperated, to see if they could triangulate on the mayor, when Ahlquist ran in the door and blurted, “We’ve got another one, another bomb.”

Virgil said into the phone, “Shirley, I gotta go. Earl says we’ve got another bomb.”

“Talk to you later,” she said. “Be careful.”

Ahlquist was in a hurry. “Follow me out of the lot. You got lights?”

“Yeah.”

They trotted out of the courthouse and into the parking lot, and Virgil saw a TV truck moving fast. The TV already knew. “Okay, stick close, we’re going west and south,” Ahlquist said.

“What’s the deal?”

“Something different-could even be a break,” Ahlquist said. “The bomb blew in a guy’s garage. Henry Erikson. Big trout guy, one of the loudmouths. Not a bad guy, but pretty hard-core. Car salesman out at the Chevy dealer.”

“I’ll follow you,” Virgil said, and jogged to the truck.

They got across town in a hurry, but never did catch the TV truck, which, when they arrived, was already unloading behind a couple of wooden barricades that said “Butternut Public Works.” Ahlquist didn’t slow much for the barricades, just put two wheels of his truck up on the curb and went around, and Virgil did the same. The Erikson house was a long half-block down from the barricades, where three deputies, including O’Hara, were standing in the yard talking, and looking into a wrecked garage, with a twisted SUV sitting inside. Two fire trucks were parked in the street, but there was no fire.

A scent of explosive and shattered pine and drywall lingered in the air, as Virgil climbed out of the truck. He and Ahlquist headed across the lawn.

O’Hara said, as they came up, “We got a situation here. Henry was hurt bad. He could die. It looks like the bomb was under his car seat, and blew when he sat down.”

“No fire?”

“No fire, the scene is still pretty much intact,” O’Hara said.

Ahlquist: “When was this?”

“Fifteen minutes ago,” O’Hara said, looking at her watch. “The first guys were mostly interested in getting Henry out of here, getting the ambulance, but one of them…” She turned, looking for the right deputy, spotted him and yelled, “Hey, Jim. Jimmy. Come over here.”

The deputy was a young, fleshy guy wearing mirrored sunglasses, with a white sidewall haircut, and he hurried over.

O’Hara said, “Tell them what you saw in there.”

The deputy said, “Erikson was a mess, he was lying on the ground by the wall over there. We did what we could, got the ambulance going. Don’t think he’s going to make it, though, looked like both legs are gone, looked like his balls… looked like stuff blew up into his stomach…”

“Anyway,” O’Hara said, prompting him.

“Anyway, when he was gone, I was looking around the mess in there, and noticed over there by his workbench, it’s all blown up, but there’s a pipe over there. It looks like the pipes that were used in the bombs.”

Ahlquist: “You mean… from the bomb? Or another pipe?”

“It looks like an unused pipe from these bombs. I saw the piece of pipe that the feds had, and it looks like the same pipe.”

“Let’s see it,” Virgil said, and, as they stepped toward the wrecked garage, “Did you touch it?”

“Absolutely not. We knew you’d want prints or DNA. As soon as I saw it, I cleared everybody away.”

Virgil nodded. “You did good.”

The Deputy took them into the garage, close to the front fender of the wrecked truck, and pointed out the pipe: it was lying against one wall of a cabinet, where the cabinet intersected with a workbench. A trashed table saw was overturned on the other side of the bench, along with a toolbox and a bunch of tools. The place smelled of blood-a lot of blood, a nasty, cutting odor, like sticking your head in the beef case at a butcher shop.