John Sandford - Shock Wave

The pipe looked right.

The deputy said, “We’re trying to find his wife, but a neighbor said she’s in the Cities, buying some fabric. She’s a decorator. We haven’t been able to get in touch.”

Ahlquist said, “Speaking of the feds, here they are.”

Barlow was hurrying up the driveway, O’Hara at his elbow. Inside the garage, Virgil pointed, wordlessly, and Barlow moved up to the pipe, peering at it, and then into it, and said, “There’s something in there. I think we might have another bomb. Better get everybody out of here until we can have a tech look at it.”

Virgil asked, “Is this the guy?”

“I’d be willing to bet that the pipe is right,” Barlow said, as they backed away. “This kind of thing happens, too, especially with new guys. They don’t really know what they’re doing. They screw something up, and boom. ”

O’Hara stepped away to take a cell phone call, and Barlow said, “The guy’s got a lot of tools.”

Virgil nodded. The garage was double-deep, three cars wide. The back half had been set up as a workshop, with storage cabinets in the corner and a long stretch of Peg-Board on the back wall. There were a half-dozen old Snap-on tool calendars on one wall-collector’s items, now-photos of cars, an airplane propeller with one end broken off, a bunch of blocks of wood, most with oil on them, a half-dozen cases of empty beer bottles along one wall.

The back wall was taken up with mechanics and woodworking tools, the side wall with garden implements. Most of the tools still hung on the Peg-Board, though some had been knocked to the floor.

“The question is,” Barlow said, “with this kind of setup, why’d he go to the college to cut that pipe? He could have cut it all right here.”

“Good question,” Virgil said. “But Jesus, talk about looking a gift horse in the mouth.”

“I hate gift horses,” Barlow said. “Half the time, they wind up biting you on the ass.”

O’Hara came back: “Erikson died. Never even got him on the operating table.”

“Ah, man,” Virgil said.

Then Barlow said, “Hey…” He stepped down the length of the garage and pointed to the floor. He was pointing at a thin silver cylinder a couple of inches long, with two wires coming out the bottom-it looked like a stick man with thin legs. “We got a blasting cap.”

“Okay,” Virgil said.

They looked at it for a moment and Barlow half-tiptoed around the rest of the garage, looking at the debris, and under it, and then Virgil asked, “How many bombers are married?”

“I don’t know,” Barlow said. “Some of them. Most of them, not-that’s what I think, but I don’t know for sure.”

“I always had the idea that they were like crazy loners, working in their basements.”

“Not always.”

“I really don’t like this,” Virgil said. “The guy’s been so smart, and then he blows himself up?”

“You hardly ever meet any longtime bombers who aren’t missing a few chunks, a couple fingers,” Barlow said. “They fool around with the explosive. Sometimes they blow themselves up.”

“With Pelex?”

“Not so much with Pelex,” Barlow admitted. “Pelex is really pretty safe, you don’t even have to be especially careful with it. But if you’d already rigged it as a bomb, with a sensitive switch…”

One of the ATF techs came up carrying a tool chest, and Barlow pointed him at the pipe. “Take a look in there with your flashlight. Don’t touch it. But is it a bomb? Is it wired?”

The tech took a heavy LED flash from his box and stepped over to the pipe, bent over it, and shone the flash down the interior. Then he stepped away: “Better get Tim over here, with his gear.”

“It’s a bomb?” Virgil asked.

“It looks like it’s stuffed with Pelex. I don’t see any wiring, but I can’t see in the bottom end-it could be booby-trapped.”

Barlow moved everybody away from the garage, then asked Virgil, “Is Erikson’s name on your list? In your survey?”

“No, he’s not,” Virgil said. “But I can’t tell you what that means. Is he in your bomber database?”

“Give me two minutes on that,” he said.

“I’ll get to the NCIC,” Virgil said. He walked to his truck, sat in the driver’s seat, and called Davenport, told him what had happened. Davenport tracked down their researcher, who found Erikson’s driver’s license, and used the birth date to check his records with the National Crime Information Center.

Davenport came back and said, “She says he’s clean.”

“Goddamnit. This complicates things,” Virgil said. “We’ve got two TV trucks here now, and they’re going to start saying that we might have gotten the bomber. Maybe we did, but I don’t believe it yet.”

“What about your survey?” Davenport asked. “You started pushing the list yet?”

“Not yet. I’ll do that now.”

Barlow came back. “He’s not in our database.”

“Nothing with the NCIC,” Virgil said.

Neighbors were starting to gather on the lawns adjacent to Erikson’s house, and Virgil left Barlow and walked over to two women. “You guys friends with the Eriksons?”

“Is he really the bomber?” one woman asked.

“Well, a bomb went off, but we really don’t know anything yet,” Virgil said.

“Is he going to make it?” the second woman asked.

Virgil shook his head: “No.”

“Oh, God, poor Sarah,” the first woman said.

“That’s his wife?”

“Yes. No children, thank God. I can’t believe he’s the bomber.”

“Why not?” Virgil asked.

“Well, because… he’s a car salesman kind of guy, he’s always running around yelling and waving his arms, but he’s a nice man. I can’t believe he’d bomb people.”

“Not exactly a loner, like you hear about,” said the second one. “He was always talking to everybody, sort of bs-ing around the neighborhood. He’d fix lawn mowers-everybody’s lawn mowers. Bring him a broken lawn mower, he’d get it running like new.”

“Thanks.” Virgil shook his head and walked back to Barlow and the tech, who were standing behind the wrecked car, looking at the backseat. Virgil asked them, “Did you guys see any other bomb-making stuff in the garage? More pipe, switches, blasting caps…”

“Just the pipe and the blasting cap,” Barlow said.

The tech said, “But it’s the same kind of blasting cap that was stolen from the quarry.”

“Yeah? You’re sure?”

“I’m sure.”

They had a case, Virgil thought, as he watched the two ATF men prowl the perimeter of the explosion. Erikson apparently had the motive-the pollution of the trout stream-and he had the mechanical skills, judging from his garage workshop.

But it was all very pat. One bomb went off. One bomb remained in evidence, and one blasting cap. No more pipe, no more explosive, no more blasting caps. Just enough to hang him, without much diminishing the bomber’s stockpile of explosive… if the bomber was indeed somebody else.

One thing I can check, Virgil thought. He found Ahlquist and said, “Where’s the Chevy dealer?”

The Chevy dealer was five minutes away, on Highway 71: Virgil went that way, in a hurry, pulled into the lot and dumped the truck in a visitor’s space. Inside, he showed his ID to the receptionist and asked to see the manager: “Is this about Henry?” she asked.

“Yes it is.”

“Is he… all right?” She knew the answer to that: Virgil could see it in her eyes.

“No,” he said.

“Ah, jeez,” she said. “C’mon, let’s find Ron, he was calling the hospital.”

The manager saw them coming through the window in his office, hung up, looking at Virgil, said, “Are you with the police?”