John Sandford - Shock Wave

“Better’n pulling out a body,” Gretchen said. She climbed the bank, dripping river water, straining against the weight of her equipment, and handed the camera to Virgil.

They all drove back to the scuba shop, where the divers took turns taking showers and rinsing down their equipment, including the camera and the console. When they were done, they walked down the street to Mitchell’s, a bar, carrying the recorder and camera. Virgil ordered beer, and when it came, called Barlow.

“Hey, I got that camera and the recorder from the first trailer,” he said.

“You got what?”

“The camera and recorder from that first trailer, the one that was blown up.”

After a moment of silence, Barlow asked, “Where’d you get them?”

Barlow got there in ten minutes, ordered a Coke, looked at the still-damp electronic gear. Virgil explained it all, and the grinning divers chipped in their bit, about finding the stuff in the murk-Frank had first found the recorder, and then a minute later, Gretchen found the camera-and finally Barlow asked Virgil, “How in the hell did you ever think of that?”

“I was just thinking about this guy stumbling around out there in the dark, carrying all this crap, and whatever tools he had to break into the trailer, and I thought, Why would he take them home? Why not just get rid of it? Where would he get rid of it? He was walking right by this river, and he was apparently familiar with the area, with these deep pools…”

Barlow shook his head. “Dumb luck, that’s what it was.”

“Ever notice how dumb luck seems to follow smart people around?” Retrief asked.

“Where you’re gonna need the luck is, the recorder,” Gretchen said. “It’s been underwater for days.”

“It’s a hard drive, and most of them are sealed units,” Virgil said. “I think we’re eighty percent for recovering the images. I’m more worried that he bashed it around than about the water. If he physically screwed up the disk, it’ll be harder to get at the pictures.” He looked at the case on the table. “It looks okay. He didn’t hit it with a hammer or anything.”

“How long before we know?” Barlow asked.

“I’ll get it back to St. Paul today,” Virgil said. “They’ll pull the unit, and take a look. If it’s not broken, we’ll have images this afternoon. Or tonight.”

“That’s something,” Barlow said. “That really is.”

“What happened with Sarah Erikson?” Virgil asked Barlow.

“She’s back,” Barlow said. “She’s pretty messed up, says her husband would never do anything like that. Wouldn’t know a bomb from his elbow, is what she says. She says she’ll come down and talk to us this afternoon. I’ll call you.”

“I gotta go talk to the paper,” Frank said. “We oughta get a picture. I think they fired their only real photographer.”

Gretchen demurred: “I don’t think I want this bomb guy to know I was involved. I live alone.”

Frank said, “Mmmm… you could move in with me.”

“No, I couldn’t,” she said. She looked at Virgil and lowered her eyelids.

Retrief said, “Fuck ’im, if he can’t take a joke. You gonna be in the picture, Frank?”

“I guess.”

“Then it’s you, me, and Virgie,” Retrief said.

“I hope you know what you’re doing,” Barlow said to Virgil.

“I want him to know; I want him to feel me coming,” Virgil said. “I want to shake him up. At the moment, I got nothing else.”

Virgil, Frank, and Retrief posed with the recovered camera and recorder, and Gretchen pushed the button on Frank’s cell phone and when he saw the photo, Frank said, “That’s a thousand dollars in advertising, right here.”

“Really? That calls for another round,” Retrief said to him. “You’re buyin’.”

Virgil took the recorder and camera back to the county courthouse and put them in a box, and Ahlquist dispatched a deputy to take them to the BCA labs in St. Paul. “Man-oh-man, this could be the break we needed. If his face is on that video, we got him.”

“Keep your fingers crossed,” Virgil said. “Where do I go to see Sarah Erikson?”

“She’s coming in here. So’s Barlow. We figured we’d kill all the birds with one stone.”

“We’re birds?”

“You know what I mean.”

“Bad metaphor, Earl,” said Virgil.

“Tough titty. Go investigate your list.”

“Which Erikson isn’t on,” Virgil said.

“Unfortunately,” Ahlquist said.

Virgil pushed himself out of his chair. “I better get investigating.”

“Somebody’s got to do it,” Ahlquist said. “Nice job on that camera, Virgil.”

A few more letters had come back with lists of possible bombers. Virgil spent a half hour going through them, but nothing much had changed. Then Good Thunder called:

“We flipped Pat Shepard, and your guy from the BCA is here with the recording equipment. We’re going to send Shepard to see Burt Block right away: we’re starting to pile up people who know about this, and we need to move. We’d like you to come and help brief Shepard.” Block was the second of the three city councilmen bribed by PyeMart through Geraldine Gore.

“When do you want me?” Virgil asked.

“How fast can you get here?”

The county attorney’s office was upstairs. Virgil looked at his watch: “About twenty-two seconds, if I take the stairs.”

“We’ll leave the light on for you,” Good Thunder said.

Pat Shepard was a middle-sized guy, tanned from the summer golf course, with a tight haircut; and he was pathetic and about the only person in the room who didn’t feel sorry for him was the county attorney, a beefy man named Theodore Wills, who introduced himself as “Theodore.” Wills was openly ecstatic about Shepard’s confession, and scornful of the man himself.

Shepard, who’d been arrested, sat in his chair and wept, and Virgil had to look away. Good Thunder kept passing Shepard paper towels from a roll, which he pressed against his eyes. Shepard’s public defender kept saying, “C’mon, Pat, it’s gonna work out.”

A BCA technician, who’d brought the sound equipment, sat in a corner and read a new copy of Sail magazine.

“Wife gone, job gone, gonna lose everything. My life is over,” Shepard said.

“Can’t do the time, don’t do the crime,” Wills said, and Good Thunder’s eyes touched Virgil’s with a slight disgusted roll.

Bill Check, the public defender, said, “Jesus, Theodore, you wanna take it easy? You’re getting everything you wanted.”

But, Virgil thought, as he watched Shepard, Wills was essentially correct. The guy had been entrusted to take care of the town, the best he could, and he’d sold his vote on a critical issue. His confession had been taken down by a court reporter, and had been signed and sealed. For his cooperation in bagging the rest of the gang, he’d get no jail time.

Wills said to Check, “No, I’m not getting everything I wanted. I wanted the sucker in jail for at least a year and Good Thunder talked me out of it. He’s the last one that’s getting a break like that. Everybody else goes down.”

Virgil leaned across to Shepard and said, “You’ve got to pull yourself together. You need to tighten up. If you can’t do this, if you blow this meeting with Burt Block, then the agreement won’t hold, and you will do time.”

“No, no,” said Check, the public defender. “There are no guarantees that this is gonna work…”

“But he has to make a good-faith effort, and if he goes in there fumbling around, and Block smells a rat, then the deal’s off,” Wills said.

Virgil reached over and patted Shepard on the shoulder. “Being upset is okay. If you show Block you’re upset, that’s fine, that’s what he’d expect. Upset’s okay, but you have to have your head under control. C’mon. Why don’t you and I take a walk and we’ll get you calmed down and talk about it.”