John Sandford - Shock Wave

Virgil went in and lay on the couch, his feet up on one arm. Lot of stuff going on. Had to think about it. After five minutes, he hadn’t thought of anything, so he called Davenport and told him what was going on. Davenport summarized it: “So you cleaned up the town, but you don’t have the bomber.”

“Not yet.”

“Well, let me know when you do. I gotta go.”

“Why’d he try to kill me? That’s what I want to know. If he’d killed me, he would have gotten a whole storm of cops in here.”

“Maybe he was making a point of some kind, about resistance,” Davenport said. “Or maybe he wanted a whole storm of cops in there.”

NO HELP THERE.

He was still on the couch when the governor called. “Hey, Virgil, I talked to State Farm, and you’re good to go. You haul the boat to the State Farm place up there, and they’ll resell what they can-scrap, I guess-and you get a check for the boat and motor and a thousand in personal property.”

“Ah, jeez, Governor. Thanks, I guess. There’s nothing criminal in this, is there?”

“Criminal? This is the least criminal thing I’ve done this week,” the governor said. “The second-least-criminal thing I’ve done is, I talked to an old buddy up at East Coast Marine in Stillwater. He’s got a Ranger, there, a beauty, used, but not hard, owned by some rich guy who went out about once a year… Anyway, your check exactly matches the asking price, including sales tax. You gotta go look at it.”

“A Ranger?” Virgil’s mouth started to water. “Jeez, Governor, I don’t know-”

“Hey, don’t worry about it,” the governor said. “Everything’s totally on the up-and-up. Well, as much on the up-and-up as these things get. Anyway, I gotta go violate somebody’s civil rights. Talk to you later. It’s Andy at East Coast Marine. He’s making out the papers right now.”

“Well… thanks,” he said, but he was thinking, Holy shit, a Ranger. He had the urge to drop the entire bomb case and get the hell over to Stillwater before Andy died…

“So Davenport said you’d been out to Michigan, to the Pinnacle. I didn’t hear about that. What’s going on there?”

Virgil explained the problem of planting the bomb, and his thoughts, and the governor said, “Any way he could climb it? Or come down? Parachute, maybe?”

Virgil thought back to the conversation he’d had with the guys at the Pye Pinnacle and said, “Someone would’ve seen a plane, or heard it at least. I thought maybe a helicopter, but you couldn’t land one there without someone noticing. A hang glider, maybe, but the Pinnacle’s the tallest thing out there. There’d be nowhere to launch it from.”

The governor rang off, and Virgil closed his eyes and leaned back on the couch. The word “glider” floated through his mind, and he thought, Hey, wait a minute. Did somebody say something about Peck flying a glider? The guy at Butternut Tech. Huh. Could you land a glider on top of a building?

He didn’t know anyone else who could answer that question, so he called Peck.

“Hey, George-could you land a glider on top of a building?”

After a moment of silence, Peck said, “A glider? Somebody told you I used to fly gliders?”

“Yeah, somebody did, but I’ll be damned if I can remember who. So, could you?”

“Well, not me, personally, because I’d be too chicken. But I guess if you had a big enough roof, without any obstructions, you could.”

“How big a roof?”

“Maybe… three hundred yards at the absolute minimum. But that would be scary as hell, even with perfect wind and good visibility. The problem is, you’d have to come in high enough to make sure you got on the roof-you don’t want to crash into the side of the building. Then you’d have to stop before you got to the far parapet, because if you didn’t, and hit it, you’d either get squashed like an eggshell hitting a wall, or if the parapet was low enough, it’d trip the glider and you’d go right over the edge and drop like a stone. Or both.”

“You had me at three hundred yards,” Virgil said. “The roof of the Pye Pinnacle is probably fifty yards across. Maybe less. It’s got all kinds of pipes and chimneys and air-conditioning ducts up there.”

“No way you’re gonna land a glider on that. That’s just not going to work.”

And Virgil thought, Hey, wait a minute. What’d Davenport just say? Maybe the bomber wanted a whole storm of cops to come in? Why would he want that?

Virgil closed his eyes and thought about it, and came up with exactly one answer: the bomber wanted a bigger, wider investigation. Why would he want that? Because a bigger, wider investigation would probably get into the question of whether the city council was bribed, and if it had been, then… PyeMart was gone.

So maybe there was a good reason to try to kill him-nothing personal, not anger or revenge or because Virgil was a threat, but an effort to get as many cops as possible into town.

The guy might be nuts, but there was a logic buried in his craziness.

So why did he go after Pye first? Why weren’t there any warnings? Maybe because he was worried about heightened security around Pye, if he set the first one off in Butternut. So he went after Pye first-after the whole board of directors, but had failed. If he’d succeeded, what would he have done then?

Issued a warning, perhaps: quit building the PyeMart, or else.

But then, if the company didn’t do it, what would he do next?

Virgil thought about it, and decided that there wouldn’t have been a warning: he would have continued on to Butternut, and would have blown up the trailer even if he had been successful with the Pinnacle bomb.

The first bomb was an announcement of his seriousness; the second bomb was the beginning of the actual campaign.

The third bomb, at the equipment yard, would slow down the construction process, and make it more expensive.

The fourth one, another attack on Pye… keeping the pressure on.

Then the attack on Virgil, maybe to bring more pressure into town.

And finally, the bomb at Erikson’s.

He considered the list, and after a moment, focused on the bombing of the equipment yard. That one wasn’t quite right: he took a big risk, to do nothing more than slow down the process. In fact, he wouldn’t even slow down the construction or opening of the store-he’d just slow down the water and sewer connection by a couple of months. If done on schedule, the connection would have been made three or four months before the store was finished. Now, it’d only be two months.

So why would that have been important to him? Important enough to make a couple of dozen bombs, or however many it was?

Then, there was the bomb at Erikson’s. If he was fully rational, he had a reason for picking Erikson as the fall guy. He wasn’t just chosen at random. Why Erikson?

Hethought about Kline, the pharmacist he’d visited on his second day in town. He knew everything and everybody…

Virgil rolled off the couch and went out to his car and drove downtown. Ed Kline, said the girl behind the pharmacy cash register, was on break.

“Up on the roof?”

“You know about the roof? Let me call him.”

She took out her cell phone, made the call, mentioned Virgil’s name, then rang off and said, “Go on up. You know the way?”

“I do.”

Kline was sitting in a recliner, looking out at the lake, his feet up on a round metal lawn table, blowing smoke at the sky.

“You find him?” he asked Virgil.

“No. But I can refine the list. The bomber, I think, is working through some kind of logic. I think it most likely has to do with money. There also has to be a link with Henry Erikson, but I can’t see what it would be. And I think he’s probably on my list.”