John Sandford - Shock Wave

“And…”

Virgil took the survey list out of his pocket. “So, I need you to look at my list and tell me who on the list would either make money, or save money, if PyeMart went down. I’ve already talked to a couple of the major possibilities, and sorta scratched them off. I really need an Erikson-money connection.”

Kline worked his way through the cigarette as he studied the list, and finally shook his head and handed it back to Virgil. “I don’t see it. I see the usual suspects, people who lose when PyeMart comes in. Nothing that involves Erikson.”

“Did Erikson ever serve on the city council? I mean, was he ever in a spot where he could have affected what happened with PyeMart?”

Again, Kline shook his head. “No. Never ran for anything, far as I know.”

“Sarah Erikson couldn’t point out any tight ties between Henry and anybody on the list.”

“I really didn’t know him well enough to suggest any connections,” Kline said.

They were sitting around, speculating, and Virgil took two calls, one after the other.

The first came from a BCA agent named Jenkins, who said, “Me’n Shrake are in town. We’re busting the mayor, and then some guy named Arnold.”

“God bless you,” Virgil said. “Are you staying at the AmericInn?”

“We are. See you for dinner?”

“If it’s not blown up.”

A moment later, he took another call, this one originating at the BCA office itself.

“Virgil? Gabriel Moss here. We loaded up your disk drives, and we got images.”

“How good?”

“The images are good enough, but you can’t see a face. He’s wearing a camo mask. We can tell you how tall he is, about what he weighs, and his shoe size, but there’s no face.”

“Can you send it to me?”

“Sure. I can e-mail it if you want. You’ll have it in five minutes.”

“And send me the numbers-height, weight, and all that.”

Virgil rang off and asked Kline, “Could you think about this? How many ways are there to squeeze money out of PyeMart? Out of the situation? There’s got to be something, and we’re just not seeing it.”

“I’ll think about it,” Kline said. “I think you’re probably right, but I suspect I’ll be awful damn surprised when you catch the guy. You might have to catch him before I can see where the money’d be coming from.”

Virgil hooked into the sheriff’s wi-fi and downloaded the video-clip file, watched it once-a murky series of black-andwhite images of a man in camo moving around the inside of the trailer.

A note with the file said that the man was six feet, three and one-half inches tall, in his boots, the brand of which was unknown, but had approximately a one-and-one-half-inch heel; that the boots were size eleven, D width, one of the most common sizes for men; that he probably weighed between one hundred and seventy-five and one hundred and eighty-five-that is, was slender to average weight, but not fat or husky-and that the camo was Realtree. The man wore a mask commonly worn by bow hunters.

Virgil found Ahlquist talking to a couple deputies, and ran the video for them to see if they could pick out anything else. Ahlquist shook his head and said, “It’s Realtree, all right, but hell, half the bow hunters in the state wear it.”

“Yeah, I got some myself,” Virgil said.

“So did Erikson, but Erikson was maybe five-eleven,” Virgil said. “I asked when I found out the lab guys had saved the video.”

“So it’s definitely not him.”

“I wouldn’t say definitely,” Virgil said. “The problem with labs, they come up with exact answers. Sometimes, they’re wrong, and it really screws you up.”

They all nodded.

He called Barlow and told him about the video, and about the size problem, and Barlow said, “So we’re down to forty-sixty. I just don’t have anybody else, Virgil. What are you doing?”

“Still talking to people,” Virgil said. “Wandering around town.”

He called Pye, who said he was at the store site. Virgil told him to stay there, he was coming out. “You get the guy?” Pye asked.

“Not yet,” Virgil said. “But we’re closing in on him.”

Pye made a rude noise, and clicked off.

Pye was not particularly happy to see him. “I hear you’re making more accusations,” he said.

“It’s gone beyond that, Willard,” Virgil said. “We’re taking down the city council-there are state investigators in town, right now, making arrests. We’re probably going to bust your expediter guy, and I wouldn’t doubt that when that happens, the prosecutors will try to work up the chain.”

“There is no chain,” Pye said. Over his shoulder, to Chapman, he added, “Keep taking it down. Put in there, ‘Pye seemed unaffected by the rash accusations made by the hippie-looking cop.’ ”

“Whatever,” Virgil said. “But that’s not what I want to talk to you about. My focus is on this bomber. We got three dead now, and two hurt bad, and four or five scared shitless, who could be dead, except they got lucky… Chapman says that you’re a big goddamn financial and business expert. I need to know, how many ways are there to make or lose money when a PyeMart goes into a town?”

Pye stuck out his lower lip and said, “Everybody knows the ways-”

“No. You might, the rest of us don’t,” Virgil said. “We know that the oil-change place might go broke, and the pharmacy, and a bookstore and a clothing store. We know that some brick layers are going to get some jobs, and somebody’s going to pay the city to lay some pipe, and that means they’ve got to buy some pipe, and now they’ve got to buy a couple more pieces of heavy equipment… but I don’t think anybody’s going around blowing up Pye Pinnacle so they can sell another excavator. I’ve thought about the basic reasons people do this stuff, and I’ve come to the conclusion that it’s probably money, in some way that I can’t see. Since you’re the money guy, I thought you could.”

Pye took off his ball cap, scratched his head, and said, “Chapman has done some research. Bombers are usually either plain nuts-they just want to bomb something-or they’re political nuts. Like the Unabomber.”

Virgil shook his head. “This seems to be too focused for a political bombing campaign. They hit the Pinnacle, they hit the city equipment yard, they hit you, me, then Erikson… They didn’t blow up the equipment yard, or Erikson, for some ideological reason. They’re not Marxists or something.”

“Barlow thinks Erikson might be the guy,” Pye said. “Maybe.”

“I don’t believe he really thinks so,” Virgil said. “He’s grasping at straws. He’s hoping. And I don’t believe it. So: money.”

Pye walked off a way, looking at the concrete pads that would hold up the new store-a store that Virgil now believed would never be built. Chapman said, quietly, “He’s thinking.”

“I can see the steam coming off his forehead,” Virgil said.

A minute later, Pye wandered back. “I’ve got nothing specific for you, but I can give you some theory. Whether it’ll help, I don’t know.”

“So give,” Virgil said.

Pye said that there were three ways money would move in a situation like PyeMart. Some of it was quite direct and positive: people getting paid for building the store, people who would have jobs at the store, taxes that would come out of the store, profits made by the store.

There were direct and negative movements as well: money lost by people who couldn’t compete with the stores. That money could be in the form of lost profits, or lost jobs.

“Or lost lives,” Virgil said. “People who lose good jobs in towns like these don’t get them back. Not in town,” Virgil said. “They have to leave. Their whole life is changed.”