John Sandford - Shock Wave

“Thank you.”

Apartment A was not exactly an apartment-it was the end unit in a town house complex, three stories tall, a two-car garage on the bottom floor, and a door. Hoping that Wyatt was still teaching, he walked up and knocked on the door, and took a long look at the lock. It was solid, a Schlage. They’d need a landlord to open it, if they got the sneak-and-peek.

Barlow called. He’d made an appointment with a federal judge, Thomas Shaver, in Minneapolis, and with an assistant federal attorney, who’d handle the details of the warrant. Virgil gave Barlow all the information he had. “We don’t have a lot of specific information on him, but we have two things: he is one of the few people who could have gotten into the Pinnacle, and he has more than enough motive,” Virgil said. “He’s been living here for years, so he also has the detailed background to plant these other bombs: the bomb on the limo had to be local work. And, if we get it, we need to get warrants for both places-his apartment, and the farmhouse out on his property.”

Barlow nodded. “I think we’ll get them. What are you going to do?”

“I want to see him. I’ve got a couple of guys in town, working the city council aspect of this thing. I’m gonna get them, and stake him out. See where he goes. I can provide a stakeout on him, when we go into his place.”

“I should be back by six o’clock,” Barlow said. “I don’t think we’ll have time to do it today.”

“I agree. Tomorrow morning would be the first good shot at it,” Virgil said. “When you get the warrant, call me-I’ll track down his landlord, get a key for his place.”

He foundJenkins and Shrake at the Holiday Inn, in separate rooms, reading separate golf magazines, got them together in the lounge. They said they’d been the front men on the three arrests, leading a group of sheriff’s deputies. They’d seized all of the accused city councilmen’s financial records, and their computers, and the same with the mayor.

“It looks like your pal-whoever it was-who suggested the deal would have something to do with golf carts was on the mark,” Shrake said. “The first thing they found on Gore’s computer was a sale of two hundred golf carts to a Sonocast Corp., which happens to be a supply subsidiary of PyeMart.”

“Excellent. Is Gore still in jail?” Virgil asked. “Or out?”

“She’s out. All of them are. They’ve got too much political clout to stay in. Gore paid cash, the other two put up their houses as bond.”

“You gonna get the PyeMart guy?”

“Don’t know,” Jenkins said. “It looks like the way it worked, PyeMart bought the golf carts from Gore, who spread the profit around

… keeping most of it for herself. That’s what this Good Thunder told us. She took a quick look at the tax records, and she seems like a pretty smart chick.”

“But there’s no law against buying golf carts,” Shrake said. “If Gore doesn’t crack, and give us exactly the quid pro quo, we might not get him.”

“That’s bullshit,” Virgil said. “You’d need a retarded jury not to convict.”

“What’s your point?” Jenkins asked.

Virgil told them about Wyatt, about how the paraglider revelation had worked out.

Shrake said, “So I solved two cases in one day.”

“That’d be one interpretation,” Virgil said. “But now, we actually got to work. We’ve got to keep an eye on this guy. I want to pick him up now, put him to bed, get him up tomorrow, take him to work.”

“We can do that, if we can take along the golf magazines,” Shrake said.

Wyatt, Virgil thought, should either be home, or arriving home soon. He gave the other two Wyatt’s address, and they agreed to stay in touch by cell phone. Virgil let them cruise the house first: Shrake called back to say there were no lights in the windows. “We found a place we can park a block away, by a ball diamond, not too conspicuous, and still see his place. We’ll sit for a bit. There’s a game about to start.”

Virgil took the break to stop at a McDonald’s and get a cheeseburger and fries. He was still there, reading the paper, when Barlow called: “We got the warrant. The judge thought we were a little weak on details, but he gave us six days. He says if we can’t do better in six days, he won’t give us an extension, and we’ll have to give a copy to Wyatt.”

“That’s good. That should be plenty of time,” Virgil said.

“You watching him?”

“Trying to. He hasn’t shown up at home yet, but I’ve got two guys watching his place.”

“Hope he hasn’t flown the coop. You get a key?”

“No. I got sidetracked on this surveillance thing. Would you have time?”

Barlow agreed to run down the landlord and get a key. Virgil would call him in the morning, as soon as Wyatt was at the college, where he was scheduled to teach back-to-back classes.

Jenkins called five minutes later and said, “He’s home.”

“I’ll be there in ten minutes-take your place,” Virgil said. “Pull out when you see me coming.”

He drove to Wyatt’s-there was a car in the driveway, an older Prius-and then continued up the block, and when Shrake pulled away from the curb at the ball diamond, Virgil took his place. There was a game going on, town ball, fast-pitch, and Virgil was looking down at the diamond from the parking place.

He half-watched the game, half-watched Wyatt’s place, and at the same time, dug his camera out of the bag in the backseat. He used a Nikon D3, with a 70-200 lens and a 2x Nikon teleconverter. When put together, the rig was heavy and long, but also reasonably sharp, and good in low light.

He still had plenty of light, and he settled in to wait.

One of the ball teams, Robert’s Bar and Grill, had a damn good pitcher; he was mowing down the other team, which was surviving less on pitching than on its fielding. In the two innings Virgil watched, Robert’s had runners in both innings, while the other team never did get a man to first.

He was interested enough in the game that he almost missed Wyatt. He came out of the apartment carrying an oversized gym bag. A tall thin man, he was dressed in a T-shirt, jeans, and running shoes, and moved like an athlete. He looked like the figure in the construction-site trailer videos. Virgil propped the barrel of the camera on the edge of the passenger-side window, and ran off a half-dozen shots as he walked around the car, threw the bag inside, then got in.

Following him wasn’t a problem: Wyatt drove out to the highway, turned toward downtown, pulled into a strip mall, got his gym bag, and walked into a tae-kwon-do studio. Virgil called Shrake and made arrangements to switch off.

The lesson had to last at least an hour, Virgil thought, so he took the time to load the photos into his laptop. When Shrake arrived, Virgil climbed into the backseat of Shrake’s Cadillac and passed the laptop across the seat. “Portraits,” he said.

The other two looked at the photos for a minute, then Shrake said, “Got him. Want us to stay with him overnight?”

“Ah… yeah.”

“Shoot. Okay, are you in? Make it more tolerable,” Jenkins said.

“I’m in. I’ll take the middle shift.” The middle shift was the bad one-four hours in the middle of the night.

Shrake took the first watch, following Wyatt from the tae kwon do studio to a supermarket, and then back to his house. He waited there until midnight, when Virgil took it. Virgil sat for four hours, until four o’clock. Jenkins arrived right at four, and Virgil went back to the Holiday Inn and crashed. Shrake, who’d gotten a full night’s sleep, took it at eight o’clock, and at nine-thirty, called Virgil and said, “It looks like he’s getting ready to move.”