John Sandford: Shock Wave

When they were all done, Ahlquist took the stage back from Wills, who was the final speaker, to shout, “We’re all headed down to Bunson’s, folks. You’re all invited.”

They all trekked down to Bunson’s and Pye stood on a table to announce that it was all on PyeMart, and got half-and-half boos and cheers, and one fat guy who shouted he’d never drink Pye’s beer. The fat guy was wrestled out of sight by the Aussie scuba diver, whose name Virgil couldn’t remember.

He did remember the name of the short-haired scuba blonde with the snake tattoo down her neck-Gretchen-and he said, “Hey, Gretchen: How’d you find us?”

“Retrief can smell free beer from miles away,” she said. “I was going to call you up. I’d like to hear about your muskie research project…”

They talked about that for a while, and Virgil found her to be intelligent, well informed, and stacked. She touched his chest: “Slobberbone-I haven’t seen one of their shirts since UNT. They’re one of my favorite bands.”

George Peck showed up, and patted Virgil on the back and said, “Told you.”

Virgil said, “George, I’m gonna have somebody contact you about this whole market research thing. We need to write something about it for the FBI or somebody.”

“I would be flattered,” Peck said. Peck was wearing a gray banker’s chalk-striped suit, a blue shirt, and a bright yellow necktie. He was on his third Rusty Nail and muttered, “I don’t think Pye saw the sign outside of town.”

“What sign?”

“The one that says, ‘Butternut Falls-a Little Drinking Town with a Nasty Fishing Habit.’ This free booze thing will cost him a fortune. I’m soaking up as much as I can, before he calls it off.”

Somebody put Willie Nelson’s Stardust album on the Bunson’s sound system, and people started dancing on the lakeside patio to “Georgia on My Mind.”

Virgil danced with Gretchen, the snake girl, and then O’Hara, and then took Good Thunder and Chapman around the floor, scuffling along in his cowboy boots, thinking only rarely of Lee Coakley.

Barlow stuck strictly to beer, and was mostly sober when he got Virgil in a corner and asked, “You think we got him? You know, enough for a trial?”

Virgil nodded. “There’s enough circumstantial evidence, backing up our recording. If they got the tapes thrown out for some reason, we’d have a problem, but everything was on the up-and-up, so I don’t see how they can do that.”

“I talked to Charlie-one of the techs-and he says Haden’s computer history was wiped, but he forgot about the cookies. He was looking at bomb sites-”

Virgil interrupted: “But he could always say that he got interested when the bombings started in Butternut, and did some research.”

Barlow shook his head and continued: “… and some of the cookies go back before the Pye Pinnacle.”

“That’s large,” Virgil said. “That’s very large.”

A part of the crowd began running and screaming and they looked that way, and then somebody came back and said, “George Peck fell in the lake. He’s okay. Just drunk.”

Jeanne Shepard came ghosting through the crowd. She looked tired, but relaxed, wore a sheer white blouse and turquoise Capri pants and sandals, and looked, as Thor the desk clerk once told Virgil, like the second-hottest woman in town. She nodded at Virgil, and then came over and said, “I hope you don’t mind if I’m here. I heard about John Haden, and you know… I wanted to hear more.”

“Hey, you’re more than welcome,” Virgil said. “Join right in. Let me get you a drink.”

He got her a Bloody Mary and a thoroughly soaked George Peck lurched over and said to her, “Jeanne, nice to see you. With Jesus Christ as my witness, I say to you, I am seriously fucked up.”

“Why, George,” she said, “I’ve never heard such language.” To Virgil: “George and I once dated.”

They turned away, talking about old times, and Virgil drifted off; a few seconds later, Thor the desk clerk idled into the room, wearing cargo shorts and a Third Eye Blind T-shirt. When Virgil saw it, he said, “God bless me: I will give you one hundred dollars for that T-shirt.”

“I could get three times that on eBay,” Thor said. He had a toothpick in one corner of his mouth, and a drink in his hand.

Virgil looked at it and asked, “How old are you again?”

“Eighteen. But I’m a jock, so it’s okay,” Thor said. “I’m just keeping an eye on that little heifer.” He was watching Jeanne Shepard.

“I don’t want to hear about it,” Virgil said.

“Well, if you heard about it, you’d probably change your mind and say you were glad you heard about it,” Thor said.

Virgil began, “Listen, Thor-”

“I don’t need a lecture,” the kid said. “We’re running really hot right now. I figure it’ll last for most of the summer, then she’ll go back to teaching school and I’ll go off to college and that’ll be it. But I sure don’t need any sermonizing. I mean, it’s just too good.”

“I was gonna tell you, don’t drink too much-I once had a few beers and ran my old man’s car into a ditch and missed a big old cottonwood by about six inches. I was very lucky I didn’t kill myself,” Virgil said. “Scratched the hell out of the passenger-side door.”

“Semper fi,” Thor said. “Jeez, you know, Jeanne’s got an ass like

…” He stopped, his voice trailing away, then he whispered, “Jesus God: Who’s the chick with the snake on her neck?”

Late in the evening, Ahlquist hooked Virgil’s arm and dragged him into a room behind the bar, saying, “You gotta take a minute.”

When they got back there, they found Chapman and Pye, Barlow and Peck and O’Hara, and Pye said, “It’s an ugly thing to have to do, but I’m a man of my word and I’m willing to pay up.”

At that point, Virgil took part in an unusual ceremony, wildly applauded by the spectators. Pye muttered, “Now I really need a drink,” and O’Hara said to Virgil, “You gotta nice ass there, surfer boy.”

Chapman wrote it all down.

The party went on for a while, but at some point after midnight, Virgil found himself sitting on his motel bed, talking to Davenport, a night owl, who’d seen cuts from the press conference on the late news.

“Get that cleaned up as fast as you can-we’ve got some trouble down in Wabasha,” Davenport said.

“Somebody’s dead?”

“Well, since they only found the feet, they’re not sure. But, that’s what they suspect,” Davenport said.

“Ah, man, how old?”

“Six, eight weeks. The newest two, anyway,” Davenport said.

“The newest two?”

“Yeah, they found three feet. People down there are talking cannibals.”

“Ah, boy…”

Davenport said, “I can hear a shower running… so… I guess I’ll hang up now. But call me tomorrow, as soon as you’re clear of the Haden thing. You gotta get down to Wabasha.”

“All right… tomorrow, I’ll let you know.”

Virgil sat on his bed, naked, a bottle of Leinie’s on the nightstand, a white towel over his thighs. Listened to the shower, and thought, So damn many good women in the world. Chapman and Gretchen the snake woman, Good Thunder and even O’Hara. Lee Coakley, for sure.

He sighed, and stood up, headed for the bathroom. The fact was, Davenport had called just as he was adjusting the temperature control. There was nobody else in the shower.

Nobody but Virgil, a little drunk, looking up at a showerhead at the Holiday Inn, on a starry night in beautiful downtown Butternut Falls, Minnesota.

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