Charlie Buck got out of his Ford Bronco and walked across Route 59 toward the burned-out truck. A portly man with a pleasant face, receding hair, and rimless glasses, he was a detective from the Campbell County Sheriff’s Department.
Yellow crime-scene tape defined the place. Half a dozen county vehicles were parked haphazardly around the perimeter of the tape, and more than half a dozen county employees were in the area.
“How many dead?” he said to Ray Vollmer.
“Coroner thinks only one,” Vollmer said. “Remains are a little scrambled.”
“Infernal device?” Buck said, looking at the twisted metal skeleton.
“I’d say,” Vollmer answered. “No sign that he ran into anything. Got some bomb-squad people coming in from Casper.”
Buck nodded, looking at the scene along the empty roadway. Occasionally a car would appear and slow to.look at the crime scene only to be waved on by one of the deputies stationed on the road for that purpose. Most of the time, however, they were alone with the silent wreckage under the high sky.
“No reason for him to have stopped here,” Buck said.
Vollmer shook his head.
“ ’Less he stopped to take a leak,” he said.
“Even so,” Buck said, “be hard for someone to rig a bomb on your car while you were pissing.”
“Coulda driven by and thrown it,” Vollmer said.
“Which would mean they were following him with a bomb waiting for the moment.”
“Yep.”
“More likely it was rigged earlier, with a timing device.”
“Could be,” Vollmer said. His eyes were wandering over the other deputies who were crisscrossing the area looking for anything that might be useful.
“If it was, would they have any way to know where he’d be when it went off?”
“They must have had a way to know he’d be in the car.” Vollmer said.
“Yeah. You can rig it to start when the ignition goes on. But what if his wife drove it. Could be a matter of weight.”
“So what if the wife and some kids got in.”
“Could be rigged for weight in the driver’s seat.”
“And what if it went off in the middle of Cheyenne, or in Gillette, next to a school bus?” Vollmer said.
“Maybe they didn’t care,” Buck said.
“Nice people.”
“Or maybe somebody trailed him at a distance,” Buck said. “And when he got out in the middle of an empty stretch they beeped the bomb like you’d open a garage door.”
“The technology’s there for that,” Vollmer said.
“Yeah. What’s up there?”
“Piece of the truck,” Vollmer said, “and maybe some bits of the driver.” He made a face. “M.E. scraped most of that up and took it with him.”
Buck nodded.
I’ll take a look,“ he said.
He and Vollmer walked up the hill where the mule deer had grazed and looked at the twisted hood and part of the foam-plastic dashboard. He squatted on his heels and looked more closely at the dashboard. Riveted into it was a metal band bearing the serial number of the truck.
“A little luck,” he said to Vollmer, and nodded at the band.
“Take a while to trace it,” Vollmer said.
“We got a while,” Buck said.