Shock Wave

11

Virgil dropped Chapman at her motel and called Davenport to report on the trip out to Michigan. He was sitting in the truck, talking to Davenport, when he saw George Peck, the traditionalist fly fisherman, walking along the street, looking into store windows.

“I just saw a clue,” Virgil said. “I gotta go.”

He hung up and waited until Peck got even with him, then rolled down the passenger-side window and yelled, “Hey, George.”

Peck turned, a frown on his face, saw Virgil in the truck, and walked over. “You shouted?”

“Yeah. I need to talk to you. Come on, get in.”

Peck paused for a moment, as if thinking about it, then nodded and popped the door and climbed in. He pulled the door shut, tilted his head up, sniffed, and said, “This truck smells like McDonald’s french fries.”

“It should-french fries are about eighty-five percent of my diet when I’m traveling,” Virgil said. “Listen, I’ve talked to a few guys about your whole market research idea. They don’t like it. I kinda do-but then, I might not be as smart as they are. There’s talk of lynch mobs.”

“I doubt you’d get a lynch mob,” Peck said.

“That’s not real reassuring-if you only doubt that I’d get one.”

“Not my problem,” Peck said. “But, consensus-seeking research seems to work with problems like yours. Of course, they’re usually asking about stock market moves, or some such. There’s usually no lynching involved. Or bombs.”

Virgil said, “What if instead of putting up a website, I got twenty very knowledgeable people…”

Peck was shaking his head. “That might not be enough. You need lots and lots of people. You could ask twenty people and just out of coincidence, because of social-class acquaintance problems, maybe none of them know the bomber… so they can’t nominate him. You need not just one set of smart people, but a whole spectrum of people.”

“But the bomber has to come from a class of people who object to PyeMart. So if I come up with a long list of people who don’t like PyeMart, they’d almost certainly know him.”

Peck thought about it for a minute, then said, “Unless… hmmm.” And he thought some more.

“Say it,” Virgil said.

“I was going to say, ‘Unless he was acting on an impulse.’ I was thinking, what if it’s, say, a college kid, and these opinions are new and he got swept up in them, but doesn’t have a history in town politics or issues arguments. He’s simply crazy, and looking for an outlet. Then, you might never see him, if you only surveyed people who were familiar with PyeMart opponents. But… on second thought.. . from what I know, that doesn’t seem likely. It seems more likely to be the work of a mature man. A planner. Somebody who thinks things through. Somebody more like me. So I’d probably know him. So…”

“So…?”

“So if you made a list based on your investigation, and on the federal investigation, of the bomber’s characteristics, and if you gave that list to me and, say, ten other people I might suggest… I think those ten people might be able to come up with a second list of a couple hundred people you could survey. Then, I think you would get your man.”

Virgil turned and pulled his briefcase out of the backseat. “Let’s make a list of characteristics right now. Then you can give me your list of names, and I’ll get the list around.”

Peck said, “Why don’t we go down to McDonald’s and work through this. It’s right around the corner.”

“Good with me. I could use some fries,” Virgil said.

They got a booth at McDonald’s, and soft drinks and fries, and Virgil laid out what he’d found to that point. Peck listened carefully, and they began their list.

The bomber, they thought: • was almost certainly male (because bombers almost always were). • was willing to take serious, but calculated, risks, both in building bombs and in planting them. • was intelligent. Was building bombs and detonators from first principles. Knew something about switches and electricity. • had hard opinions and was willing to act on them, even to the point of killing people. A streak of fanaticism. The bomber is crazy. • was acting out of an economic or environmentalist impulse. • probably had some close connection with Butternut Tech. • was intimately familiar with Butternut environs and personalities, down to limousine drivers. • could have close relatives or friends in the Grand Rapids, Michigan, area.

“In the letter you write to the survey people, you have to say that they need to consider all the points,” Peck said. “But in the end, you’re also looking for gut feelings.”

Virgil wrote gut feelings at the bottom of the list.

“And you’ll have to say that nobody will see the answers except you, and that you’ll destroy the lists. Or, better yet, that it’ll all be anonymous, and nobody will know who answered what, not even you. Or even, who answered. Because not everybody will.”

“George, you’re a big help,” Virgil said. “Give me the list of ten names that’ll get me the list of two hundred.”

Getting Peck to produce ten names took a while, but when he got them, Virgil drove over to the county courthouse and began putting together a letter to the ten people recommended by Peck. The sheriff came by to see what he was up to, and Virgil showed him Peck’s list.

The sheriff agreed that the ten names had been well chosen, added two more names, plus his own and his wife’s, for a total of fourteen. He had a deputy get together a list of home and business addresses.

In his letter to the first, smaller group, Virgil asked that their lists be returned to the sheriff ’s department that afternoon or evening.

Time is of the essence, he wrote. We hope to begin distributing the survey tomorrow morning.

The Sheriff got two Deputies and told them to chase down the twelve people on Virgil’s list; he would take his own letter and his wife’s. “This is gonna be weird,” Ahlquist said. “Never heard anything like it being done. Could freak people out.”

“With any luck, it’ll keep the bomber laying low,” Virgil said.

“Speaking of which, you oughta lay low yourself,” Ahlquist said. “You’re the most obvious threat to him. You could wind up with a bomb in your boat.”

“I don’t think he’s that kind of a monster,” Virgil said. “Bombing a man’s boat.”

“I’m serious,” Ahlquist said. “I’d ask the people at the Holiday to move you to another room, one that opens to the inside, over the pool, where he’d be seen if he went to your door.”

Virgil said, “I’ll do that. I’ll be back at eight o’clock or so, to pick up the responses. If I can collate the list we get back tonight, and get the second letter out to however many people we have-Peck thinks a couple hundred would be good-we could start getting a list together tomorrow night.”

“Be interesting,” Ahlquist said. “What’re you doing for the rest of the day?”

“I got a couple of guys I want to talk to, and, uh… you got any fish in that lake?”

Virgil found Cameron Smith, president of the local trout-fishing club, at work at the Butternut Outdoor Patio Design Center. Smith was busy with a female customer when Virgil walked in, so he spent fifteen minutes chatting with a nice-looking blond bookkeeper who worked in the back office. When Virgil introduced himself, she called Smith, who was thirty feet away, on the other side of a door, on her cell phone. Smith said he’d be there as soon as he could get away.

“That’s a big order out there,” the woman said. Her name, according to a desk plaque, was Kiki Bjornsen. “She’s looking at spending over nine thousand on patioware and a spa.”

“Is that PyeMart gonna sell patio stuff?”

“Not like ours,” Bjornsen said. “I mean, they might sell some rickety old aluminum chairs, but they won’t be selling any Sunbrella products.”

“Good for you.”

“And I can tell you for sure that Cam didn’t blow anything up,” she said. “He just got back from Canada last night. He was up there with about six college friends. He was up there for a week.”

“Well, shoot, there goes my day,” Virgil said. “I was planning to drag him kicking and screaming down to the county jail.”

“That’d be something to see,” she said.

Smith was a chunky, sunburned man who said he’d just spent five days getting blown off Lake of the Woods, and Virgil told him that he’d been blown off Lake of the Woods himself, on several occasions.

“Fishing out of Kenora?” Smith asked.

“Yeah, most of the time. I really like that town,” Virgil said.

“Got the most vicious, impolite, asshole game wardens I ever met,” Smith said. “We were out five days, got stopped three times. Hell, we’re fishing on a conservation tag, not keeping anything, and they’re tearing our boats apart.”

“They do that,” Virgil said. “But the fishing is good.”

“And they got some good pizza,” Smith said. “So, what can I do for you?”

“Is there anybody in your trout club that might be setting off these bombs?”

“I been thinking about that ever since I heard about the bomb, the first one,” Smith said. “I call my wife every night to tell her I didn’t drown, and she told me about it, about that poor bastard getting blown to pieces. I mean, jeez, nobody deserves that… Anyway, no. I don’t think any of our guys would do that. We’ve got some rednecks, but you know, they’re all… fishermen. Fishermen don’t kill people.”

“Well, maybe muskie fishermen,” Virgil said.

“Okay, I’ll give you that,” Smith said. “But not us trout guys. Crappie guys might be bombers, but I don’t think walleye guys, or bass or bluegill guys. Bullhead guys… well, we don’t talk about bullhead guys. I don’t think they’d go violent, but they’re not quite right in the head, if you know what I mean.”

Virgil nodded: he tended to agree with Smith’s characterizations.

“You know Larry Butz,” Virgil said.

“Yeah, and he’s the one everybody would point at, because he’s got a loud mouth. But he’s really a good guy,” Smith said. “The paper this morning said that a group of kids were crossing the street just before Harvey’s limo blew up, and that’s the kind of thing that Larry would have thought of. About other people getting hurt. He’s got five kids, and there’s no way he’d ever take a chance like that. That he’d hurt a kid. I mean, I don’t think he’d hurt anybody.”

“I’m getting a lot of that,” Virgil said. “Nobody knows anybody who’d do something like this.”

“Well, do you know anybody who’d do it? A bomb guy, he’s gotta be a rare creature.”

“That was my opinion, before I got tangled up in this, but the ATF guy tells me they’re not as rare as you’d think,” Virgil said. Then, “Have you ever been fishing any of those lower pools and seen a guy around there in camo? Maybe with a camera or a pair of binoculars?”

Smith said, “Noooo… not exactly. I mean, if you mean sneaking around the PyeMart site. I mean, in the fall we get a couple of bow hunters back there.”

“I was thinking, sneaking around looking at PyeMart, specifically,” Virgil said.

“Haven’t seen anything like that, but then, I’m only back there once a week. Maybe not that often. Hardly ever see any cars parked up by the bridge, either. Those are usually guys that I know, and could vouch for.”

“The bridge?”

“Yeah, there’s a bridge upstream a half mile or so above the Walmart site, off County Road Y. There’s a parking area down beside the bridge.”

“Could you ask around, among your friends, about any unusual cars?”

“I can do that,” Smith said.

Virgil pushed himself out of his chair, gave Smith a business card, and said, “Just mostly wanted to check with you. Think about it. If anything occurs to you, give me a ring, or if somebody saw a strange car out there in the last month.”

Half an hour later, Virgil was backing his boat into Dance Lake. The lake had two basins, a shallow upper basin with lots of weed, and a deeper lower basin. After parking his rig, he took his boat north out of the landing, under a bridge and into the upper basin, picked out a weed bed on the flattest part of the lake, dropped his trolling motor. The depth finder said he was in four feet of water. He wasn’t expecting much, just a short afternoon of messing with small pike.

He got his fly rod going, throwing a Bigeye Baitfish, and zenned out, letting the problem of the bomber percolate through the back of his brain. Talking with Peck had been useful; he had some hope for the survey. The connection with the tech school should help winnow suspects.

Critical question: What should he do to keep pressure on the bomber? What would make him keep his head down? He was thinking about that when a small pike hit the Bigeye and, feeling the resistance of the line, tried to make a run into the weed bank. Virgil turned his head, got him running sideways, turned him toward the boat, played him, eventually brought him alongside-maybe twenty-three or twenty-four inches, he thought-grabbed the eye of the hook and shook it loose.

He’d gotten some pike slime on his hand and rinsed it off, then sat in the boat and let the sunshine sink into his shoulders; nothing like it. After a few minutes, he sighed, took the cell phone out of his pocket and called a reporter, Ruffe Ignace, at the Star Tribune.

“Ruffe? Virgil Flowers here.”

“Virgil-I heard you were up in Nutcup, trying to find that bomber.”

“Yeah, I am, still,” Virgil said. “Some of the media are spreading a rumor that I’d like to squelch.”

“A rumor? In the media? No, you gotta be joking,” Ignace said.

“As far as I know, there are no plans whatever to secretly deploy seventy-five to a hundred BCA infrared cameras around Butternut Falls, to monitor the coming and going of cars to sensitive sites,” Virgil said.

“Wait-wait-wait, let me get the last part of that… ‘to monitor the coming and going of cars to sensitive sites.’ Is that right?”

“That’s right. I have no information about any such plans.”

“By sensitive sites, you mean like the city hall, the county courthouse, the city councilmen’s houses, Willard Pye’s cars, the PyeMart site, and so on?”

“Those would be sensitive sites,” Virgil agreed.

“You’re not saying that there aren’t any plans, you’re saying that you don’t have any information about such plans.”

“That’s correct.”

“I’m not writing the story, but I’ll pass it on,” Ignace said.

“God bless you,” Virgil said. “And any children you may have spawned.”

Done with Ignace, he called Barlow to see if the ATF had come up with anything at the tech school. They had not. “It’s not a dead end, it’s a rats’ nest,” Barlow said. “There’re hundreds of people coming and going all the time, and they have adult evening classes, enrichment classes, and most of the adults in Butternut have been through there, at one time or another.”

“I have a feeling that it’s not a casual acquaintance, it’s somebody who goes through there on a regular basis. Somebody who’s familiar with the working of the place. A staff member, a full-time student.”

“Well, we’re still looking,” Barlow said.

Another possibility occurred to him: What if there were more than one thing going on? What if the first bomb was aimed at Pye himself, as the third one had been-and had been brought in by some desperate board member? Desperate, why? Virgil didn’t know, but he was sure that board members must get desperate from time to time. Pye was an older man, and there must be some kind of succession waiting in the wings. If you knew when the bomb was going to go off, then you could absent yourself… Of course, if you knew when it was going to go off, you would have set it for later, after the board meeting was sure to be under way.

Still, there might be something in it-someone desperate, or greedy, in Grand Rapids, hooking up with somebody desperate in Butternut Falls.

As weird as it seemed, there was a history of crazy bombers getting together-9/11 of course, but also the Oklahoma City bombing. There’d been cases of serial killers finding each other, or recruiting accomplices.

How would you do that? The Internet. He remembered Marie Chapman talking about anti-PyeMart sites. He’d forgotten to do anything about that… Virgil got back on the phone and called the BCA researcher. “Sandy? This is Virgil. You got time to do some Internet research?”

She said, “If Lucas approves it.”

He outlined what he wanted: for her to go back in the archives of any anti-PyeMart sites she could find and see if it looked like a couple of the crazier posters seemed to be getting together… and then tracking down where they were from.

“I can do all of that from home, so that’ll make it cheaper,” she said. Sandy worked on a part-time basis, and sometimes as a consultant. “I’ll talk to Lucas and get back to you.”

Another idea popped up. Would the bomber have taken all of the risks associated with building a bomb, and smuggling it into the Pinnacle, if he wasn’t sure it would work? Most likely, he’d rehearsed somewhere. That “somewhere” was most likely around Butternut. While the town was out in the countryside, it wasn’t a wilderness-if a bomb had gone off within a hundred miles of Butternut, somebody had heard it.

How to find those people?

Virgil went back to the fly rod, but his heart wasn’t in it, and after another ten minutes and one strike-and-miss, he motored back to the landing and yanked the boat out of the water. On the way back into the downtown, he called the sheriff, asked for the name and number of the local paper, which he couldn’t remember-the Clarion Call, as it turned out. He got the editor on the line and asked about the possibility of a public request-for-help on the next day’s front page.

“Well, what do you need?”

“I need a story that says the bomber probably rehearsed his bombings-he probably touched off a couple explosions within the last month or so. Probably not too far from Butternut-it’d be someplace familiar to him. You can attribute all those thoughts to me. I’d like to ask your readers if any of them heard an unexplained explosion. If they have, call the sheriff’s department.”

“Sure, we can do that. Give it a good spot, too.”

“I appreciate it,” Virgil said.

The day was still hot, but the afternoon was wearing on, and he’d been up early. Nap time? If he could get an hour or two, he’d be good until midnight. Back at the Holiday Inn, he was headed for his room when the desk clerk came running out to the parking lot and called, “Hey, Virgil.”

Virgil stopped. “Yeah?”

The kid was waving a piece of paper. “You got a call. It’s important.”

“A confession, I hope?”

“Well, yeah, something like that.” He handed a piece of paper to Virgil. “It was kind of anonymous. I took it down word for word.”

Virgil unfolded it. In the clerk’s neat handwriting, the note said: For Virgil Flowers of the Bureau of Criminal Apprehension. Important. Pat Shepard’s wife Jeanne knows he took $25,000 from Pye but doesn’t know what he did with it. She thinks he used it to pay back taxes. He didn’t. He hid it so he could spend it on his girlfriend Marilyn Oaks (sp?). Jeanne doesn’t know about Marilyn.

Pat Shepard was one of the city councilmen who voted for the PyeMart. Virgil took a minute to digest the note. A cricket started chirping from the flower bed around the parking lot, an annoyance that brought him back. He asked the desk clerk what he thought. “I think Jeanne Shepard is the second-hottest woman in town.”

Virgil checked him out: a fairly good-looking blond jock-like kid of seventeen or eighteen, with big shiny white teeth; a kid who reminded him somewhat of himself, when he was that age. “How old is she?”

The kid shrugged: “I don’t know. Thirty-five?”

“What are you doing, thinking a thirty-five-year-old woman is hot?”

“Hey. If you’re hot, you’re hot,” the kid said. He was wearing a name tag that said Thor.

“Did you take the message?” Virgil asked.

“Yup. It was a man,” Thor said. “He refused to give his name, but it was Doug Mackey. Mr. Mackey.”

“Mr. Mackey?”

“He’s a teacher at the high school,” Thor said. “He was my golf coach for three years, and I took driver’s ed from him. I recognized his voice, but he didn’t recognize mine. Mr. and Mrs. Shepard are teachers, too. You want to know what I think?”

“Sure,” Virgil said.

“Mr. Mackey and Mr. Shepard are friends and they play a lot of golf together, at least once or twice a week. I think Mr. Shepard told Mr. Mackey that he’s nailing Marilyn Oaks. I don’t know Marilyn Oaks, but she must be the first-hottest in town, if Mr. Shepard is chasing her, instead of staying home. I’m telling you, Mrs. Shepard has got an ass like a couple of slow-pitch softballs. If it was me, I’d be-”

“Stick to the story,” Virgil said.

“Hey. I’m trying to get you fully informed. Anyway, I figure Mr. Mackey wants to nail Mrs. Shepard, or already is, and he’s trying to get Mr. Shepard out of the picture. He thinks you’ll go over there and tell her about Marilyn Oaks, and one way or another, Mr. Shepard is outa here and Mr. Mackey moves into Mrs. Shepard’s thong.”

“Mrs. Shepard wears a thong?”

“Better believe it,” Thor said. “Black in color, and just about the size of a pirate’s eye patch.”

“Eye patch?”

“She once wore a pair of tight white pants out to the country club-I was caddying at the time-and you could see it, right through the pants, when she started to sweat a little,” Thor said. “I want to tell you, I had a woody she could have putted with, and I was only fourteen. Another time, I was supposed to take some stuff for a school play over to her house, and she came out wearing a T-shirt and no bra, and she had nipples like the end of my little finger, and hard as marbles. Honest to God, I wish-”

“Stick to the story,” Virgil said. “How did Mackey find out that Shepard took the money?”

“Either Mr. Shepard told him, because they’re pals, just like he told Mr. Mackey about nailing Marilyn Oaks. Or, Mr. Mackey already nailed Mrs. Shepard, and she told him. Or, he’s lying about it, and he doesn’t know anything.”

“How old are you, Thor?” Virgil asked.

“Eighteen. Just graduated.”

“You have a very suspicious mind,” Virgil said. “And not entirely unsullied.”

“I’ve been told that,” Thor said.

“You know what unsullied means?”

“Sure.”

Virgil closed one eye and peered at the kid. “I actually have a gun in the car,” he said. “If you tell anybody about this note, I’ll kill you.”

“Whatever,” the kid said.

“I don’t want a whatever, I want your mouth shut,” Virgil said. “This is important stuff.”

“Make you a deal,” Thor said. “I’ll keep my mouth shut and you tell me if Mrs. Shepard finds out about Marilyn Oaks. From you, or anybody else.”

“If I made that deal, what would you get out of it?” Virgil asked.

“Mrs. Shepard always liked my looks. I could tell,” Thor said. “I had her for tenth-grade American literature and senior English. Soon as she throws her old man out, I’d run over to Pizza Hut, get an anchovy pizza, and go over to her house for a chat. Get there before Mackey.”

“Ah, man. Anchovies. Just like a ninth-grader,” Virgil said. “You get a woman like that, you buy a meat lovers’ and nothing else.”

“A meat lovers’?”

“Take it from me. The hormones in the meat gets them hot.”

“Nasty, but I believe you,” Thor said. “So, we got a deal?”

“Maybe.”

“Maybe?”

“I want to get a look at Mrs. Shepard first,” Virgil said. “A youth like yourself might not be qualified to handle her.”

“That is not right,” Thor said. “That is wrong.”

Up in his hotel room, Virgil called Davenport, who was about to leave the office, and told him about the note.

“Can you do both? Get the bomber and the city council?”

“If this note is real, I might,” Virgil said. “The thing is, half the people in town believe the council sold out, and they may be right. And they’re looking for somebody to help. They deserve at least a look.”

“Fine. But keep the bomber on the front burner,” Davenport said. “If you can do the other… I hate that kind of corruption shit. It drags us all down. But they’re not killing anybody. Not yet, anyway.”

“Okay. I thought I’d check,” Virgil said.

“I okayed Sandy for some research time on anti-PyeMart sites,” Davenport said. “She’ll be getting back to you.”

“Good. Hell, I’m gonna push everything,” Virgil said. “I think I can crack the whole town open. The fact is, moving on the city council might get me closer to the bomber, too.”

“Good luck with that,” Davenport said. “Stay in touch. And stay out of the boat, goddamnit.”

“What boat?”