The naked edge

11

Garth stepped from his cruiser into a nightmare. Ahead, on East Broadway, one of Jackson's few main streets, lingering flames as well as the headlights and flashing lights of emergency vehicles showed the wreckage of five cars. The vehicle in the middle had been ripped apart by an explosion. Fiery debris had struck and ignited the four police cars, eventually setting off the fuel in their gas tanks. Now the cars were just smoking metal frames. Paramedics put unconscious state troopers onto Gurneys, wheeling them toward two ambulances. The air smelled of cooked flesh. Dear God, Garth thought, watching the ambulances speed away.

Movement caught his attention. Jackson's chief of police finished an urgent conversation with a fireman and walked toward him. Jackson had about 8,200 all-year residents, with an additional 10,000 ski-season residents, and three million tourists who passed through during the summer. The huge influx of visitors meant that the area's law enforcement, emergency, and medical systems needed to be first-rate, but even so, they weren't accustomed to gunfights and explosions, let alone two in less than twelve hours.

"You radioed ahead to warn us about the pursuit," the police chief said. "I sure hope you know what's going on."

Sickened, Garth scanned the shattered store windows on each side of the street: Pendleton's, Jackson Mercantile, Chico's, Haagen-Dazs ice cream. The wooden sidewalks were smoldering. So were some of the cottonwoods in the town square. One of the four elk-antler arches that served as entrances to the square's small park had been blown into pieces. Thousands of chunks of gray-white antlers covered the street like dirty snow.

"This is connected to the attack on Aaron Stoddard's place."

"And what was that about?"

"No one's sure." Garth outlined the facts that were available, then asked, "What did they have in that car? A bomb? What set it off? Bullets?"

The police chief pointed toward a crowd at the far end of the square, shocked residents and tourists wearing hastily put-on clothes, some only in housecoats. "A guy walking his dog saw the whole thing. He said there were a lot of sirens and squealing tires. But no shots. Definitely no shots. Several people who live nearby and were wakened by the sirens say they didn't hear shots, either."

"So what set off the explosive? Whoever was in that car, were they so determined not to be questioned that they blew themselves up?"

"I don't see how they could have," the police chief said.

"What do you mean?"

"They couldn't have reached the explosive to detonate it. The blast split the chassis upward. From the middle. From underneath."

"Underneath?" Garth asked in confusion.

"We'll need crime-scene investigators to confirm it, but at the moment, it looks as if the bomb was mounted under the car."

"They didn't know it was there?"

"Seems that way. If it was their explosive, they'd have kept the bomb in the trunk or in the back seat, where they could get to it in a hurry. But this way…"

Garth understood. "Yes. The only reason to put the bomb under the car was to hide it from the people inside."