Conard County Revenge

by Rachel Lee

  She shook her head. “Sorry.”

  He sighed. “Yeah.”

  She faced him then, her heart skipping a surprised beat as she was struck again by his attractive features. “I shouldn’t have to explain to you.”

  “You don’t. But I don’t have to like it. My students are all good people, but I understand you have to figure that out for yourself. The problem is, Darcy, how are you going to form a search party if you don’t know who to trust?”

  “Uniforms,” she said shortly, then stopped. A young man stood at the edge of the no-man’s land, his hands in his pockets, his gaze intent on the work around the bombed area.

  “Who’s that?” she asked sharply.

  Alex swiveled his head. “Jackson Castor. Jack. He’s in my cabinetry class. Great guy.”

  “Hmm.” Darcy said no more but continued to slowly follow her circumnavigation while studying the ground far beyond the area where the firemen worked. When the opportunity arrived, she included Jackson Castor in a couple of shots.

  Perps often showed a great deal of interest in the crime scene. She knew of numerous cases where a bomber had returned to watch the investigation while admiring his handiwork. Before she said anything about it, however, she was going to find out more about this Castor person.

  She suspected Alex knew what had crossed her mind but she’d already sensed how protective he was of his students. A broody mother hen, she thought with amusement, but still one who had been an FBI agent and therefore probably knew how often the perpetrators showed up at the crime scene. Nope, better not to say a word. Maybe let him think the young man’s presence had just slid right by her because of her focus on the ground.

  The grasses were beginning to green with the spring, which didn’t make her search any easier. What was the likelihood there’d been any metal in that bomb? Nobody had mentioned a pipe bomb or nails, so they surely hadn’t discovered any nails and not enough debris to know the type of bomb.

  Then she spied something odd. A green blade of grass had a hole in it. Squatting, she looked more closely. The edge of the hole was blackened. Something awfully hot had passed through it.

  She set her tablet beside her, and pulled on a pair of gloves so she could comb through the grass. Something had to be here unless it was nothing but a cinder. She couldn’t take that chance.

  She sensed Alex squat beside her, but he didn’t say anything. Gently she moved blades of grass, drawing a line in her mind. The blast had come from over there. Anything flying from it would have come from the same general direction. That told her where to concentrate her efforts.

  Then she spied it: a three-inch piece of slender wire. A little melted at one end, but otherwise surprisingly unaffected. It might be nothing, or it might be a part of the triggering device. Certainly not to be left behind. She took a photo of it and the blade of grass.

  Then she tugged out an evidence bag, used a pen from her pocket to write on it, then carefully sealed the wire in the bag. Looking up, she tried to decide if it would be safe to leave it here or if she should mark the spot and take it.

  Take it, she decided. This area hadn’t been cordoned off. “I need some evidence markers from the back of my truck, or from the fire department.”

  Alex straightened. “I’ll get you some from them. Might as well keep the numbering the same.”

  “Thanks.” She quickly scrawled the GPS coordinates on her pad and waited for Alex to return with the plastic tent-style markers. When he did, she placed the numbered yellow piece and took another photo before adding the number to her description on the pad.

  Painstaking work. Every bit of it.

  “Any thoughts on what it could be?” Alex asked. He didn’t sound as if he expected an answer.

  “Too soon,” she said anyway. All she knew for certain was that it had been blown out here by the explosion.

  She straightened up and looked around. “I need to change into some decent work clothes. And ask Charity to widen her cordon considerably. How’s the motel?”

  “It’s clean but it’s old,” he said. “Wish we had something better to offer.”

  “Clean is good enough. How do I find it?”

  * * *

  Alex watched her talk to Charity, who agreed to bring the cordon out another thirty or forty feet. He wondered if she ever softened or if she was always so businesslike.

  Then he saw her walking toward Jack Castor. Immediately he jogged over. He knew Jack well and was absolutely certain he wasn’t capable of doing something like this. Yeah, he understood why Darcy was probably looking askance at the youth, but...

  He caught himself. He’d learned a long time ago not to make those assumptions about anyone. Your own mother could be the murderer. Living with that kind of knowledge, borne out in his work, had driven him to a more peaceful life. Reality could be ugly. Oddly, he found himself recalling a quip he heard from reporters: if your mother says she loves you, check it out.

  Darcy was doing her job. Ugliness had penetrated his new life, and he needed to squash urges that could hinder this investigation. Whoever had done this might move to larger bombs, bombs that could take a life. No time to be overprotective.

  He reached Darcy and Jack in time to hear her say pleasantly, “Alex says you’re in his cabinetry class. So this bombing interests you?”

  Jack grinned. “A whole lot. I never told anybody because I’m just a ranch kid and might not be able to go to college, but I always wanted to work for ATF.”

  “Yeah?” Darcy smiled. “It’s fascinating work. What draws you to it?”

  Jack’s smile faded. “I have a friend... Well, his grandfather was killed in the Oklahoma City bombing. He wasn’t even born yet, but his mom talked about it a lot for years and I heard about it, and every time she did I just wanted to do something useful about it. I know that’s over and done with, but it wasn’t the last bomb.”

  “No, it wasn’t.” She turned and indicated the school. “You have any ideas about this?”

  “Who’d do this, you mean?”

  Darcy simply waited.

  “No.” Jack looked almost crestfallen. “I wish I did. I mean, I can listen around and see if I hear anything, but I haven’t yet.” He looked down, then back at Darcy. “That’s the weird part.”

  “What is?”

  “You’d think someone would brag about it.”

  “Why do you think that?”

  “Well...” Jack shifted from one foot to the other. “If it was some kid at the school...he’d tell someone. Most of us can’t keep a secret that exciting.”

  Alex was surprised when Darcy laughed. “You make a good point, Jack.”

  Jack’s smile returned. “Anyway, whoever did it would probably want to tell at least one person, someone he trusted, right? But that person would probably spill the beans to someone else...” He shrugged. “Or not. I guess some people must be really good at keeping secrets.”

  “Some are,” Darcy agreed. “But your thinking is good. Keep it up. You’re going to have to move back soon. We’re extending the perimeter.”

  “Can I help with anything?” Jack asked eagerly.

  Darcy shook her head. “Officials only.”

  “Okay, I’ll stay out of the way.”

  “You do that.”

  Then she continued toward her truck. Alex followed, still concerned. “What are you thinking?” he asked as she opened her truck door.

  “You mean about Jack?”

  “Of course about Jack.”

  “Nothing yet,” she said with a shrug. “Keep your pants on, Alex. It’s early days.”

  He watched her drive away and half wished he could shake her out of her detachment. Then he remembered what had happened when he’d lost his. Divorce. Nightmares. End of career.

  Aw, screw it, he thought and headed for the undamaged part of the s
chool to check on those tarps. Let the agent do her job. He’d stay as far away as he could because he didn’t want the nightmares to come back. And he sure as hell didn’t need any new ones.

  * * *

  At the motel, which was clean albeit seriously outdated, Darcy showered away the travel grime, then changed into her gray working overalls and black boots. On her way back out to the site, she stopped long enough to grab another latte to stave off the fatigue from the long drive and added more tall cups of black coffee for the firefighters working out there.

  She was surprised when she pulled into the parking lot to see that a small crowd of onlookers had appeared. Either word had got out that the ATF was here, or the firemen had found something exciting.

  If they were curious because of her, they were in for a serious disappointment, she thought wryly. One agent in overalls was hardly the show they’d be hoping for. And they’d be right. Most explosions drew a bigger response, but at the moment too many cases had investigators pretty tied up. If she needed some backup, she would get it, but right now hands were tied.

  She pulled in between two dusty pickup trucks, then retrieved her laptop and evidence case from the back of her truck.

  Almost at once Jackson Castor appeared. “Let me at least carry the coffee,” he said eagerly.

  So he was still here, still interested in the goings-on. Might be a flag, might not be. So far nothing was setting off her internal warnings except his presence.

  “Thanks. Make sure everyone working gets a cup,” she said. Relieved of the extra coffees, she could handle the other items better. “Is Alex still around?”

  “Yeah. He’s been inside the school a lot. I guess you wanted some tarps?”

  And just how did he know that? Was Alex talking to him? And what if all these people were here because something important had been found? The ATF preferred to keep evidence to themselves until they had the most complete picture possible. Dribbling news out to the public could only create problems and possibly false expectations or, worse, appear to accuse innocent people.

  Not that her organization was completely without stains and mistakes. Like any organization, it was made up of people and people weren’t perfect.

  The cordon had been extended as she had asked, creating a much-wider area for investigation. She asked Jack to remain at the edge of the yellow tape and told him she’d tell everyone he was holding coffee for them. He seemed pleased by his job, however humble.

  Well, she thought, it was possible he was just a kid who was interested in a career. It didn’t have to mean anything that he was hanging around so eagerly. She discovered she was honestly hoping he was as innocent as Alex believed him to be.

  The crowd, such as it was, showed a lot of interest in her, but she could feel their repressed disappointment that she was just one small woman and she didn’t have a brawny team marching with her.

  Not a very impressive display for the ATF, she thought with grim humor.

  As she approached the most obviously blackened area, she caught up with Charity Camden. “Jack Castor. You know him?”

  “The high school kid? Sort of. I seem to remember him from a talk I gave at the school about arson last fall. Eager and full of questions. Good questions.”

  How interesting, Darcy thought but kept the thought to herself. “I left him at the cordon holding coffee for you and your guys, and anyone else working on this. Maybe you’re used to it, but it feels chilly to me out here.”

  Charity smiled. “Coffee’s always welcome. Thanks.”

  “What brought the crowd? Did you find something?”

  Charity laughed. “Not what, but who. They heard ATF was here. Enjoy your celebrity, if you can. I experienced a bit of it after I married Wayne. Good people, but curious as hell.”

  She called to her two helpers, telling them Jack had coffee for them. That cleared the zone briefly for Darcy, who set her equipment down, pulled on her gloves, made sure her loupe was in her pocket along with some evidence bags and started to walk through the grid laid out by the firefighters.

  She squatted often, examining the contents of a bag more closely and checking the ground beneath it. Once, she lifted her head and sniffed the air. It still contained the faintest tang of fuel oil after nearly two days. It must have soaked the ground.

  She added that tidbit to her increasing list of tidbits. She needed to find out what kind of fuel it was, because she needed to know its burn characteristics but also because she needed to know why she could still smell it. Fuel oil evaporated quickly if it didn’t burn. It was the benzenes and xylenes that made up the gasoline that created most of the familiar smell. Those evaporated relatively quickly, so a lot must have leaked out of that bomb without burning at any point.

  That brought her head up. Still squatting, she thought about it. That much fuel oil? In a closed container, why add the fertilizer? You could just make a great Molotov cocktail.

  She looked toward the building. But it wouldn’t have caused that kind of damage. She closed her eyes again, sniffing and thinking about it. Apparently the bomber hadn’t perfected his method. He’d left far too much gasoline residue behind. Way too much.

  Had this been a practice bomb? The notion chilled her deeply. One accident might well become a string of bombs if this had been a trial run.

  Good God!

  “Can I join you?”

  Darcy turned her head a little in response to Charity’s voice. “Yeah. Don’t disturb anything.” She almost winced as she heard herself. Charity certainly didn’t need that warning.

  Soon Charity was squatting beside her, saying, “I figured once we move everything we can see out of here we’ll need to look again.”

  “Yeah, with a rake. It’s hard to be sure we haven’t stomped something into the dirt.” Then she pointed toward where she’d found the wire. “We have all that to cover, too.”

  “You’re sure the wire came from the explosion?”

  “Unless someone was soldering out there, yeah.”

  Charity sighed. “I’ve seen some bad fires, Darcy, but nothing like this. You’ll have to tell me what to do.”

  “I don’t seem to have a problem with that, huh?” Darcy’s voice was dry.

  Charity chuckled quietly. “That’s okay. There can never be too many reminders. By the way, Alex said you needed a place to spread all this out. He’s talking the principal into turning the gymnasium over to you. I don’t get why that would be a problem. We haven’t even been able to determine if the rest of the building is structurally sound yet. We have an engineer coming from Gillette on Thursday. Meantime, no school. And thanks again for the coffee.” She raised her foam cup as if in toast, then sipped.

  “Darcy?”

  “Yeah?”

  “You’ve been squatting here an awfully long time. Is something bothering you or do you need help getting up now?”

  It was such a relief to just laugh. Darcy let it out, along with a lot of tension. “I was thinking. You’re the arson person. Do you still smell fuel oil?”

  “Yeah, I do. Some didn’t burn off. The ground must be soaked. It’s driving my guys crazy because I won’t let them smoke anywhere around here.”

  Darcy turned her head. “Your guys smoke?”

  Charity shrugged with a half smile. “The chief, my husband, hates it, but it’s as if these guys just can’t get enough smoke. They’re not allowed to do it in public, but it’s no secret, really.”

  “Criminy,” Darcy remarked.

  “Yeah. You’d think they never saw the results of careless smoking. Anyway, fuel oil. I gather it’s bothering you, too.”

  “If the bomb was precisely made, the residue of the fuel oil, the volatile chemicals in it, should be pretty much gone by now. The fact that I can smell it here in the open air after all this time...” She shook her head a little.

  “Y
ou’re thinking this guy didn’t know what he was doing?”

  “I’m thinking he knows what he’s doing but hasn’t quite got it right.”

  Charity drew a sharp breath. “I don’t like what that might mean.”

  “Me neither. Say, you know Alex, right?”

  “Fairly well, I guess. He’s a friend of Wayne’s.”

  “Well, he worked for BSU, but from what he said I gather he left some demons behind. Do you think I’d disturb him if I asked him for an evaluation?”

  At that moment, Darcy’s knees decided to raise an objection. She straightened and Charity was right beside her. The two of them stood sipping their coffees while Darcy shook her legs a bit and waited for Charity’s answer.

  “I honestly don’t know what his instinctive reaction would be,” Charity answered finally, drawing the words out as if she were still pondering. “I know this school matters a lot to him, and his students even more. He’s the kind of teacher we’d all have liked, you know? He takes a personal interest and, from what I hear, is amazingly even-tempered even when provoked by some teen. You know how teens are. Or you can remember.”

  “Smart mouths.”

  “Yeah. And they push each other into stupidity sometimes. But he’s never criticized one of them in a way that anybody complains about. Gifted with dealing with testosterone, I guess. But for the rest?” She looked at Darcy. “I’ve never talked with him much about his FBI days. Wayne’s given me the sense that Alex would prefer to forget them. But given that his school has been struck by a bomb...and more specifically his shop facilities...” She trailed off. “I dunno, Darcy. He’s a grown man. He knows how to say no. My guess is that he’d like to do something constructive about this mess, but I can’t guarantee anything.”

  “I’m not asking for a guarantee. I just want to avoid hitting a raw nerve, but I’m not trying to put you on the spot or deprive him of the right to speak for himself.”

  She was good at figuring out the mechanics of the bomb. Good at tracking evidence back to its source. Not so good at trying to evaluate the psychology of a bomber. Other than that they were usually cowards, she didn’t know a whole lot. Once she’d amassed enough evidence, the FBI would probably assist in this investigation. They often did, having their own skill sets and people. But she didn’t want to wait that long. She wanted to know if her nose was misleading her. Literally.