Shock Wave vf-5

by John Sandford

  “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?”

  12

  That evening, Virgil called the AmericInn and got transferred to Marie Chapman’s room. She’d just come through the door, she said, when she picked up. “Willard’s got his computer out, and he’s looking at spreadsheets, so I’m done.”

  “Good. Can I buy you dinner?”

  “Yes. Is there anywhere besides Bunson’s? I’m about Bunsoned out.”

  “There’s an exceptional Applebee’s in Butternut,” Virgil said. “Mmm-mm.”

  “Bunson’s it is,” she said. “Give me a half hour. I’ll meet you in the lobby.”

  Virgil did a quick run through the bathroom, showered, brushed his teeth, slapped a little Old Spice behind his ears, went outside, dropped the boat trailer, cleaned out the truck, and still had five minutes to get to the AmericInn.

  On the way over, he questioned his motives: he was still attached to Lee Coakley, but had the feeling that Lee was drifting away, if not already gone. Should he push on Chapman a little, to see what would happen? With her rootless type of job, he didn’t doubt that she would be a little lonely, and sophisticated enough not to put too much importance on… what? What exactly was he doing here? And if he should hustle her into bed, or vice versa, what would that do for, or to, his soul?

  Anyway, he got to her motel in three minutes, and precisely a half hour after he’d spoken to her on the phone, she walked into the lobby and said, “Right on the minute.”

  She was wearing a turquoise blouse and black pants, with a Hopi silver necklace and earrings. “You look terrific,” Virgil said.

  “You’re getting off on the right foot,” she said. “I require large amounts of flattery.”

  “You came to the right guy,” he said.

  On the way to Bunson’s, they chitchatted, and at the restaurant, got a quiet table. Virgil ordered a Leinie’s and Chapman got a margarita, and Virgil started filling her in on the lack of any new developments in the search for the bomber.

  “The sheriff said something about doing a survey…”

  “Yeah, I gotta go back there tonight and print up a bunch of letters and stuff them in envelopes and get them addressed,” Virgil said. “Gonna get the sheriff ’s deputies to deliver them tomorrow.. . and then tomorrow night, I’m going to put it all together.”

  He explained the survey idea, and she said, “I’m familiar with the market concept, but usually, you need the players to bet on the outcome with some kind of pot they can win. Money. I could probably get Willard to put up some cash.”

  Virgil was shaking his head: “No, no. The kind of thing you’re talking about, there’s got to be a payoff to get people to play, and be serious about it. With this one, the payoff is catching the bomber and keeping yourself from getting blown up.”

  She said, “Maybe. You’re gonna have to sort thousands of different names.”

  “I’m hoping not. I’m hoping there’ll be hundreds, or maybe only dozens. That everybody knows who the potential crazies are,” Virgil said. “The guy who gave me this idea thinks the bomber will be in the top ten.”

  They talked about that, ordered dinner, steaks and potatoes, and talked some more about it, and then Virgil said, “You know, a lot of people think Willard bribed the mayor and city council to approve the zoning change for the store.”

  “I know.” She said nothing more.

  Virgil waited for a minute, then asked, “What do you think about that?”

  “I don’t know,” she said. She stopped talking as the food arrived, and when the waiter went away, she continued: “There was a situation in Indiana where a PyeMart construction expediter was charged with bribing members of a city council. This was four or five years ago. He was convicted and was sentenced to a year in jail. Willard said he didn’t know anything about it. I believe him, b
ut…”

  “What’s an expediter?” Virgil asked.

  “PyeMart only goes into a town after a lot of market research-especially if there’s already a Walmart,” she explained. “Their target markets overlap somewhat. Margins are pretty low, and they want to make sure the store will make a profit. After the market research is done, if they decide that the market will handle the store, then an expediter is appointed. He fronts the company to the town-finds out what will be needed to get the store built. Local regulations, zoning, makes contacts with city officials and building-supply places. PyeMart tries to get the actual construction work done locally, and supplied locally, because that’s an economic point that the town will have to consider.”

  “This guy expedited the store by bribing the city council?”

  “Apparently. There was a slush fund in the construction department, and some of the slush got transferred to the councilmen,” Chapman said. “Willard said he never knew. I believe him on that exact point, but I also know that expediters are paid a lot of money-a lot more than somebody normally would be at that level. I expect some of that is risk money. Expediters are not expected to come back and say they can’t get the permits to build the store. They get the permits. Period.”

  “So Willard doesn’t know of any specific case of bribery, but at some level, has to know that it goes on,” Virgil said.

  “Willard can be a very sweet man and he’s tremendously loyal to his employees-but he is a ferocious businessman. He does what he thinks he needs to do.” She hesitated, and rolled the bottom of her margarita glass on the tabletop, making a tracery out of a couple drops of water. “We’re now getting into an area that I want to reserve for my book.”

  “So he knows.”

  “I can’t say that. I can tell you that the man, the expediter, who went to jail in Indiana, served eight months of the one-year sentence. When he got out, he landed on his feet: he got a great job with a major paper company, a maker of all kinds of paper products, everything from notebooks to paper plates.”

  “Yeah?”

  “A major supplier to PyeMart,” she said.

  “So the guy got taken care of.”

  “That would be for somebody else to say,” she said. Then, “Are you investigating Willard?”

  “I’m trying to find the bomber,” Virgil said. “But you know there’ve been accusations of bribery… you were at the press conference, almost a fistfight there.”

  “Well, I’ll tell you, Virgil, I’ve said about as much as I’m going to say,” Chapman said. “I won’t betray Willard, or go sneaking around to find information for you. If you’re going to investigate him, you’ll have to do it on your own.”

  “Be a good thing for your book,” Virgil said. “You know, if Pye got pitched into some kind of crisis.”

  She looked at him for a long moment, then laughed, a short, choppy sound, and said, “The snake crawls out from behind the surfer-boy smile.”

  “Hey… I’m just telling you what’s going on,” Virgil said.

  “We ought to talk about something else,” she said.

  So they did.

  They had a pleasant meal, talked about writing, and about police work, about where they grew up, and about Virgil’s cases-Chapman had access to an excellent news clipping service, and knew about Virgil’s major busts. She was, Virgil thought, an interesting woman, but something had fundamentally changed between them when the word “snake” came out of her mouth. He dropped her at the AmericInn at nine o’clock and, feeling a little melancholy, went on to the sheriff ’s department.

  Of the fourteen letters sent out, they’d gotten back eleven-three people declined to participate. Virgil took two hours to work through the mass of names, entering them on his laptop, with addresses. After eliminating duplicates, he had a list of a hundred and seventy-eight people who’d be asked to nominate possible bombers.

  Ahlquist had come through several times while Virgil was working out the list, and finally he said, “You sure you want to go through with this? It’s gonna cause a stink.”

  “Yeah, it will, but it’s a whole new way of looking at an investigative problem,” Virgil said. “I’m almost as curious to see how it comes out as I am anxious to catch the bomber.”

  When he had the list, and the addresses, he wrote a carefully worded cover letter, explaining the idea behind the nominations, asking that the lists be returned to the sheriff ’s department no later than the next evening. He left space at the bottom, with ten blank underlines, for the bomber nominees, and noted that the letter’s recipients didn’t need to sign the letter or identify themselves in making their nominations.

  He was working through the letter, revising, when he took a call from Lee Coakley. He perked up as soon as he saw the incoming number, and heard her voice: “Virgil, how are you?”

  “Aw, I’m in a mess of a case. I’m up in Butternut Falls.”

  “David told me, I looked it up on the Star Tribune ’s website. Are you getting anywhere with it?”

  “Well, I’m trying something new…” He explained about the letters. When he finished explaining, she started laughing, and after a minute, said, “Virgil, you have a different kind of mind.”

  “ I didn’t think of it.”

  “But you’re doing it. I hope Earl knows what you’re getting him into.”

  “Earl’s gonna do just fine, if I pull this off. Anyway, what have you been up to?”

  So she told him, a bunch of stuff he didn’t entirely understand about working through a gunfight on a TV show. “It’s about half real, and half movie. I tell them what’d really happen, they tell me what they need to have happen, for the movie. Then, we try to work something out that feels sorta real, but gets done what they need done.”

  She went on for five minutes and sounded so enthusiastic about it that Virgil felt the melancholy coming back. Because, he thought, Lee probably wouldn’t be. When she said, “I gotta go, the boys are raising hell,” it was a notably friendly, and non-intimate, good-bye. A kind of good-bye he recognized, a good-bye from a friend, not from a lover. He wondered if she recognized it, and thought she probably did, since women were always a few steps ahead in such matters.

  Which, when he thought about it, was how he lost his Tim Kaihatsu-signed Gibson guitar when his second wife moved out.

  He went back to the letters, editing them, then printing them. Before stuffing them in envelopes, he numbered each of the one hundred and seventy-eight names on his list, and on each letter, carefully, with black ink, put a small dot in a word that corresponded, in number, to the number of each name on the list.

  In other words, the letter began with the phrase, As you undoubtedly know… and the first name on the list, Andrew Lane, got a small black dot between the legs of the capital A in As. The second name on the list got a tiny dot in the o in you. The third name got a dot in the o of undoubtedly.

  Because the letters had said the responses would be anonymous, it felt dishonest, but, he thought, it might be useful to know who nominated whom. He couldn’t think of a reason why it might be useful, but then, he’d never done anything like this.

  He finished after one o’clock in the morning, left a stack of letters with the duty officer, for delivery the next day, and headed back to the hotel.

  He spent a restless night in the over-soft bed; too much to think about. He didn’t have many new ideas about chasing the bomber, at least, not until the letters came back. That would give him as much work as he could handle.

  In the meantime, he could look into the question of whether the city council had been bribed. That would not be fun-he would need to extort the necessary information, using marital infidelity as a wedge. He’d had a checkered past himself when it came to women-three divorces in three years, before he at least temporarily quit getting married. So you had some schoolteachers engaging in some bed-hopping-so what? Except, unfortunately for them, it might be tangled up with bribery.

  He could also stay in bed, the
pillow hard as a pumpkin, and spend the night brooding about Lee Coakley. Had she already been unfaithful? What about himself; was thinking about the honeyhaired Marie Chapman actually unfaithful? Taking her out to dinner? Jimmy Carter would have said… But, you know, fuck Jimmy Carter.

  In the morning, he cleaned up and decided to head out to Country Kitchen for French toast and link sausage; and, he thought, since he didn’t know exactly what he’d be doing all day, he might as well take the boat, just in case.

  He backed around, hooked up, and took off. At the street, he took the curb-cut too short and he felt the trailer’s right wheel bounce over the curb.

  In an infinitesimally short space of time, the bomb in the trailer blew up and the world lurched and Virgil found himself on the street, crawling away from the truck, with the sense of blood in his nose and mouth, though when he wiped his face with his hand, there wasn’t any. He rolled onto his butt and looked back. The boat had been cut in half, but the truck itself seemed untouched; gasoline was pouring onto the street, and he thought, Fire.

  He turned and continued crawling, then got to his feet and staggered away. He thought, How did I get in the street…?

  He could hear sirens, then, and two people ran out of the Holiday Inn’s front door; he saw a window had blown out. The smell of gasoline was intense… He pulled himself together and realized that when the bomb went off, he’d instinctively jammed the truck’s gear shift into park, and had rolled out the door… Hadn’t thought about it-nothing had gone through his mind at all-he’d just done it.

  More people were running toward him, and the truck and trailer, and he pointed at the two closest, the ones who’d come out of the Holiday Inn, and said, “Keep everybody away. Keep everybody back. There’s gasoline all over the place. One of you, get inside and call nine-one-one and tell them we need a fire truck here now. Go.”

  A minute later, when the first deputy arrived, Virgil was already on the phone to Barlow: “The guy came after me. He blew up my boat.”

  “I’m coming,” Barlow said.

  The Deputy ran up and asked, “You okay?”