“Well, I’m scared shitless,” Virgil said.
“Man: you’re lucky to be alive. Anybody hurt inside?” He went running into the Holiday Inn.
Virgil let him go: he was feeling a little distant from events.
Gas had stopped pouring out of the boat, but was still trickling out. He had a twenty-gallon tank that ran under the floor, and it had been a miracle, he thought, that the gas hadn’t started burning. Staying well back, Virgil made a wide circle, checking the damage. The boat was gone: totaled. The blast had ripped the boat in half, right at the midsection. The bomb must have been in one of the rod-storage lockers down the right side of the boat, he thought.
He worked through it. The bomb would have been more certainly deadly, he thought, if it had been placed under the driver’s door of the truck. That would have done him for sure. But he’d parked the truck right out front, where it could be seen from both the Holiday Inn and the highway. Too much traffic to take the risk…
The boat, on the other hand, had been in the overflow lot, where Virgil had parked it to get it out of the way. There were lights, but it’d still be dim back there; and depending on how the bomb was rigged, it wouldn’t have taken more than a few seconds to put it down inside the rod locker.
At least, he thought-still feeling a little distant-they hadn’t gotten his muskie rods. He hadn’t had them out yet. He’d lost a couple walleye rigs, and a nice little ultralight bass rod and reel…
More deputies came in, and rubberneckers, and then the fire truck, and Virgil stood on a curb and watched them foam the gasoline. Barlow arrived, and came trotting over, followed by one of the crime-scene technicians. He put a hand on Virgil’s shoulder and asked, “You okay?”
“More or less,” Virgil said. “I’d like to get the truck away from there, so I can stay mobile. I didn’t want to do anything until you got here.”
“Give us a few minutes to look at it,” Barlow said. Then, “I wonder why he didn’t put it under the truck…?”
Virgil told him his theory on that, and the ATF man nodded and said, “You’re probably right.” They’d been drifting down the line of the wrecked boat, still well away, as the firemen finished up. Barlow said, “I bet it was another mousetrap and it was set to go off when you opened that locker. It would have taken you apart. It would have been like somebody stuffed a hand grenade down your shirt. You were lucky.”
Ahlquist showed up, red-faced and angry: “Man, he’s going after us now. He’s completely off the goldarned rails. You okay? Man…”
Virgil wandered off and took his cell phone out of his pocket and called Davenport. “Did I mention to you that I brought my boat along, you know, in case an after-hours fishing opportunity came up?”
“Tell me something surprising,” Davenport said.
“Okay. This fuckin’ bomber just blew it up.”
“What?”
“It’s gone, man. Cut in half. Truck’s okay.”
“Are you okay?”
“I’m a little freaked. He set it to kill me, no question. Goddamnit, Lucas, I’m shakin’ like a shaved Chihuahua.”
“You want some guys? I could get Shrake and Jenkins and be up there in a couple hours, help you tear the ass off the place.”
“Nothing to tear up right now. Maybe tomorrow-I’ll let you know. I just gotta get organized here, I gotta get the truck and get going.”
“Hey, Virg-go get a beer, or a cheeseburger, or something. Sit down for a while. That’s what I do when some shit happens. Man…”
Virgil rang off and walked back to where Ahlquist was standing, talking to Barlow, and asked, “Anybody hurt inside?”
“Two windows got knocked out, that big one on the front, and then there’s a small one, upstairs, in an empty room,” Ahlquist said. “So. .. no. Nobody hurt.”
“But he was trying his best,” Barlow said. “When he put the bomb in that rod locker, he did you a favor-there are about six aluminum walls between the bomb and the truck, and they soaked up the blast going forward. Didn’t even knock the windows out of the truck. But if somebody had been standing on the sidewalk when it went, they’d be dead.”
“It’s been sheer luck that he hasn’t killed a whole bunch of people,” Ahlquist said.
“We can move the truck, if you want it,” Barlow said. “We’re not going to get much out of this bomb-all that gasoline and foam would have taken out most of the evidence.”
Ahlquist: “I wonder why the gas didn’t blow?”
“Not much fire involved,” Barlow said. “That’s why most cars don’t burn when they’re hit.”
“I’ll take the truck,” Virgil said. “I gotta get some breakfast. I’m just, uh… I gotta get some food.”
“Sure you’re okay?” Ahlquist asked. “You’re sorta mumbling at us.”
“I was scared,” Virgil said. “But now, I’m getting pissed. Really, really, royally… I gotta get some food.”
He ate what he thought was about a three-thousand-calorie breakfast at Country Kitchen: French toast with hash browns, eggs over easy, regular toast, and two orders of link sausage, gobbling it down like somebody was going to take it away from him. When he was done, he felt a little sick from the grease, but his head was clearing out.
The bomb wasn’t the first time somebody had tried to kill him, but this one had shaken him. He hadn’t been kept alive by skill, or by reflexes, or by fast thinking; he was alive because he got lucky. If he hadn’t driven over a curb, he’d have died sometime during the day.
Simple as that. The coldness of the fact shook him. He was finishing the third of his three Diet Cokes when Davenport called him.
“You sure you’re okay?”
“Except for the fact that I just swallowed about a pint of grease, I’m okay.”
“ ’Cause I just talked to Hendrix, and he said if you’re too close to an explosion, the atmospheric pressure overload can screw you up, all by itself. Even if you don’t get hit by any of the shrapnel. They’re seeing that with guys coming back from Afghanistan.”
“I’ll take my pulse three times a day,” Virgil said.
“Seriously, keep it in mind,” Davenport said. “They say that what happens is, the next time you’re under a lot of stress, a vein pops in your brain. Usually, when you’re having sex. You get really worked up, and your blood pressure goes up, and just when you’re, you know, getting there, pop, there goes the vein, and you’re dead.”
“Now you’re lying,” Virgil said.
“I did make up that last part, about the sex,” Davenport said. “But seriously, if you start getting funky, talk to someone. It’s called ‘blastrelated traumatic brain injury’ or ‘blast syndrome.’ You can look it up on the Net. They see it even in people with no obvious physical injury.”
“Lucas… thanks. I’m more pissed off than hurt. I’m so mad, I
… Now it’s personal.”
“Glad to hear it,” Davenport said. “Things move quicker that way.”
13
Virgil went back to the scene of destruction: because of the mess caused by fire suppression, preservation of the crime scene wasn’t as important as it otherwise might have been, and the boat and trailer had been towed out of the street and parked at the far end of the Holiday Inn lot, where one of the ATF crime-scene techs was working through it.
“The guy’s giving us a lot of business,” he said, when Virgil walked up.
“You find anything good?”
“Got one end of the pipe. It blew right through the front sidewall on that locker, and the wall of the next locker, but then the hull stopped it. Same pipe as before. The guy went into that college and cut it up, and he’s using it one piece at a time. If we can find him, we can hang him with the rest of it.”
“We’ll find him,” Virgil said.
“Sorry about your boat. I thought maybe you could salvage the engine, but some shrapnel went right through the cowling. The electronics are toast.”
“Wonderful.” Made hi
m want to cry.
The boat was an older Alumacraft Classic single-console model with a fifty-horse Yamaha hung off the back; a decent boat, usable on big water only on calmer days, but fine for most smaller Minnesota lakes. Virgil had bought it used, with a state credit union loan, and had only just finished paying it off. He wasn’t sure, but if he remembered correctly his insurance policy had some kind of caveat about payment in case of “war or civil insurrection.”
Was a bomb the same as war?
He was still looking at the boat when he got a call from Ahlquist: “The paper got a crazy note, supposedly from the bomber. You need to come take a look at it. We’ve got it down at my office.”
“Are they sure it’s from the bomber?”
“Yeah. They’re sure. It mentions, I quote, ‘state Gestapo agents.’ The state Gestapo agents would be you,” Ahlquist said.
“I’ll be over,” Virgil said. “Listen, have you had anybody checking the motel and the other buildings around here for witnesses?”
“I got O’Hara organizing that,” Ahlquist said. “She and her crew are talking to everybody for a couple blocks around.”
“What about the letters?”
“We’re delivering them right now. We should be done by noon.”
Before he went to the sheriff ’s office, he walked around the block and found O’Hara.
She jogged up, smiling, squeezed him on the upper arm, and said, “Man, you got bigger balls than anybody I ever heard of.”
“Huh?”
She stepped back and said, “I heard all about it. Your boat got blown up right behind you, and you got knocked out of your truck, and then, then, you went out and got breakfast. That is cold, dude.”
Virgil said, “That’s not exactly… hmmm… Anybody see anything?”
She shook her head. “Nobody saw nuthin’. The thing is, this guy is very smart, and he’s careful. I’m really interested to see who it’s going to be.”
“If you find out, call me,” Virgil said.
Virgil left her and drove to the sheriff ’s department, and looked at a Xerox copy of the note sent to the newspaper. It was couched in a faintly ridiculous faux-lefty cant: The bombing campaign against PyeMart, Willard T. Pye, city officials who support the PyeMart’s oppressive action against our people, and state and federal Gestapo agents will continue until PyeMart steps back from its current plans and the Butternut City Council withdraws permits to build the PyeMart store. To ensure this gets done, we demand: -A public statement from Willard T. Pye that store construction will be abandoned. -Destruction of the footings already laid for the store. -Reversal of the zoning changes made to allow the store to be built. -Elimination of the sewer and water lines to the store site. -Resignation of those members of the city council who voted to allow the changes. -Resignation of Mayor Geraldine Gore. – Withdrawal of federal and state Gestapo agents investigating the case on behalf of PyeMart. Until this is done, we will continue to deliver our bombs to those who support PyeMart. To prove that this note is legitimate, we will reveal that another attack will take place today, and another boot will be removed from our necks.
“I’m saying that ‘another boot will be removed from our necks’ hooks up with ‘Gestapo agents.’ He didn’t want to say that you specifically were going to be attacked, in case you hadn’t been by the time the note got here,” Ahlquist said. “But the hint is strong enough, after the fact, for us to know what he was talking about.”
“I see that,” Virgil said. “I’d say you’re right. That’s clever-a clever guy. Do we know where it was mailed from?”
“Here in town. It went through the post office, but there are lots of places where it could have been dropped.”
“Fingerprints…?”
“We sent the original letter and envelope down to St. Paul, to your lab, to see if they can get anything off it. It looked pretty clean, just eyeballing it. No watermark on the paper, or anything-it looked like standard copy paper.”
The note was interesting, in a way, helping to build a better mental image of the bomber, but there wasn’t much real information in it. The scariest thing, Virgil thought, was that the guy was picking targets and turning out the bombs so quickly. He told Ahlquist, “If I were you, I’d have a serious talk with the city council people, and tell them they’re at risk. I told Gore, but she didn’t want to hear it.”
“All right. Are you just waiting for your letters to come back?”
“I got another thing I’m working on,” Virgil said. “I’m going to spend a little time with that. I’ll see you again this evening. I want to get going on those letters as soon as we start getting them back.”
“Already got two,” Ahlquist said. “I’m looking at the names, and I’m thinking, Yeah, this might work. Some people I didn’t think of, but you see their name, and you think, You know… that might be right.”
“All right. Maybe it’ll be something,” Virgil said. Then, “Do you know a woman named Marilyn Oaks?”
“Marilyn Oaks… that seems… Just a minute.” He stuck his head out in the hall and called, “Hey, Helen? Could you step in here?”
A clerk came in, an older woman with silvery hair: “Yes?”
“Marilyn Oaks. I’m thinking, the country club. Like the… dining lady, the caterer…”
Helen bobbed her head at her boss: “That’s right. Thin woman. Dark hair.”
“Got her,” Ahlquist said. “Thanks, Helen.” When Helen was gone, he said to Virgil, “Now you know everything I know about her.”
“Is she hot?”
Ahlquist’s eyes narrowed, then he said, “Nooo… I guess I wouldn’t call her hot, exactly. She does have a look about her. Like, you know, she’d fuck back at you. Is that sexist?”
“No, I don’t think so, but I’m not totally up on my feminist theory.”
Five minutes later, after getting directions from Ahlquist, Virgil was on his way to Doug Mackey’s house, the schoolteacher who’d phoned the tip to Thor, the desk clerk. Mackey wasn’t home, but a neighbor said, “He’s probably out at Cottonwood. He’s the pro there, in the summers.”
Cottonwood was a privately owned public golf course five minutes south of town. After inquiring in the pro shop, Virgil found Mackey by himself, on the driving range, working on a half-swing pitch out to a fifty-yard can.
He turned to Virgil with a golf pro’s inquiring smile, which faded when Virgil introduced himself and said, “I need to talk to you about how you know that Pat Shepard took twenty-five thousand dollars from Pye-and how you know he’s nailing Marilyn Oaks.”
Mackey’s mouth dropped open: “You were… Did you… Was there a tap on my phone?”
“No, nothing like that. But you know how word gets around, especially in a small town,” Virgil said.
“What?”
“You know how word gets around,” Virgil repeated. “Anyway, we do know, and lying to me is a crime, called obstruction of justice, but knowing what you know isn’t a crime, so it’d be best if you just told me the truth. If you tell the truth, you don’t get arrested, get to keep your job, and so on.”
Mackey stared at him for a second, did a baton twirl with his sand wedge, stuck it back in his bag, and then said, “I gotta have a beer.”
The club had a porch overlooking the eighteenth green, and they got a Bud Light for Mackey and Virgil got a Diet Coke, and they sat down at the far end, away from a foursome that had just come off the course.
“This is pretty awful,” Mackey said, after a couple of swallows. “They’re friends of mine. I feel like I’m betraying them.”
“Things were going to get awful the minute you picked up that phone,” Virgil said. “The other way to look at it is that you’re an honest citizen, doing your duty.”
“Doesn’t feel that way,” Mackey said. They sat looking at each other for a moment, then he asked, “Do they have to know that I’m the one who turned them in?”
“I don’t know,” Virgil said, though he thought it woul
d probably all come out, if the case ever got to court. “It depends what happens. I was talking to a psychologist about all of this, and explained that you were all teachers in the same school. He suggested that this might involve some personal relationship between you and Jeanne Shepard.”
Mackey didn’t say anything, but took another hit on his beer. Virgil took one, and finally Mackey said, “Pat’s a golfer. Not very good, but he works at it. He asked me to give Jeanne some lessons, so they could play together.”
“Something happened there?”
Mackey shook his head. “Jeez. You know? It didn’t take long. A little kissy-squeezy stuff. Then one day she came out for a lesson, and we saw Pat teeing off with his regular foursome, knew he’d be gone for at least five hours. We dropped my car off at Walmart, and took her car over to her place.”
“Is she the one who told you about Pat taking the money?”
“Yeah… I’m not sure why. I kind of think she wouldn’t mind if somebody spilled the beans and Pat went away,” Mackey said. “She could get a divorce, probably get the house. They’ve got a fifteenyear mortgage, almost paid off. Start over, maybe have another kid. She’d like to focus on her art.”
“She a good painter?”
“If you like sunsets,” Mackey said. “I never cared that much for them, myself.”
“You think she’d talk to me?”
Mackey said, “If you came onto her, like you came onto me-like you already knew about it, and like lying would get her in trouble, too. .. Yeah, she’d tell you about it. Things haven’t been good between her and Pat for quite a while.”
“Does she know about Marilyn Oaks?” Virgil asked.
“No. Pat told me about that. I think he might be lining her up as the next Mrs. Shepard.”
His affair with Jeanne Shepard, Mackey said, had begun right after golf season started, the second week of April. It had been going hot and heavy through May, but in the last couple of weeks Jeanne Shepard seemed to be cooling off. Then, he said, he found out that “she’d blabbed to her friend Bernice, who’s got the biggest mouth in Butternut Falls. No way she was going to keep the secret, and we got in an argument over that.”
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