Shock Wave vf-5

by John Sandford

“Yeah. Wyatt just left for the moon,” Virgil said. “Where are you?”

  “Five minutes away. Jenkins says he can see the dust cloud. We’re coming.”

  Virgil clicked off, heard O’Hara talking to Ahlquist, and then she clicked off and caught up with him. They passed the car, which had been turned probably thirty degrees sideways. The near side had been torn to pieces by shrapnel from the house. Where the house had been, there was nothing but a hole in the ground.

  Virgil thought, almost idly, No more spiderwebs…

  “Was it an accident?” O’Hara asked. “Or did he do it on purpose? Maybe he figured you had him…”

  There were sirens everywhere and the first patrol car blew past the subdivision at the bottom of the hill, coming fast. Virgil was aware that the car looked hazy-that everything looked hazy-and he realized that he was walking through an enormous cloud of dust, which was still raining down on them. O’Hara’s red hair was turning gray with the dirt, and he was sure his was, too.

  He took her by the elbow and said, “Come on, we’ve got to get out of the dust.”

  She resisted. “What about Wyatt?”

  “Elvis has left the building,” Virgil said. “Or maybe, the building has left Elvis. And we’re breathing in all kinds of bad shit, maybe including little pieces of asbestos, or glass fibers, if the place had insulation. We’ve got to get out of the cloud. Cover your mouth and nose with your shirt.”

  Using their shirts as masks, they walked down the track to the county road; the patrol car turned into the track, and Virgil waved them off. The car stopped, and they walked down to it, and Virgil said, “Pop the back door, let us in. Keep your window up.”

  They got in the back, and Virgil told the deputy about the dust, and then about Wyatt.

  The deputy asked O’Hara, “So you guys think he’s dead?”

  “I think he was vaporized,” O’Hara said. “I think he somehow touched off everything he had left. It was like… it was like the movies they showed us in Iraq. It was like an IED.”

  Virgil asked the deputy to take him back to his truck. As they rode over, he called Shrake and said, “Wait a bit before you try to go up the hill. That dust cloud may be toxic. I’m parked on the highway. I’ll meet you there.”

  Shrake and Jenkins arrived two minutes later, and more patrol cars came along, and were waved off, and then a fire truck. Rubberneckers were piling up on the highway, and Virgil sent a couple of the cops to keep them moving. Then Ahlquist came in, and a moment later, Barlow. They stood on the shoulder of the road, watching the dissipating dust cloud, and Barlow said, “If it took out a whole house, that was probably the rest of it.”

  “That’s what I said,” O’Hara told him.

  Ahlquist asked, “No chance that he got out? That he set off a timer thing, then went out the far side and ran out through the corn to the other side?”

  Virgil said, “No.”

  Shrake said, “You sound pretty sure of that.”

  “I am,” Virgil said.

  “Suicide by cop,” Barlow said. “He knew you were coming, and took the easy way out.”

  “I think we can go up there,” Virgil said. The cloud was thinning, under a light westerly breeze.

  They drove up the hill in a long caravan, with the fire truck trailing behind. They found a hole, but no sign of Wyatt.

  “If it killed him, his head should be around here somewhere,” Barlow said, and Virgil remembered what the deputy had said the first night he was in town. O’Hara remembered it, too, and looked at Virgil and nodded.

  “Then we need to get some people together to walk the field,” Virgil said. “We had bricks coming down eighty yards out, so if we.. . you know, his head shouldn’t have gone much further than that.”

  Barlow looked at him, but nodded.

  Ahlquist pointed at a deputy and told him to get some cops and start walking the field. Barlow walked over and looked in the hole, the former cellar. He shook his head. “Damn good thing we didn’t go down that basement. The thing must have been unstable-or maybe it was set to blow if anyone found it.”

  Virgil: “You think the bomb was in the basement?”

  Barlow nodded. “I know it was. If it had been upstairs, the floor would have been blown into the basement. But the explosion was below the floor, and everything went straight up. That’s why the basement’s so clean. The whole building, including the floor, went out.”

  He added, “You two were lucky. You were down below the shrapnel line and partly sheltered by that foundation. About nine thousand pounds of shrapnel blew right over your heads.”

  “And you think that was the whole stash of Pelex,” Ahlquist said.

  “Just about had to be, to do this kind of damage,” Barlow said. He looked around and shook his head. “I need to get pictures of this. This is something we don’t see very often.”

  The cops were walking the field, slowly, looking behind every cornstalk. Virgil got his Nikon and a short zoom, and walked around the blast zone, documenting the effects of the explosion at Barlow’s direction-and Barlow wanted three shots of everything, at slightly different exposures.

  They’d been at it for fifteen minutes when the cops found a piece of a human body, what looked like a hip joint. Virgil took a couple shots of it, and then, a minute later, the ragged remains of a foot.

  “No question now,” Shrake said, his face grim.

  “Never was a question,” O’Hara said. She’d been tagging Virgil and Barlow around the field. “He walked through that door and it was about a count of one… two… and boom. He didn’t have time to walk halfway through the house.”

  Virgil was tired of taking photos of body parts, but there wasn’t anyone else to do it, and for what it might somehow be worth, he kept at it, as more and more body parts were found. Wyatt’s head was eventually found, only seventy feet from the house, under a piece of the roof. There were no features remaining: nothing but a bloody skull.

  Virgil thought, F8 and be there, and took the shot.

  “Must’ve gone straight up,” Jenkins said. “Like a baseball.”

  “Another cop said like a basketball,” Virgil said. He turned away from the mess, sick at heart. “Doesn’t look like any kind of sport, at all.”

  A patrol car arrived, in a two-car set with a civilian car, a Toyota Corolla, and a woman got out of the Corolla and looked up the hill.

  Ahlquist said, “Mrs. Wyatt. It’s Jennifer, I think. I better get down there to meet her.” He turned to a deputy: “I want tarps or something over all the body remains. There’s nothing for her to identify, and I don’t want her to see the scraps.” When the deputy seemed to hesitate, Ahlquist snapped, “Get going! Get going! ”

  Barlow came up and said, “We’ll have to do DNA. Just to make sure.”

  O’Hara was getting testy: “I told you: he didn’t have time to get out.”

  Barlow shook his head. “Time is strange, after something like that. You think it was two seconds, but you were almost killed. Things speed up under those conditions. If it were ten seconds-”

  “Then where did the body come from?” O’Hara demanded.

  “That’s something we’d have to determine,” Barlow said. O’Hara said, “Oh, bullshit,” and Barlow put up his hands. “I think it’s ninetynine percent you’re right. But, we check.”

  Virgil walked around with his camera, shaking his head, and O’Hara asked, “Are you all right?”

  “No,” he said.

  Ahlquist and Jennifer Wyatt walked around the house, talking, and Wyatt began to cry, and Ahlquist put an arm around her shoulders. Virgil watched. Barlow came up and said, “Her house and his apartment are both crime scenes. I’m talking to my ADA to make sure we don’t need search warrants, and if we do, to get them. We’re going down and taking her house apart.”

  “I’ll come along, too,” O’Hara said.

  “Ah, you can go on home,” Virgil said. “Get cleaned up. You’re sorta a mess.”

  “Nope. I
’m going,” she said. “Either I ride with you or I’ll ride with somebody else.”

  “Better go with somebody else,” he said. She stalked off and Virgil looked at the weeping Mrs. Wyatt, and told Shrake and Jenkins, “You guys hang tight. I gotta get out of here and get something to eat.”

  “To eat,” Shrake said, doubtfully.

  “Yeah. Food,” Virgil said.

  He told Barlow that he was going, and that he would e-mail all the photos that evening; and he walked down to his truck.

  Bunson’s was almost empty. He got the French toast-it was still more or less morning-and told the waitress to keep bringing the Diet Cokes, and he sat and worked it through.

  One thing didn’t fit, and he couldn’t make it fit. He closed his eyes and took himself back to the Pye Pinnacle visit. Thought about all the explanations, about the dead and wounded, about the boardroom explosion, about the ludicrous sight of the birthday pies smeared all over the ceiling…

  He thought about how Pye had a “sanctum sanctorum” where he worked out his problems, and where not even the cleaning lady was welcome. Not that the cleaning lady would have been there, early on a Monday morning.

  So here was a question: Why didn’t the bomber, coming down from above, put the bomb in Pye’s office? If he’d used some kind of mousetrap trigger, and stuck the bomb in the desk leg hole, he would have gotten Pye. Why would he do something so uncertain as to stick the bomb in the credenza? In the credenza, any number of things could have led to its discovery.

  He thought about it, and thought about it, and eventually came up with an answer, in the best tradition of Sherlock Holmes. Once you’ve eliminated all the other possibilities, whatever was left had to be the answer.

  What was left was simple enough, Virgil thought. It should, he thought, have been apparent to anyone with half a brain.

  Even with half a brain, Virgil thought he was probably correct.

  He made a phone call to St. Paul, to Sandy, the researcher, told her what he wanted, and asked her to make some phone calls.

  He finished the french toast, and the waitress came over, a young girl with dark hair and big black eyes, and smiled at him and said, “You’re Virgil Flowers.’ ”

  “Yes.”

  “Your two friends said I should ask you why you’re called ‘that fuckin’ Flowers.’”

  “They said you should ask because they’re assholes,” Virgil said.

  She was taken aback, a stricken look on her face, and Virgil touched her arm as she turned away and said, “Wait, look… I’m sorry. I was up at that bomb this morning, and I’m still a little shook up. That’s why I’m sitting here stuffing my face.”

  She put her hand to her face and said, “Oh, jeez…” and, “You’ve got stuff all in your hair, is that from…”

  “Yeah, it is. And really, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to sound like a jerk,” he said. “They call me that because… well, because I’m so good with women.”

  Now she ventured a tiny smile, and said, “That’s what I thought,” and she left him.

  Virgil got an address for Wyatt’s house from the sheriff’s dispatcher, went that way, and found Barlow’s truck outside, and a couple sheriff’s cars. Barlow was inside, with O’Hara and two other deputies. He’d found some bow-hunting equipment and some camo, and showed it to Virgil.

  “Not Realtree,” Virgil said.

  “But he had some, and he could have had some more, someplace else.”

  “Could have, but probably didn’t,” Virgil said.

  “How do you know that?” O’Hara asked.

  “Because he wasn’t the bomber. He was murdered.”

  Barlow said, “Aw, man, don’t start this shit again. First Erikson, now Wyatt…”

  “Erikson led to Wyatt,” Virgil said. “The bomber led us down the garden path. He wanted us to look hard at the first setup, so we’d buy the second one.”

  O’Hara was curious. “You know who it is?”

  “Yeah, but I need another piece of the puzzle. I should get it this afternoon. I want you both to get down on your hands and knees, praying that the call comes through.”

  “Well, who is it?”

  “I don’t want to slander anyone,” Virgil said. “Wait until the call comes through.”

  They all got pissed at him, so he slouched out to his truck, drove out to the PyeMart site, intending to do some fishing. When he got there, he found Pye looking at the footings; Chapman was looking over his shoulder.

  Pye saw him getting out of the truck and said, “Well, you fucked me. And, I still gotta kiss your ass, for nailing down this Wyatt guy.”

  “Wyatt’s not the guy,” Virgil said.

  Pye took a step back. “So, you fucked me, and then you fucked me again?”

  “I didn’t think you used that kind of language, Willard,” Virgil said.

  “I don’t, unless somebody really fucks me,” Pye said.

  “I’ll get the guy this afternoon. Or maybe tomorrow, depending.”

  “Depending on what?”

  “I’ll let you know about that,” Virgil said. “In the meantime, keep your mouth shut about this. I only told you, because he tried to kill you.”

  Pye bobbed his head, and Chapman nodded.

  Virgil said, “So, you’re pulling the store out?”

  “Sounds like it. I been all over Ahlquist, and what he says is, three city councilmen and the mayor have been suspended, and under state law, the governor is going to appoint replacements until there can be an election. The first order of bidness is gonna be to reverse the zoning changes on grounds that the former council was bribed. I don’t believe it, I still gotta talk to my boy.”

  “Tell you what, Willard: just between you and I and Marie’s potential two million readers, you bribed their asses. You know it, I know it, and Marie’s two million readers know it. There’s gonna be a trial, and it’s all gonna come rolling out.”

  “Well, there will be if there’s a trial-but who knows what might happen, between now and then?” Pye said, showing the slightest crinkle of a smile. “Anyway, it’s time for me to get the crap outa town.”

  “You’re not gonna stay for the ass-kissing ceremony?”

  Pye looked at his watch, then asked, “When you gonna get him again?”

  “Today or tomorrow. Tomorrow at the latest.”

  “And you won’t tell me who it is?”

  “Not yet,” Virgil said.

  “Can you tell me how you knocked it down?” Pye asked.

  “Two things. You almost had a birthday party, and I was in the right place at the right time. I’ll tell you the rest of it tomorrow.”

  Virgil was getting his fly rod out of the truck when he took a phone call from Sandy the researcher. “You were right,” she said. “We’ve got a receipt, but they’ve got no video.”

  “Goddamnit. I don’t suppose he signed his own name,” Virgil said.

  Sandy said, “Not unless his real name is Mick E. Maus.”

  25

  Virgil put the fly rod away and called Ahlquist from his truck, and said, “I’m coming over. I can tell you who the bomber is, but we have to talk about how to catch him. Probably ought to have Good Thunder there, if you can get her. Somebody from the county attorney’s office, anyway. Anybody you think should know. I’ll call Barlow, get him in, and my two guys from the BCA.”

  “Fifteen minutes?” Ahlquist asked.

  “Yeah, that’s good. I’ll see you there.”

  He called Jenkins and told him to bring Shrake, and Barlow. “I got my call. I think I can tell you how it happened, and who did it.”

  Virgil pulled into the parking lot outside the county courthouse, left his car in a slot near the door. Shrake and Jenkins went by in Shrake’s Cadillac, Jenkins lifting a hand to Virgil, and found a spot farther down the lot. Preoccupied with his thoughts about the bomber, Virgil didn’t see Geraldine Gore come through the courthouse door until she shouted at him, “You dirty sonofabitch.”

&
nbsp; She was accompanied by a man in a gray suit, white shirt, and pink tie; he might as well have had an ID patch on his back that said, “Lawyer.” He said, “Geraldine, Geraldine,” and tried to catch her arm, but she twisted away and came steaming toward Virgil. She was carrying a big leather purse and Virgil had the feeling that she was going to swing it at his head.

  She did. He stepped outside the swing, and said, “Take it easy, Mayor, for Christ’s sakes.”

  She said, “You motherfucker,” and came back in, angrier and angrier, swung again and missed. Shrake and Jenkins came up and Shrake said, “I bet she takes him.”

  Jenkins said, “You’re on for five. That fuckin’ Flowers has got the reach on her and twenty pounds. Okay, three pounds.”

  Her attorney was on her by then, shouting, “Geraldine, Geraldine, stop it, stop it!” He wrestled her away, then turned to Virgil and said, “I hope you’re not offended.”

  Jenkins jumped in: “Offended? You mean, because she committed aggravated assault, assault on an officer of the law, extortion of a witness, obstruction of justice? And those are just the felonies.”

  Gore screamed, “Shut up, you asshole.”

  Virgil said, “I forgot you guys had been introduced.”

  Shrake said, “Oh yeah, the three of us go way back.”

  The attorney: “Agent Flowers…”

  Virgil said, “Just don’t let her shoot me, when I turn my back, okay? I’m going inside.”

  “So we’re okay?” the lawyer asked.

  “Yeah, except now I need an aspirin,” Virgil said.

  Gore shouted, “You’re gonna need more than an aspirin, you shit, you shit, you shithead, you peckerhead, you…”

  The lawyer hauled her away, sputtering and screaming.

  Shrake watched them go, then said to Virgil, “You find the most interesting crooks.”

  “You got an aspirin?”

  They gathered in a courtroom, Virgil, Ahlquist, Barlow, Good Thunder, Shrake, Jenkins, O’Hara, and a tall fat deputy that Virgil didn’t know, but who turned out to be the chief deputy, and whose name was Jeneret.

  “So who is it?” Ahlquist asked. They were sitting in the court pews, with Virgil on a chair in front of them.