Critical question: What should he do to keep pressure on the bomber? What would make him keep his head down? He was thinking about that when a small pike hit the Bigeye and, feeling the resistance of the line, tried to make a run into the weed bank. Virgil turned his head, got him running sideways, turned him toward the boat, played him, eventually brought him alongside—maybe twenty-three or twenty-four inches, he thought—grabbed the eye of the hook and shook it loose.
He’d gotten some pike slime on his hand and rinsed it off, then sat in the boat and let the sunshine sink into his shoulders; nothing like it. After a few minutes, he sighed, took the cell phone out of his pocket and called a reporter, Ruffe Ignace, at the Star Tribune.
“Ruffe? Virgil Flowers here.”
“Virgil—I heard you were up in Nutcup, trying to find that bomber.”
“Yeah, I am, still,” Virgil said. “Some of the media are spreading a rumor that I’d like to squelch.”
“A rumor? In the media? No, you gotta be joking,” Ignace said.
“As far as I know, there are no plans whatever to secretly deploy seventy-five to a hundred BCA infrared cameras around Butternut Falls, to monitor the coming and going of cars to sensitive sites,” Virgil said.
“Wait-wait-wait, let me get the last part of that . . . ‘to monitor the coming and going of cars to sensitive sites.’ Is that right?”
“That’s right. I have no information about any such plans.”
“By sensitive sites, you mean like the city hall, the county courthouse, the city councilmen’s houses, Willard Pye’s cars, the PyeMart site, and so on?”
“Those would be sensitive sites,” Virgil agreed.
“You’re not saying that there aren’t any plans, you’re saying that you don’t have any information about such plans.”
“That’s correct.”
“I’m not writing the story, but I’ll pass it on,” Ignace said.
“God bless you,” Virgil said. “And any children you may have spawned.”
DONE WITH IGNACE, he called Barlow to see if the ATF had come up with anything at the tech school. They had not. “It’s not a dead end, it’s a rats’ nest,” Barlow said. “There’re hundreds of people coming and going all the time, and they have adult evening classes, enrichment classes, and most of the adults in Butternut have been through there, at one time or another.”
“I have a feeling that it’s not a casual acquaintance, it’s somebody who goes through there on a regular basis. Somebody who’s familiar with the working of the place. A staff member, a full-time student.”
“Well, we’re still looking,” Barlow said.
ANOTHER POSSIBILITY OCCURRED TO HIM: What if there were more than one thing going on? What if the first bomb was aimed at Pye himself, as the third one had been—and had been brought in by some desperate board member? Desperate, why? Virgil didn’t know, but he was sure that board members must get desperate from time to time. Pye was an older man, and there must be some kind of succession waiting in the wings. If you knew when the bomb was going to go off, then you could absent yourself.... Of course, if you knew when it was going to go off, you would have set it for later, after the board meeting was sure to be under way.
Still, there might be something in it—someone desperate, or greedy, in Grand Rapids, hooking up with somebody desperate in Butternut Falls.
As weird as it seemed, there was a history of crazy bombers getting together—9/11 of course, but also the Oklahoma City bombing. There’d been cases of serial killers finding each other, or recruiting accomplices.
How would you do that? The Internet. He remembered Marie Chapman talking about anti-PyeMart sites. He’d forgotten to do anything about that.... Virgil got back on the phone and called the BCA researcher. “Sandy? This is Virgil. You got time to do some Internet research?”
She said, “If Lucas approves it.”
He outlined what he wanted: for her to go back in the archives of any anti-PyeMart sites she could find and see if it looked like a couple of the crazier posters seemed to be getting together . . . and then tracking down where they were from.
“I can do all of that from home, so that’ll make it cheaper,” she said. Sandy worked on a part-time basis, and sometimes as a consultant. “I’ll talk to Lucas and get back to you.”
ANOTHER IDEA POPPED UP. Would the bomber have taken all of the risks associated with building a bomb, and smuggling it into the Pinnacle, if he wasn’t sure it would work? Most likely, he’d rehearsed somewhere. That “somewhere” was most likely around Butternut. While the town was out in the countryside, it wasn’t a wilderness—if a bomb had gone off within a hundred miles of Butternut, somebody had heard it.
How to find those people?
VIRGIL WENT BACK to the fly rod, but his heart wasn’t in it, and after another ten minutes and one strike-and-miss, he motored back to the landing and yanked the boat out of the water. On the way back into the downtown, he called the sheriff, asked for the name and number of the local paper, which he couldn’t remember—the Clarion Call, as it turned out. He got the editor on the line and asked about the possibility of a public request-for-help on the next day’s front page.
“Well, what do you need?”
“I need a story that says the bomber probably rehearsed his bombings—he probably touched off a couple explosions within the last month or so. Probably not too far from Butternut—it’d be someplace familiar to him. You can attribute all those thoughts to me. I’d like to ask your readers if any of them heard an unexplained explosion. If they have, call the sheriff’s department.”
“Sure, we can do that. Give it a good spot, too.”
“I appreciate it,” Virgil said.
THE DAY WAS STILL HOT, but the afternoon was wearing on, and he’d been up early. Nap time? If he could get an hour or two, he’d be good until midnight. Back at the Holiday Inn, he was headed for his room when the desk clerk came running out to the parking lot and called, “Hey, Virgil.”
Virgil stopped. “Yeah?”
The kid was waving a piece of paper. “You got a call. It’s important.”
“A confession, I hope?”
“Well, yeah, something like that.” He handed a piece of paper to Virgil. “It was kind of anonymous. I took it down word for word.”
Virgil unfolded it. In the clerk’s neat handwriting, the note said: For Virgil Flowers of the Bureau of Criminal Apprehension. Important. Pat Shepard’s wife Jeanne knows he took $25,000 from Pye but doesn’t know what he did with it. She thinks he used it to pay back taxes. He didn’t. He hid it so he could spend it on his girlfriend Marilyn Oaks (sp?). Jeanne doesn’t know about Marilyn.
Pat Shepard was one of the city councilmen who voted for the PyeMart. Virgil took a minute to digest the note. A cricket started chirping from the flower bed around the parking lot, an annoyance that brought him back. He asked the desk clerk what he thought. “I think Jeanne Shepard is the second-hottest woman in town.”
Virgil checked him out: a fairly good-looking blond jock-like kid of seventeen or eighteen, with big shiny white teeth; a kid who reminded him somewhat of himself, when he was that age. “How old is she?”
The kid shrugged: “I don’t know. Thirty-five?”
“What are you doing, thinking a thirty-five-year-old woman is hot?”
“Hey. If you’re hot, you’re hot,” the kid said. He was wearing a name tag that said Thor.
“Did you take the message?” Virgil asked.
“Yup. It was a man,” Thor said. “He refused to give his name, but it was Doug Mackey. Mr. Mackey.”
“Mr. Mackey?”
“He’s a teacher at the high school,” Thor said. “He was my golf coach for three years, and I took driver’s ed from him. I recognized his voice, but he didn’t recognize mine. Mr. and Mrs. Shepard are teachers, too. You want to know what I think?”
“Sure,” Virgil said.
“Mr. Mackey and Mr. Shepard are friends and they play a lot of golf tog
ether, at least once or twice a week. I think Mr. Shepard told Mr. Mackey that he’s nailing Marilyn Oaks. I don’t know Marilyn Oaks, but she must be the first-hottest in town, if Mr. Shepard is chasing her, instead of staying home. I’m telling you, Mrs. Shepard has got an ass like a couple of slow-pitch softballs. If it was me, I’d be—”
“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, but . . .”
“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.