The offer, she said, had not come directly from Dunn, but from Mayor Geraldine Gore, who had also delivered the money. Pat Shepard, she said, had come home and told her excitedly that their problems were over: they might even have enough left to buy a home theater system.
“Did he buy one of those?” Good Thunder asked.
Shepard bit her lip, looked away: “No. I have reason to believe that he’d begun a relationship with another woman, Carol Anne Moore, who works for the county clerk, and that he spent a good deal of money on her.”
Virgil: “Was this a serious relationship? Was this a fling, or did you consider your marriage endangered or over?”
“The marriage was over. I was just picking a time to leave,” she said. “I don’t know how serious the relationship was. Is. I don’t know if it’s still going on; I assume it is. Why would it make any difference?”
Virgil asked, “I wonder if he would confide in Miz Moore.”
She shook her head: “I don’t know.”
Good Thunder: “In regards to your own personal life, I would suggest that you act with discretion. If it comes to a jury trial, it will be . . . less difficult.”
“You mean, ‘Don’t fuck anyone new’?” Then, with a quick glance at the stenographer, “Oh my God, I’m sorry I said that, I just . . .”
“A lot of stress,” Good Thunder said.
“It’s completely understandable,” said LaRouche.
Shepard said that her husband had laundered much of the money by giving it to his brother, who owned an auto-body shop in St. Cloud. The brother ran it through his bank, then returned it to Shepard as a “temporary employee.”
“I don’t know if Bob knew where the money was coming from, but Pat told me it was no skin off Bob’s butt. The money came in, he paid it to Pat, deducted Pat’s wages as a temporary employee, and it all came out even, tax-wise.”
After they’d wrung her out, Virgil said, “Mrs. Shepard . . . your husband will likely be looking at a jail sentence here. Do you think that if he were offered a deal, a reduction in the sentence, that he would be willing to implicate some of the other members of this conspiracy?”
“If you said that you could keep him out of prison if he ran over our daughter with the car, he’d do it,” she said. “He is a coward and a rat. And he cheats at golf.”
Good Thunder: “Do you know a woman named Marilyn Oaks?”
Shepard stared at her for a moment, then closed her eyes and leaned back: “I knew it. That sonofabitch.”
When they were all done, and the stenographer had folded up her machine, Shepard said, “The thing that defeats me is, Pat is a jerk, and his hair is falling out, and he’s got a little potbelly. . . . How does he have two mistresses? That we know of?”
“Lonely people,” Virgil said.
“I’m lonely,” she said.
“Yeah, but Pat apparently can’t fix that for you.”
She shook her head, then looked at Good Thunder and said, “I’m not sure I can act with discretion.”
OUT IN THE PARKING LOT, Good Thunder asked Virgil, “Can you guys give us some technical support? Now that we’ve got Mrs. Shepard nailed down, I’m going to pull in Pat Shepard. You won’t have to be there for that—I can handle it with an investigator—but if Shepard agrees to flip, I’ll need a wire and support.”
“Count on it,” Virgil said. “I’ll talk to my boss tonight, and he’ll call you tomorrow.”
“Deal,” she said.
AT THE COURTHOUSE, the duty officer had another stack of letters for him, and Virgil asked the officer to find George Peck’s phone number. He waited, got the number, and dialed. Peck picked up, saying, “Peck.”
Virgil suppressed the urge to tell him he sounded like a chicken, and instead, said, “George? Virgil. Listen, I’m over at the courthouse, compiling those names. If you’ve got time, you could come over and take a look.”
“As a matter of fact, I do have time,” Peck said. “I was just about to get in the bathtub. I’ll be an hour or so, if that’s okay.”
“See you then.”
VIRGIL HAD SET UP the spreadsheet to rank the names by the number of entries in each name-cell; McLachlan had one hundred and eight nominations. The second most, a man named Greg Sawyer, had seventy-four. After that, the numbers dropped sharply. There were four ties with eight, five with seven, eight with six nominations, lots of names with five, four, three, or two nominations, and the rest were scattered, with one each; a total of more than five hundred names.
When he finished, he went out and found two more letters, entered those, with no change in the standings; he was just finishing when Peck showed up.
Virgil asked, “Why the hell did you nominate yourself, George?”
“IQ test,” Peck said. “I wondered if you were smart enough to keep a secret list of which letter went to who. What’d you use, something that shows up under ultraviolet?”
“Nope. Just added a dot in one of the letters on the rightnumbered word in the letter.”
Peck was pleased. “Excellent. So even if somebody sent back a non-original copy, a Xerox, you’d still know who it was.”
“Yeah, I guess, but I didn’t think of that,” Virgil said. “Hey—here’s the list. Take a look.”
Peck settled in front of Virgil’s laptop. Looked at the list, his lower lip stuck out, stroked his left cheek with an index finger, then muttered, “What a fascinating list. McLachlan is a moron, there’s no way he did these bombings. Throw him out, and you’ve got eighty people with two or more nominations. I know most of them, and I wouldn’t have nominated several of them, but I’d still say, ‘Yes, I can see that.’ Fascinating.”
“You think the bomber’s on the list?”
“I’ll bet you a thousand dollars he is—that he’s among those eighty, for sure. He’s probably among the top ten or twelve, once you throw out McLachlan and a couple more.”
“You know this Greg Sawyer?”
“Yeah, he’s another semi-professional criminal. I mean, he’s a big rough redneck bully who steals stuff when he can, usually pigs and calves, and usually gets caught. He’s not the guy.”
AHLQUIST CAME IN, saw Peck, frowned, but then said to Virgil, “On that other thing. We’re going to let you guys handle it. You want me to call Davenport?”
“You can do it, if you want,” Virgil said. He said to Peck, “George, keep thinking. I’ve got to go talk to Earl in secret, where you can’t hear.”
Peck waved them off: “Go ahead. Ignore my feelings.”
DOWN IN AHLQUIST’S OFFICE, Virgil called Davenport at home. “I’ve got the sheriff here, and he’s got a request. We’re cracking the city council, big-time. Here, talk to him.”
Ahlquist took the phone, explained the situation—that he worried about the appearance of a conflict of interest—nodded a few times, and said, “We’ll be in touch, then. Virgil or me.”
He handed the phone back to Virgil, who told Davenport, “We’re also going to need some tech support, if we manage to flip Pat Shepard. I got a name and number for you, a Shirley Good Thunder.”
“Not a problem,” Davenport said, and took down the information. He was too cheerful about it, and Virgil said so.
“What you’re doing, is proving that we’re worth the money the taxpayers give us,” Davenport said. “That’s always good. Anyway, I’ll call Good Thunder, and send Jack Thompson down with the equipment. When you’re ready to move, I can have Shrake and Jenkins down there in two hours. I’ll call everybody and get them cocked and locked.”
Virgil said, “Ten-four. Say hello to your old lady for me.”
BACK WITH PECK, Ahlquist took his turn looking at Virgil’s list. “Heck of a list. You got some serious people on there, important people, and every one of them is a sociopath,” Ahlquist said. “But don’t quote me.”
“Are any of them instructors at the college?”
“Mmm . . . no. Not regular instructors, anyway, not that I know of,” Peck said. “
Somebody might be a part-timer. There’s all kinds of guys teach a class from time to time. I do myself, photography and Photoshop.”
“This guy here . . . he’s pretty far down, John Haden, he teaches there,” Ahlquist said, tapping the screen. “He’s on the staff. And this guy, Bill Wyatt.”
Haden had been nominated twice, Wyatt, three times.
“Gotta look at them. And the top eighteen,” Virgil said.
“Tonight?”
“Tomorrow,” Virgil said. “And pray to God that there’s not another bomb.”
“You’re wasting your time,” Peck said. “There is no God, and why an intelligent person would think so, I cannot fathom.”
AS THEY BROKE UP for the evening, Virgil said, “Listen, guys, do me a favor. Ask yourself, ‘Why would the bomber try to blow up Virgil Flowers?’ Because it’s a lot more interesting question than you might expect. If we could figure that out, it might help.”
They said they’d think about it, and Virgil went back to the Holiday Inn, where he carefully parked his truck in a no-parking zone directly in front of the front window, where the desk clerk would be looking straight out at it.
He went in the lobby, to explain, and Thor came out of the back room.
He said, “Hey, Virg.”
“I parked my truck there so nobody would put a bomb in it. Keep an eye on it, would you?”
“No problem. I’m going off in an hour, I’ll tell the night girl.” Then, “So, you talk to Mrs. Shepard?”
Virgil said, “Thor . . .” He sighed, shook his head, and said, “I need some sleep.”
“Hot damn, you did! I’m going over there.”
“She’s not over there,” Virgil said. “She moved out.”
Thor thought for one second, or less, then said, “She’s at her sister’s. I’m going over there.”
“If you mention my name in any way . . .”
“You’ll kill me. Got it.”
“She’s in pretty delicate shape,” Virgil began.
“So am I,” Thor said. “You wouldn’t believe how delicate a shape I’m in. And don’t worry about it, dude. I’m not gonna go in there and jump her. I’m gonna offer her my friendship.”
“And a pizza.”
“Well, yeah. A meat lover’s.”
VIRGIL WENT UP TO BED, undressed, lay in the dark, and asked God, “Why did the bomber try to kill me? And how did he sneak into the Pye building? You can answer this question either as a sudden revelation, or you could write it up in the sky, or whisper it to Thor, your namesake. Okay? Deal? I’m going to sleep now, God. Please answer before anybody else gets hurt. Oh—and keep an eye on Mrs. Shepard. She seems like a nice-enough lady. And Thor. Keep an eye on Thor.”
Satisfied, he went to sleep, and slept well, for a man who’d almost been blown up.
The last thing he thought of, as he drifted off, was that Lee Coakley hadn’t called.
15
THE BOMBER WAS WORRIED. He’d missed twice in a row, once with Pye, once with the cop. The misses weren’t really the problem. His intention with the cop was to pull more cops into town, to bring more pressure, to tear the place up. That would now surely happen, would it not?
What worried him was not the misses, but his own reaction to them. When he heard about the miss with Pye, he’d been angry about it, but accepted it as just a matter of chance and inexperience. He’d taken a shot—a good shot, a creative one—and it had gone sour. The cop was no different, though he’d taken some extra risks there, in placing the bomb so close to a busy street; but again the reflexive anger came, stronger this time, almost despair.
He controlled it, but . . . where did that come from? The despair?
He’d started out thinking of the bombs as tools. But now, he thought, it was like he needed them. Almost like he was addicted to them.
The bomber had been addicted to cigarettes earlier in life, and kicking the habit had been a struggle. He could remember the gravitational pull of the cigarette packs, sitting on their shelves in the gas stations and the convenience stores, calling to him. For years after he’d quit, he would wake up in the night, having dreamed that he’d fallen off the wagon, that he’d taken a cigarette . . . and when he woke, he could taste the nicotine and tar, and feel the buzz.
The bomb thing was almost like that. When he heard that he’d missed the cop, he felt a powerful impulse to get in his car, drive up in the hills, to the box of explosives, and get what he needed for another bomb. To do it right now.
To hit them again.
TO KILL SOMEBODY.
That was the problem.
His whole campaign had been a rational effort to solve a serious problem—serious from his point of view, anyway—and the killing was just a by-product of that effort.
If he just let himself go . . . it seemed like the killing could become the point. If that should happen, if he should need to kill, then sooner or later he’d be caught, and he’d spend the rest of his life in a hole in the ground.
He had to be coldly rational about it: he would need another bomb or two, simply to complete the campaign as he’d planned it. He didn’t need to start building bombs willy-nilly, and hitting everything in sight.
HE HADN’T THOUGHT of all of this at once, but in bits and pieces as he worked through his day, did the mail, wrote some checks. Late that night, he saw the delivery guy unloading the next morning’s paper at County Market. He no longer got the paper, but glanced at this one because of all the tumult around the bombings, and found an end-of-the-world headline, which said:
STATE POLICE ASK TOWN: WHO’S GUILTY?
Beneath that was a secondary head that said:
PIPE BOMB FACTORY FOUND.
And below that, the stub of a story, which jumped inside for a much longer spread. The headline on the third story said: POLICE BAFFLED BY PYE TOWER ATTACK.
HE STUFFED THE PAPER in his basket with the vanilla-flavored rice drink, the fat-free Rice Krispies, the tofu wieners, the Greek yogurt, the salads, waited impatiently at the cash register for an old woman to write a check for three dollars and fifty-three cents, and finally paid and got out of the place.
He couldn’t wait to get back to the house, so he sat in the parking lot, under a streetlamp, and read the two stories. Flowers, he read, had sent out a letter asking a selected group of people in the town to nominate suspects in the bombings. Some of the people objected to the idea, and a couple of them had sent the letters along to the newspaper, which had reproduced them.
The idea was outrageous. Flowers would get dozens of nominations, and if the very best thing happened, for Flowers, they’d all but one be innocent. Was the cop that stupid? Maybe it was a good thing that he hadn’t killed him.
The second story reported that police had discovered the pipebomb factory where the pipes had been cut, and that “factory” was Butternut Tech. The story said that Flowers refused to comment, which suggested that Flowers was the one who had found the place.
How had he done that? Maybe not so stupid after all.
He closed his eyes and thought about it. Really, how outrageous, he wondered, was this survey the cop was doing? The more he thought about it, the more complicated it seemed, the more intricate the possible outcomes.
Finally, he concluded, it wasn’t crazy at all. It was even . . . interesting. If he weren’t the object of the hunt, he wouldn’t mind participating in it.
The third story was a long Associated Press piece out of Minneapolis, wrapping up all the bombings so far. One of the most baffling aspects of the case, according to the story, was how the first bomb got into the Pye Pinnacle. “If we could figure that out, we’d know who the bomber is,” an ATF agent said.
ON THE DRIVE HOME, the bomber began to wonder: Had anyone suggested his name, in Flowers’s survey? He did have a temper, which flashed from time to time. Would the cops be looking at him? If they did, they would quickly discover his relationship to Butternut Tech.
Not good, not good at all.
He felt the first hot finger of panic. That damn pipe thing . . . what had he been thinking of? Pure laziness, that’s all it was. The pipe cutter was there, he knew about it, he could get in and out. But he could have cut the pipe the way he first intended, with a hacksaw. He even tried it. The first cut took nearly an hour, and nearly wore out his arm. Still, he could have done one a day, and it would have been time well spent: the hacksaw would now be in the bottom of the river....
He smacked his hands against the steering wheel as he looked up at the red light on a traffic signal. Damnit. Damnit.
One thing he had to do: go over the house and the car with a fine-tooth comb and make sure there wasn’t the slightest evidence of bomb-making activity. He’d stashed the explosives out in the hills, but had actually assembled the bombs in his basement. If there were any chemical remnants about, much less any mechanical stuff, and if it came to a search by the ATF, they might well have the equipment to detect the residue.
He had, he thought, thrown the bodies of three old thermostats in the trash, their mercury switches torn out. In the same trash, probably, were such things as junk mail with his address on it.
That had to stop. In fact . . .
He was halfway home, but he turned the car around and headed back toward County Market, where he planned to buy a few bottles of the harshest chemical house cleaner he could find, along with new sponges, a pail, and a mop. When he was done with them, they’d all go in the trash.
Somebody else’s trash, he thought. Things were coming to a head: he was almost there, and he had to be extra careful.