Shock Wave (43 page)

“Well, I don't know.” Her hands flopped in her lap. “It just seemed you were always more interested in the money than Bill was, and you started talking about maybe us getting married, and I started to think . . . I mean, oh, God . . .”

He laughed. “You think
I'm
the bomber?”
This wasn't good.

“No. No, of course not. It's just that you came on so hard with me. Nobody ever did that before. You're so good-looking and the other women, you know, are always looking at you. I wondered why you . . . I mean, I know what I look like, I'm pretty average . . . I'm not that smart . . .”

“Sally, for Christ's sakes.”
That ol' sinking feeling.

“And then . . .”

There was more?
“What, what?”

“I remember last week, you were telling me how we'd slept together the night before that bomb went off at Pye's building . . . but we didn't. The bomb was on a Wednesday, and Billie has her dance line on Tuesday evening, and then her cello lesson, and we're never home before ten o'clock. It was on
Monday
we slept together. And on the way over here, I wondered why you'd even bring it up—that we'd slept together the night before the Pye building thing, when we didn't, and I thought . . . I don't know what I thought.”

“That I was building an alibi?”

“I'm sorry,” she said. “I'm so sorry.”

“Did you tell any of this to Flowers?” Haden asked. “I really don't want him jumping down my throat.”

“I didn't tell it to anyone. Nobody knows about us, not even the kids. It's so embarrassing. Bill leaves the house, and three days later I'm in bed with a friend of his. I mean . . . I'd be ruined, if my friends found out.”

“Sally, people don't get ruined anymore,” Haden said. “They only get ruined in Victorian novels.”

“And small towns,” she said. “Anyway, you didn't do it. I mean, Flowers asked if I'd been seeing anyone, and I lied and said no, and that's when all this silly stuff started going through my head. And then I started thinking, I just lied to a police officer. I think I could really be in trouble, I think I might have to go back and tell him that I was seeing somebody. I think that would be best.”

He thought, Nobody knows where she's at. Nobody knows that we've been sleeping together. If Flowers finds out, finds out I mentioned marriage . . . that would be inconvenient. If Flowers kept coming, if he ever stumbled over that FedEx store in Grand Rapids . . . and who knows what would happen if they took too close a look at that videotape? Would there be some way they could tell it wasn't Wyatt?

He felt a surge of anger, ran his hands through his hair. Hated to give it up. Hated it.

But the anger was running so hot, and the frustration. He'd been one inch away....

Wyatt stood up and stepped toward him. “John,” she said. “They won't care. I mean, I won't tell them, you know . . .”

He slapped her, hard, and she fell on the floor. “You bitch!” he shouted. “You're taking it right out of my pocket.”

She was weeping, and trying to turn and crawl away from him. He straddled her, and dropped his weight on her hips, pinning her facedown. She cried, “You did it.”

“You silly bitch. All my work. All my planning.”

“I won't tell anyone,” she screamed. “I won't tell anyone.”

“Yes, you will. You'll tell everybody,” he said. He swatted her on the side of the face with an open hand. “Now, I want you to tell me something, and I want you to be honest about it, because if you're not honest about it, I'll catch that little bitch of a daughter of yours, and I'll spend two days raping her virgin ass, then I'll strangle her and throw her body in a ditch so the animals can eat her. You hear me? You hear me?”

He hit her again, and she sobbed, “Yes.”

“Who did you tell about us?”

“No one,” she sobbed. “Honest, no one, and I never will tell anyone. Just let me go, let me go, I'll never tell anyone.”

“You're fuckin' lying.” He hit her yet again, and her head rocked with the blow.

“Why . . . why did you kill that car man? Why?” She tried to push herself up against him, but he pinned her. “I know why you killed Bill, but why . . . that car man . . .”

“Because I needed him to lead Flowers to Bill,” he said. “Now, listen, Sally, I'm really sorry about this, but I'm going to have to choke you a little—”

“Please don't do this, please don't . . .” She thrashed against him, and he felt the hard knob in her back, and cocked his head, and frowned and she shouted, “Safety.”

Haden said, “What?”

Virgil stuck his head in the door and said, “Get off her, John.”

Haden, stunned, looked down at Wyatt, then back up at Virgil, his mouth open. He said, “Virgil . . .”

Virgil said, “Get off her, John.”

Haden stood up and said, “She accused me—”

Virgil said, “Too late, John.”

 

 

HADEN TOOK A QUICK STEP
toward Virgil, as if to push him out of the way. Virgil's response was instantaneous: the punch came from somewhere behind his waistline. As it passed his shoulder, his fist was already traveling at the speed of sound—well, almost—and when it collided with Haden's beaked nose, there was an immensely satisfying crunch, at that perfect distance where your hand and knuckles don't feel it too much, and your shoulder takes up some of the recoil, and the nose guy's head rockets off your knuckles like a tennis ball flying off a racket.

Haden stumbled over Wyatt's legs and smashed into the wall, and went to his butt. O'Hara pushed past Virgil and said, “That's what happens when you resist.” Jenkins was right behind her, and said, “Good punch.”

Wyatt wailed, “He was on top of me, he had me by the throat, he was choking—”

At that moment, Haden, who'd rolled up on one leg, as though he were just coming to his feet, suddenly fired off the floor, like a runner coming out of the blocks. He was headed toward the patio door....

Which was closed.

He hit the glass headfirst, full tilt, went through in an explosion of splintered crystal, crashed into the lawn furniture, and went down again.

Virgil and Jenkins and O'Hara were on top of him before he could recover again. O'Hara put the cuffs on.

Ahlquist had come through the front door in time to see the sprint.

Haden looked up at him, his face a mass of blood, and said, “I think . . . I think I'm really hurt.”

Ahlquist bent down, looked at him for a moment, then said, “Tough titty.”

O
'HARA AND FIVE OTHER COPS,
in three sheriff's cars, lights all flashing and sirens screaming, drove Haden through town to the hospital, leaving no doubt in the mind of anyone who heard them, or saw them, that the bomber had been caught.

At the hospital the docs propped up Haden's nose and sewed shut a few cuts from when he'd gone through the glass door, and then O'Hara and the escort cops drove him with sirens screaming and lights flashing through town to the jail, and locked him up.

When all that was done—it took three hours—Virgil and Ahlquist, O'Hara, Barlow, Theodore Wills, the county attorney, Good Thunder, Pye, and Chapman took part in an hour-long press conference jammed with TV, newspaper, and online reporters, and the one public radio reporter with his recorder and microphone. Ahlquist wore a silky pale blue suit from Nordstrom and served as master of ceremonies, giving broad credit to Virgil, Barlow, and O'Hara for cracking the case.

When they were all done, Ahlquist took the stage back from Wills, who was the final speaker, to shout, “We're all headed down to Bunson's, folks. You're all invited.”

They all trekked down to Bunson's and Pye stood on a table to announce that it was all on PyeMart, and got half-and-half boos and cheers, and one fat guy who shouted he'd never drink Pye's beer. The fat guy was wrestled out of sight by the Aussie scuba diver, whose name Virgil couldn't remember.

He did remember the name of the short-haired scuba blonde with the snake tattoo down her neck—Gretchen—and he said, “Hey, Gretchen: How'd you find us?”

“Retrief can smell free beer from miles away,” she said. “I was going to call you up. I'd like to hear about your muskie research project. . . .”

They talked about that for a while, and Virgil found her to be intelligent, well informed, and stacked. She touched his chest: “Slobberbone—I haven't seen one of their shirts since UNT. They're one of my favorite bands.”

George Peck showed up, and patted Virgil on the back and said, “Told you.”

Virgil said, “George, I'm gonna have somebody contact you about this whole market research thing. We need to write something about it for the FBI or somebody.”

“I would be flattered,” Peck said. Peck was wearing a gray banker's chalk-striped suit, a blue shirt, and a bright yellow necktie. He was on his third Rusty Nail and muttered, “I don't think Pye saw the sign outside of town.”

“What sign?”

“The one that says, ‘Butternut Falls—a Little Drinking Town with a Nasty Fishing Habit.' This free booze thing will cost him a fortune. I'm soaking up as much as I can, before he calls it off.”

Somebody put Willie Nelson's
Stardust
album on the Bunson's sound system, and people started dancing on the lakeside patio to “Georgia on My Mind.”

Virgil danced with Gretchen, the snake girl, and then O'Hara, and then took Good Thunder and Chapman around the floor, scuffling along in his cowboy boots, thinking only rarely of Lee Coakley.

 

 

BARLOW STUCK STRICTLY TO BEER,
and was mostly sober when he got Virgil in a corner and asked, “You think we got him? You know, enough for a trial?”

Virgil nodded. “There's enough circumstantial evidence, backing up our recording. If they got the tapes thrown out for some reason, we'd have a problem, but everything was on the up-and-up, so I don't see how they can do that.”

“I talked to Charlie—one of the techs—and he says Haden's computer history was wiped, but he forgot about the cookies. He was looking at bomb sites—”

Virgil interrupted: “But he could always say that he got interested when the bombings started in Butternut, and did some research.”

Barlow shook his head and continued: “. . . and some of the cookies go back before the Pye Pinnacle.”

“That's large,” Virgil said. “That's very large.”

 

 

A PART OF THE CROWD
began running and screaming and they looked that way, and then somebody came back and said, “George Peck fell in the lake. He's okay. Just drunk.”

Jeanne Shepard came ghosting through the crowd. She looked tired, but relaxed, wore a sheer white blouse and turquoise Capri pants and sandals, and looked, as Thor the desk clerk once told Virgil, like the second-hottest woman in town. She nodded at Virgil, and then came over and said, “I hope you don't mind if I'm here. I heard about John Haden, and you know . . . I wanted to hear more.”

“Hey, you're more than welcome,” Virgil said. “Join right in. Let me get you a drink.”

He got her a Bloody Mary and a thoroughly soaked George Peck lurched over and said to her, “Jeanne, nice to see you. With Jesus Christ as my witness, I say to you, I am seriously fucked up.”

“Why, George,” she said, “I've never heard such language.” To Virgil: “George and I once dated.”

They turned away, talking about old times, and Virgil drifted off; a few seconds later, Thor the desk clerk idled into the room, wearing cargo shorts and a Third Eye Blind T-shirt. When Virgil saw it, he said, “God bless me: I will give you one hundred dollars for that T-shirt.”

“I could get three times that on eBay,” Thor said. He had a toothpick in one corner of his mouth, and a drink in his hand.

Virgil looked at it and asked, “How old are you again?”

“Eighteen. But I'm a jock, so it's okay,” Thor said. “I'm just keeping an eye on that little heifer.” He was watching Jeanne Shepard.

“I don't want to hear about it,” Virgil said.

“Well, if you heard about it, you'd probably change your mind and say you were glad you heard about it,” Thor said.

Virgil began, “Listen, Thor—”

“I don't need a lecture,” the kid said. “We're running really hot right now. I figure it'll last for most of the summer, then she'll go back to teaching school and I'll go off to college and that'll be it. But I sure don't need any sermonizing. I mean, it's just too good.”

“I was gonna tell you, don't drink too much—I once had a few beers and ran my old man's car into a ditch and missed a big old cottonwood by about six inches. I was very lucky I didn't kill myself,” Virgil said. “Scratched the hell out of the passenger-side door.”

“Semper fi,” Thor said. “Jeez, you know, Jeanne's got an ass like . . .” He stopped, his voice trailing away, then he whispered, “Jesus God: Who's the chick with the snake on her neck?”

 

 

LATE IN THE EVENING,
Ahlquist hooked Virgil's arm and dragged him into a room behind the bar, saying, “You gotta take a minute.”

When they got back there, they found Chapman and Pye, Barlow and Peck and O'Hara, and Pye said, “It's an ugly thing to have to do, but I'm a man of my word and I'm willing to pay up.”