Shock Wave

you again for a while. I mean, quite a while.—Lee
    He thought, Well, shit. He had seen it coming, but hadn’t wanted it . . . although a voice in the back of his head added, Not yet. He needed time, he thought, to revise his entire philosophical approach to women....
    Damnit: bummed him out.

    “YOU LOOK LIKE SOMEBODY ran over your pet skunk.”
    Virgil looked up and saw Deputy O’Hara peering down at him, a cup of coffee in her hand. He said, “What, no doughnut?”
    “The doughnuts here suck,” she said. “If you want a good doughnut, you gotta go down to Bernie Anderson’s.”
    “Yeah, well, I’ll write that on a piece of paper, when I get one,” he said.
    “My, my,” she said, “you really are in an uproar. Well, if there’s anything I can do for you, hesitate to call.”
    “I will,” he said, and she left. He watched her go past the window. Left in something of a huff, he thought. What, she maybe thought he was going to buy her that doughnut? Goddamn women.
     
     
    HE WAS ALMOST FINISHED with his hot chocolate, wondering if he’d been stood up, when Haden came through the door, in a hurry. “I’m running late,” he said, dropping his briefcase by Virgil’s foot. “Watch this, will you?”
    He was back in four minutes with what Virgil thought might be a venti, if that was the extra-large. He pulled out a chair and sat down, asked, “All right: you want me to betray my old pal Bill Wyatt, in some way, is that right?”
    “That’s not the word I would have chosen, but yeah,” Virgil said. “I don’t really want you to betray him, I want you to give him a little push so that if he’s the bomber, he’ll betray himself.”
    Haden regarded him over the top of his coffee, for just a moment, and then said, “Huh. That sounds like a nice little piece of sophistry, but I’m listening.”
    “I’ve found some things that make me think Wyatt is my guy. But: I need to get him to wherever he keeps his bomb-making stuff. I need to lay a hint on him that we’re coming. That we’ve got something.”
    “Like what?”
    “I’d like you to bump into him, and ask him if he knows about my list. Tell him that you’re on it, and that he’s on it, too. That somebody named both of you. Ask him if he knows who,” Virgil said. “Tell him that I came over and talked to you, but I backed off, and something I said suggested that I was going for a search warrant for somebody. That I knew something. Ask him if I’d talked to him yet.”
    “I could bump into him, but I don’t know exactly how I could bring all that up, without sounding . . . phony,” Haden said.
    “Sorta like I said it. Tell him that I came over, was impatient with you, then said I was wasting my time anyway. Say that I apologized, and confessed that somebody else was first on the list. That we had a tip, and we might know where the bomb stuff was.”
    “Man, that sounds . . .”
    “Well, hell, I don’t know. Make something up,” Virgil said. “You’re the big brain. But that’s the idea I want to get across. That we’ve got something. Not that he’s a target, just that he was on the list, and that we’ve got something.”
    Haden took a gulp of coffee, swallowed, looked at his watch, and said, “I gotta run. I’ll think of something. I’ll call you when I’ve done it.”
     
     
    WHEN HE WAS GONE, Virgil called Shrake: “Still sitting there? Any movement?”
    “Not a thing,” Shrake said. “On the other hand, I have learned that I’m probably turning my hips too soon, in my drive, which is why I slice. I need to shift my weight to my left before I start turning my hips. That gives me a natural inside-to-outside swing, which I’ve always needed.”
    “I’m pleased you’ve had this learning experience,” Virgil said. “Listen, we’re going round-the-clock on Wyatt. I’m giving him a push. And I want two guys on him, so I’m going to try to borrow a guy from the sheriff. You guys do what you have to, then get some sleep. I’ll pick him up in a few minutes. I’ll want you guys around midnight, to do the overnight.”
    When he’d worked a timetable with Shrake, he called Ahlquist: “I need one of your guys to sit with me. I’m staking out Wyatt.”
    “Starting when?”
    “Right now. You know my truck, and I know Wyatt’s car. I’m going to spot it in the parking lot up at the college and I’ll be at the other end of the lot.”
    “Get somebody there soon as I can,” Ahlquist said. “You need any