Shock Wave

sandwiches or anything? Coffee?”
    “I’ll get some Diet Coke on the way over, but a couple of sandwiches would be great.”

    VIRGIL PICKED UP a half-dozen Diet Cokes, stuck them with some ice in his cooler, and drove out to the college. He spotted Wyatt’s Prius, and took up a spot as far away as he could get and still see the front entrance and Wyatt’s car.
    A half hour after he’d settled in, there was a knock on the passenger-side door, and he saw Deputy O’Hara looking in at him. She was carrying a white paper bag.
    “Ah, for Christ’s sakes,” he muttered. Ahlquist’s idea of a joke. He popped the door, and she climbed in, handed him the bag, and said, “Here’s your sandwich, sir. Anything else I can possibly get you?”
    “I’m good,” Virgil said. “Where’s your uniform?”
    She was wearing a pale blue blouse and khaki slacks. “I thought this would be less obvious. But I brought my gun.”
    “That’s good. Don’t shoot anybody unless I tell you to,” Virgil said.
    “Yes, sir,” she said.
    “No sarcasm, either.” She said nothing, but smiled, and Virgil dug into the bag and said, “You got me an anchovy sandwich, right?”
    She shuddered. “I never heard of such a thing. They’re chicken salad on caraway rye. There are two of them.”
    His eyebrows went up. “Deputy O’Hara: that’s one of my favorite sandwiches in the United States.”
    “I’m happy for you. You owe me seven dollars.”
    He paid her, unwrapped a sandwich—damn good sandwich, too—and said, around a mouthful of chicken salad, “All right. Here’s what we’re trying to do.”
    He spent a couple minutes explaining, and she said, “So if he takes the bait, we might follow him right out to where he’s got, like, twenty pounds of high explosive, right?”
    “Yeah.”
    “And he’s already killed three people, attacked a cop and one of the richest people in the world, and injured or scared the crap out of a bunch of other people. Right?”
    “Yeah.”
    “So, I don’t want to seem obstreperous, or anything, but . . . you do have a gun?”
    “Yes.”
    “Could you get it out? And check it? Where I can see you do it? I don’t mind going in on something like this, but I don’t want to have to look after your ass, as well as mine.”
    Virgil said, “Let me finish the sandwich. I’ve got a gun. Really.”
     
     
    HE GOT A CALL from Haden: “I feel like Judas, but I did it. He was interested.”
    Virgil said, “Thank you,” and hung up.
    Deputy O’Hara asked, “You gonna eat that other sandwich?”
    “You can have it, for three-fifty,” Virgil said.
    “I only want a half.”
    “Then one-seventy-five.”
     
     
    DEPUTY O’HARA, it turned out, was an art freak, and on her weekends off, worked as a docent at the Minneapolis Institute of Arts. She also worked an off-duty second job at the local mall, an hour before and after closing time. “Those are the high shoplift times; and then, I make sure everybody gets out of the place with their money.”
    “Are you doing this because you really need the money? Or is it simple greed?” Virgil said.
    “Every penny of my off-duty work, except what I need for taxes, goes in my travel fund,” she said. “Then every fall, I take off for Europe. I go to museums.”
    Virgil said, “Hmm.”
    “What? You’re against culture?”
    “No. I was thinking that’s a great way to go through life,” Virgil said.
    She looked at him suspiciously: “But not something you’d do.”
    “Not exactly,” he said. “But I could probably be talked into it.”
     
     
    SHRAKE CALLED: “ANYTHING?”
    “We’re watching his car, but haven’t seen him yet,” Virgil said. “You okay for midnight?”
    “Yeah, I talked to Jenkins. We’re all set. You by yourself?”
    “I got a deputy with me,” Virgil said.
    “See you at midnight.”
    O’Hara said, “I gotta call my night job, tell them I can’t make it.”
    “If he goes back home, I could probably drop you,” Virgil said.
    “No, I’d rather have the overtime. Earl said overtime is okay, as long as it’s not too much.”
    “Good of him,” Virgil said.

    WYATT FINALLY WALKED OUT of the college building an hour after his last class ended. Virgil worried a bit that he’d snuck out some other exit, and walked somewhere, but there was nothing to do about that.
    Wyatt stood blinking in the sunlight for a moment, looking around the lot, then spotted his car and walked over to it, jingling his keys. He