Shock Wave

eventually found, only seventy feet from the house, under a piece of the roof. There were no features remaining: nothing but a bloody skull.
    Virgil thought, F8 and be there, and took the shot.
    “Must’ve gone straight up,” Jenkins said. “Like a baseball.”
    “Another cop said like a basketball,” Virgil said. He turned away from the mess, sick at heart. “Doesn’t look like any kind of sport, at all.”
     
     
    A PATROL CAR ARRIVED, in a two-car set with a civilian car, a Toyota Corolla, and a woman got out of the Corolla and looked up the hill.
    Ahlquist said, “Mrs. Wyatt. It’s Jennifer, I think. I better get down there to meet her.” He turned to a deputy: “I want tarps or something over all the body remains. There’s nothing for her to identify, and I don’t want her to see the scraps.” When the deputy seemed to hesitate, Ahlquist snapped, “Get going! Get going! ”
    Barlow came up and said, “We’ll have to do DNA. Just to make sure.”
    O’Hara was getting testy: “I told you: he didn’t have time to get out.”
    Barlow shook his head. “Time is strange, after something like that. You think it was two seconds, but you were almost killed. Things speed up under those conditions. If it were ten seconds—”
    “Then where did the body come from?” O’Hara demanded.
    “That’s something we’d have to determine,” Barlow said. O’Hara said, “Oh, bullshit,” and Barlow put up his hands. “I think it’s ninetynine percent you’re right. But, we check.”
    Virgil walked around with his camera, shaking his head, and O’Hara asked, “Are you all right?”
    “No,” he said.
     
     
    AHLQUIST AND JENNIFER WYATT WALKED around the house, talking, and Wyatt began to cry, and Ahlquist put an arm around her shoulders. Virgil watched. Barlow came up and said, “Her house and his apartment are both crime scenes. I’m talking to my ADA to make sure we don’t need search warrants, and if we do, to get them. We’re going down and taking her house apart.”
    “I’ll come along, too,” O’Hara said.
    “Ah, you can go on home,” Virgil said. “Get cleaned up. You’re sorta a mess.”
    “Nope. I’m going,” she said. “Either I ride with you or I’ll ride with somebody else.”
    “Better go with somebody else,” he said. She stalked off and Virgil looked at the weeping Mrs. Wyatt, and told Shrake and Jenkins, “You guys hang tight. I gotta get out of here and get something to eat.”
    “To eat,” Shrake said, doubtfully.
    “Yeah. Food,” Virgil said.

    HE TOLD BARLOW that he was going, and that he would e-mail all the photos that evening; and he walked down to his truck.
    Bunson’s was almost empty. He got the French toast—it was still more or less morning—and told the waitress to keep bringing the Diet Cokes, and he sat and worked it through.
    One thing didn’t fit, and he couldn’t make it fit. He closed his eyes and took himself back to the Pye Pinnacle visit. Thought about all the explanations, about the dead and wounded, about the boardroom explosion, about the ludicrous sight of the birthday pies smeared all over the ceiling....
    He thought about how Pye had a “sanctum sanctorum” where he worked out his problems, and where not even the cleaning lady was welcome. Not that the cleaning lady would have been there, early on a Monday morning.
    So here was a question: Why didn’t the bomber, coming down from above, put the bomb in Pye’s office? If he’d used some kind of mousetrap trigger, and stuck the bomb in the desk leg hole, he would have gotten Pye. Why would he do something so uncertain as to stick the bomb in the credenza? In the credenza, any number of things could have led to its discovery.
    He thought about it, and thought about it, and eventually came up with an answer, in the best tradition of Sherlock Holmes. Once you’ve eliminated all the other possibilities, whatever was left had to be the answer.
    What was left was simple enough, Virgil thought. It should, he thought, have been apparent to anyone with half a brain.
    Even with half a brain, Virgil thought he was probably correct.
    He made a phone call to St. Paul, to Sandy, the researcher, told her what he wanted, and asked her to make some phone calls.
     
     
    HE FINISHED THE FRENCH TOAST, and the waitress came over, a young girl with dark hair and big black eyes, and smiled at him and said, “You’re Virgil Flowers.’ ”
    “Yes.”
    “Your two friends said I should ask you