Shock Wave

going to do something illegal, and didn’t want to buy one locally, you might run into the Cities, and they probably sell hundreds of blades over there.”
    “Damn it: I thought I was onto something,” Virgil said.
    “Let me ask around, the boys,” Lawrence said. “Maybe somebody’ll have an idea.”
    Virgil thanked him, gave him a card, and told him to call if he learned anything.

    BACK IN THE TRUCK, he made a note to check with the BCA researcher to see if there was a way to check with Home Depot, Menards, and Fleet Farm to see if any metal-cutting chop-saw blades had been sold recently, and if so, if there’d been a credit card attached to the sale. He had little hope that anything would come of it.
    Sitting there in the sun, looking at Ahlquist’s list of possible interviews, and Kline the pharmacist’s list of names, he sighed and shook his head. He’d have to do the legwork, but if the guy was clever, the legwork wouldn’t turn up much.
    What, the guy was going to confess when Virgil dropped by?
    If he got anything, it’d come at an angle—he’d get it as a result of looking at something else. Looking at Kline’s list, he called Ahlquist and asked him to get subpoenas for people who used antipsychotic medications.
    “I’ll have O’Hara do it, and have her serve them,” the sheriff said. “We’ll have them tonight.”
    “How about the press conference?”
    “We’re gonna have one whether we want to or not, with two separate incidents, now. I got a TV truck right now, taking pictures of the limo, and talking to Harvey, and more are coming in. What time should I make the conference?”
    “Later this afternoon . . . give us some space, and time to think. Maybe . . . three o’clock?”
    “See you then. Unless another bomb goes off. Then I’ll see you sooner.”
    With that taken care of, he dug out his iPad, turned it on, and got a map with directions to the hospital. He stopped at a local coffee shop and got a skinny hot chocolate, and then went off to the hospital.
     
     
    MICHAEL SULLIVAN WAS in a bed in the critical care ward, not because he was badly hurt, but because he was confused, and the confusion could be the result of some continuing head injury.
    “We want to protect against the possibility of a trauma-induced seizure, or stroke,” a doctor told Virgil.
    Sullivan’s confusion seemed to be diminishing, the doc said, but at times he flashed back to the moment after the explosion, when he wiped the gore from his face and eyes and saw Kingsley’s head on the ground, and saw the dead man’s eyes open and looking at him.
    “A pure psychological thing, but real enough,” the doc said. “It should get better over time, but he’ll never escape it completely. The effects will always be there, the changes in his life and career and prospects.”
    “Could those be better, instead of worse?” Virgil asked.
    The doc grinned and said, “Nobody ever asked me that. Okay, they could be better, but how would you know? Say he goes on to be a millionaire, and he thinks, If I hadn’t been blown up, I’d be a billionaire. So what do you say about that?”
    Virgil shrugged. “You say, ‘Well, that’s life. Suck it up, cowboy.’ ”
    “That’s why you’re not getting paid two hundred dollars an hour, like me,” the doc said.

    SULLIVAN WAS PROPPED UP on a couple of pillows, and except for what looked like a wind-burned face, seemed okay. A handsome young woman sat on a chair to one side, flipping through an Elle magazine, while a guy in a suit had his butt propped against a windowsill, taking notes on a yellow pad inside a leather folder.
    When Virgil came in and introduced himself, the woman said, “He’s been really good. He still has a ringing in his ears, but I think he’ll be just fine.”
    And the man said, “Whoa, whoa, whoa, we don’t know anything of the sort, Mary, and you have to stop telling people that.”
    Virgil understood that the man with the folder was a lawyer and the woman was Sullivan’s wife. Virgil turned to the injured man and said, “I don’t really, uh, want to question your condition, Mr. Sullivan. I’m more interested in what happened before the explosion. People you may have seen around the site. . . .”
    The lawyer said, “No matter who he may or may not have seen around the site, I don’t think we can say he really had any responsibility—”
    Virgil said, “Look, I’m here to interview Mr. Sullivan. He is not suspected of a crime