Shock Wave

the place where the pipe was cut for the bombs.” He told them about the tech college, and the metal shop.
    Pye clouded up: “How come nobody told me about this? This is a big deal.”
    “Just happened, a few minutes ago,” Virgil said. “They got a piece of pipe. Maybe it’ll have a fingerprint, or DNA.”
    “Not the way that our luck has been running,” Pye said. “But it sounds like you’ve been making progress. I don’t want you to go running off to Grand Rapids if it’ll slow you down.”
    “If you can turn me around in a hurry, I won’t lose much time here,” Virgil said. “But I’d want to work tonight, and get back on the plane first thing tomorrow morning.”
    Chapman said to Pye, “If you want, I could go along with him. That way, I could cut through any bureaucratic bullshit.”
    Pye squeezed his lower lip, thinking about it, then said, “If you got out of here at seven o’clock, you’d be in the building by eleven. You lose an hour in the time zones. I could have everybody waiting for you. You talk to them, look around, see what you think, get a few hours’ sleep, get back on the plane at eight—the pilots need an eighthour turnaround. You could get another couple hours of sleep on the plane, and still be back here by nine o’clock in the morning, because you get the hour back. Eat breakfast on the plane, you’d lose no working time at all.”
    Virgil said, “Set it up. I’ll be at the airport at seven o’clock, if nothing else blows up.”
     
     
    THE PRESS CONFERENCE almost went off as planned, with Ahlquist as an upbeat master of ceremonies. He told the gathered reporters that substantial progress had been made toward finding the bomber, that arrests were expected in the next few days, that the ATF lab was processing DNA evidence found on pieces of the bomb.
    And he announced that they’d found the saw where the pipes had been cut, but refused to say where that was. “We have to hold some of this tight, for investigative reasons.”
    One of the reporters said, “We heard it was out at Butternut Tech.”
    Ahlquist said, “I can’t confirm anything—”
    “Everybody already knows,” the reporter said.
    “Ah, shit,” Ahlquist said, then, “Excuse me.”
    Barlow, in his turn, conceded that the lab work would take a few days, and that “nothing was certain.” The media people detected the tap dancing and went after him, asking for a timetable on which they could decide whether or not the investigation was looking like a failure. Barlow slipped that punch and turned the pageant back to the sheriff.
    Ahlquist recovered some ground by lying about the amount of progress made, including references to additional information that couldn’t be disclosed.
    Then things turned ugly.
    A middle-aged dark-haired woman stood up and shouted, “How come you spend all this time investigating this bomber, and you don’t investigate that little fat man for killing this whole town?” She turned around and poked an index finger at Pye, who was still sitting next to Virgil. “That one! The people who elected you to office would like to know that.”
    “This ain’t good,” Pye muttered, and Chapman wrote it down.
    Ahlquist tried to dodge the bullet by saying, “Now, Beth, goldarnit, you know I’m not a city official and I had nothing to do with the PyeMart deal.”
    Beth Robertson, the bookstore woman, Virgil thought. She shouted, “Everybody knows that Pye bought the city council and the mayor, and you sure got the right to investigate that. If you investigated that—”
    At that point, the mayor, who’d been sitting in the front row, half-stood and turned, and shouted, “Robertson, you shut your mouth or I’ll sue your butt off. I never did anything I didn’t think was for the good of this town. I work sixty hours a week—”
    “YOU shut up, bitch-face,” Robertson shouted. She stepped into the aisle and took a couple steps toward the mayor. Virgil wondered why none of the sheriff’s deputies were trying to get between them; it seemed like the responsible thing to do. Chapman leaned around Pye and said, “Maybe you ought to stop them.”
    Virgil: “Me?”
    Robertson screamed at the mayor, “You and that goddamned crook you’re married to would sell your children for ten dollars and a rubber tire. . . .”
    Her voice reached toward a screech and Virgil thought, Hmm, and, at the same time, decided he liked her turn of phrase. Pye had lowered himself in his seat, but