Shock Wave

a lot of people who were angry enough to be suspects. She wouldn’t name them, because there were too many of them, and because she didn’t want to point at a lot of innocent people—“And all but one of them is innocent.”
    He asked about the college and she shook her head. “None of the people who seem the angriest are from the college, as far as I know. But if I were so angry that I’d start setting off bombs, I’d pretend that I wasn’t angry at all. Wouldn’t you? Just keep my mouth shut and build my bombs.”
    Virgil scratched his chin and said, “Yeah. You may be right. I should be looking for somebody who isn’t angry.”
    She showed the smallest of smiles: “Doesn’t sound like you have an easy job.”
     
     
    VIRGIL FOUND LARRY BUTZ, who’d joined Robertson in shouting at the sheriff at the press conference, working in the back of Butz Downtown Jewelers. “I figured you’d be showing up,” he said, after a sales clerk ushered Virgil into the back office. “I’m not blowing anybody up.”
    “You know anybody who might be?” Virgil asked.
    “I probably know him, if he’s local, but I couldn’t identify him as the bomber, if you see what I mean,” Butz said. He hesitated, and then said, “Aren’t you pulling a fishing boat around? Somebody told me that you write for Gray’s and a couple other magazines.”
    “I do from time to time,” Virgil said.
    Butz leaned forward: “Then you should be on our side, man. These drainage things are insidious. We’ve got them all over the state—gas and oil and brake fluid getting into the groundwater, and then into the lakes. It’s a disgrace.”
    “I am on your side, from that angle,” Virgil said. “But I wouldn’t be murdering people to stop it.”
    “Probably won’t help me to say it, but killing off a few of these assholes would probably be a good thing,” Butz said. “Trouble is, this bomb guy is blowing up the wrong people. He killed two innocent people, just doing their jobs, and he missed Pye. He missed the board of directors. If murdering people was going to help, he’s managed to murder all the wrong ones, and turn Pye into a hero, giving away all those millions of dollars. How in the hell did that happen? Is he really on our side? What I want to know is, how did one of us Butternuts get up on top of Pye’s skyscraper? He’s got all kinds of security, is what I hear. I think we’re being set up.”
    “Huh,” Virgil said.
     
     
    THEY TALKED FOR a few more minutes, and then Virgil left: he did not scratch Butz off the list. Butz did get him thinking about the Pye Pinnacle again, and he called Barlow.
    “Are you sure that bomb at the Pinnacle was set off with a clock?”
    “Pretty sure. We found the clock. Pieces of it, anyway.”
    “What if the bomber is bullshitting you? What if he had the bomb wired through a cheap plastic cell phone or walkie-talkie, and he put it right on top of the Pelex, or molded the Pelex around it, with the clock off to one side. Then, when it went off, the cell phone vanishes and you find pieces of the clock . . . which means you look for somebody who was in the building twenty-four hours before the explosion, and maybe he was there a week before.”
    Barlow said, “Well, the reason is, our lab is really good at this stuff, and our techs are really good at picking up evidence. That’s why we’re still out there in that trailer, two days later. If there’d been a cell phone involved, we’d have picked it up.”
    “For sure? One hundred percent?”
    “Nothing’s one hundred percent,” Barlow said.
    “How fast can you get to your lab guy?” Virgil asked.
    “Got him on my speed dial.”
    “Call him up and ask him what percent,” Virgil said.
    “Get back to you in three minutes,” Barlow said.
     
     
    FIVE MINUTES LATER, Barlow called back: “He said seventy-five to eighty percent. I was kinda surprised it was that low.”
    “So there’s one chance in four or five that you wouldn’t find a cell phone,” Virgil said.
    “Yes, under certain conditions, but the guy would have to know a lot about what he was doing. We’re not seeing that level of sophistication.”
    “We’re talking about a tech college,” Virgil said.
    “Yeah . . . gives us something more to think about. I’ll get the ATF guys to look at that video as far back as it goes. There’s a terabyte of memory for every one of the cameras, so that’d cover a lot of time.”
    “Keep talking to me,” Virgil