Shock Wave

walked into the motel. Thor was behind the desk, saw him coming, and asked, “Did you talk to Mrs. Shepard?”
    “I can’t really talk about that,” Virgil said.
    “So, was she as hot as I said?”
    “She was . . . yes, she was,” Virgil said. “Did some deputies come around and talk to you about people prowling your back lot?”
    “Yeah, they talked to everybody, but nobody saw anything,” Thor said. “You think I got a chance to get Mrs. Shepard before Mr. Mackey?”
    “I gotta go,” Virgil said.
    From behind him, Thor said, “Sonofagun, he already got there, didn’t he?”

    VIRGIL TURNED AROUND and Thor said, “I’ll tell you what’s got me scratching my head.”
    Virgil turned back. “Yeah?”
    “Why’d they try to kill you ?” he asked.
    Virgil said, “Well, see, I’m a cop, and I’ve been assigned to find the bomber—”
    “Yeah, and what happens if you get killed? About, what, a hundred more cops come in?” Thor asked. “Right now, we got the sheriff’s department, and Sheriff Ahlquist is a nice guy, but to be honest, his deputies couldn’t find a stolen bike unless it was parked between the cheeks of their ass. So we got two real cops here, one state and one federal. If he kills a real cop, what happens? We get a hundred real cops, and they’re all pissed off. So, what’s the percentage? Is the guy stupid? He doesn’t seem stupid.”
    Virgil had no answer for that. He said, “You need to lie down and take a nap before your brains burn up.”
     
     
    SO, VIRGIL ASKED HIMSELF, back in his truck, why’d he try to kill me?

14
    V IRGIL INTENDED TO SPEND SOME time thinking—stretch out on the bed and have at it. As a backup, and just to make sure he didn’t fall asleep, he set the alarm, and the alarm woke him a half hour before he was to meet Good Thunder at Shepard’s lawyer’s office.
    He got up, checked his vital signs—he had an after-nap erection, which was always good—brushed his teeth and took a quick shower.
    Good Thunder had given him directions to the lawyer’s office, and wearing his most conservative T-shirt—an unauthorized souvenir from My Chemical Romance, with the band’s name only on the back, and with a black sport coat covering it—he set off for the lawyer’s office.
    The office was in a low, low, rustic strip mall—fake log cabins—with Butternut’s most complete collection of upscale boutiques, including one called Mairzy Doats with a window full of stuffed velvet moose dolls. Good Thunder was sitting on the hood of her car, a new fire-engine-red Chevy Camaro, waiting. When Virgil got out of the truck, she said, in a phony baritone, “Johnny Cash, the ‘Man in Black.’ ”
    “You seem to be in a pretty good mood,” Virgil said.
    She hopped off the hood. “My boss put a thumb in the wind—that’s not where he usually keeps it—and decided that if we can bag the city council, if they really did it, then he’ll be a lock for reelection. What he really doesn’t want, though, is for us to screw it up. He’s gonna be really unhappy if we just wound them.”
    Virgil nodded. “I know how it is. You get a wounded city councilman out in the brush, they’ll charge at the drop of the hat.”
    “Whatever,” she said. “Let’s not have any show of wit in here. Let’s just play it straight.”
    “This lawyer’s pretty smart?”
    “As a matter of fact, he is.”
     
     
    THE LAWYER WAS an extremely white man named Thomas LaRouche. His secretary ushered them into his office, where Jeanne Shepard sat in a corner chair, looking apprehensive. LaRouche was tall, courtly, and silver-haired, wearing a blue suit and a white shirt, open at the throat; a burgundy necktie was curled on a corner of his desk. He was maybe sixty, Virgil thought.
    When they came in, he stood up, smiling, said, “Shirley,” and came around the desk and kissed Good Thunder on the cheek, and shook hands with Virgil and pointed them at two leather visitor’s chairs.
    “I heard your boat was blown up this morning,” he said to Virgil, as he settled behind his desk. “That qualifies as a war crime.”
    “You’re right,” Virgil said. “People keep asking me if I’m all right, but I keep thinking about the boat. I took that thing all over the place.”
    LaRouche asked him what kind of boat it was, and when Virgil told him, he lit up, a bit, and said, “I used to have one like that—but it was years ago. I had a 40 Merc tiller off the back. One time up on