Shock Wave

up all the bombings so far. One of the most baffling aspects of the case, according to the story, was how the first bomb got into the Pye Pinnacle. “If we could figure that out, we’d know who the bomber is,” an ATF agent said.
     
     
    ON THE DRIVE HOME, the bomber began to wonder: Had anyone suggested his name, in Flowers’s survey? He did have a temper, which flashed from time to time. Would the cops be looking at him? If they did, they would quickly discover his relationship to Butternut Tech.
    Not good, not good at all.
    He felt the first hot finger of panic. That damn pipe thing . . . what had he been thinking of? Pure laziness, that’s all it was. The pipe cutter was there, he knew about it, he could get in and out. But he could have cut the pipe the way he first intended, with a hacksaw. He even tried it. The first cut took nearly an hour, and nearly wore out his arm. Still, he could have done one a day, and it would have been time well spent: the hacksaw would now be in the bottom of the river....
    He smacked his hands against the steering wheel as he looked up at the red light on a traffic signal. Damnit. Damnit.
    One thing he had to do: go over the house and the car with a fine-tooth comb and make sure there wasn’t the slightest evidence of bomb-making activity. He’d stashed the explosives out in the hills, but had actually assembled the bombs in his basement. If there were any chemical remnants about, much less any mechanical stuff, and if it came to a search by the ATF, they might well have the equipment to detect the residue.
    He had, he thought, thrown the bodies of three old thermostats in the trash, their mercury switches torn out. In the same trash, probably, were such things as junk mail with his address on it.
    That had to stop. In fact . . .
    He was halfway home, but he turned the car around and headed back toward County Market, where he planned to buy a few bottles of the harshest chemical house cleaner he could find, along with new sponges, a pail, and a mop. When he was done with them, they’d all go in the trash.
    Somebody else’s trash, he thought. Things were coming to a head: he was almost there, and he had to be extra careful.

    WHICH BROUGHT UP a new thought: he needed to end this, but there was more to be done. He’d not yet finished. If he quit now, it’d all have been for nothing.
    So he had to go on, but the quicker he finished, the sooner he could pull back into the weeds, and lay low.
    He pulled back into the County Market parking lot and thought of something he’d once seen in an all-night Home Depot: a man who’d bought some chain, an axe, and a large black plastic tub.
    All right, the ax and the chain could be used to cut down and drag a tree. But the tub? The tub made you think of bodies being cut up with the ax, and sunk with the chain . . . or something.
    If he went into County Market and bought six bottles of assorted detergents, would the cops . . .
    Ah, fuck it: that was paranoid.
    Had to watch himself. Had to be careful. Had to walk between the over-recklessness generated by the pleasure of the bombs, and the paranoia caused by the fear of prison.
    He had to walk between the raindrops of pleasure and paranoia, but he still had to move.
    A new thought popped into his head, full and complete, like a religious vision: a way out.
    He needed to build another bomb, and right now .

16
    THE NEXT MORNING, quote, the shit hit the fan, unquote. Virgil had expected that there might be some reaction, but he hadn’t expected the intensity of it. The phone rang the first time a few minutes after seven o’clock, and the Star Tribune reporter Ruffe Ignace asked, “Why are you asleep? I’m not. I just had a fourteenyear-old assistant city editor snatch my ass out of bed because you did some kind of cockamamy survey. What the hell are you doing, Virgil?”
    Virgil told him in a few brief sentences, and Ignace said, “That would almost make sense, if we didn’t have a Constitution.”
    “What part of the Constitution does this violate?” Virgil asked.
    “It must violate some part,” Ignace said. “I’ll look it up on Wikipedia later.”
    “Call me back when you find the violation,” Virgil said. “Right now, I’m going back to bed.”
    “Not for long. They got morning news cycles on TV, and they are gonna be on you like Holy on the Pope. The shit has hit the fan.”
    “You think?”
    “Of course I think. I’m about to call up the governor and ask him