Shock Wave

what the hell you’re doing,” Ignace said. “You know, with the Constitution and all.”
    “Can we go off the record for a moment?” Virgil asked.
    “Just for a minute.”
    “Good. Fuck you, Ruffe. I’m going back to bed.”
     
     
    THE SHERIFF CALLED eight minutes later and said, “Virgil? Man, you gotta get up. The shit has hit the fan. They’re saying we’re running a witch hunt.”
    “Earl, could we go off the record for a minute?”
     
     
    WHEN VIRGIL GOT DOWN to the courthouse, there were three TV vans in the parking lot. He went in a side entrance, through the jail, and down to Ahlquist’s office. Ahlquist said, “We’ve got a lot to talk about, but let me say, the goddamn Fox reporter is not believable.”
    “Why?”
    “Because everything jiggles,” he said, astonished by the thought. “ Everything. I’m afraid to go on with her, because I’d forget how to speak in English. To say nothing of having a boner like a hammer handle.”
    “You gotta model yourself on me, Earl,” Virgil said. “Mind like moon. Mind like water.”
    “I don’t know what that means, but it sounds like more hippie shit, and I don’t think it has anything to do with the Fox reporter.”
    “I’ll handle it,” Virgil said.
     
     
    THE NEWS PEOPLE were stacked up in the open lobby. Virgil went out, trailed by Ahlquist, and stood on the second step of a stairway and asked for everybody’s attention. He introduced himself, and a bunch of lights clicked on, and a triangle of on-camera reporters moved to the front. At the very tip of the spearhead was the Fox reporter, whom Virgil had seen on television, but had not experienced in person.
    As Ahlquist had said, she jiggled even when she was standing still. She had a flawless, pale complexion with just a hint of rose in her cheeks, and green eyes, and real blond hair. She got along with just a touch of lipstick. She did not, Virgil thought, appear to be from this planet.
    She asked the first question, and her teeth were perfectly regular, and a brilliant white, and her voice a husky paean to sex: “Agent Flowers, isn’t this questionnaire a violation of the Constitution?”
    Virgil wanted to say, “What the fuck are you talking about?” but, for a few seconds, he forgot how to speak English.
    His pause was taken for either guilt or stupidity, or she was simply familiar with the reaction, and she enlarged on her question: “The American Constitution?”
    Virgil leaned toward her and said, “I’m glad you specified ‘American.’ No, it’s not. I’d suggest you read that document. Nowhere does it mention either surveys or questionnaires.”
    “You don’t have to get snippy about it,” she said.
    A guy from public radio, edging into the camera’s line of sight, and maybe going for a little frottage on the Fox reporter, along with the validation of TV time, asked, “But aren’t you essentially establishing a state-sponsored witch hunt?”
    “No. I looked up ‘witch hunt’ in the Merriam-Webster dictionary, before I came over here,” Virgil said. “I believe I’m quoting verbatim when I say that a witch hunt is defined as, one, a searching out for persecution of persons accused of witchcraft, and two, the searching out and deliberate harassment of those (as political opponents) with unpopular views. Are you suggesting that we are doing one of those things?”
    “Not exactly,” he conceded.
    “Not at all,” Virgil said. “All we’re doing is surveying responsible citizens to see if they have any ideas who might have been involved in murdering two people, injuring two more, and barely missing several more. The surveys can’t be made public because they are anonymous, and it wouldn’t be ethical to make anonymous accusations public; and since a number of people refused to participate, by not returning letters, even we don’t know whether a particular individual participated or not. We won’t be making public the names of any of those mentioned in the survey.”
    The public radio guy: “But somehow . . . it feels like a witch hunt.”
    “That’s because we’ll be looking at people against whom we have no evidence at all,” Virgil said. “But, if you’ll excuse me for making the point, that’s what a detective always does, in any kind of complicated case. You go around and ask people who they think did it, whatever it was. Often, just walk up and down the street, knocking on doors. This is just like that, except that we have to