Shock Wave

when Ahlquist ran in the door and blurted, “We’ve got another one, another bomb.”
    Virgil said into the phone, “Shirley, I gotta go. Earl says we’ve got another bomb.”
    “Talk to you later,” she said. “Be careful.”
     
     
    AHLQUIST WAS IN A HURRY. “Follow me out of the lot. You got lights?”
    “Yeah.”
    They trotted out of the courthouse and into the parking lot, and Virgil saw a TV truck moving fast. The TV already knew. “Okay, stick close, we’re going west and south,” Ahlquist said.
    “What’s the deal?”
    “Something different—could even be a break,” Ahlquist said. “The bomb blew in a guy’s garage. Henry Erikson. Big trout guy, one of the loudmouths. Not a bad guy, but pretty hard-core. Car salesman out at the Chevy dealer.”
    “I’ll follow you,” Virgil said, and jogged to the truck.
     
     
    THEY GOT ACROSS TOWN in a hurry, but never did catch the TV truck, which, when they arrived, was already unloading behind a couple of wooden barricades that said “Butternut Public Works.” Ahlquist didn’t slow much for the barricades, just put two wheels of his truck up on the curb and went around, and Virgil did the same. The Erikson house was a long half-block down from the barricades, where three deputies, including O’Hara, were standing in the yard talking, and looking into a wrecked garage, with a twisted SUV sitting inside. Two fire trucks were parked in the street, but there was no fire.
    A scent of explosive and shattered pine and drywall lingered in the air, as Virgil climbed out of the truck. He and Ahlquist headed across the lawn.
    O’Hara said, as they came up, “We got a situation here. Henry was hurt bad. He could die. It looks like the bomb was under his car seat, and blew when he sat down.”
    “No fire?”
    “No fire, the scene is still pretty much intact,” O’Hara said.
    Ahlquist: “When was this?”
    “Fifteen minutes ago,” O’Hara said, looking at her watch. “The first guys were mostly interested in getting Henry out of here, getting the ambulance, but one of them . . .” She turned, looking for the right deputy, spotted him and yelled, “Hey, Jim. Jimmy. Come over here.”
    The deputy was a young, fleshy guy wearing mirrored sunglasses, with a white sidewall haircut, and he hurried over.
    O’Hara said, “Tell them what you saw in there.”
    The deputy said, “Erikson was a mess, he was lying on the ground by the wall over there. We did what we could, got the ambulance going. Don’t think he’s going to make it, though, looked like both legs are gone, looked like his balls . . . looked like stuff blew up into his stomach. . . .”
    “Anyway,” O’Hara said, prompting him.
    “Anyway, when he was gone, I was looking around the mess in there, and noticed over there by his workbench, it’s all blown up, but there’s a pipe over there. It looks like the pipes that were used in the bombs.”
    Ahlquist: “You mean . . . from the bomb? Or another pipe?”
    “It looks like an unused pipe from these bombs. I saw the piece of pipe that the feds had, and it looks like the same pipe.”
    “Let’s see it,” Virgil said, and, as they stepped toward the wrecked garage, “Did you touch it?”
    “Absolutely not. We knew you’d want prints or DNA. As soon as I saw it, I cleared everybody away.”
    Virgil nodded. “You did good.”
     
     
    THE DEPUTY TOOK THEM into the garage, close to the front fender of the wrecked truck, and pointed out the pipe: it was lying against one wall of a cabinet, where the cabinet intersected with a workbench. A trashed table saw was overturned on the other side of the bench, along with a toolbox and a bunch of tools. The place smelled of blood—a lot of blood, a nasty, cutting odor, like sticking your head in the beef case at a butcher shop.
    The pipe looked right.
    The deputy said, “We’re trying to find his wife, but a neighbor said she’s in the Cities, buying some fabric. She’s a decorator. We haven’t been able to get in touch.”
    Ahlquist said, “Speaking of the feds, here they are.”
     
     
    BARLOW WAS HURRYING UP the driveway, O’Hara at his elbow. Inside the garage, Virgil pointed, wordlessly, and Barlow moved up to the pipe, peering at it, and then into it, and said, “There’s something in there. I think we might have another bomb. Better get everybody out of here until we can have a tech look at it.”
    Virgil asked, “Is this the guy?”
    “I’d be willing to bet that the