Shock Wave

when I’m not in a relationship,” Haden said. “The thing about three exes is, there are always some good memories.”
    “True,” Virgil said. He thought of Janey, and her ass.
    “You’d know?” Haden asked.
    “Yeah, I got three down myself,” Virgil said. “I’ve given it up for the time being. I’ve got a girlfriend, but I think she’s about to break it off with me.”
    “You want her to go?” Haden asked.
    Virgil considered. He hadn’t actually thought about it that way. Finally, he said, “Maybe.”
    “Ah. So you’ve maneuvered her into breaking it off with you, so you won’t have to deal with the guilt,” Haden said.
    “That’s a facile bit of pseudo-psychology,” Virgil said.
    “Facile. A subtle word for a cop. One bit of advice. If she breaks it off with you, don’t sleep with her again for at least a year.”
    “A year?”
    “Okay, six months.”
    “Is that your practice?”
    “No, I won’t sleep with them for at least three weeks, but then, I think I have a more resilient personality than you. You look like a kinder soul than I am.”

    THEY SAT AND BULLSHITTED for a while, then Haden got a second beer for each of them, and Virgil passed over the list of names, and told him how he’d acquired it. He scanned the list and said, “There I am . . . Probably my department chairman. Somebody told him once that I smoke dope.”
    “He’s a non-smoker?”
    “Oh, yeah . . . Weird for a college professor, huh? So let me see if I get this right. You made this list with no real mathematical or statistical basis. It’s a back-of-the-envelope guess by a bunch of hosers who are getting even with enemies, and may have a few good ideas as well.”
    Virgil considered again, then nodded: “I think that’s fair.”
    Haden handed the list back, leaned back in his chair, and closed his eyes. Thought about it. Then, “I’d say there’s a better than even chance that he’s on the list. You can probably strike several people off right away.”
    “We have.”
    Haden nodded. “From what I know about the bombs, I have no alibis, except that I couldn’t have done the one in Michigan, if it was, in fact, a simple time bomb, as the newspaper said. I have a lady friend who’ll tell you that, since I spent that night pounding her like a jackhammer. During the day, I was doing finals.”
    “I’ll check, if I need to,” Virgil said. “Give her my name. I’m not fooling around about this, John.”
    “I know that. I looked you up on the Net while you were on the way over,” Haden said. Then he said, “I’ve been toying with the possibility that Henry was simply killed at random, but I don’t think so. There’s something in Henry’s killing that’s important to the bomber, and it’s not just that Henry was somebody to frame. You gotta go pull Sarah apart. She must know what it is, even if she doesn’t know that she knows.”
    “Mmmm.” Virgil closed his eyes. “Nice out here. I need a patio.”
    “I’m serious. You know what Sherlock Holmes used to say.”
    “Sherlock Holmes actually didn’t say anything,” Virgil said. “He’s a fictional character, invented by Theodore Roosevelt, or some other Boy Scout just like him.”
    “He said, and I quote, ‘When you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth.’ ”
    “I knew that,” Virgil said. “I’m a professional detective.”
    “But you might be outsmarting yourself. Go back to the fundamentals of detecting. If there is such a thing. Another beer? I’ve only got two left, and it seems a shame just to leave them sitting there by themselves.”
     
     
    GO BACK TO FUNDAMENTALS, Virgil thought, when he finally left.
    Shoe leather. Compile facts. Throw out whatever was impossible . . .
    Whatever. Unfortunately, he didn’t know where to start walking, and while he had a lot of facts, they were mostly irrelevant. What about motive? The fundamentals would say that murder is committed because of greed and sex, to which Virgil added craziness, druginduced or otherwise.
    There was craziness here, but also a method: it wasn’t the kind of compulsive, uncontrolled murder that’s done by what psychiatrists referred to as nut jobs. This was craziness on a mission, and the mission probably involved greed or sex.
    But not trout.
    Virgil realized that he’d psychologically eliminated about half the people nominated for the bombings: the trout fishermen.
    Trout fishermen, he thought,