Shock Wave

things get. Anyway, I gotta go violate somebody’s civil rights. Talk to you later. It’s Andy at East Coast Marine. He’s making out the papers right now.”
    “Well . . . thanks,” he said, but he was thinking, Holy shit, a Ranger. He had the urge to drop the entire bomb case and get the hell over to Stillwater before Andy died....
    “So Davenport said you’d been out to Michigan, to the Pinnacle. I didn’t hear about that. What’s going on there?”
    Virgil explained the problem of planting the bomb, and his thoughts, and the governor said, “Any way he could climb it? Or come down? Parachute, maybe?”
    Virgil thought back to the conversation he’d had with the guys at the Pye Pinnacle and said, “Someone would’ve seen a plane, or heard it at least. I thought maybe a helicopter, but you couldn’t land one there without someone noticing. A hang glider, maybe, but the Pinnacle’s the tallest thing out there. There’d be nowhere to launch it from.”
    The governor rang off, and Virgil closed his eyes and leaned back on the couch. The word “glider” floated through his mind, and he thought, Hey, wait a minute. Did somebody say something about Peck flying a glider? The guy at Butternut Tech. Huh. Could you land a glider on top of a building?
    He didn’t know anyone else who could answer that question, so he called Peck.
    “Hey, George—could you land a glider on top of a building?”
    After a moment of silence, Peck said, “A glider? Somebody told you I used to fly gliders?”
    “Yeah, somebody did, but I’ll be damned if I can remember who. So, could you?”
    “Well, not me, personally, because I’d be too chicken. But I guess if you had a big enough roof, without any obstructions, you could.”
    “How big a roof?”
    “Maybe . . . three hundred yards at the absolute minimum. But that would be scary as hell, even with perfect wind and good visibility. The problem is, you’d have to come in high enough to make sure you got on the roof—you don’t want to crash into the side of the building. Then you’d have to stop before you got to the far parapet, because if you didn’t, and hit it, you’d either get squashed like an eggshell hitting a wall, or if the parapet was low enough, it’d trip the glider and you’d go right over the edge and drop like a stone. Or both.”
    “You had me at three hundred yards,” Virgil said. “The roof of the Pye Pinnacle is probably fifty yards across. Maybe less. It’s got all kinds of pipes and chimneys and air-conditioning ducts up there.”
    “No way you’re gonna land a glider on that. That’s just not going to work.”
     
     
    AND VIRGIL THOUGHT, Hey, wait a minute. What’d Davenport just say? Maybe the bomber wanted a whole storm of cops to come in? Why would he want that?
    Virgil closed his eyes and thought about it, and came up with exactly one answer: the bomber wanted a bigger, wider investigation. Why would he want that? Because a bigger, wider investigation would probably get into the question of whether the city council was bribed, and if it had been, then . . . PyeMart was gone.
    So maybe there was a good reason to try to kill him—nothing personal, not anger or revenge or because Virgil was a threat, but an effort to get as many cops as possible into town.
    The guy might be nuts, but there was a logic buried in his craziness.
    So why did he go after Pye first? Why weren’t there any warnings? Maybe because he was worried about heightened security around Pye, if he set the first one off in Butternut. So he went after Pye first—after the whole board of directors, but had failed. If he’d succeeded, what would he have done then?
    Issued a warning, perhaps: quit building the PyeMart, or else.
    But then, if the company didn’t do it, what would he do next?
    Virgil thought about it, and decided that there wouldn’t have been a warning: he would have continued on to Butternut, and would have blown up the trailer even if he had been successful with the Pinnacle bomb.
    The first bomb was an announcement of his seriousness; the second bomb was the beginning of the actual campaign.
    The third bomb, at the equipment yard, would slow down the construction process, and make it more expensive.
    The fourth one, another attack on Pye . . . keeping the pressure on.
    Then the attack on Virgil, maybe to bring more pressure into town.
    And finally, the bomb at Erikson’s.

    HE CONSIDERED THE LIST, and after a moment, focused on the bombing