Shock Wave

hundred and eighty-five—that is, was slender to average weight, but not fat or husky—and that the camo was Realtree. The man wore a mask commonly worn by bow hunters.
    Virgil found Ahlquist talking to a couple deputies, and ran the video for them to see if they could pick out anything else. Ahlquist shook his head and said, “It’s Realtree, all right, but hell, half the bow hunters in the state wear it.”
    “Yeah, I got some myself,” Virgil said.
    “So did Erikson, but Erikson was maybe five-eleven,” Virgil said. “I asked when I found out the lab guys had saved the video.”
    “So it’s definitely not him.”
    “I wouldn’t say definitely,” Virgil said. “The problem with labs, they come up with exact answers. Sometimes, they’re wrong, and it really screws you up.”
    They all nodded.
    He called Barlow and told him about the video, and about the size problem, and Barlow said, “So we’re down to forty-sixty. I just don’t have anybody else, Virgil. What are you doing?”
    “Still talking to people,” Virgil said. “Wandering around town.”
    He called Pye, who said he was at the store site. Virgil told him to stay there, he was coming out. “You get the guy?” Pye asked.
    “Not yet,” Virgil said. “But we’re closing in on him.”
    Pye made a rude noise, and clicked off.
     
     
    PYE WAS NOT PARTICULARLY HAPPY to see him. “I hear you’re making more accusations,” he said.
    “It’s gone beyond that, Willard,” Virgil said. “We’re taking down the city council—there are state investigators in town, right now, making arrests. We’re probably going to bust your expediter guy, and I wouldn’t doubt that when that happens, the prosecutors will try to work up the chain.”
    “There is no chain,” Pye said. Over his shoulder, to Chapman, he added, “Keep taking it down. Put in there, ‘Pye seemed unaffected by the rash accusations made by the hippie-looking cop.’ ”
    “Whatever,” Virgil said. “But that’s not what I want to talk to you about. My focus is on this bomber. We got three dead now, and two hurt bad, and four or five scared shitless, who could be dead, except they got lucky. . . . Chapman says that you’re a big goddamn financial and business expert. I need to know, how many ways are there to make or lose money when a PyeMart goes into a town?”
    Pye stuck out his lower lip and said, “Everybody knows the ways—”
    “No. You might, the rest of us don’t,” Virgil said. “We know that the oil-change place might go broke, and the pharmacy, and a bookstore and a clothing store. We know that some brick layers are going to get some jobs, and somebody’s going to pay the city to lay some pipe, and that means they’ve got to buy some pipe, and now they’ve got to buy a couple more pieces of heavy equipment . . . but I don’t think anybody’s going around blowing up Pye Pinnacle so they can sell another excavator. I’ve thought about the basic reasons people do this stuff, and I’ve come to the conclusion that it’s probably money, in some way that I can’t see. Since you’re the money guy, I thought you could.”
    Pye took off his ball cap, scratched his head, and said, “Chapman has done some research. Bombers are usually either plain nuts—they just want to bomb something—or they’re political nuts. Like the Unabomber.”
    Virgil shook his head. “This seems to be too focused for a political bombing campaign. They hit the Pinnacle, they hit the city equipment yard, they hit you, me, then Erikson. . . . They didn’t blow up the equipment yard, or Erikson, for some ideological reason. They’re not Marxists or something.”
    “Barlow thinks Erikson might be the guy,” Pye said. “Maybe.”
    “I don’t believe he really thinks so,” Virgil said. “He’s grasping at straws. He’s hoping. And I don’t believe it. So: money.”
     
     
    PYE WALKED OFF A WAY, looking at the concrete pads that would hold up the new store—a store that Virgil now believed would never be built. Chapman said, quietly, “He’s thinking.”
    “I can see the steam coming off his forehead,” Virgil said.
    A minute later, Pye wandered back. “I’ve got nothing specific for you, but I can give you some theory. Whether it’ll help, I don’t know.”
    “So give,” Virgil said.
    Pye said that there were three ways money would move in a situation like PyeMart. Some of it was quite direct and positive: people getting paid for building the store,