Shock Wave

that,” Pye said. “What else?”
    “That’s it,” Virgil said. “How long will it take?”
    “A while—until tomorrow, probably, if I keep people looking all night. That’s if you want ‘any way, shape, or form.’ ”
    “I’ll take tomorrow morning,” Virgil said. “Do not talk to anybody else about this. I’ll call you.”
    “We did not bribe anybody, nohow, no way,” Pye said.
    “Glad to hear it,” Virgil said. “But I’m pretty sure the grand jury will want to know where Arnold Martin’s sailboat came from. And why two city councilmen tell a different story.”
    “You don’t believe me?” Pye demanded.
    Virgil scratched the back of his head and then said, “Well, Willard, personally, I like you all right. You got some color, and you’re a smart guy. But I gotta say . . . no. I don’t believe you. Have a nice day.”
    Chapman followed Virgil outside, the metal door banging closed behind them. “Is this store dead?”
    “Yeah, I think it probably is,” Virgil said. “Maybe you can donate those concrete pads to the city, as municipal tennis courts, or something. Take a tax write-off.”
    A wrinkle appeared on her forehead. “You know, that’s not a bad idea. . . .”
     
     
    VIRGIL LOOKED AT HIS WATCH as he left the motel: still broad daylight, but the sun was getting low. He’d have Wyatt on the brain overnight.
    Thought about it for a minute, then thought about John Haden, the other professor he’d spoken to, that morning. He looked at his cell-phone record, punched up Haden’s phone number, and got him.
    “I need to talk to you.”
    “Well, I’ve got a friend over, we’re just, uh, finishing talking. Give me fifteen minutes or a half hour? I got some black beans and pork chops I was gonna make for dinner, if you’re hungry.”
    “See you then,” Virgil said.
     
     
    VIRGIL HAD NOTHING BETTER to do, so he drove over to Haden’s and parked down the block. An older Subaru was sitting in Haden’s driveway, with the look of a visitor. Doorbellus interruptus, which he’d suffered on a number of occasions, just wasn’t polite. He closed his eyes and thought about Wyatt’s ride into the Pinnacle. It would have been thrilling, closing in on the building from above, those lights playing around the emerald glass. Wyatt would have had to find a place to dump his car, to take off, but given the Pinnacle’s location, that wouldn’t have been hard.
    Finding the car again, in that sea of corn, might have been harder, but with a GPS . . .
    Virgil got out his iPad, called up Google, and looked at a satellite photo of the area around the Pinnacle. To the south, on the other side of the interstate, a gravel road cut deep into the countryside, with only a few farmhouses around. Plenty of room for a takeoff, he thought.
     
     
    HADEN’S FRIEND LEFT HIS HOUSE a few minutes later, a friendlylooking blonde, but not exactly Virgil’s image of a woman that Haden would be chasing. He gave him credit for more taste than Virgil had been expecting; that is, she was something more than tits and ass. She did a U-turn and drove back past Virgil. He went back to the Google map for a couple more minutes, trying to figure the best takeoff spot, calculating distances.
    True, there weren’t a lot of farmhouses, but if he’d taken off in the middle of the night, somebody should have heard him. On the YouTube videos he’d seen, the propellers were loud; louder than a lawn mower.
    Of course, the sound might have been confused by trucks on the freeway. Huh.
    He gave up—couldn’t tell enough without being on the ground—and pulled up to Haden’s house.
     
     
    HADEN WAS WEARING SWEATPANTS and a T-shirt, with flip-flops, his hair wet from a shower, and Virgil said, “I don’t want to hear about it. I’m so horny the light socket ain’t safe.”
    “So your friend is out in Hollywood with those producer guys . . .”
    They talked about women for a while, then Haden drained a can of black beans through a colander, stuck the beans in a plastic bowl with some microwave rice, set it aside, got some pork chops out of the refrigerator and led the way to the patio, where he had a gas grill.
    “So what’s up?” Haden asked, as he fired up the grill.
    “This is just between you and me,” Virgil said.
    “Yup.”
    “You know a guy named William Wyatt?”
    “Yeah, Bill Wyatt,” Haden said. “Is he the bomber?”
    “I’m asking myself that. What do you think?”
    The pork chops were