Triple Threat

Keplar, who literally jerked him to a stop.
    Dance was pulling out a walkie-talkie. “Michael, it’s Kathryn, you read me?”
    “Four by four. We’ve got six choppers and the entire peninsula com network standing by. You’re patched in to all emergency frequencies. What do you have?”
    “The target’s a party—Christmas, I’d guess—involving bankers, or savings and loan people, bank regulators, something like that. It
is
a bomb and it’s under the stage in that room you texted me about.”
    Wayne Keplar stared at her, awash in confusion.
    A half dozen voices shot from her radio, variations of “
Roger… Copy that… Checking motels with banquet rooms in the target zone, south of Moss Landing… Contacting all banks in the target zone.
”
    “What is this?” Keplar raged.
    Everyone ignored him.
    A long several minutes passed, Dance standing motionless, head down, listening to the intersecting voices through the radio. And then: “This is Major Rodriguez, CHP. We’ve got it! Central Coast Bankers’ Association, annual Christmas party, Monterey Bay Seaside Motel. They’re evacuating now.”
    Wayne Keplar’s eyes grew wide as he stared at Dance. “But the bomb…” He glanced at Dance’s wrist and those of the other officers. They’d all removed their watches, so Keplar couldn’t see the real time. He turned to an agent and snapped, “What the hell time is it?”
    “About ten to four,” replied Dan Simmons, the reporter.
    He blurted to Dance, “The clock? In the interrogation room?”
    “Oh,” she said, guiding him to the prisoner transport van. “It was fast.”
    # # #
    A half hour later Michael O’Neil arrived from the motel where the bankers’ party had been interrupted.
    He explained that everyone got out safely, but there’d been no time to try to render the device safe. The explosion was quite impressive. The material was probably Semtex, Abbott Calderman had guessed, judging from the smell. The Forensic Services head explained to O’Neil that it was the only explosive ever to have its own FAQ on the Internet, which answered questions like: Was it named after an idyllic, pastoral village? (yes). Was it mass produced and shipped throughout the world, as the late President Vaclav Havel claimed? (no). And was Semtex the means by which its inventor committed suicide? (not exactly—yes, an employee at the plant did blow himself up intentionally, but he had not been one of the inventors).
    Dance smiled as O’Neil recounted this trivia.
    Steve Nichols of the FBI called and told her they were on the way to the CBI to deliver the other suspect, Gabe Paulson. He explained that since she’d broken the case, it made sense for her to process all the suspects. There would be federal charges—mostly related to the explosives—but those could be handled later.
    As they waited in the parking lot for Nichols to arrive, O’Neil asked, “So, how’d you do it? All I know is you called me about three, I guess, and told me to get choppers and a communications team ready. You hoped to have some details about the location of the attack in about forty-five minutes. But you didn’t tell me what was going on.”
    “I didn’t have much time,” Dance explained. “What happened was I found out, after wasting nearly an hour, that Keplar was kinesics proof. So I had to trick him. I took a break at three and talked to our technical department. Seems you can speed up analog clocks by changing the voltage and the frequency of the current in the wiring. They changed the current in that part of the building so the clock started running fast.”
    O’Neil smiled. “That was the byword for this case, remember. You said it yourself.”
    And remember: We have two and a half hours. We’ve got to move fast…
    Dance continued, “I remembered when we got to CBI Keplar started lecturing Dan Simmons about his cause.”
    “Oh, that obnoxious reporter and blogger?”
    “Right. I called him and said that if he asked Keplar why he picked those particular victims, I’d give him an exclusive interview. And I called you to set up the search teams. Then I went back into the interrogation. I had to make sure Keplar didn’t notice the clock was running fast so I started debating philosophy with him.”
    “Philosophy?”
    “Well, Wikipedia Philosophy. Not the real stuff.”
    “Probably real enough nowadays.”
    She continued, “You and the crime scene people found out that it was probably a bomb and that it was