“Even so,” Buck said, “be hard
for someone to rig a bomb on your car while you were pissing.”
“Coulda driven by and thrown it,” Vollmer said.
“Which would mean they were following him with a bomb waiting for the moment.”
“Yep.”
“More likely it was rigged earlier, with a timing device.”
“Could be,” Vollmer said. His eyes were wandering over the other deputies who were crisscrossing the area looking for anything that might be useful.
“If it was, would they have any way to know where he’d be when it went off?.”
“They must have had a way to know he’d be in the car.”
Vollmer said.
“Yeah. You can rig it to start when the ignition goes on.
But what if his wife drove it. Could be a matter of weight.“
“So what if the wife and some kids got
in.”
“Could be rigged for weight in the
driver’s seat.”
“And what if it went off in the middle of Cheyenne, or in Gillette, next to a school bus?” Vollmer said.
“Maybe they didn’t care,” Buck
said.,
“Nice people.”
“Or maybe somebody trailed him at a
distance,” Buck said. “And when he got out in the middle of an empty stretch they beeped the bomb like you’d open a garage door.”
“The technology’s there for
that,” Vollmer said.
“Yeah. What’s up them.”
“Piece of the truck,” Vollmer said,
“and maybe some bits of the driver.” He made a face. “M.E. scraped most of that up and took it with him.”
Buck nodded.
I’ll take a look,“ he said.
He and Vollmer walked up the hill where the mule deer had grazed and looked at the twisted hood and part of the foam-plastic dashboard. He squatted on his heels and looked more closely at the dashboard. Riveted into it was a metal band bearing the serial number of the truck.
“A little luck,” he said to Vollmer, and nodded at the band.
“Take a while to trace it,” Vollmer said.
“We got a while,” Buck said.
coffee. Captain Cat Was asleep on top of the filecabinet.
He didn’t stir when Burke came in. Burke put one cup down on the desk for Jesse, and took his to the window and looked out.
“Anthony’s cruiser,” Burke
said..“He took it home last night after work and parked it in front of his house. Somebody spray-painted the windshield.”
Jesse got up with his coffee and came to the window and stood beside Burke. In the parking lot below was one of the Paradise cruisers. Clumsily sprayed in blue onto the windshield was the word SLtrr.
“I had it towed in,” Burke said.
“It wouldn’t look good to have Anthony drive it in peeking around the graffiti.”
Jesse sipped some of the coffee and stared down at the cruiser.
“‘Slut,’ ”Jesse said.
“Maybe it’s personal.”
Burke shrugged and didn’t say anything.
“Have Perkins go over it,” Jesse said.
“Probably won’t find much, but it’ll be good practice for him.”
Burke nodded.
