Seth’s new hero had fallen back to the rear of the group, to talk to Elena. Frank told himself that being angry with her accomplished nothing. But he would think of the man in the wreckage of the Cessna, and this boy without a father, and he could not bring himself to forgive her for her silence.
His aging Volvo was, he was relieved to see, still in one piece.
“Two devices,” one of the bomb squad members told him. “And for working so quickly, he worked neatly. One was on your ignition. Actually, that was the backup device, in case the first one failed — a pressure device.”
“Where was that one?”
“Under the driver’s-side seat. When you told me the dogs had been interested in that side of the car, I made sure we checked it out. The device was rigged so that if you sat down on the seat, your weight would trigger an explosion. If something went wrong with that, when you started the car, you would have triggered a second device, under the hood.”
Frank’s mouth went dry, but he managed to ask, “Any clues to the identity of the bomber?”
“When we study the devices, we’ll probably know more about him than he’d ever guess we could know. They weren’t unique in construction, per se, but — strange thing is, they are built almost exactly like the ones a guy named Wendell Leroy Wallace built seven or eight years ago — same materials, same design, everything — and the really weird thing is, his initials were on this one — W.L.W.”
“I remember those cases,” Frank said. “Series of car bombs. He had some grudge against the company he worked for.”
“Right, that’s the one. But Wendell’s been dead for years. He went the way of a lot of the guys who take up this bomb-making work — the on-the-job training is murder. I’ll bet there are still little pieces of him embedded in the oak tree near what was left of his garage.”
Frank thought for a moment, then said, “Who did the lab work on those cases, county or city?”
“County, mostly. We’ve got the bomb squad. But of course, there was cooperation between your lab and ours. On that case, we were going all-out, so I’m sure the information was shared.”
“You’ve been in this business awhile?” Frank asked.
“Yes, and I’ve still got all my fingers, although my hearing’s going.”
“How long?”
“About eighteen years. Why?”
“What’s your guess about this guy — the one who placed these bombs?”
“An off-the-record guess? Whoever made them hasn’t done this sort of thing around here lately, because I would have recognized anything done in Wendell’s style. So it’s someone who has read about Wendell, or studied him somehow, because I don’t believe that Wendell’s come back from the dead. I almost would believe that, because like Wendell, this guy is as anal as all get-out.”
“What do you mean?”
“A neat little set of packages, all lined up just so, everything clean, ends of the wires carefully clipped and attached, and so on. I’d like to see him caught, because I don’t need any careful bombers — especially any who can install quickly — working in my neck of the woods.” He looked at the stitches in Frank’s eyebrow, the black eye and other bruises, and said, “I suppose it’s foolish to ask if you have any enemies?”
“A few.”
“Well, in your line of work, I guess that’s a given.” He started to walk off, then paused and turned back. “Hey, you think you could show me how to fold a paper airplane the way you do?”
“What?”
“We found this one under the passenger seat, figured it must be yours. I’ve never seen one folded so elaborately.”
“I have,” Frank said as the man showed him the plane. “Once before.” And he suddenly remembered the form in one of Professor Wilkes’s folders — the contest entry that had been filled out so neatly by W. L. Wallace.
42
Friday, July 14, 3:30 A.M.
The Dane Mansion
“Myles, why these lucubrations?” Dane said, entering Myles’s small study. “Are you feeling guilty about striking Detective Harriman?”
Myles looked up from his desk to see Mr. Dane smiling at him. Mr. Dane was clad in a blue silk dressing gown into which a pattern of swans had been embroidered. Only the slight swelling and darkening of the area around his right eye marred his beauty.
“I do regret that deeply, Mr. Dane, but only because it went against your wishes.”
“Naturally you felt compelled to defend me, Myles. Please don’t lose another moment’s sleep over it.”
“Yes, sir. But I should point out that I’ve stayed up late going over these papers because I believe I’ve found the pattern we were looking for, sir. I wanted to be certain I was on the right track.”
“What track is that?”
“I’ve found something in common in many of the eleven cases you asked me to look into — something other than the fact that the defendants either died unexpectedly or were later convicted of crimes of which you believed them to be innocent.”
“Yes?”
“Judge Lewis Kerr, sir.”
“Kerr? Are you certain?”
“Yes, sir.”
