“Earl, could we go off the record for a minute?”
When Virgil got down to the courthouse, there were three TV vans in the parking lot. He went in a side entrance, through the jail, and down to Ahlquist’s office. Ahlquist said, “We’ve got a lot to talk about, but let me say, the goddamn Fox reporter is not believable.”
“Why?”
“Because everything jiggles,” he said, astonished by the thought. “ Everything. I’m afraid to go on with her, because I’d forget how to speak in English. To say nothing of having a boner like a hammer handle.”
“You gotta model yourself on me, Earl,” Virgil said. “Mind like moon. Mind like water.”
“I don’t know what that means, but it sounds like more hippie shit, and I don’t think it has anything to do with the Fox reporter.”
“I’ll handle it,” Virgil said.
The news people were stacked up in the open lobby. Virgil went out, trailed by Ahlquist, and stood on the second step of a stairway and asked for everybody’s attention. He introduced himself, and a bunch of lights clicked on, and a triangle of on-camera reporters moved to the front. At the very tip of the spearhead was the Fox reporter, whom Virgil had seen on television, but had not experienced in person.
As Ahlquist had said, she jiggled even when she was standing still. She had a flawless, pale complexion with just a hint of rose in her cheeks, and green eyes, and real blond hair. She got along with just a touch of lipstick. She did not, Virgil thought, appear to be from this planet.
She asked the first question, and her teeth were perfectly regular, and a brilliant white, and her voice a husky paean to sex: “Agent Flowers, isn’t this questionnaire a violation of the Constitution?”
Virgil wanted to say, “What the fuck are you talking about?” but, for a few seconds, he forgot how to speak English.
His pause was taken for either guilt or stupidity, or she was simply familiar with the reaction, and she enlarged on her question: “The American Constitution?”
Virgil leaned toward her and said, “I’m glad you specified ‘American.’ No, it’s not. I’d suggest you read that document. Nowhere does it mention either surveys or questionnaires.”
“You don’t have to get snippy about it,” she said.
A guy from public radio, edging into the camera’s line of sight, and maybe going for a little frottage on the Fox reporter, along with the validation of TV time, asked, “But aren’t you essentially establishing a state-sponsored witch hunt?”
“No. I looked up ‘witch hunt’ in the Merriam-Webster dictionary, before I came over here,” Virgil said. “I believe I’m quoting verbatim when I say that a witch hunt is defined as, one, a searching out for persecution of persons accused of witchcraft, and two, the searching out and deliberate harassment of those (as political opponents) with unpopular views. Are you suggesting that we are doing one of those things?”
“Not exactly,” he conceded.
“Not at all,” Virgil said. “All we’re doing is surveying responsible citizens to see if they have any ideas who might have been involved in murdering two people, injuring two more, and barely missing several more. The surveys can’t be made public because they are anonymous, and it wouldn’t be ethical to make anonymous accusations public; and since a number of people refused to participate, by not returning letters, even we don’t know whether a particular individual participated or not. We won’t be making public the names of any of those mentioned in the survey.”
The public radio guy: “But somehow… it feels like a witch hunt.”
“That’s because we’ll be looking at people against whom we have no evidence at all,” Virgil said. “But, if you’ll excuse me for making the point, that’s what a detective always does, in any kind of complicated case. You go around and ask people who they think did it, whatever it was. Often, just walk up and down the street, knocking on doors. This is just like that, except that we have to move faster. This bomber is now turning out a bomb a day. Another thing: a witch hunt operates on fear and emotion and rumor. We have to have definitive proof before we can accuse somebody. We’re not going to indict somebody on somebody else’s say-so. We need to find explosives, blasting caps, bomb parts, and motive. We’re asking people where we should look. In a small city like this, where most people know most other people, we have hopes that we’ll pinpoint some good suspects.”
They went on for a while, and Virgil outlined what he thought about the bomber, and the TV people finally went away, apparently satisfied. Back in Ahlquist’s office, the sheriff said, “You see? She never stopped jiggling.” And, he added, “You’re goldarned near as good on TV as I am.”
Virgil got Ahlquist to assign him an assistant, Dick Pruess, and between them, they began running the list of names through the National Crime Information Center. Lyle McLachlan, the leading candidate in the survey, had thirty NCIC returns, varying from resisting arrest without violence at the bottom end, to felony theft and aggravated assault at the high end. He was thirty-eight, and had spent fourteen years in prison.
“Not him,” Pruess said. “Be nice if it was, but the guy can barely make a sandwich. He could never figure this out.”
They had seven more hits among the twenty names they checked, fewer than Virgil expected, given that all those named were, in the mind of some sober citizen, capable of multiple murder.
Ahlquist came by and looked at the list, and the hits, and said, “The problem I see with most of the hits is that they involve guys right at the bottom of things-they’ve hardly got a stake in the town, so why would they do something as weird as attack a PyeMart? If anything, these guys would want to take revenge on the town, not defend it.”
Of the two people with direct ties to Butternut Tech, one came back clean, the other had a drunk driving conviction. The first one had served in the army, and Virgil called a BCA researcher and asked her to get in touch with the army and see if he’d had any training in explosives.
They were still looking for returns when Davenport called and said, “Your press conference made all the news shows. You looked pretty straight, with that black-on-black coat and shirt.”
“Pain in the ass,” Virgil said.
“I’ve got a bet for you-and I’ll take either side,” Davenport said. “Do you think only one, or both, of the major papers will use the phrase ‘witch hunt’ in an editorial tomorrow?”
“Both,” Virgil said.
“Damnit, I was hoping you’d pick ‘one.’ ”
“I can’t help it, Lucas. I’m doing the best I can,” Virgil said.
“I know it, but everybody’s watching now. It’d be best if you wrapped this up in the next couple of days.”
“Did Ruffe call the governor and ask him about the Constitution?”
“Everybody called the governor,” Davenport said. “I think this is what us liberals call ‘a teaching moment.’ ”
Good Thunder called: “I took down Pat Shepard this morning, early, because he had a summer school class. He freaked. He cried. You know what? This isn’t going to be any fun.”
“It never is, when you go after people who think of themselves as honest, upright citizens,” Virgil said. “Because down in their heart, they feel the guilt.”
“And because he’s going to lose both his wife and his job.”
“Yeah, it is brutal,” Virgil said.
“I’m waiting for you to do the ‘Don’t do the crime if you can’t do the time.’ ”
“Be a long wait,” Virgil said. “Will he flip?”
“Yeah, I think so. He wasn’t as enthusiastic about it as his wife suggested he’d be,” Good Thunder said. “In fact, I’m a little worried. I don’t want to find him at the end of a rope, or with his head in the oven.”
“Where is he?” Virgil asked.
“Last time I saw him, he was with his lawyer. I’ve told him that he’ll be arrested, but I haven’t arrested him yet. I’ve laid out the deal. They’re talking, and if he’s not crazy, he’ll go for it. We’re going to need the wire, and the monitoring gear.”
“I’ll talk to Davenport,” Virgil said.
“Boy, that survey thing… the shit really hit the fan, huh? Pardon my French.”
Virgil and good thunder were talking about who they’d go after first, if Shepard cooperated, to see if they could triangulate on the mayor, when Ahlquist ran in the door and blurted, “We’ve got another one, another
