wished again he’d been able to call ahead. No way did he want to intrude on the investigation.
But Captain Winters smiled in welcome when Matt emerged from his cab.
“Matt!” he said in surprise. Then he turned to Steadman. “This is one of my Net Force Explorers, Matt Hunter. What brings you out here, Matt?”
Steadman excused himself and headed for the garage as Matt presented his printout. Winters read the statement of support with his usual quiet, serious expression. But Matt thought there was a hint of mist in the captain’s eyes as he partially unrolled the paper to see the beginning of the list of signatures in three neat rows, then hefted the weight of the scroll in his hand to get some idea of how very long the list was.
“Every current Net Force Explorer signed,” Matt said with pride, “as well as some kids who aren’t with the group anymore, either because they graduated from the program or went on to pursue other interests.”
“Matt—” Winters had to clear his throat before he went on. “Thank you. This couldn’t have come at a better time. It’s not a pleasant experience to have your colleagues execute a search warrant on your house.”
“It’s a nice-looking place,” Matt said.
Winters glanced at him, a hint of a smile quirking his lips. “What? You were expecting a cave? Or maybe a bunker? What a disappointment! The captain lives in a house!” Winters shrugged. “I try to keep it neat. And I
Matt sensed immediately that Winters wasn’t referring to his housekeeping skills.
Hangman Hank Steadman came back out of the garage, his eyes hooded. “Captain,” he said formally, “you told us you hadn’t used the workshop back there for quite some time.”
“It’s been months,” Winters replied. “I was cutting some wood during the summer to make repairs on the deck out back.”
Steadman gave him a brief, almost ironic, nod. “In that case, can you explain why there’s no dust on any of the tools in there?” The IA man pressed on. “And why we found traces of plastic explosive on your workbench?”
5
Matt stepped into Captain Winters’s office — he still couldn’t think of it in any other way — and shook hands with Agent Dorpff.
“Matt Hunter?” The youthful-looking agent smiled. “Good to start meeting some of the guys — and girls — in the organization,” he quickly added, obviously remembering his disastrous introduction to the Net Force Explorers. “Captain Winters specifically mentioned you as part of what he called ‘the local organizational cadre,’” Dorpff went on.
“Really?” Matt said, a little flattered.
Agent Dorpff nodded. “Looks like the captain was right,” he said. “Considering the job you did on that petition. A nationwide response in less than a week!”
He gave an embarrassed shrug at Matt’s look of surprise. “Hey, it’s part of my job, checking out what’s happening on the Net Force Explorer Net.”
Dorpff looked concerned. “I hope you weren’t too upset by what happened when you went to deliver the printout.”
Matt couldn’t help himself. “How did you—”
His answer was another shrug. “I may be the guy on the bottom of the organizational totem pole, but even I hear things,” Dorpff said.
“And is this part of the job, too?” Matt asked. “Consoling the upset teenagers?”
“It’s probably in the job description somewhere,” Dorpff said. “But even though I’m just starting out, I’m not stupid enough to think that you’ll forget Captain Winters.” He hesitated for a second. “I do want you to know that I’ll be there…if you need me.”
“In case I’ve scarred my poor psyche?” Matt said. “Hey, all I did was see a bunch of lab nerds running around in the captain’s garage.”
“So you actually got to see the workshop?” Dorpff said.
“From the garage door,” Matt said. “It looked clean.”
“Clean as a whistle, from what I heard.” The young agent frowned. “I always wondered, why would anyone consider a whistle particularly clean? It would be full of spit and germs—”
Matt didn’t let him change the subject. “Maybe Winters has the world’s most fanatical cleaning lady.”
“A suspicious mind would think in terms of an attempt to destroy evidence,” Dorpff replied. “Even so, those lab nerds found indications of Semtec, a fine, old-fashioned plastic explosive still used in some military munitions. And from the trace chemicals they put in the stuff — taggants, they’re called — it was linked to a batch of the stuff involved in one of the captain’s old cases.” Dorpff shrugged. “You hear about people taking their work home, but even so—”
“Very funny,” Matt said.
“Here’s something not so funny,” the young agent went on. “The same chemical tracers were found in the bomb that blew up Stefano Alcista.”
Matt stared as if Dorpff had just punched him in the gut.
“The captain said he hadn’t been in the workshop in months,” Matt said. “And knowing how busy the job keeps him, I have no problem believing that’s true. There’ve been times when kids have called this office late, or even on the weekend, and found him in—”
“But, oddly, he wasn’t in the office most of the afternoon before the Alcista bombing,” Dorpff interrupted almost gently. “He claimed he’d gotten a call to meet an informant who never showed. But there’s no record of such a call. Captain Winters left at two P.M. and didn’t get back until four forty-five. Less than an hour later Steve the Bull decides to go for a car ride, and…boom!”
“It’s not
Dorpff nodded. “And street informants have a pretty elastic sense of time — when they even bother to show. But there was no phone call on record here, either to the captain’s desk or to his foilpack.”
The agent looked at Matt for a long moment. “Do you know about the MOM theory of crime?”
“Um — what?” Matt said, expecting some bizarre psychological mumbo-jumbo about mother fixations. Frankly, he had a harder time imagining Winters with a mother than he did thinking of the captain as being married. The captain was so emotionally mature it was hard to think of him as a drooling toddler.
“It’s an old acronym for the main elements in investigating a crime,” Dorpff explained. “Motive, Opportunity, and Means. M-O-M. Put your feelings for Captain Winters aside for a moment and consider how the elements line up in this case.”
He ticked off one finger. “Motive — that’s pretty obvious. Alcista is believed to be behind the death of Captain Winters’s wife. And half the world has seen that news segment, showing the look on Winters’s face when he heard about Alcista getting out. I think we can take motive for granted.”
Matt gave a stiff-necked nod.
Dorpff held up a second finger. “Opportunity. Winters disappears from his office for several hours the day Alcista dies. The captain doesn’t have a satisfactory reason why he was missing. And the part of the story we
“I bet a lot of people were out of the office,” Matt said. “And the call could have come in on a line other than the direct one to Winters’s desk and been forwarded. That happens all the time. Are they checking on that?”
“Yes, but there’s no denying the captain had the opportunity to commit the crime. That’s where MOM comes in,” Dorpff pointed out. “We’re interested right now only in the people who have a motive for hurting Alcista.”
He hesitated, then put up a third finger. “Finally — means. Steve the Bull was nailed by a Semtec bomb. Traces of the same batch of Semtec turn up in Captain Winters’s home workshop.”
The young agent hesitated again. “I probably shouldn’t tell you this, but it will undoubtedly leak out soon enough. Internal Affairs ran a Net search of suspicious occurrences near the captain’s home. They found a police report in the next township. Somebody had complained about an explosion in a patch of woods two days before
