Shock Wave Read Online Free PDF

one, and it was used, but, it’s a sailboat.”
    “You look into it?”
    “Not the Tortola part. But I was chatting with a guy over at Eddie’s Marine, and he said the former owner wanted fourteen grand for the boat. It’s called a Flying Scot, it’s two years old, and I’m told it’s got a high-end racing rig. I had one of my deputies, who can keep his mouth shut, talk to the former owner, and he said Arnold financed it through the Wells Fargo. I got a friend there , and I found out Arnold did finance half of it, over three years, and he’s been making regular cash payments on the deal.”
    “So what does that make you think?” Virgil asked.
    “What it made me think was, Arnold got some money from somewhere, but wasn’t dumb enough to just go plop it down on a boat,” Ahlquist said. “He financed the boat, and is making payments out of the stash.”
    “That’s not very charitable of you,” Virgil said. “Maybe he saved the money.”
    “And maybe the mold on my basement door will turn out to be a miracle image of Jesus Christ, but I doubt it,” Ahlquist said.
    A waitress dropped a basket of bread on the table, took their orders, and Ahlquist got another bourbon.
    Virgil said, “So there might be a little informal economic assistance going on . . . but the bombs wouldn’t be coming from those guys. The bombs would be coming from somebody who doesn’t like those guys. So who would that be?”
    “If I knew, I’d be on them like lips on a chicken—but I don’t know,” Ahlquist said. “There’s always been rumors that this-or-that councilman or county commissioner took a little money under the table, for doing this-or-that. Who knows if it’s true? Impossible to prove.”
    “But this is different.”
    Ahlquist nodded. “It is. See, Virgil, you know about these big-box stores all over the place. You get a bunch of them in a small town, and it can wreck the place. Drive out half the merchants, and their families, who always made decent livings, and the downtown dies. In exchange you get a bunch of minimum-wage jobs. You hollow out the town. Well, we’re big enough that we could take a Walmart and a Home Depot. It hurt, but we took it. People adjusted. You throw in a PyeMart, which is a little more upscale, and it doesn’t leave people with anywhere to adjust.”
    He shook his head. “A lot of these folks are going to lose their businesses. Going to lose their livelihoods. Some of them have been here a hundred years, their grandfathers and great-grandfathers started their companies. They’re bitter, they’re angry, they’ve said some crazy things.”
    “Crazy enough that there might be a bomber amongst them?”
    “Yeah, that’s one place he could be coming from,” Ahlquist said. “Then, there’s the trout-fishing cranks.”
    “Careful,” Virgil said.
    Ahlquist grinned at him. “I know. I see you’re dragging your boat. Anyway, the Butternut runs a half mile or so behind the PyeMart site, and then makes a big loop down to the south, and then comes back north and runs into town. Some people think that the runoff from the PyeMart parking lot is going to pollute their precious crick. If it does, it’d be the whole bottom two miles, before it runs into the lake. That’s the best part, I’m told. Some of the trout guys, they were screaming at the council meetings. They were completely out of control.”
    “Could I get some names?” Virgil asked.
    “Sure. I can get you a list. People you can go around and talk to.”
    “If I’m gonna handle this fast enough to get my ass kissed, I’ll need the list pretty quick.”
    Ahlquist nodded, fished in his oversized uniform shirt pocket, and pulled out a black Moleskine reporter’s notebook. “I can give you a good part of it right now. I’ll think about it overnight, and give you the rest tomorrow.”
    “Works for me,” Virgil said. He slid down in the booth a bit, yawned, and asked, “So how’s your old lady?”
    “Pretty damn