Conard County Revenge

by Rachel Lee

  “Cool,” Darcy answered, though was wasn’t sure she thought so. Then Alex. “You used to be FBI?”

  “Behavioral Science Unit.”

  Well, that could be useful, she decided. Her latte arrived in a tall foam cup and she wrapped her hands around it. Her fingers felt chilled and she hoped enough heat would escape to warm them.

  “And you?” Alex asked bluntly.

  “Ten years with ATF as an investigator. Right across the spectrum.”

  All right, then, with creds established among them they fell silent as their sandwiches were slammed in front of them. No one seemed surprised by the loud clatter.

  Darcy hadn’t expected to be working alone—that would have been ridiculous—but she wasn’t sure how Alex fitted in unless someone thought he could profile a perp. She knew better than that. The idea that anyone could pull a suspect out of their hats was for the movies. A so-called profiler could use evidence to piece together a behavioral picture of a perp, but there was no magic to it. Just skill and a lot of ugliness, from what she understood.

  She finished her first bite of sandwich and forgave Maude for all current and future rudeness. When their eating began to slow, she focused on Alex. “What brought you to be a shop teacher?”

  “I enjoy working with my hands.” He paused. “And frankly, I’d had enough of the underbelly of humanity. It’s peaceful here, and I enjoy my students. Creating something is a great source of healing.”

  His forthrightness surprised her. She sat looking at him—well, admiring his appearance if she was to be honest—but astonished by how much he had just revealed with a few brief words. So the BSU had left him emotionally scarred in some way. She understood the job could be really dreadful, but she hadn’t ever pondered how it might personally affect those who did it. No reason to. Her own job could get horrible enough at times.

  She looked from Alex to Wayne. “This bombing must be...shocking to the town.” And to them, though she didn’t say it.

  “It’s not something that happens here,” Wayne said. “Although most everything else has at one time or another. It’s not like evil never touches us. But this is a new one.”

  She looked down at her sandwich. “I hope it was an accident. But...”

  Wayne nodded. “I did some research on ANFO bombs. They don’t happen by accident. Usually.”

  “Not unless we’re talking about a fertilizer plant. So nobody uses anhydrous ammonia around here?”

  “Not that I know of,” Wayne replied. “Alex?”

  “Me neither. But I don’t need to tell you how hard it would be to know for sure. Once those tanks are delivered, all identifying information is removed so no one should know it’s there. Basic safety precaution. Heck, even when it gets to construction sites where it’s in heavy use, they take all identifiers off it. It should be recorded somewhere safe but...” He paused and shook his head, smiling faintly. “I’m preaching to the choir. I’m sure you know better than I do. You guys write a lot of the rules.”

  “Interstate Commerce does mostly. Hazardous cargo. But I read you.” Liquid anhydrous ammonia made it much easier to build a bomb, so its presence was concealed as much as possible. All labeling was reserved for when it was being transported. On farms all over this country, tanks full of it resided without even a single marking to identify it as hazardous. “Where would it be recorded if someone had it?” She knew what the answer should be, but she wanted to know the procedure here.

  “With the fire department,” Wayne answered promptly. “We’d be the first responders in case of a breach. I have my assistant looking back through logs for the last ten years. Lots of stuff comes into this county that we track in case, but so far no anhydrous ammonia.”

  Very professional, keeping the record of hazardous materials with the first responders. She felt a prickle of annoyance with herself that somewhere inside she must have expected something different. What did she anticipate? Moth-eaten records in some damp, moldy basement? “Well, the storage tanks can be distinctive,” she remarked. “They have to endure such high pressures, you can sometimes pick them out if you know what you’re looking for. But say this guy didn’t have access to the liquefied stuff.”

  Two men exchanged looks. “Then we’re in trouble,” Alex said. “Hundreds and hundreds of square miles out there where fertilizer could be stashed. But, Darcy, you know it’s close to impossible to use ammonium nitrate fertilizer for an explosive.”

  “Close to, but not impossible. Oklahoma City.”

  The words fell into a dead silence among them. After a few moments, Darcy spoke again. “Nothing’s impossible, gentlemen, when it comes to explosives. Some of it is just more difficult. Using bags of ammonium nitrate fertilizer has worked, as we all saw. As a result, these days we keep a record of large purchases, but you don’t need enough to blow up a big building to make a bomb. Or you can acquire smaller quantities over time that wouldn’t draw any attention.”

  * * *

  Alex watched Darcy eat with a healthy appetite. Clearly she wasn’t a rabbit-food-only woman. He liked that. Judging by her nice build, at least as much of it as he could see through her gray suit, she kept in great shape. So naturally, she had to eat decently.

  She was also pretty, but he wasn’t exactly prepared to notice that, not her bright green eyes or dark auburn hair caught in a businesslike knot on the back of her head. She was a Fed. He’d been a Fed. He wanted nothing to do with that world ever again.

  Although the bombing early Sunday morning at the school had kind of dragged him back in. He was sure the first suspects would be his students, especially given the location of the blast, but he was equally certain none of them would have put a bomb in the school. Some were adventurous enough to try it out in the barren areas around here, he supposed, but none of them were the kind of stupid that would put it in the school in an area that would draw attention their way.

  There was going to be some push and pull here, he thought, bending his gaze once again to his sandwich. Skills he had tried to bury were already springing to life. He wanted to protect the students in his shop classes. He wanted to get the real bomber. And he was quite sure he didn’t want to fight with this Darcy Eccles all the way.

  “The timing creates a problem,” he said a while later. “Two in the morning on a Sunday? Nobody in the building, not even a janitor? Property damage only? No point to it unless you hate band saws.”

  He was pleased to see a smile tug at the corner of Darcy’s mouth. Okay, then, she wasn’t that uptight.

  She answered, “It does seem like an extreme way to drop a class.”

  While he and Wayne both smiled, Alex felt his innards coiling. She could joke about it, but he was quite sure every single one of his students was going to be put on trial in this woman’s mind.

  Fairly, he acknowledged that was part of her job, to regard everyone who might be involved as a potential suspect. But he’d left that world behind and he had come to understand since the bombing just how protective he felt of his students. They were the bright and shiny future he’d once sought only to lose it in the bowels of criminal minds. Especially that last case. He closed his eyes momentarily and shoved the memories aside.

  Anyway, because of those students he had a bright and shiny present, and he wanted to keep it that way, mostly for them. The microscope of suspicion could cause a lot of damage, and by the nature of her job, Darcy brought suspicion. Much as he didn’t want to get involved with the work again, it appeared he would have to. Who else could ride herd on her? Or even guide her to a reasonable list of suspects? Therein lay a great deal of his training.

  It wasn’t as if he would start rustling up his training now that she arrived, though. Hell, no. He’d begun gathering evidence from the moment he learned what had happened. Some things never turned off.

  But that didn’t mean he wanted to dive in full strength.
r />   Wayne’s elbow brushed his. “About ready?”

  Alex looked down at his plate. Two mouthfuls remaining. “When are we meeting Charity?”

  “Twenty minutes.”

  “Then give me a minute to finish. I can’t bear to waste any of this sandwich.”

  Wayne laughed. “Have at it.” Across the table, Darcy had stopped eating. Slightly more than half her sandwich was gone. “Need a container?”

  “Please.”

  Wayne waved and moments later Maude stomped over with a foam container. “More coffee?” she asked as she put the container down on the table.

  “The latte was great,” Darcy said pleasantly. “I’ll be back for another later.”

  Alex took the last bite of sandwich because it was a great way to stifle his grin as Darcy watched Maude stomp away without the merest acknowledgment of the compliment. Darcy shook her head a little and put her sandwich in the container. “My truck’s just outside the sheriff’s office. I can follow you.”

  “It’s not that far,” Alex said. “Down the street out there toward the north of town. No turns. You can’t miss it.”

  She nodded and rose, lifting her box. “I’ll meet you at the school then.”

  Alex watched her walk over to the register and pay for her lunch. Per diem, he thought. She’d come with cash to cover her expenses, maybe a credit card for the motel, and she wouldn’t allow anyone to pick up her tab. He was familiar with the protocol.

  Wayne stood a moment later. “You coming?”

  “Of course.” His gaze followed Darcy through the door.

  Wayne laughed, drawing his attention. “Watch it, man. I was a fool to fall for Charity when I thought she’d be leaving in a week or two. But I was lucky.”

  Alex gave him a crooked grin. “I’m that obvious?”

  “I’d be looking, too, if I weren’t happily married. She’s a stunner, all right.”

  “As long as she doesn’t catch me drooling, we’ll be fine.”

  Wayne laughed again as they went over to the register. “I thought you were done with the Feebs.”

  “I sure thought so.”

  “Funny how circumstances can change things.”

  Chapter 2

  As promised, Darcy had no difficulty finding the high school. It kind of hit her in the face at the north end of the street. It also looked sadly deserted except for some people working inside a police-taped area toward the rear corner, under a large canopy. Yellow evidence markers covered the ground, looking like a field of out-of-control dandelions.

  She sat studying the destruction from the parking lot, taking it in, estimating the explosive force involved. Pure guesswork at this point, but the damage to that corner of the school was extensive. A fertilizer bomb. She’d encountered them before during her years with ATF, but quite a few of them had been duds. Seriously, it wasn’t easy. Timothy McVeigh had had a lot of time to experiment beforehand. Yeah, he’d thrown the final bomb together at the last minute in the back of a rental truck, but he’d had plenty of experience and experimentation to back up that effort. Plus, a great detonation system.

  Detonators weren’t exactly easy to come by, either. They had to be signed for. Permits were required. Plenty of people had legitimate reasons to get them, but they left a paper trail. Possible, of course, to make a detonator if you knew what you were doing. She was looking forward to finding out if they’d recovered any remains of the ignition device. Given the hour of the night when the bomb had exploded, a timer had to be involved. A timer or a cell phone. Curiosity began whetting her appetite for this job.

  Athletic fields spread out from the school building, large and spacious because this county had the room. Some trees lined the north and west ends of the fields, most likely as a windbreak. In the winter it was probably very stark, but now, in the late spring, it was simply relaxing and beautiful.

  Until she trained her gaze again on the scarred building. Annoyed as she had been to be pulled off the other case, that was forgotten as she looked at the new challenge. Build a case. Find a perp. Ascertain every part of the bomb that had been used here and try to trace it to someone. Excitement began to rise in her. A whole new case, entirely her own, unless she needed to send for assistance. A lot of trust from her superiors. For the first time it struck her that she’d had a kind of promotion by being sent out here to do the job herself. She’d never headed up a task force, but she was doing that now, even without the accompanying manpower here.

  Resources would be at her disposal back at the field office. Other agents would be assisting her. A new level of responsibility. She was determined not to fail.

  Both Wayne and Alex had parked nearby, and she realized they were waiting for her to exit her vehicle. Time to start earning her spurs.

  She climbed out, carrying her notebook computer and a legal pad on which to scrawl notes to herself. The computer would make taking photos easy, but she’d never mastered the art of holding the tablet in one hand and typing with the other. A few key identifiers, yes, but actual notes? She preferred to write them on paper and organize them later on the tablet.

  She also retrieved some evidence bags and some rubber gloves, stuffing her pockets with them. Best to be prepared, although right now it appeared that the local authorities had matters well in hand.

  She switched the computer on as she approached the two men, and was glad to see she was getting a wireless signal. She’d discovered quite a few dead zones on her way to Conard City. Apparently that wasn’t a problem in town.

  Summoning a smile, she reached the two men.

  “That’s my wife, Charity,” Wayne said, pointing.

  Darcy picked out a blonde woman who was probably stunning when she wasn’t wearing suspendered fireman’s pants and boots and heavy gloves. Good clothing choice for the job. Darcy’s fresh-from-the-office outfit was going to hinder her until she could change. At least she’d worn sensible black flats.

  Charity waved at them and strode toward them. “Hi,” she said, accepting a quick kiss from Wayne. “You must be Darcy Eccles.” She waved her glove, stained with soot. “I’ll shake your hand later.”

  Darcy liked her immediately. “That can wait. How’s your investigation going?”

  “Like most investigations. The cause is obvious. Finding all the pieces is a bit more difficult. We did find some slivers of PVC pipe, but at this point we can’t be sure it didn’t come from the building and not the bomb. As you can see, it was a decent blast, but not huge.”

  “Any sign of the ignition source?”

  Charity shook her head. “Agent, I’m going to let you go through all the pieces. I’ve never dealt with a bomb and I couldn’t recognize a lot of items that might be significant. We’re mapping our finds on a grid, taking photos, bagging stuff we don’t want to leave out in the elements. Mainly, we’re trying not to disturb anything. Is that good?”

  Darcy was surprised that she was being asked, then wondered why. Bombs were her area of expertise, not the arson investigator’s.

  “That’s great. I’m going to need someplace where I can lay things out and look at them. And if you don’t mind, I’d like to take a few pictures right now if I won’t get in your way.”

  Charity lifted the yellow tape. “Have at it. I’ve been waiting impatiently to turn this over to you. I wouldn’t have touched anything at all except the wind moves things and covers them with dust and dirt, and what if it rained?”

  Darcy smiled at her. “It sounds like you’ve done an excellent job of protecting the evidence.”

  “I hope,” said Charity. “Anything you need from me, let me know.”

  As Darcy approached the blast area, she saw that the damaged side of the building gaped open like a devouring mouth. “Any chance we can get tarps over the side of the building? After I have a chance to get up top and make sure they wouldn’t conceal a
nything. But not tacked to the side of the building until we’ve examined it.”

  Charity turned toward the two men. “Think so?”

  “I’m sure,” said Alex. “We have a storage room at the school still full of roofing tarps from a tornado that went through a few years ago.”

  “FEMA roofs,” Darcy said.

  Alex laughed. “I’ve heard them called that.”

  “Thanks for the tarps,” Darcy said. “We need to make sure any evidence inside is protected as well as you’ve done outside.”

  Standing near the edge of what appeared to be the blast circle, Darcy took in the damage to the cinder block wall, and the spread of debris, many of the larger pieces lying on the ground still, but carefully tucked into clear evidence bags for protection.

  “I’m glad you didn’t start gathering it up yet,” she said to Charity. “I’ll get a very clear picture this way. I’m going to walk around the perimeter and take some photos.”

  Charity nodded. “Do what you need to. Jeff and Randy and I will get back to scouring the area. We started at one edge and have been working our way slowly and carefully across so as to disturb as little as possible.”

  Darcy nodded, both impressed and pleased. Of course, as an investigator, Charity had plenty of knowledge of how to protect evidence.

  She started walking around the edge of the yellow tape, aware that Alex stayed nearby, but not concerned about it. With every step she took, she studied the ground in case something had blown farther out than the gridded area that the fire people had laid out. While they appeared to have properly designated the blast area, she’d long ago learned that some things flew a much greater distance than you’d expect. Some things that might appear innocuous when removed from all the surrounding evidence. Like a shiny building nail she’d found forty feet from the blast radius two cases ago.

  She stopped and took another photo toward the center of the blast. “Do you suppose,” she asked Alex absently, “we could organize a search of the area farther out?”

  “I would think so. I could probably get a bunch of my students...”