by Greg Sisk
“Maybe,” acknowledged Burton. “Maybe. But we need a lot more than this to lock down a case against him. It’s a pretty big step from theft to murder.”
Garth called police dispatch to arrange for another officer to bring a couple of Insignia Construction employees to the Burnsville storage site and do a thorough inventory of the construction supplies found in Pirkle’s storage. There was a chance they’d find something linking Pirkle to explosives or the bombing. Somehow Burton doubted it. At least they had solved one crime.
Garth called Burton back to the car. “Just heard from dispatch. The ticket seller at the bus terminal in Denver’s pretty sure he sold a ticket to Pirkle. Denver police think he’s a credible witness and the lead’s solid.”
“Does he happen to remember what bus Pirkle bought a ticket for?”
“Not for certain, but he thinks he remembers it was for a bus going to the upper Midwest, like Des Moines or Chicago or maybe even Minneapolis.”
“So,” pondered Burton, “maybe Pirkle’s coming home. Maybe we’ll get lucky.”
• • •
Candace Klein looked again at the large image of Olin Pirkle on the front page of the Minneapolis Star Tribune. The paper was lying in front of Bill on the table in the breakfast nook of their house. Bill seemed always to be right there in the kitchen whenever she had looked for him in the two days since their return to the house.
Bill’s eyes were red and puffy. Well, she probably looked about the same, worried Candace. Neither of them had gotten much sleep over the past few nights.
They had talked a little—more than a little—in the days since the funeral. They didn’t converse for hours. And the words didn’t flow easily. Their tentative interchanges these days were nothing like their animated convocations during those long-past days in Chicago when they had enthusiastically joined with renewed purpose in planning for the family transition to the Twin Cities. Nonetheless, Candace discovered that even the limited and episodic communication she had restored with Bill was more comforting than she would have expected.
The ice had been broken when Bill finally spoke to her during the gathering at their house after the funeral and burial. Their exchanges remained brief, but were becoming regular. And they were slowly becoming less awkward. Most importantly, they were talking again. They were in it together again. She could feel it.
In these early attempts to re-connect as husband and wife after the tragedy, they mostly shared memories about J.D. Yesterday evening, they had recalled the family vacation to Key West in Florida just last year. J.D. had never been to the ocean. And once he saw the expanses of water and felt the surprisingly warm waves, he resisted any attempts to get him to come out. In the words of the cliché, J.D. took to water like a fish. The little boy was overjoyed to be swimming in the ocean along the sandy Florida beach. Candace and Bill hardly had the heart to drag him out, if only for a moment so as to be slathered in another layer of sun-tan lotion.
Each recollection of J.D., so vibrant in his young life, made Candace’s heart ache. But she knew it was an ache she needed to feel, that she wanted to feel. She couldn’t move on before she had moved through it.
Turning from the front page photo of Olin Pirkle and the accompanying story, Candace said to Bill, “The reporters are hinting the dynamite might have come from my father’s company. And that you’re the one who was in charge of all the dynamite for construction demolition.”
“If the news reports are right, ATF apparently found that the explosives used in the . . .” Bill was unable to continue for a moment. “That the explosive materials were consistent with TNT manufactured by one of the companies that supplies Insignia. But lots of other companies receive TNT from that manufacturer as well. The ATF can’t say for sure where it actually came from.”
“It sounds like the police think it might have come from Insignia,” persisted Candace. “And they say you were the one with the code to the lock on the explosives.”
For the first time in several days, an edge crept back into Bill’s voice when he replied, “I think you knew I supervised construction work. That required getting down and dirty, including using explosives. It’s not like your dad has me designing buildings or using my construction engineering degree.”
At first Candace was put off by his tone and considered stepping away. But then, she thought, at least he’s starting to talk about what’s been bothering him for the last three years. To think it took something like this for a husband to tell his wife how he really feels.
“In any event,” continued Bill, “it almost certainly wasn’t our TNT. And I certainly had nothing to do with, with . . . this.”
“I know, I know. Please, please know I never—never—have thought even for a second that you had anything to do with this. Bill, I love you. I know you. You would never try to hurt me, to hurt . . . J.D.”
Bill’s face softened. He smiled sadly at her. He reached over and took her hand.
Candace then asked, “Is there any possibility that someone else got some of your dynamite?”
Bill switched to technical terminology, which Candace saw as an encouraging return to some semblance of normalcy for her husband. At the same time, she was a little resentful for being patronized. Her father had raised her alone, while building his construction business, after Candace’s mother had died of cancer when she was in elementary school. As a necessary consequence, Candace had spent many an afternoon (and even some evenings) with her father around construction sites when she was a child and then a teenager. As Bill well knew, Candace had at least passing fluency in construction geekspeak.
“First of all, to be technical,” lectured Bill, “we use TNT or Trinitrotoluene, not dynamite. TNT’s more stable and thus more effective for construction purposes.
“As for whether someone could have taken some of our TNT, I just don’t see how it could have happened. We store it in regulation magazines—that’s like a big storage cabinet or locker—and we limit who has access to it. We keep careful track of it, even when on a construction site. Still, I suppose anything is possible . . . .”
“Has any dynamite . . . I mean, TNT ever gone missing?”
“Well.” Bill looked disconcerted. “I don’t think so.”
“That isn’t exactly a definite and confident no,” interceded Candace. “You don’t sound sure about it.”
“I pretty much am.”
“That’s not quite the same as saying that you’re absolutely sure that none of the company’s TNT might have been taken.”
“All right,” said Bill after hesitating and looking even more abashed. “I’m going to tell you something, but you’ve got to promise you’ll keep it between us. With the ATF involved in this case, they’d jump all over this. I’d get in trouble. The company would be in trouble. And I’m sure that it doesn’t mean anything.”
“You know I’m on your side, Bill. However hard it has been, however hard it will be, I made a commitment to you for life. We still can get through this together. You have to trust me. It’s when you start leaving me out and keeping secrets . . . that’s when keeping faith becomes difficult.”
“Well, about two weeks ago, when I was last out at the Boulderville strip mall construction site, I did think for a moment that I had misplaced a couple of sticks of TNT. Things were kind of hectic, and there were problems at the site. I got distracted. I’m sure those two sticks were set off, and I’d just forgotten to keep the checklist straight.”
“What do you mean?”
“Well, whenever I take TNT out of the locked cabinet in the van in which we transport it to a construction site, I log off the manufacturer’s markings and shift code against a checklist. That checklist identifies by shift code every stick of TNT taken out of the locked magazine at our main warehouse. Well, at one point during the day, I couldn’t quite make those numbers line up.
”
“What happened?”
“Well, when I took another couple of sticks out of the van and started to check off the shift codes from the list, the next two numbers on the checklist didn’t line up with the sticks I had taken out of the cabinet.”
“You mean you were missing two sticks of TNT?”
“No, no. Probably not. Almost certainly not. And that’s why you’ve got to keep this quiet. Someone else might see it that way. Like I said, I was distracted. I’d obviously forgotten to log two already detonated sticks. It was just a mistake in checking things off. It doesn’t mean those two sticks were really missing.”
“What did you do about it?”
“Nothing right then, other than admittedly uttering a few foul words to the air—no one else was around at the moment. Later on, during the ride back to the office, I just went ahead and checked off those two sticks as well, so that the paperwork would come out right.”
“Is that proper?”
“It’s a gray area. It’s the daily inventory that really matters, which is the inventory at the central magazine back at the warehouse. Since I was pretty sure that we had detonated those two sticks, I’d just record that in the daily inventory. I suppose one could argue that, since I couldn’t line up the shift codes perfectly, we should have reported two sticks of TNT missing to the ATF. But that’s just bureaucratic stuff.
“Writing up a report form and getting the company listed with the ATF as having lost some TNT would have been overkill for what was a perfectly innocent mistake.”
“How could you not know whether you had lost two sticks of explosives?”
“You have to understand just how solid the granite composition is at this construction site. On that day alone, we probably detonated thirty sticks of TNT. Forgetting to log a couple of sticks isn’t all that surprising.”
“Have you ever lost explosives before?”
“I told you,” Bill’s voice became sharper, “I didn’t lose it. I just forgot to check it off, is all.”
“Has that ever happened before?”
“I’m very meticulous, Candy. I do my job well.”
“That’s not an answer.”
“Yes, it’s happened another time or two,” Bill admitted reluctantly. “I remember all too well the first time I made that kind of mistake. It was during my first months on the job for your dad. I checked TNT out of the office locker, went out to the site, used some of it, then brought the rest back. The checklist showed one stick missing. Your dad insisted we file a report with ATF for that one stick. And he was really steamed.
“Within a few days, we found the missing stick, which was still in the warehouse locker and had fallen behind another stack. But the ATF won’t remove the lost or missing report when you find the explosive. They just add a subsequent notation that the TNT was found. The company is still listed as having filed a report of missing explosives.
“So, yes, on one or two other occasions, like that time a couple weeks ago at the Boulderville site, I lost track for a moment. It isn’t exactly scintillating work supervising guys breaking up rock. I’m sure I just wasn’t paying attention and thus missed checking sticks off when we used them. I didn’t see the point of going through all that again when I know it almost certainly is only a paperwork mistake.
“And it isn’t as bad as it sounds. Based on what I hear from folks at other construction companies, I’m hardly alone in reconstructing the records from time to time, rather than making something out of nothing and ending up for no good reason on the ATF missing explosives list.”
“Could Pirkle be responsible for the missing two sticks of TNT?”
Bill paused, creased his forehead, and looked thoughtful. “Yeah, I guess that could account for it. And it’s certainly starting to look like he had something to do with this. I was pretty sure the two sticks had been used but not logged. And maybe I’m still having a hard time getting my head around the idea Pirkle could have stolen TNT, then tried to kill me. You know, now that I think about it, maybe that’s what happened.”
“Does anyone else know you just checked off the TNT sticks later?”
“Well, I suppose if Pirkle stole the TNT, he obviously would know I’d failed to make a report of missing TNT. Even if he didn’t take any TNT, Pirkle might know I filled in the records afterward . . . if someone reminded him. I’m sure he saw the checklist at some point that afternoon, and if he had looked closely, he would’ve seen a couple of numbers hadn’t been checked off in order. Pirkle was driving the truck and sitting right next to me on the ride back to the office when I pulled out the checklist and marked off those two sticks. I don’t know if he was really clued in to what I was doing, and I certainly wasn’t highlighting it for him. But if someone prodded his memory, that is, asked him the right questions, he might put two-and-two together and realize he’d seen something not quite right on the checklist and then had seen me marking things off after we’d left the site.”
“Pirkle isn’t exactly a friend of yours now, even if he didn’t steal the TNT.”
“No,” Bill emphasized. “Which is another reason we need to keep this quiet. Either Pirkle’s the one responsible for taking the TNT, or he might be prompted to remember that I ‘corrected’ the TNT use records.”
“Either way,” sighed Candace, “there’s no love lost between the two of you.”
“So let’s let sleeping dogs lie,” agreed Bill. “If Pirkle’s guilty of stealing the TNT and of the . . . bombing . . . then questions may eventually be asked about the errors in the records. There could be some regulatory problems later, but my guess is it’ll slide by in the aftermath of ATF’s celebration that they solved a big crime. But if we let the cops know about what I did with the records now, they may start to look in the wrong direction. An innocent mistake could start to look like something nefarious.”
• • •
Ed Burton was feeling restless. He was not about to spend the rest of the afternoon and evening waiting around on the hope that Olin Pirkle would be so nice and cooperative as to come home to Minnesota on the bus.
Around 4:00 p.m., Burton told Garth he was going to take a drive up to that construction site near St. Cloud where Pirkle and Bill Klein had been using explosives to prepare the ground for the strip mall foundation.
If he left right now, he might get ahead of most of the rush hour traffic from Minneapolis to the northwest suburbs and beyond. And even if the drive took a couple of hours, he’d have a chance to sit alone, quietly behind the wheel . . . and think.
When Burton reached the “Boulderville” construction site, after about an hour and a half on the road, he hadn’t come up with any new ideas. Maybe solitary contemplation is overrated, he thought. Still, the time on the highway had settled him down. He felt more rested, more alert, even though he had been driving in heavy traffic some of the way northwest from the Twin Cities.
He got out of his car and looked around the construction site. It looked unremarkable to him, although he knew he was no expert in construction and hadn’t spent much time on construction sites. Even standing outside the chain-link fence surrounding the site for the strip mall, he could see the blasted holes in the granite and broken rock, undoubtedly resulting from the use of the explosives. It all looked just as Bill Klein and George Peterson had explained.
Spending a few more minutes gazing at the site—at least the portions he could see from outside the fence—produced nothing pertinent to his investigation. Nothing provoked a new line of thought. Nothing moved things forward.
Disappointed, he turned and looked in the opposite direction, away from the construction site. A clump of bushes and trees somehow had found root in the stony ground about fifty feet away to the southwest. The paved road on which Burton had driven ran past the construction site in a southeast to northwest direction.
To the southeast, alongside the road, the vista was barren grasslands, without any trees, bushes, or buildings. His view was unimpeded, all the way to a fast-food restaurant about half a mile away. Even as Burton watched, a pickup truck rolled up to the drive-through window of the burger place.
The burger joint and what looked to be a low-rise office park neighboring it were the first encroachments of civilization into this desolate stretch of land. The Insignia Construction site marked the next human incursion into this previously undisturbed quarter. Eventually this entire area would be developed, with a housing subdivision planned nearby. In a decade or two, as newly-planted trees reached upward, sod lawns were laid down on the fallow ground, and sprinkler systems were installed to water the previously arid fields, this landscape would be transformed.
Burton’s ruminations then jumped back a step. Hey, wait a minute, he thought. If there’s a drive-through window at the restaurant, there might also be a security camera. Nah, he corrected himself, that’s probably a dead-end. Even if they did have a camera, the footage from a couple of weeks ago surely had been erased. And the burger place was half a mile away. Any security camera probably didn’t even cover this area. Still, he supposed, it was worth checking out since he was already out there.
• • •
George Peterson was ushered by Ed Burton into a slightly darkened room inside the ATF division headquarters in St. Paul. As he came into the room, Peterson’s man-in-charge composure had slipped a little. Peterson was accustomed to summoning others to his office, not being summoned himself. And no one had told him why he was being asked to come to a federal law enforcement office.
“Mr. Peterson,” said Burton, “this is Alex Kramer of the ATF.” Peterson and Kramer shook hands. “We need your help. We’ve got something we want to show you.”
Another man in the room was attaching a projector to a computer. Then a grainy video was projected on to a large screen in the room.
