Page 46 of South of Nowhere (Colter Shaw #5)

46.

The truth is a thing of percentages too.

Because truth’s building blocks—facts—don’t always stand up the way we’d like.

People grew sick from wind and vapor and spirits—a one hundred percent fact—until germs were spotted by a rudimentary microscope.

A human being couldn’t fly. Fact. Until two brothers demonstrated otherwise on a beach in North Carolina.

Then there are the more subtle underpinnings of the truth.

What would the shattered metal and glass and plastic—and human tissue and bone and blood—in a copper mine workshop say about what happened there?

Would what Colter Shaw was about to find support an answer that rated a truth factor of one hundred percent?

Or zero?

Or somewhere in between? (It took a while to link those crawly little microscopic things to the flu.)

The rain had largely stopped but the surface of the highway to the Redding mine was still slick and when Shaw arrived he skidded long, stopping just shy of the gate. The sandbag barrier was down here, allowing the ambulance and two official cars—Debi Starr’s and TC McGuire’s—inside.

Shaw took in the grim mine—made grimmer yet by the awareness of what had just happened in the workshop shed not fifty feet away, the door blown out and burn marks in a corona around the frame.

Shaw walked to two people who were having a conversation near the entrance: Debi Starr and the man Shaw had met earlier, the operations manager, Hugh Davies, looking pale and distraught and actually wringing his hands.

Without a greeting, he turned to Shaw with hollow eyes tinted with red skin from crying. “I saw it.” He whispered, “I’ll see it forever. He…I mean you can’t even say ‘he’ or ‘him’ anymore. It’s a thing. That’s what the explosion did.”

Starr was holding a notebook and she’d already gotten some information, he could see. She was saying to the man in a kind, motherly voice, “There are some people you can talk to. They’re like counselors. Trauma. They can help. They really can.” She wrote some names and numbers—from memory, Shaw noted—and tore off the slip and handed it to him. He stared at this too.

Shaw supposed that being the town traffic detail, she had had occasion to see tragedy on the highways and would want to set up a fatality’s family with those who could help during those impossibly difficult times. For his own business he’d done the same on rare occasions. Teddy and Velma Bruin maintained a list of such professionals.

Two more vehicles arrived.

Tolifson and Dorion. The mayor walked up to the three of them, while Dorion made a call, possibly to Ed Gutiérrez who was out of surgery. The slug, which Debi Starr had dug out of the earth on the hill near town where he’d been hit, was a hunting rifle caliber, a big one, .308.

Shaw looked around for Bear, notably sniper nests where the man might be sighting on them.

No sign.

McGuire was searching the grounds for him, Shaw knew, but had reported that he’d found no evidence of his presence.

Starr said to Shaw and the mayor, “I asked Mr. Davies about that employee, the man with the beard, the stocky one, and he’s not familiar with anyone of that description.”

Her eyes told him that she believed he was telling the truth.

So maybe Bear wasn’t on their payroll after all.

Which didn’t mean Redding hadn’t hired him on the sly.

Tolifson said, “When Ms. Shaw asked about explosives earlier, to blow part of the spillway, Redding said they didn’t have any.”

Davies responded, “That’s right. We use an outside service. Demo work is specialized.”

Starr asked, “They never leave explosives here, Mr. Redding told us.”

“Nowhere to keep ’em safe. But I’ll call the service and double-check.” Davies took his phone and with shaking hands made the call. He left a message and stood with slumped shoulders as he cradled the silent mobile.

Shaw noted Tolifson was once again fiddling with his pistol.

That was enough.

He gestured for the man to step aside with him. The mayor frowned but did so.

Shaw lowered his voice, so as not to embarrass him in front of anyone. “You’ve got to understand that that weapon of yours has a five-pound pull. It’s not as light as some, but it’s low enough. A twitch can fire it. There’s a rule: Never touch your weapon until you need to draw, and never draw until you see a threat.”

Shaw didn’t know how this schoolmarm stuff would be received.

Gratefully, as it turned out. “That’s helpful. Appreciate it. You’re right. I’m new to this game, but I’m a fast learner. And I’m soaking up stuff right and left.” In an odd move, he shook Shaw’s hand enthusiastically and returned to the others.

Davies explained that Redding had been in the building by himself, working on one of his inventions. The man frowned. “It used a blank rifle shell to send sound waves into the ground. For identifying ore. You think that could have anything to do with what happened?”

Shaw said, “No, that’s C-four in there, not smokeless powder.” The scent was unmistakable.

He couldn’t help but notice the names of the mines once again.

Hades, Inferno and Hell…

Davies got a call and had a conversation. He disconnected. It had been from the demo company. He said, “They use only gel here—not plastic. And they didn’t leave any here anyway. But for what it’s worth, the guy I talked to said that there was a notice on the Interstate Dangerous Substances Network that four kilos of C-four were stolen from a land-mine manufacturer outside of Seattle. Three days ago. They have no idea who and the police don’t have any leads. Sounds unrelated.”

Never assume there’s no connection when confronted by seemingly unrelated events or individuals.

Ashton Shaw got a lot of mileage out of that one.

Tolifson said, “Maybe we should follow up on it.”

Starr held up her phone. “Already sent an NCIC request.” She then pointed to the front of the workshop. “Look.”

A series of footprints. Somebody had either walked from the door to the fence and back, or the other way around. He and Starr walked closer and studied them, as she taped the trail off with a yellow ribbon.

“No way to tell the sole mark,” she said. “But big enough to be Bear’s.”

“There.” Shaw was pointing up. “Security camera. It might’ve caught him.”

Davies was hesitating. In an unsteady voice he said, “The disk is in the workshop. A separate hard drive plugged into the desktop. To the left as you walk in. The videos are stored for forty-eight hours. Then they’re overwritten.”

Shaw said, “I’ll get it when I search the room.”

Tolifson was looking away. Then he said, “I appreciate this, Mr. Shaw, but I’m thinking. You wonder if maybe the bomber left another IED in there? You know, to stop investigators?”

“I give it fifteen percent.”

“How do you figure that low?”

“It’s just logical. Assuming it was murder, which I think it’s safe to do now, then it wasn’t a timed device. The killer couldn’t know exactly when Redding would be inside. The trigger was rigged to something that Redding touched, stepped on or sat down in.”

“Okay, but how are you going to avoid setting another one off?”

“There’s an easy rule for that.”

“What?”

“Be careful what you touch, step on or sit down in.”