The kind of violence ATF deals with. Guns. Bombs. I don’t know whether it’s just a growing population or a genuine change going on.”
“Change,” he said succinctly. “People are getting bolder about expressing themselves in deadly ways. Just as hate crimes are on the rise. I’d like to be able to point to one thing as the causative agent, but I think it’s a whole bunch of things, so I’m not going to trot out the list. It is what it is, and it’s getting worse. That’s all we need to know right now.”
“Bad enough that’s it’s happening,” she agreed. “There are probably a whole lot of different motives anyway. Not one size fits all.”
“No.” He turned and pulled out two mugs from a cupboard. “Black, milk, sugar?”
“Black’s fine, thanks.”
He put the mugs on the table and joined her. Facing each other once again as they had at the diner. “So the excess gasoline is bothering you?”
“Yes, it is,” she acknowledged. “Of course, the spill could have been a deliberate attempt to spread any fire in the hopes that evidence would be destroyed.”
“Maybe.” He frowned, leaning back and cradling his mug in both hands.
“The thing is, the concussive force of a bomb often snuffs any fire in its immediate vicinity, like blowing out a candle. You need debris that’s hot enough to start a fire when the concussion passes or it lands somewhere. Now it happens all the time, but not every time, that we get extensive fire away from the blast. Anyway, the smell of that gasoline was obviously too close. It didn’t burn.”
“Or too far away, which doesn’t seem likely given the hole in the side of the building. So you’re thinking this was a mistake of some kind?”
“Possibly.” She sipped coffee, running bits and pieces through her mind, trying to fit them together. She’d know more tomorrow or the next day as she examined the debris and received evaluations from the field office. “Our bomber could always stop with this one. Maybe it said all he wanted to say. On the other hand, what if this was a trial run? He’d be learning nearly as much as I am.”
Then she leaned forward, her full attention on him. “Ponder something for me, Alex. What would make that corner of the school a better target than any other? Assuming it wasn’t just someone with a—what did you call it?—a hatred of band saws.”
He set his mug on the table and his gaze grew distant as he thought. She let him be. He was coming at this from a totally different perspective than she could: the psychology.
“Not easy to see back there at night from the street. Pretty secluded, actually.”
“No security lights?”
“We’ve never needed them. Some in the front of the school near the entrance, but back there it’s not a good place to break in regardless.”
“No garage doors?”
“You saw the only two. They’re on the shop wing, facing the street. The auto shop is up there on that end of the building. The back...that’s all wood and metalworking. If we need to bring in something large, it’s delivered out front to the garage doors. Access between the work areas is good, but...” He shook his head. “If I wanted to break in to steal something, that would be the place, except that the risk of being spied by a patrol is high. But bombing? The back, definitely.”
She nodded. She’d already seen what he meant. It was a wonder the damage hadn’t spread farther. “Okay. Why not someplace else?”
“Almost anyplace else would get you a classroom. The interior doors are all fire doors and locked. So if you want to get into the building, a classroom wouldn’t be the best route. If all you want to do is destroy something, you’d get thirty desks and a whiteboard.” He paused.
“The administrative offices are in the center. Hard to get to except from inside. The gym...well, you saw for yourself. It would have made a good target on the back side, but there are fire doors back there. I don’t know if they’d cause a problem. Reasons this guy would pick my corner? No really good ones other than what I’ve said.”
Now he rubbed his chin. “There had to be a reason other than not being spotted if all you want to do is bomb something. Why not blow out a classroom? Or try the gym...” He paused. “Unless my corner of the school resembled another target...”
Their eyes locked. Darcy’s heart began to race like a horse in a steeplechase. “I was afraid that you might say something like that,” she murmured.
“Yeah,” he said after a moment. “I was trying to avoid that idea.”
For a long time, neither of them said a word, lost in their own lines of thought. Alex rose once to freshen their coffee, and part of Darcy’s mind once again noted how much he looked like a Viking, except that he wasn’t shaggy at all. He ought to grow his hair out.
Her mind snapped back. She had to cut this out. Mooning over the shop teacher was well outside the parameters of anything she was here to do.
She was looking at what might be the first act of a serial bomber. No rhyme or reason, evidently, but a person who’d successfully created an ANFO bomb could not be ignored, even if he’d messed up and spilled fuel oil at the site.
“You need a break,” he said, surprising her. “I learned the hard way that thinking about something else for a while not only refreshed me, but allowed my subconscious to churn things. Have you thought about anything but this bomb since you got here?”
You. But she wasn’t going to admit that. “Yeah, a bit. I pay attention to other things but it keeps pulling me back. Your young friend Jack has been hanging around, too.”
His face darkened. “Darcy...”
“You know the profile, Alex. Do you really need me to remind you? Excessive interest in the scene along with a desire to join the bureau. Those two things together... Well, you tell me how else Jackson Castor could get to watch ATF in action. He also said he didn’t think he’d get to college, so any federal agency is going to remain a pipe dream for him. He’s walking around wearing warning flags.”
Alex’s expression remained grim, but he didn’t argue with her. Like it or not, he knew as well as she that Jack’s behavior was putting him in the crosshairs. He wouldn’t be convicted based on it, but he had to be watched and even investigated.
But what could you investigate with a kid that age? His whereabouts early on a Sunday morning? Whether he had the tools at home to put something like this together? An extraordinary interest in chemistry, maybe?
Darcy pushed her coffee away. “Sorry I’m upsetting you.”
“No, you’re being honest.” Some of the stoniness left his face. “I don’t like it, but I’m not dismissing it, okay?”
“Fair enough. You being his teacher and all, you can probably clear him easier than I could.”
Finally, the stone chipped away and he smiled again. “Yes, I could. And you don’t have to look so unhappy for mentioning it. It’s a legitimate point, and much as I like that young man, I’ve been aware of the same flags you mentioned. I’m not going to overlook them.”
She
