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.
Wayne’s elbow brushed his. “About ready?”
Alex
