Part 17 (1/2)

'Mr. Griffin, my name is Aram Trune. I'm FBI liaison to the National Counter-Proliferation Center. I hope your father is doing better.'

'Liaison?' William asked, still stunned by the pulverized nature of the rubble.

'We're tasked with helping focus the Bureau's relations.h.i.+p with the new administration.'

'Where was Griff found?' Rebecca asked Trune. 'I was pretty much out of it after the blast.'

'So I hear.' Trune stepped up to the edge of the pit, marked by a sheared-off line of studs and a narrow, ragged overhang of concrete, and pointed. 'He was pushed into the back of a concrete stall. The wall fell over him and deflected the main force. Most of his injuries were from crus.h.i.+ng. Agent Watson-' He shook his head. 'We've just removed the last of her.'

'What sort of explosive was it?' William asked.

'Perchlorate and aluminum powder in a polybutadiene base,' Trune said. 'We call it a Thiokol special. Basically, it's what they use in solid rocket motors, like on the old s.p.a.ce shuttle. The explosion was triggered by a spark mechanism.' He pointed to the tangled remains of the poles and wires spread around the farmyard and the field. 'Induced current from the upper atmosphere, flowing through a network of wires. The Patriarch wanted G.o.d to take the blame.'

'Will He?' William asked.

'Beats me.' Trune said.

Trune guided them through taped-off and gridded patches of land to the operations trailer, a double-wide thirty-footer with an incongruous porch and lots of gingerbread. Inside, agents and investigators had set up marker and bulletin boards, a big screen display, and folding tables on which they had laid out and were cataloging evidence. Two technicians were transferring bagged pieces of burned, melted plastic and metal and what might have been shrapnel to the central table. A third was preparing to photograph them.

William and Rebecca stood by the table. Rebecca bent over and examined thin blackened metal rods. 'How many?' she asked a diminutive female technician.

'Fifteen or twenty units, plus cables,' the technician said. 'We found them in a heap beside some burn barrels, along with the remains of two computers.'

Rebecca glanced at William. 'Runners from inkjet printers,' she told William. 'Older models. Epsons. They don't sell them anymore. Did the Patriarch strike you as a computer geek?'

Trune maneuvered through the crowd. The room was quiet and efficient; those who were talking tended to move off to the kitchen or the back rooms. A woman started posting photo prints on the cork board: surveillance shots of members of the Patriarch's family.

William looked through the bay window off the 'dining room' and saw another large trailer being moved up behind the house.

Trune slipped on green plastic gloves and lifted a section of steel tube about three feet long off the table. He held it up before Rebecca.

'Guess?'

'Pipe?' Rebecca ventured.

'Cannon is more like it.' Trune replaced the tube within its marked outline on the graph paper that covered the table. He walked around the photographer and lifted a plastic bag. The bag contained a small amount of cream-colored powder. 'We sc.r.a.ped this off the trees. There's a lot of it out there. Take a another guess.'

'Anthrax?' William said.

Rebecca leaned forward to peer at the bag. 'Yeast.'

'Good guess,' Trune said.

'We saw the bags in the barn.'

'It's brewer's yeast,' Trune said. 'Baker's yeast, actually. All cultivars of the same species. Safe enough, I suppose. It's all over the rooftops, in the soil, on the leaves outside. Heavier concentration to the north. The wind in the valley blows from the south most days.' He plucked three sets of gogs off a shelf and led them to the back of the trailer. 'I've reserved a room and arranged for our local server to show the barn vids on demand.'

'Glorious,' Rebecca said as he showed them the unplumbed bathroom.

'The real potties are in another trailer. We have techs working the farm's septic system and all around the drainfield,' Trune said. 'Everyone on site is going to have blood drawn and receive a free CAT scan, until we're done processing the scene, and probably for a week thereafter.'

William felt the sweat trickling down from his armpits.

'Okay, now tell me why they used yeast,' Trune said, lowering his voice.

'Someone planning a biological attack could use yeast as a neutral test substance,' Rebecca said.

'Are we talking weaponized anthrax here?'

'I don't know,' Rebecca said. 'But finely milled yeast disperses almost as well.'

Trune whistled, then pulled back his coat arm, revealing a keypad. 'Showtime, folks. I'll split the screen between Agent Griffin and Agent Watson. Anything catches your eye, let me know, and I'll zoom in.'

'I'm dead,' Rebecca said as they drove up the highway through the woods. 'I've been cruising for forty-eight hours now on nothing but catnaps.'

'No coffee?'

'Can't drink coffee,' Rebecca said. 'Makes me anxious. I start having dark thoughts. Isn't worth it.'

'I can live on coffee,' William said. 'Caffeine is a vitamin.'

'That's because you're fat,' Rebecca said with a hint of a smile.

'I'm two ounces underweight for my height,' William said. He was trying to untie the knot in his stomach. Talking-about anything-felt good.

'Just a roly-poly puppy. Where'd you start?'

'NYPD. I wanted to be in Emergency Services. Forget Jesus, ESU saves.'

'Ha. Good luck.'

'Right. So I worked vice for a year.'

'Vice? What'd you do in vice?'

'I was a pretty boy.'

'A pretty boy?'

William plumped up nonexistent b.r.e.a.s.t.s.

Rebecca pinched out her lips. 'Put on some eye shadow. You would be kind of pretty.'

'Skinny tranny with big b.o.o.bs, blond wig, real fright city,' William said. 'I wasn't that good at improv, so they pushed me out and I transferred over to the big-a.s.s headphone patrol...OCID, organized crime surveillance.'

'Beats the cold New Yawk streets,' Rebecca said.

'Sometimes I miss it. The ladies in their limos, smelling like fresh baked bread and Opium-the perfume. Their insides so warm. The limos, I mean.'

Rebecca wizened her eyes. 'Kid me not.'