“If a building blows up, you and Creighton could be in deep trouble for not helping us out. If we stop it and it’s nothing more than a theft that went nowhere, who’s even to know? But we need to know what you know,” Letty said. “Creighton said if you stay in the Army, you’ll eventually be a general. You want to stay in? Or do you want to be the guy who blocked an inquiry into what happens with a bunch of stolen explosives?”
Colin looked down at his phone, then punched the end button.
“We don’t know anything, not for sure,” he said. “We sent the guy in charge over to the dump. After a quick look, he came back and said we might be missing some C-4. Where it went and who took it, he doesn’t know. We’re going to get our own investigators involved. If we can find the thief, that should help stop . . . stop whatever might happen.”
Letty asked, “How much was stolen?”
“I got a car coming, I got to get out there,” Colin said. He looked down the street, and then said, “Go away, I don’t want anybody to see me talking to you.”
“How much?”
Colin took off his hat, rubbed a hand across his head, then said, “A hundred pounds. With detonators and individual digital timers.”
“How precise are the timers? Could they be set so everything blows at once?”
“Yes. Now go away.”
Letty jogged back to Kaiser, said, “Hundred pounds.”
Kaiser said, “That ain’t optimal.”
Letty asked what he meant, then called Greet at home, who asked, “Is it bad news? I assume it’s bad.”
“They’re missing a hundred pounds of C-4, with detonators and digital timers,” Letty said. “The good news is, Kaiser says it’d probably be a smaller building. They’d need more to bring down a skyscraper, depending on how smart they are.”
“Well, that brightens my day,” Greet said, appalled. “A smaller building. You mean, like the federal building in Oklahoma City?”
“I bring the news, I don’t editorialize on it,” Letty said.
EIGHTEEN
Letty and Kaiser sat in the Explorer, in silence, until Letty asked, “How much do you really like your job?”
“A lot. I depend on it,” Kaiser said. “If I stick with it, I can retire at sixty-five with two full pensions and Medicare.”
“I mean, other than that,” Letty said.
“Does get boring sometimes. Not so much lately. Sweetie.”
“We need to go back to that Hawkes woman’s house,” Letty said. “We need to get inside.”
“Ah . . .” Kaiser shook his head. “Tell you what. Let’s go to this Fleet & Ranch store and ask about her. If she’s there, we can tell her, you know, we need help finding some people involved in right-wing activities, maybe on her street.”
“Then you’re willing to break into her house if we go to Fleet & Ranch first?”
“Maybe. I’m willing to be the lookout, anyway,” Kaiser said.
* * *
The store manager’s name was Benjamin Rojas, and they spoke to him on the store’s sales floor.
“Jane worked for us for . . . I don’t know . . . several years,” Rojas said. “She quit about a year and a half ago, but I know she’s still in town. I’ve seen her around, I think she works at a bar.”
“You know which bar?”
“Mmm . . . wait a minute.” He got on his cell phone, found a number, called it, and said, “Angela, could you come up to the contractor’s door for a minute? Right away?”