The Tulsa Police Department, for all their internal troubles and the incompetence of some of their patrol officers, was no half-baked and slipshod operation when it came to forensics. They had the use of some very sophisticated lab facilities. Rod had no intention of underestimating them.
"My foreman called some time before the explosion," he said, carefully. "It was on his cellular phone, so I'm sure you can find out exactly when that was. He said that the crew had uncovered some kind of Indian remains, bones or something, and that the Indians on the crew were rather upset about it and refused to go back to work."
"But that was only a few minutes before the explosion," the detective replied, dubiously. "There wouldn't have been any time for anyone to get a bomb in place."
"Perhaps not," Rod replied, watching the detective's expression very carefully, "but this isn't the first time I've had trouble with Indians on my crew here. They-" he paused, and selected his words very carefully. "They have what I would call a 'flexible' idea about time and work-schedules, and I am a very precise man. I don't tolerate unnecessary overtime or goofing off on the job."
The detective's lips tightened, just a little, and he squinted in the hot sun. It occurred to Rod that the polyester suit he wore must have been like wearing a sauna, but Rod wasn't much more comfortable in the linen blazer he used as summerwear. Rod wasn't about to take it off, though, despite the sweat that trickled down his back, tickling him. He wasn't going to sacrifice an iota of his edge in dealing with the police. Police respected a man in a suit; he'd learned that lesson quite completely over the years. They would treat a man in a suit a hundred times better than a man in blue jeans, and they were significantly more likely to listen to him than a man in shirtsleeves.
"Why would a troublemaker, Indian or not, go and blow up his own people?" the detective asked, finally.
"Why do terrorists do anything?" Rod countered. "I've never seen a fanatic who wasn't willing to sacrifice a few of his own to get the enemy. What's more, if you take out a few people, it tends to make others take you seriously when you make a threat in the future."
Slowly, the detective nodded. "Sounds like you've studied the situation."
Rod let a tiny hint of a smile creep onto his face. "You know what they say; know your enemy. These days, a developer never knows who is going to decide he's oppressing them. Animal-rights nuts, ecology freaks, special-interest groups-we'd already had some problems before we started clearing this land. Troubles with the ecofreaks and the Indians, over the eagles and what have you. Maybe this is just an extension of that kind of thing."
The detective didn't look as if he was convinced. "I can't see where a bunch of back-to-nature nuts is much of a threat-and I can't imagine why they'd plant a bomb in a bulldozer."
There; he'd let it slip. They had found the remains of the bomb. Rod schooled his face not to let his satisfaction show.
"You should ask loggers about that," he replied, allowing himself to look and act a little heated. "Ask them about the tree-freaks driving railroad spikes into trees they're about to cut. You know what happens when a logging-grade chain saw hits one of those spikes?"
Evidently the detective had handled a chain saw or two in his lifetime; he winced. "But a bomb?" he persisted.
"I wouldn't actually put my money on ecology nuts," Rod said with a sigh. "I don't know what it is, but those Indians have it in for me. I think maybe this was their way of saying I'd better watch my step." He let his smile turn bitter. "Funny thing about people who claim they want equal rights-they don't, not really. What they want is superior treatment, not equal. And they squawk if they don't get it. Sometimes they do more than squawk."
" 'All pigs are equal,, but some pigs are more equal than others,' " the detective quoted, in a kind of mutter. He made a few more notes in his book, and flipped the cover closed. "All right, Mr. Calligan, I think that will be all for now. Thank you for being so cooperative."
"Thank you," Rod Calligan replied automatically. "Keep me posted on what you find out, will you?"
"Sure thing," the detective replied. He wouldn't, Calligan knew that, as he knew they both had to go through the motions.
But as the detective headed for his sedan, and Calligan for the cool interior of his air-conditioned BMW, he was still a most contented man. The seed had been sown. Now to nurture it, and make it grow.
Jennifer tucked the phone between her shoulder and cheek, and waited for Ron Sinor's secretary to see if he was "in" for her. Meanwhile, with one hand she grabbed the stacked sheets of paper off the printer, and with the other, she reached for a tamperproof Tyvek envelope.
"I'm putting you through to his office now," the secretary said, and there was a click, and a short ring, picked up almost immediately.
"Miss Talldeer, glad to hear from you-" Ron said, cautiously.
"You should be even gladder when I tell you that the background checks you asked me to run took less time than I estimated," she replied, evening the edges of the pile of papers and slipping them neatly into the Tyvek envelope. "They're done; do you want me to send them by regular mail, or would you rather I called a messenger service or dropped them over myself?"
"How 'eyes only' are they?" Ron asked cautiously.
"Depends on how you feel about alcoholics," she said.
"Personally, I wouldn't want one writing my software. Sometimes I suspect that was what was wrong with the last release of my word-processing package."
Ron chuckled; he could afford to, since his company wrote oil-field analysis software, not word-processing programs. "Overnight mail, and make it registered, too," he replied decisively. "That way only Judy and I will see it."
"Done and done." Jennifer slipped the tamperproof envelope into a bigger Priority Mail bag, and grabbed a ballpoint pen to fill out the adhesive waybill. One advantage of having an office a half block from a local post office. "The bill's in there, too."
"Good. Thank you, for being so quick." Sinor sounded genuinely pleased. "A couple of those people looked really good on their resumes, and I didn't want someone else to hire them out from under me-or find out that they were only good on paper."
Let's hope one of the ones he wanted isn't the guy who drinks his breakfast, she thought, but didn't say. "Thank the | modern computer environment," she said instead. "If I'd had to type this the old way, you'd still be waiting for it."
He laughed, and they said their good-byes. Jennifer put the envelope in a stack of mail to go to the post office by three.
Her watch read 2:15; that gave her just enough time to call Claremore and the old homestead while she sorted receipts. Claremore was a good forty minutes away from Tulsa; if there was anything someone needed she could bring it out when she and Grandfather came over for Saturday dinner.
The phone only rang twice. "Yo!" said a familiar young male voice.
"Yo yourself, creep," she replied cheerfully to her youngest brother. "When did you get back from the lake?"
" 'Bout fifteen minutes ago," Robert Talldeer said, and paused to gulp something. "Didn't take as long as we thought it would. Never recharged the A/C on an RV before, those things don't take more than a pound. So what's up in the life of Nancy Drew?"
"Same song, different verse, little brother," she said, with a yawn. "Grandfather is fine, although I'm afraid one of the neighbor kids addicted him to Tetris. At least it's better than soap operas, but I suspect he's beating the kids out of their allowance money. Thought I'd catch up on family gossip before I went to the Post Awful."
"I could get to like recharging air-conditioners," Robert said, and paused, before adding scornfully, "Not!"
"Then be glad you've got a job to pay for college, Wayne," she told him, making neat little stacks of receipts. "You'll make a better engineer than a heating and A/C specialist. How's Dad's ostrich-fence project coming?"