“He’s gone, but he left us a laptop,” I said. “Why would he do that?”
Steel L-bar welded to the side of the container held up the back of the desk and the long workbench. Chains at the corners held up the front. Where they’d been wiped for residue, the color was bright. C-4, Semtex, another plastic explosive, or dynamite had been here. In front of where the laptop sat on the bench was a wooden chair with long legs. I saw Garod Hurin in the late night in here, sitting on this chair as he built a bomb. Fluorescent tube lighting hung above the desk, everything neat and clean, tools oiled and lined up, things in their place.
The scene brought back a memory of a government-research cabin in the Wind River Range where a neo-Nazi bomb maker had holed up for months. Same as that guy, Hurin knew we’d get here. He knew enough about our approach to the situation to anticipate us. The open laptop drew my eyes, drew Olsen’s too. But if you want an open laptop as a trap, why not make it look like you’re still here? Leave some clothes hanging off a chair and dirty dishes in the sink. Otherwise, what the hell?
“What do you think?” Olsen asked.
“What I think is we gather touch DNA, then go out and check the storage box before we do anything more in here. We think first. We don’t do anything yet. We’re missing something. He left the laptop for us, and we don’t want to do what he’s hoping for.”
“Okay, if you’ve got a vibe, let’s back out.”
Ten minutes later, SWAT blew the door off the storage hut. Inside was gear that Coffina identified as belonging to a former tenant: a suitcase of old clothes, three cardboard boxes of dusty yellowing books, and two assault rifles and six boxes of ammunition wrapped in a blanket. The weapons looked cared for and Coffina explained another man had used them to train for the coming war, when the government would suspend the Constitution and join with the UN to confiscate all guns and make Americans slaves to the New World Order.
“No shit?” I asked.
“Swear to God.”
Olsen and I went back inside. A SWAT agent who had looked beneath the house poked his head in and said, “There might be something in the area under the throw rug. Could just be rocks or debris. We can’t get a good enough angle to tell what it is. It’s more or less in the center so it could be a support for the floor.”
“Let’s treat it as dangerous,” I said.
I skirted the rug, moved back to the cooking area, and picked up on a faint solvent smell as I leaned over the sink. It was there on the dishes in the rack too. We’d tested for DNA in a dozen places in the kitchen and found nothing here. Hurin must have worked slowly and carefully in the kitchen, wearing gloves, wiping and re-wiping the counter and cabinet faces, the sink and every dish and glass with a diluted solution. He’d scoured away DNA, though not bomb residue. He left the laptop and guessed we’d focus on it, but not touch it. We were looking at a stage set created for us, and designed to lead us somewhere.
“Let’s check the laptop again for wires,” I said to Olsen. “Only this time you do it. Maybe I keep staring at the same thing and am missing what’s important.”
Olsen was younger, more agile than I was, so he got down lower. He balanced. He rocked on his heels and got on a knee and didn’t see anything.
“There’s no wire coming off the laptop to anything underneath. There’s only the plug into the wall. If we hit a key, it’s not going to detonate anything.”
“Yeah, but don’t touch a key yet.”
I pointed at the exposed wiring that ran from the four-plug outlet the laptop was plugged into. The wire ran up and across to the kitchen ceiling and a junction box there. Other wires along the ceiling fed lights.
“That’s where the electrical power for this place comes in. If that landlord walked in, as he would have done sometime soon, he would have seen it and seen the guy was gone. What’s he going to do?”
“Take the laptop, lock the door, and keep the huge deposit.”
I laughed. So did Olsen.
“And what does Hurin think we’ll do once we figure out it had no leads running to explosives?”
Olsen didn’t answer. He didn’t want to be set up.
The other SWAT officer was at the door again. He didn’t step in but said, “They’re ready to cut power to the building.”
When I heard that, it hit me. “Tell them no! Do not cut the power until we’re a hundred yards away. Relay that as fast as you can.”
“Fuck, man, you’re scaring me,” Olsen said, and I felt sweat start as I listened to the SWAT officer radio and wait for the response.