Conard County Revenge. Rachel Lee

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      “That’s fine.” She returned her attention to Jack. “You sit right here, young man. Turn your phone over to Deputy Marcus. No calls until I say so.”

      “Yes, ma’am.”

      “One more thing.” A small flicker of anger was trying to get started. “Did you touch anything in here?”

      Jack shook his head. “I wouldn’t have anyway, but the deputies were already in here.”

      She looked at Marcus. “He’s yours. I need to step outside.”

      Marcus nodded and pressed Jack back down onto the bench.

      * * *

      Alex decided to accompany Darcy outside. She’d been very controlled with Jack, which he appreciated professionally, but he wondered what she was thinking. He knew what he was thinking: Jack was up to his neck in trouble now, although he still didn’t honestly believe his student had a role in the bombing. But it sure didn’t look good, and it couldn’t be ignored.

      Outside, Darcy thrust her hands into the side pockets of her overalls. “Keys?” She repeated. “He had keys? He could have got into anything. Why didn’t everyone have to turn them in as soon as the bombing happened? I never thought just anyone had access to that building.” She kicked the earth. “Damn, I should have verified that.”

      “It didn’t occur to me, either,” he said reassuringly. “I just assumed that would have been one of the first things the police did when sealing the scene.”

      “I guess they never thought the entire building could be the scene.”

      “I need to find out who was the scene commander. Someone needs a talking-to.”

      “Probably a simple oversight,” she said grimly. “Otherwise everyone did a spectacular job. I shouldn’t be so angry. Besides, they clearly had a good guard set on the gymnasium, and there are still guys watching the blast area both inside and outside. Sorry.” Then again, she said disbelievingly, “Keys?”

      “Sometimes the small oversights can really get to you.”

      “And cause huge problems.”

      He waited, admiring her restraint. He wouldn’t have blamed her for giving in to at least a small explosion of ire. She was right, the entire school should have been locked down, but he wasn’t accustomed to actually working crime scenes of any kind, and it had never crossed his mind that maybe it wasn’t a good thing that administrators were still able to get to their offices. After all, he’d gone in and asked for use of the tarps and the gym.

      Darcy had probably thought he’d passed some kind of gatekeeper to do that. Instead he’d walked in as easily as if he were going to teach a class. Admittedly, there’d been a deputy at the door, but he hadn’t been restricted.

      But maybe that’s because the deputies keeping watch pretty much knew everyone who should be able to access the school. Maybe they figured that going to talk to someone in administration was a necessary access.

      It had been, but it shouldn’t have been so easy.

      “I wonder how contaminated the scene is now,” Darcy said quietly. “My fault. I should have noticed when you led me inside to show me the wall of the shop. It should have occurred to me that I needed to check if there was a lockdown on the building.”

      “Why would you imagine there wasn’t? First, that end of the building was locked down. Remember? Tape and two deputies. It’s not like the inside of the building was crawling with gawkers. Besides, we were really concerned about the structural integrity. We didn’t want anyone in there unnecessarily. So the lockdown wasn’t perfect, but it was good enough.”

      “Until tonight.”

      Well, yeah, he thought. Until tonight.

      She faced him. “You need to know something. I’ve worked on a number of these cases but I’ve never been the lead on one. Now I’m out here on my own and I just made a potentially critical error. I wonder how many others I’ll make.”

      Man, that must have been hard for her to say. She hardly knew him. He hesitated, wishing he dared to clasp her shoulder reassuringly but concerned about his roiled up feelings. Touching this woman might remind him of just how desirable he found her. Some lines were better not crossed.

      He spoke, determined to keep this professional. “I don’t think you’ve made a critical error. Part of what you’re dealing with here is that darn near everyone knows everyone else. Maybe we aren’t being as careful as we should be since everyone is familiar, but we ought to be more cautious. Anyway, I don’t think you made any unjustified assumptions. I think we were a little more lax than you imagined. And I doubt there was a critical error, certainly not on your part.”

      “I guess we’ll find out.” She looked out over the area away from the school.

      “I did want to ask you, though. No criticism intended. But does the ATF usually send only one agent?”

      “Depends on what’s going on, what local resources are available and how many we have tied up. We don’t have any slack right now. I was pulled off another case to come here. I guess everyone was thinking it was probably some kind of accident.”

      “Is ANFO ever an accident?”

      She surprised him. “Believe it or not, it does happen. It’s like anything else. A bomb is next to impossible to make deliberately, then a factory worker inadvertently spills something while smoking an illicit cigarette and kaboom.” She sighed. “You’ve read about it in the papers. Usually involving a chemical plant. So yeah, it happens, and that’s kind of what I was expecting to find here, but I’m not going to make that assumption without proof. And now that I’m here, I’m pretty sure this was deliberate, however sloppy.”

      He nodded. “Tonight I wish I hadn’t quit smoking.”

      That brought her face around to eye him. “You used to smoke?”

      “Yeah, in college. I quit, obviously, but right now I wish I hadn’t.”

      “I get you.” Then she shrugged. “Okay, so we go out to the Castor place, upset his family, going over every square inch inside and out, and hopefully by tomorrow night we’ve cleared him. I’m going to take one extended look out there, turn it over to the locals, then come back here. I need to go into that gym and start looking for any sign of a detonator. That might be our only clue to the perp. Everything else is off-the-shelf. Your sheriff hasn’t found record of a detonator being sold?”

      “I’m sure he has. We’ve got all kinds of uses for them in this state. Checking them out is going to take time, especially when we don’t know exactly what we’re looking for. But if he finds anything suspicious, you’ll be the first to know. Not me.”

      “Yeah.” She rubbed her eyes. “Okay. I need to make a quick sweep through the Castor homestead. Look for things that could have been used to make this bomb.”

      “You’ll find them. Bags of fertilizer. Fuel for tractors. Pieces of pipe for repairs.”

      She eyed him again. “Just about any ranch around here, right?”

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