must have happened. Laney examined the door that he’d had the feeling Jake intended to break down.
“Let’s go,” Jake said and turned back to the car. Once inside and headed back toward the city, Jake explained what had been inside.
“A map of Europe?” Laney asked.
“It looks like he had a plan of some kind with a series of sites he wished to visit. Unfortunately, there was nothing that explained what he was looking for. Carlson should send someone official with the search warrant. It might be interesting to compare the map to locations he’s known to have been in Europe.”
“We can tell her during the call,” Laney suggested.
“Let’s see if Wally has returned on the way back home,” Jake suggested.
Wally was back, but he was of no help. He claimed to know nothing about Ray, and was too busy with getting the evening edition out to really focus on their questions. Jake would have liked to speak with Fred Hickam again, but he wasn’t around any longer. Agnes had said he was off on a story across town. They would have to return in the morning if they wanted to see him.
Carlson had listened carefully to their report. She had made progress of her own, and summarized the results of the day’s efforts.
“We dug up the old police file on Pati Ray’s death,” Carlson said. “The report records her brother having said she was an erratic driver and hadn’t been paying close attention. Nothing in the officer’s report indicated that Henry Ray felt the accident was anything other than negligence on the part of his sister. It was a single vehicle accident. She drifted into a parked construction vehicle, impaling herself on a load of steel pipes. Henry was lucky to have survived himself. The front windshield was totally destroyed. Apparently he saw what was coming at the last minute and ducked.”
“Did you learn any more about her family?” Jake asked.
“Nothing on the father. That was nearly two decades ago. One of the neighbors who still lives where Pati was born indicates the mother had a large number of men passing through those days. She had no idea if any of them might have been the father. I doubt we will have any luck in that area. Only Henry is still around, and he’s the one we are looking for.”
“Pati is a little easier. She lived in a small apartment in Berkeley. She played at being a student. She was in with the drug group, and like her mother seemed to be involved with a lot of guys. Several of those still living there indicated she was a bit of a scatterbrain, and to their knowledge didn’t have any single guy she was close to. It’s unlikely that we’ll find anything there, but we’ll keep looking.”
“So unless we find Henry, we’re unlikely to know much,” Jake observed. “What about the trucker and the bombers?”
“The bombers we haven’t located. The bombs were put in place some time ago, and simply waited until the day they were to be triggered. We don’t know who placed them, not who triggered the explosion, that of course, now never happened. We did however, find your trucker.”
“I’ll bet he denies everything,” Jake guessed.
“Of course! While he has a long rap sheet, this time around he didn’t commit any crime. We are guessing he was told to make the attempt on Zack, and if he wasn’t able to locate him, to simply drop the matter after a couple of days. We searched his truck and found five thousand dollars in reasonably new bills stashed away. The trucker claims the money is the result of a gambling windfall that he didn’t want to report to the IRS. For the moment we had to let him go, but we’ll keep tabs on him. It’s unlikely whoever hired him will approach him again though.”
“Five thousand dollars, and he didn’t have to do anything,” Laney observed. “Someone is being generous. It didn’t look to us as if this Ray has that kind of money.”
“His basic bank account balance is relatively small,” Carlson said. “We did locate another account that has more than two hundred thousand in it. Unlike the bank account, it hasn’t seen any action in over a year. He might have other money set aside somewhere we haven’t found.”
“The latest submittals to the paper agree with what you said about account withdrawals,” Jake said. “It would seem he is in Europe somewhere, or at least he wants it to