Terminal Event by James Thayer

Author:James Thayer
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Simon & Schuster

21

I stood near the door to the men’s lavatory, watching Idaho Resister Runny Smith carry the bomb toward the Emerald Airlines counter. His walk was peculiar, as much up and down as forward. The folds of his shirt hid most of the bomb. Smith had tucked the package tightly against his stomach, as if he hoped to make it disappear.

Special Agent Jamie Suarez had told me that a gait is as distinctive as a face. Smith walked as I imagined a Neanderthal would, his shoulders hunched, with a peculiar rolling, as if he were trying to keep his center of gravity low. His eyes were on the ground a few feet in front of him, so perhaps he didn’t trust the airport lobby’s floor to be smooth.

The package wasn’t a real bomb, of course, but a mock-up of the explosive device that had destroyed Sacajawea. Same estimated size and weight, wrapped in brown paper.

Smith had been told to ignore onlookers and cameras, not to glance at the six U.S. deputy marshals who were his escorts, to act naturally. One of the marshals still had Smith’s handcuffs in his hand, and was flicking them open and closed. Smith had been arrested as an accomplice to the murder of Special Agent Bill Fitzpatrick, and had not made bail. A 7-Eleven clerk had recognized Smith when he tried to purchase an economy bag of pretzels and an air freshener.

Smith’s court-appointed lawyer had moved that the charge be dismissed. The hearing was the next day, and Smith was going to walk from the hearing into the streets of Boise, a free man. Not enough evidence—not any evidence, the truth be known, the U.S. attorney had told me—connecting Smith to the spring gun in Ed Fahey’s closet, other than beer talk about rifles and the oppressive United States government.

This event was testament to how little effect my investigation into a fuel vapor detonation was having on the FBI. They had an explosion and they had a threatening letter and they had some suspects and were busily looking for more. And while they would tell anyone who asked that all leads—even something as fragile and quick as a spark—needed to be investigated to the very end, FBI agents generally thought my inquiry into the possibility of a spark was as pointless as an NBA all-star game. They would deny it to my face, but I felt it. My puerile response—admitted to nobody and hardly to myself—was that I would show them.

IIC Rich Shrader and his superiors at the NTSB insisted on receiving intelligence on FBI progress. Although the bureau recognized that the Sacajawea investigation was at this stage still both a criminal and an engineering investigation, and that the NTSB should be kept posted on progress on the criminal side, it was not the FBI’s history nor inclination to easily share its hard-won information. So I was observing their operation at the Hailey airport and elsewhere. Each evening I sent Shrader e-mail regarding the FBI’s progress. I was a known spy, just as Linda Dillon was a known spy.

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