CHAPTER 24

I found a site on the Internet where it showed how to rig a garage door opener so that it triggered an electrical charge. The switch of a garage door motor is activated by the opener. which means that electricity begins to flow into the motor. It turned out to be relatively easy to attach a battery to a switch, press the opener and the current from the battery closed the switch. All that was necessary was to connect the switch to something that was explosive. Which, of course, I didn’t have.

One of the guys on the job, working on the foundations, told me about blasting some rock for a house they had built on the ridge above Tiburon. “Big fucking ledge,” he said. “Code says you got to go down eighteen inches, doesn’t matter what the fuck is there, dirt or rock, so we just blew the fucker up. Laid mats over the top so we didn’t spatter the neighborhood with pieces of rock.”

“Where did you get the stuff to blow it up?”

“We didn’t. Ken hired some company in Sacramento. They mostly do stuff up in El Dorado County, the Sierras. Roads and shit like that.”

So I found out the name of the company and spent an afternoon in Sacramento. I talked to the receptionist and lied about who I was, telling her I was a contractor from Marin County who needed some blasting work done. I explained that it was a small job, some site work before a house was to be built and asked if I could speak to a foreman or somebody who could give me advice.

She gave me the name of one of the owners of the company. He was on a job at that time, up in Shingle Springs, where they were removing an old dam on a ranch. Could I come back at the end of the week? Or could he call me?

I wasn’t sure what it was I was going to tell him. What I wanted to know was where I could get a couple of sticks of dynamite and a couple of blasting caps. And from my research I knew that I couldn’t get them without a permit. And his company wasn’t about to hand them to me. But now I knew where their corporation yard was and obviously there were things like that stored there. I needed somebody to slip those things to me for a fee. Surely there was a worker who would be willing to do that. But only if I gave him a story that satisfied him. Something that showed I had a reasonable use for them, not something that could cause trouble. The blasting caps I could probably get from someone online, but the sticks of dynamite were something else. Still, I was determined to bring my project to an end that would result in Earl Winslow being severely damaged. If Detective Fuller managed to link me to that killing in West Marin, then I would be isolated, and Winslow wouldn’t be any wiser. If he tracked me down, he would find me already removed, and that was almost more than I could think about. No, I would find some way to get the explosive. Even if I had to steal it.

The owner of the company called me the next evening. What did I have in mind? He asked.

I explained that it was a small job, a ridge on a lot had to be removed and it was too difficult to get heavy equipment up. “We do that sort of thing all the time,” he said. “You want me to come down and take a look at it, give you a bid?”

“Not just yet.” We chatted a bit more but it became apparent that there was no way that I could get to one of his workers and forge a deal. What I would have to do would be to go back to Sacramento and steal what I needed from his corporation yard.

“I’ll get back to you,” I said.

Now what I needed to do was make an evening run to Sacramento, somehow get inside his company yard and find the explosives. They would be locked up. But according to my research, dynamite wasn’t unstable unless it was carelessly stored, and the company in Sacramento wasn’t likely to be careless with explosives. Packed in cases, it is easily transportable, and as long as the cases weren’t subject to extreme temperature changes, there was no danger in removing some of it.

I drove to Sacramento in the evening traffic, found the company yard and parked down the street. It was an industrial area and the street lights were few and far between. I waited for a while to make sure no one was staying late and then, when it neared midnight, I got out of my car. I looked carefully to make sure there was no one on the street before, using a pair of bolt cutters, I snapped the padlock. I pocketed the padlock. No point in leaving a chopped up padlock as proof that they had been broken into. I slipped inside and went through the sheds until I finally found what I was looking for, a shed that had a warning sign on the door. NO ADMITTANCE EXCEPT FOR AUTHORIZED PERSONS was emblazoned on a hand-lettered sign. This had to be the repository for explosives. There was a padlock on this shed, too, and I cut it off. Inside were cases with the label Dyno Nobel, the company that manufactured the dynamite here in the U.S. That much I had garnered in my Google search. I opened a box. Two sticks of dynamite wouldn’t be missed. I took them, searched until I found the storage of blasting caps, selected two electrically powered ones, slipped back out and put a new padlock on the door. Whoever tried to open it with the old key would be frustrated. Eventually they would cut the lock off, but they would put it down to a mix-up in locks, not to a burglary. I did the same at the front gate. Of course the new locks would raise eyebrows, but they wouldn’t connect those locks to me. I drove back to Fairfax, arriving well after midnight. I put the contraband in the garage, nestled in a box of old newspapers. Now all I had to do was assemble my IED.