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the “chicks” he had arrested.
    A shadow of surprise crossed Brasco’s face as she approached, dispelled almost immediately by a broad grin.
    “Hey, if it isn’t my gal Friday. Guys, meet the legendary Patty Moriarity, Tommy’s kid.”
    Patty shook hands with the men from Norfolk, Corbin and Brown, both of whom seemed at first glance to be more enlightened than her partner.
    “Thanks for calling me, Wayne,” she said.
    He shrugged matter-of-factly and said, “I was going to.”
    “Bomb squad say anything yet?”
    “Nope, but what can they say? The dude was blown to smithereens, and it wasn’t an accident. Ba-da-bing, ba-da-boom. Case closed.”
    Brasco laughed at his own attempt at flip humor. Patty was pleased when neither of the other two officers joined in.
    “Well, for those of us not as knowledgeable about explosives as you are,” she said acidly, “there may be one or two things we can learn.”
    Had Brasco ever bothered to spend time talking with her, or even looking through her file, he might have learned that through taking several courses, Patty was making herself something of an expert on ordnance and explosives.
    “Well, that’s one of them coming over here right now,” Brasco replied, an irritated edge appearing in his voice. “You can ask yourself.”
    A baby-faced officer who could easily have passed for Opie on
The Andy Griffith Show
approached the quartet and was introduced to Patty by Corbin as Chipper Dawes.
    “Well, we’re all done,” Dawes said.
    “Thanks,” the Norfolk detective replied. “You’ll get us a report as soon as possible?”
    “No problem.”
    “So what do you think?” Patty asked. “Semtex?”
    Dawes looked at her with surprise and undisguised respect.
    “As a matter of fact, yes,” he said. “We’re fairly certain of that. Probably wrapped around the drive shaft, just behind the transmission.”
    “So what’s this Semtex all about?” Brown asked, angling his rotund body, purposefully or not, so that Brasco actually had to step to his left and forward to insert himself back in the ring of conversation.
    “The terrorist’s friend, we call it,” Dawes explained. “Plastique. Similar to C-4. It can be molded into almost any shape and worked into almost any space. Forty pounds or less flattened the American embassy in Kenya.”
    Patty sensed Brasco’s discomfort and bore in.
    “The IRA is supposed to have more than three tons of the stuff. With a little knowledge, it’s a cinch to make. Have you found the detonator?”
    “No. I’m going to stick around for a while longer to look, but I have my doubts we will.”
    “So,” Patty continued, now on a roll, “if the Semtex was wrapped around the drive shaft, the detonator was possibly some sort of centrifugal fuse that went off when it reached enough RPMs.”
    “You’re exactly right, Sergeant,” Dawes said. “Two weights come together and form a contact that sends a small electrical impulse to the blasting cap, and ka-boom. There are other ways the Semtex could have been detonated, but this is what we think at the moment.”
    Lost in thought, Patty toed the ground and glanced down. A charred lump—probably a portion of a leg with bone protruding out—lay on the lawn just a few feet away. At that instant, two lab people scurried over, labeled it, marked the location on a chart, and dropped it into a large plastic evidence Baggie.
    “Chipper,” she asked, “do you think this could possibly have been the work of an amateur—someone who’s just angry at managed-care executives because of something a managed-care company did that hurt them or maybe killed a loved one?”
    “Not really,” Dawes replied. “Whoever did this knew what they were doing. It may not look it, but blowing up a car in a driveway without substantially damaging the house twenty feet away is not easy.”
    “This woman’s a keeper,” Corbin said. He was an imposingly tall and muscular black man with dark, intelligent