Chapter 231

Wednesday was a repeat of Tuesday with the exception that Patti drove to KCC. On the way home I was going to pick up the new suburban to replace the wrecked one. With the death threat against me unresolved and no new information, bigger was better when it came to vehicles.

At KCC, students continued through the enrollment process with little difficulty. The biggest complaint was about the replacement section of the dorm being for seniors only.

The new three story dorm was reserved for girls only. This was a break in the tradition for the last few years where girls were on one floor and males were in the same building on another floor. More and more international and immigrant students and the problems at other colleges had contributed to this change at KCC.

I was expecting legal complaints or at least a complaint from the new Student Union President as soon as one was elected. But for now the college was safe and probably for the year because I doubted that any changes would be made until the next college year, no matter who complained.

Patti dropped me off at the GM dealer to pick up my new KCC Suburban. The paperwork was already done; I just had to grab the keys and leave. At least it was full of gas so I did not have to stop on the way home.

I had just pulled into the driveway when the agent came running up to the Suburban. "We think there has been a pipe bomb left near the fence. You need to move the vehicle over to the gym parking lot. Wait over there; a unit is on its way to check it out."

The girls had already moved all our cars over to the gym parking lot and were in the gym. The sheriff's department had stopped all traffic turning into Summer's Lane and had stopped traffic leaving before our house and gym.

We waited over at the gym with all the rest of the people while all the county, state and federal departments got all their equipment out.

They had one of those remote controlled tracked bomb inspection units loaded with sensors and cameras. The thing moved at a snails pace. After it made an initial inspection bomb sniffing dogs would check it out if there were any doubts.

They had laptops on the back of several cars monitoring the thing and looking at the camera. I thought 'what the heck' and walked over to the car where everyone was gathered and looked over Eric's shoulder at the camera feed.

By now the media was parked out on the edge of 50 along with their tower cameras held high. The reporters were raising cane with the troopers out at the entrance of the road trying to gain entrance.

The robot would inch ahead then the robotic arm with the camera would angle, raise and lower and then it would inch ahead again.

There was no doubt that it was a piece of 4 inch pump pipe with a welded cap on the end from the view I saw. The other end was what made it suspicious. There were what appeared to be wires and something else taped to the outside.

We waited as they moved the robot closer. Finally it was in a position so we could see the other end. Everybody breathed a small sigh of relief and I'm sure that the all the experts were disappointed that they could not use more of their special equipment.

The other end of the pipe was open and there were pipes in it, each getting smaller in size. Every plumber's truck had several pipes like this fastened to the side or sticking out the back; they used them to store smaller pipe and in making more space in the back of the truck.

Apparently this one was fastened with wire and taped to keep the pipe from sliding out of the wires. This one must have been on the truck a long time and the wire finally gave way.

One of the specialists in a heavily padded suit went over to give it a real look. He then picked it up out of the ditch and pulled the other pipes out of it for a good look inside.