Free Hollow World by Nick Pobursky Page A

work. He stuck his head almost entirely inside the wheel well and breathed in deeply through his nose. Earlier he had detected a faint but all-too-familiar scent when he neared the tire. Now he was absolutely positive as to the source of the odor.
    Gunpowder.
    The acrid, chemical aroma that subtly wafted through the air in the wheel well was unmistakable—Charlie had become intimately familiar with the scent over the course of countless hours at the firing range. There could be no misidentifying that scent. This bus hadn’t run over anything at all. The tire had been disabled by a small explosive charge. A gunpowder smell wouldn’t be present if the tire had been shot from a distance. A bullet large enough to shred such a massive tire would have passed through and caused further damage to the bus.
    Charlie had no doubt that it was an explosive charge, but to confirm his hypothesis, he pulled the shredded remains of the tire free from the rim and inspected it closely. He noted the smooth slice where the wheel had cleaved through the dense rubber after it had been dislodged, but finally the flashlight beam came across a ragged hole with melted rubber along its edge. Charlie ran his fingers around the hole and rolled the residue between his finger and thumb. Observing the black substance, he noted that it was an extremely fine, almost oily powder, similar to graphite shavings from a pencil. The residue was too fine to be rubber, though—it was certainly not a byproduct of the tire. No, this was the exact residue that Charlie had cleaned out of the barrels of his pistols after a long afternoon at the shooting range.
    What was the point of this? he thought. First he tells me to go to my hotel and rest for the night, then he blows out a tire on the bus that’s taking me there?
    Charlie, with all of his talents, still couldn’t make head or tail of this man. It was obvious that he was careful, and that he was extremely intelligent. He’d known the precise amount of explosive needed to disable the tire, while leaving no traces that the average person could detect. For all intents and purposes, this looked identical to any average tire blowout on any multi-axle, high-weight vehicle. Charlie ran his hand around the rim of the wheel, but he found no residue and could spot no burn marks anywhere. The amount of explosives this man used was beyond close—it was exact. Had Charlie not been a police officer, he would have never been able to detect the smell of the explosive agent over the heavy fumes of exhaust and the bitter tang of hot tire rubber.
    This unknown enemy knew that Charlie would realize the tire had met with an explosive end. He had known that the detective was too sharp to miss the evidence, however small. Why? What end could this man hope to achieve by allowing Charlie to discover the method? One thing was clear: this man meant for Charlie to discover the explosive.
    Charlie’s mind was left reeling, trying in vain to discover the man’s motive. As it stood, it seemed as if there was no motive at all. The entire thing exuded the details of a motiveless act committed by the insane, simply because they knew no better. All of the material evidence lent itself to a crime of passion; something that was done without thinking—without premeditation. Even as he thought this, Charlie knew it was absurd. This man clearly had a goal in mind, and the planning that had gone into this endeavor was extensive to say the least—this was clearly premeditated.
    Charlie felt disoriented. His training was kicking in, and because the situation was so painfully anomalous, it seemed as if the two halves of his brain were warring against each other. On one side stood the rational detective: stoic, calm and favoring reason over emotion. On the other was the everyman: passionate, emotional and reasonably confused. The two sides battled relentlessly for supremacy, warring for dominance over the detective’s thoughts. He couldn’t shake the