"THIS GUY IS A NATIONAL TRAGEDY"

By ELIZABETH GLEICK

In the blink of an eye, ATF agents found a piece of blown-away truck axle. In what seemed just moments later, Timothy McVeigh was in police custody. The first hours and days after the Oklahoma City bombing convinced many that justice would be swiftly done. Then real-life rhythms took over. Nearly three weeks after the blast, John Doe No. 2 is still at large, and the immensity of the task facing the feds has sunk in. "It's now down to basic investigation and luck," one official admitted. Said another federal lawman: "I think we may be a year putting this thing together."

For a while, it seemed as if there were as many potential John Doe No. 2s as clowns tumbling out of a circus car. An Australian tourist in Ontario was dragged from his car at gunpoint and questioned for four hours by authorities; a hitchhiker was detained in Ohio; a man driving through Georgia in a BMW with Oklahoma plates was stopped by a local sheriff's deputy. The most colorful detainees, Gary Allen Land and Robert Jacks -- two drifters whose travels mysteriously paralleled McVeigh's in the days before the bombing -- were arrested on Tuesday in Carthage, Missouri, and released 18 hours later. "They were morons, you know," Jacks said of the FBI last week. Still, the authorities continue to rely on tips pouring in to the FBI hot line at the rate of around 1,100 a day. "The American people are going to solve this case for us," says a top FBI man. With the help, that is, of more than 500 FBI, ATF and Customs agents, and police officers on the case in Oklahoma City, thousands of others who have been running down leads across the nation, support staff and lab technicians, and officials still on alert at the borders.

For now, investigators concede, they are not even sure what part of the country the second suspect is hiding in or whether McVeigh -- who broke his steadfast silence last week only to reject two lawyers provided by his family -- is mastermind or pawn. Are the Nichols brothers more deeply involved than they are now charged? Was John Doe No. 2 the ringleader? "Somebody did motivate them," an agent maintains. Furthermore, "he could easily motivate two or three more militia types to do this again somewhere else. You do this two or three times, we'd be chasing our butts. This guy is a national tragedy walking around."

Some bomb experts have concluded that McVeigh and his associates were eager amateurs. According to one investigator, "If they were truly mad bombers, they could have brought the building down, and they didn't do it." The feds also continue to pursue the theory that McVeigh was a member of a close-knit band of extremists impervious to such traditional law-enforcement tools as infiltration and electronic surveillance.

Although the involvement of the Nichols brothers -- who are still being held in Wichita, Kansas, on bombmaking charges -- remains unclear, the evidence linking them to the blast appears to be growing. Agents found a receipt for a ton of fertilizer in Terry Nichols' house; the purchase was made in Kansas under an alias, but Time has learned that a salesman picked out Terry Nichols from a lineup. The receipt has McVeigh's fingerprints on it. According to a government source, the same phony name was used to purchase a second ton of fertilizer. Agents have also found evidence that Nichols bought 55 gal. of diesel fuel.

The FBI has set up a command post in Kingman, Arizona, McVeigh's last known permanent residence, and will remain there for several months. More bits of information keep seeping out from the dusty desert town: McVeigh allegedly purchased fertilizer there in 1994, and his radical views and fascination with guns were widely known. "I still can't believe it," says Walter McCarty, a former Marine who talked politics several times with McVeigh and was his instructor in a weapons-training class. "If he's found guilty, I'd be the first one to volunteer to blow him away in a firing squad." Agents removed five boxes and two garbage bags of possible evidence from the trailer of Kingman resident Michael Fortier, an Army buddy of McVeigh's. Though Fortier has been interviewed and released, one of his neighbors, James Rosencrans, who also knew McVeigh, is now being held.

Meanwhile, Oklahoma City residents reached an emotional milestone on Friday. Workers finally abandoned their search for the last two missing bodies in the rubble of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building; soon the fbi too will halt its search of the dangerously unstable structure. About 60% of the Ryder truck has been retrieved in fragments that are being analyzed for bomb traces and fingerprints. So far, there has been no evidence in this debris that John Doe No. 2 perished in the explosion. Oklahoma City police chief Sam Gonzales admits to frustration about the pace of the investigation, even though he is briefed twice daily by the FBI. Still, Gonzales is convinced the feds will get their man. "I'm optimistic," he says. "I can't really discuss [why], but I'm confident." --Reported by Elaine Shannon/Washington, Patrick E. Cole/ Oklahoma City and Margot Hornblower/Kingman

With reporting by PATRICK E. COLE/OKLAHOMA CITY, MARGARET HORNBLOWER/KINGMAN AND ELAINE SHANNON/WASHINGTON