BIDNIJA, Malta — On Oct. 16, at 1:41 a.m., a cellphone SIM card was activated in this rural Maltese village. It was the moment, investigators say, when a remote-controlled bomb packed with TNT was armed and placed under the driver’s seat of this tiny country’s most famous, and most provocative, journalist.

The next afternoon, the journalist, Daphne Caruana Galizia, left her house and walked toward her gray Peugeot 108, intent on regaining access to her bank account. Her assets had been frozen as part of a libel case, one of 47 suits pending against her. This one stemmed from an article she had published on her blog about Malta’s economy minister, Christian Cardona, reportedly visiting a brothel in Germany while traveling on official business.

Her son Matthew heard a powerful explosion and felt the windows of the house shake. He raced outside and sprinted barefoot down the long, unpaved drive from their home to the main road, where a column of black smoke churned upward into the autumn sky. Shards of glass and plastic were everywhere, and, most gruesomely, chunks of flesh were strewn on the road, all accompanied by the droning blare of a car horn.