Heat Lightning

by John Sandford

  “Huh,” Virgil said.

  “Are you going to ask me where I was last night?”

  Virgil yawned and said, “Sure. Where were you last night?”

  “Asleep.” He laughed. “Mai and I ordered out, ate in—around eight o’clock—and I did some correspondence on the Internet, and Mai and I had a little talk about my health . . . and then we went to bed.”

  “Your health?”

  Sinclair tapped his chest. “Had a nuclear stress test yesterday morning. Starting to show what the cardiologist calls ‘anomalies.’ I eat eggs, I eat bacon, I drink milk. They want me to eat air with some plastic spray on it.”

  “So how bad? Bypass?” Virgil asked.

  “Not yet—but that could be down the road. We’re gonna do an angiogram and figure out what to do. They could put a stent in,” he said. “That’s why Mai’s up here—she’s trying to get me to go home to Madison, where she can keep an eye on me.”

  “Hmmph. Makes me nervous just hearing about it. I do like my bacon,” Virgil said. Then he asked, “Why are you here, anyway? In St. Paul? You’re a big shot in Madison.”

  “A couple reasons. Teaching, mostly. I was drying up in Madison. I had this gig, I’d do my gig, and it was like I was teaching from reflex. Grad students, small classes.” Virgil was listening, but thought it all sounded rehearsed. Scripted. Sinclair was saying, “So I had this seminar, and one day we sat working through class, and every one of the students yawned at one time or another. I started noticing. So—I took a year’s leave. Got a teaching job here: I teach nothing but freshmen and sophomores, they ask off-the-wall questions, they push me around, they’ve got no respect. It’s working—it’s like fresh air.”

  “Why would the University of Minnesota be any different than Wisconsin? Except that we don’t smoke as much dope?”

  “I’m not teaching at Minnesota. I’m teaching at Metro State,” Sinclair said, amused. “I went way down-market.”

  “All right,” Virgil said. “You said a couple of reasons. What’s the other one?”

  “You know Larson International, the hotels? Headquarters down in Bloomington?”

  “Sure. I’ve got a frequent-guest card for Mobile Inn,” Virgil said. “Owned by Minnesota’s fourth-richest billionaire.”

  Sinclair nodded. “They’re trying to build some big resort hotels in Asia—Vietnam, Thailand, maybe even China. I’m consulting with them on the Vietnam project. I’ve still got a bit of a reputation there. The idea is, I can help them with government contacts and so on.”

  “Can you?”

  “Yes. I speak the language and I know how things work,” Sinclair said. “You know, who gets greased, and how heavily. So they get their money’s worth.”

  MAI CAME BACK and took a chair, swiveled it back and forth with her excellent legs. “I looked it up on the Net—WWTDD. What Would Tyler Durden Do. Fight Club. The first rule of Fight Club is that you don’t talk about Fight Club.”

  Virgil and Sinclair looked at each other, then Sinclair turned back to his daughter, a puzzled look on his face. “What are you talking about?”

  “Aww . . .” She looked at Virgil. “I really need to go dancing,” she said. “I signed up for a dance class here, but it’s all . . . dance. I need to go to a club. You know the clubs?”

  “I know a few.” Also a few that he’d have to stay away from, like the ones that Janey went to. “You ever do any line dancing?”

  She was stricken. “Oh, no. You are not serious. . . .”

  VIRGIL GOT AROUND to asking Sinclair where he was the night of Utecht’s murder, and Sinclair got up, came back with a leatherette calendar, put on a pair of reading glasses, paged through it, and said, “Same thing as with last night’s. I was here, asleep.”

  “The best alibi of all,” Virgil said.

  “Why’s that?” Sinclair asked, his crystal blue eyes peering over the top of the half glasses.

  “Because it can’t be broken,” Virgil said.

  Sinclair looked at Mai. “He’s smarter than he looks.”

  “Thank God,” she said. “He looks like he ought to be waxing his surfboard. If they’ve got surf in Iowa.”

  Virgil laughed again, said, “Y’all are pickin’ on me.”

  “I like the way that hick accent comes and goes,” Sinclair said to Mai. “It’s like a spring breeze—first it’s here, and then it’s gone.”

  “Okay. The hell with it. I don’t even know why I’m talking to you.” Virgil pushed off the chair, but Sinclair held up a hand. “So Sanderson and this other man were executed? Is that what you’re saying?”

  “That’s what it looks like.” Virgil hesitated, then said, “One other thing—they both had lemons stuffed in their mouths.”

  “Ah . . . shit.” The word sounded strange, and peculiarly vulgar, coming from Sinclair, with his aristocratic manner.

  “What?”

  Sinclair glanced at Mai. “When the Vietnamese execute a prisoner—a political prisoner, or even a murderer—they’ll gag him by stuffing a lemon in his mouth. Hold it there with tape. Duct tape. Keeps them from talking while they’re walking out to the wall.”

  “That’s pretty goddamn interesting,” Virgil said.

  Mai rolled her eyes. “And probably an urban myth.”

  “What would you know about it?” Sinclair snapped.

  His daughter turned her face, embarrassed by the sudden pique. “It’s too dramatic, it’s too weird. Why would anybody do something like that? It’s got the earmarks of a legend; if you’d studied literature, you’d know that.”

  “Ahh . . . They did it, take my word for it,” Sinclair said irritably. To Virgil: “We don’t have anything to do with any of this, but it sounds to me like it goes back to Vietnam. Somehow. I’d take a good close look at Sanderson. See what unit he was in. See if there’s anything blacked out in his file. Some of these Vietnam vets, they’re crazier than a barrel of wood ticks. They’re getting old and ready to die. You might have an old rogue killer with an agenda. He might be good at it, if he was Phoenix, or something. . . .”

  “I heard about Phoenix when I was in,” Virgil said. “You’d hear about it from these old sergeants-major. Sounded like there was an element of bullshit to it.”

  “Of course there was! Of course there was!” Sinclair said, leaning forward and rapping on the table with his knuckles. “But there’s a core of reality to it, too. We did have assassins. We did murder people in their homes. We did hire men with silencers and guns and no useful skill but murder. We even had a name for it—wet work! Look it up! Look it up!”

  Virgil exhaled, stuck his notebook in his hip pocket, and said, “I better find Ray.”

  Sinclair relaxed, suddenly affable again, and he smiled and said, “Good luck to you.”

  MAI TAGGED ALONG to the front door, walking close to Virgil’s side. He said, “I would be delighted to take you dancing anytime you want, ma’am, except not tonight, because I gotta find this guy.” His words were tumbling out, a little confused, but that was one of his more endearing traits, he’d been told, so he worked it. “I can’t make any promises about tomorrow or any other night, because of this murder thing, but if I could call you about six o’clock, some night when I’ll know what I’m doing . . .”

  “I’m usually home by then,” she said. “You’re a good dancer?”

  “I gotta couple moves,” Virgil said. He tried to look modest.

  “I noticed that, but I was talking about dancing,” she said. They both laughed and Virgil said, “I got your number someplace.”

  “Here.” She stepped over to an entryway table, pulled open a drawer, and took out a pen. Taking Virgil’s hand in hers, she wrote a number in his palm, a process so erotic that Virgil feared erective embarrassment. He left hastily, Mai in the doorway, watching him all the way through the front door, smiling.

  If Jesus Christ had a girlfriend, Virgil thought, that’s what she’d look like.

  7

  VIRGIL WALKED d
own to his truck, climbed in, thought about it for a minute, then drove around the block so the back of the truck was looking down at the Sinclairs’ condo. He shut the truck down, got his laptop, phone, camera, and an oversized photography book called Photojournalism , and crawled into the back.

  Minnesota allows only a certain level of window tinting in cars, so that highway patrolmen won’t walk into a gun they can’t see. Virgil’s was twice as dark as the permissible tint, which was okay for police vehicles used for surveillance. Virgil didn’t use the 4Runner much for surveillance, but since it was always full of fishing tackle or hunting gear or camera equipment, the heavy tint worked as insurance, keeping the eyes of the greedy out of the back of his truck.

  And it also worked for surveillance, as intended.

  Sitting in the back, he was invisible from the outside, and a camping pillow made a comfortable-enough seat. If he’d jolted Sinclair in any way, then he might make a move. If not, he had things to do, which could be done from the back of the truck.

  He called Carol and asked, “So where’s Ray Bunton?”

  “Can’t find him. The cops at Red Lake are all out working, there’s nobody to talk to us. But they’re gonna call back,” she said.

  “Check them every five minutes,” Virgil said.

  That done, he opened the photojournalism book to the section called “Techniques of the Sports Shooter” and settled in for a little study, trying out things with his new Nikon as he did it.

  The good thing about the new digital cameras, like his D3, was that you could see the shot instantly. He was working on his panning technique, shooting the occasional passerby, when Mead Sinclair walked out of his house, looked both ways, and then turned toward Virgil’s truck.

  Virgil took a shot or two as Sinclair came up—couldn’t hurt to have a couple of current shots—and went on past. Sinclair never looked at the truck. He seemed to be talking to himself, or maybe singing to himself, and he had a hand-sized spiral notebook in one hand, with a pen clipped to it, and up the block, he stopped and made a note, then continued on. An intellectual, Virgil thought.

  At the end of the block, Sinclair crossed the street and started along the next block, and Virgil watched him through the windshield. At the end of the second block, he wrapped around to his right, headed out to Grand Avenue.

  Virgil followed in the truck, crossed the street that Sinclair had taken, saw him walking up the block. Virgil took the opportunity to back up a bit, watched him in a narrow gap between the edge of a house and a tree trunk. Sinclair crossed the street at the corner, carefully looking both ways before he crossed, and a moment later was out of sight again.

  He could lose him right there, but Virgil took the chance and drove on another block, then right, to the end of the block, and eased out, looking down the block, and saw Sinclair crossing Grand, heading into a restaurant.

  Sinclair had just eaten, he’d said. Virgil hadn’t been invited. . . . So why the restaurant? Virgil parked, waiting to see who he might come out with—or who might come out that was interesting.

  Nobody came out but Sinclair, a minute or so after he went in. He recrossed the street, then turned away, down the block, retracing his steps: might be headed home. Virgil made a quick turn, went down to the end of the block, found a bush he could stop behind. A minute later, Sinclair appeared a block away, crossed the street again, and headed back toward his house.

  Virgil said, “Shoot,” and wrestled the truck in a quick U. Had he missed somebody? He should have waited outside the restaurant.

  Nobody came out for ten minutes, and then it was two elderly ladies. Another five minutes, and two fat guys in golf shirts, one picking ferociously at his teeth with a toothpick. They got into a Cadillac and drove away; they seemed unlikely.

  Virgil decided to look for himself. Walked down to the restaurant, stood at the hostess stand for a moment, checking out the ten or twelve people in the booths. They all looked unremarkable, and seemed focused on food or conversation. The hostess, who might have been a college girl from Macalester, came over and said, “One?”

  “Ah, I was here to meet a guy, but I’m late, and I’m afraid I might have missed him. Good-looking older guy, still blond . . .”

  “Oh—the professor?”

  “Yeah. That’s him,” Virgil said.

  “He was here, but made a call and then he left again. He might be trying to call you.”

  “Thanks,” Virgil said. He backed away, glanced toward the rest-rooms, saw the old-fashioned black coin phone on the wall. “I’ll try him again on the phone.”

  He went back and looked at it: the phone dial showed a number, and he jotted it down in the palm of his hand, under the number that Mai had written there.

  Outside again, he thought about it. Sinclair had just walked four blocks to a cold phone to make a call. Interesting. . . .

  He noted the time and called Carol. “See if you can get a subpoena for the phone records for a pay phone at Stern’s Café, on Grand. Here’s the number . . .”

  “You want me to check informally first?” She meant that Davenport knew a guy who could tell them whether a subpoena would be a waste of time.

  “If you could. Get in touch with Red Lake?”

  “Not yet; still trying.”

  VIRGIL RANG OFF, looked at the phone for a moment, groped in his briefcase for his black book, punched in a number.

  “Harold; it’s Virgil Flowers in Minnesota.”

  “Yeah, Virgil. What’s up?”

  “I got a killer who’s executed two older guys, left their bodies on vet memorials, with lemons stuck in their mouths. Killed them with a .22, two shots, maybe silenced. You ever hear of anything like that, with the cartels, the mob, or anybody?”

  “New one on me,” Harold Gomez said. He was an agent with the DEA. “You got weird shit up there. I always said that.”

  “If you have a line into the FBI, into that serial-killer unit, whatever it is . . . could you check the lemon thing? Without burning up any of your personal credit?”

  “Sure. I know a guy who knows those guys,” Gomez said. “How fast you need it?”

  “Well, if you get a hit, I need to know right away,” Virgil said. “The killer guy, we don’t know that he’s left town. If he’s crazy, if it’s business, or what it is. If he’s got a list, it could get ugly.”

  “I’ll call—but to tell you the truth, it sounds more like some kind of goddamn Russian thing or Armenian or Kazakh. They’re into the rituals and warnings and shit. The mob, those assholes just shoot your ass and bury you in the woods with Jimmy.”

  “Jimmy?”

  “Hoffa.”

  “Oh, yeah. Listen—another guy told me that the Vietnamese executioners sometimes stick lemons in the mouths of the people they’re going to execute,” Virgil said. “Like gags. If you can find any reference to that . . . maybe old Vietnam guys or something?”

  “Sounds kinky. Let me check,” Gomez said. “You on your cell phone?”

  “I am. One more thing, Harold? See if the guys in the serial-killer unit are looking at any chain of old veteran deaths. Even without lemons and memorials.”

  “Sure.”

  “I owe you, Harold.”

  HE CLICKED OFF, got ready to move, but Carol called back.

  “We talked to a guy in Red Lake who knows Bunton, and they’re out looking for a guy to call you back. Sandy dug up some pictures of him, she e-mailed them to you, along with every file she can find on him. Income tax, all of that. She can’t get into the military records, but there’s a reference in one of his DWI files that he was treated for alcoholism at the Veterans Administration Hospital, and that he did service in Vietnam . . . so he’s ex-military.”

  “All right. I sort of knew that, but it all helps.”

  HE WAS FIVE MINUTES from a Starbucks, where he had an online account. He got a white chocolate mocha Frappuccino, found a table, and brought the computer up as he sipped.

  The photos of Bunton showe
d a hard, square-looking man, always in T-shirts. In one photo, he glared at the camera, a headband tight around his forehead, an eagle feather dangling over one ear. With his pale eyes, he didn’t look particularly Indian, Virgil thought—more like an IRA dead-ender. Was Bunton an Irish name? Or maybe Scots? Didn’t sound a hell of a lot like Ojibwa.

  Whatever.

  The rest of the Bunton file told him what he’d already guessed—Vietnam, hanging out, motorcycles, alcoholism, dope, and sporadic employment involving automobile parts.

  When he finished, Virgil shut down the computer, looked at his watch.

  Goddamn Bunton.

  He stood up to leave, but his phone rang. Carol. He sat down again, flipped it open, and said, “Yeah?”

  “Informally, the phone call went to the Minneapolis Hyatt. I’ve got the number, but not the room. . . .”

  THE MINNEAPOLIS HYATT is all tangled up in the Skyway system, and Virgil, operating on Kentucky windage, put his truck in the wrong parking ramp and debouched into the Skyway, not realizing that he wasn’t where he thought he was. He spent ten minutes running around like a hamster in a plastic habitat, before he found a map and realized his mistake.

  The hotel’s lobby was empty, but the Hyatt desk was being run by a young woman who was far too sophisticated and generally out there to be running a hotel desk. Virgil had the uneasy feeling that if he asked her to connect a phone number to a room and a name, she’d call a manager, who might want to see a subpoena . . . blah-blah-blah.

  He looked around and saw an elderly rusty-haired bellhop sitting on a window ledge, reading a sex newspaper called Seed, which, Virgil happened to know, was the publishing arm of an outlaw motorcycle gang.

  Virgil went over and sat down next to him. The bellhop looked like a model for the next Leprechaun horror film, with a nose the size of a turnip and a bush of red hair shot through with gray.