Heat Lightning

by John Sandford

  Bunton held up a finger, crawled across the floor to the boom box, and poked a button on it; the silence seemed to jump out of the ground.

  Bunton asked, “You a cop?”

  “Yeah. BCA. Trying to figure out what happened to Bob Sanderson,” Virgil said.

  Bunton dropped his chin to his chest, then shook his head, crawled a few more feet across the garage, got a jean jacket, and shook a pack of Kools and a beat-up Zippo out of the pocket.

  Bunton was gaunt, with bad teeth colored nicotine-brown under the brilliant work lights. Once-muscular arms, now going to flab, showed purple stains that had been tattoos. He lit a Kool after flicking the Zippo a few times, and the stink of lighter fluid sifted over to Virgil. Bunton took a drag and said, “Bob’s time ran out, you know. What the fuck.”

  “You got any ideas why? Or who stopped his clock?” Virgil asked.

  “No, I don’t, but I’d like to.”

  “You know a guy name of Utecht from down in New Ulm?” Virgil asked.

  “Ah, Christ, if it ain’t one thing, it’s another,” Bunton said, and Virgil felt the spark. Bunton knew Utecht: a connection.

  Bunton stood up and stretched, and Virgil noticed that he was wearing a leg brace. These were old guys: these guys were older than Virgil’s father. “Somebody told you that we were going to meetings together, huh? Me ’n’ Bob?”

  “Somebody,” Virgil said. “This all have something to do with Vietnam?”

  Bunton laughed, and then coughed, a smoker’s hack. When he finished, he patted himself on the chest with his cigarette hand and said, “Tell you what, pal—what’s your name?”

  “Virgil Flowers.”

  “No shit? Good name. But tell you what: I went to Vietnam when I was nineteen, and since then, everything has something to do with Vietnam. Lot of people like that, you know? They even go back there, like tourists, to see if it was real.”

  Bunton might have been part Indian, Virgil thought, but not too much: as in his photos, he looked more Scots than Indian—and a little like the Cowardly Lion in The Wizard of Oz.

  “Okay, I don’t understand that,” Virgil said. “I was in the military, but not in heavy combat. But I believe you.”

  “That’s nice of you,” Bunton said.

  “The thing is, I understand that Sanderson wasn’t in Vietnam,” Virgil said. “He was in Korea. Some guys have suggested I try to find out if he was in some kind of intelligence outfit and Korea was just a cover.”

  “Ah, jeez. Not Bob. Bob was . . .” Bunton had a wrench in his hand, and he dropped it into an open steel toolbox and interrupted himself to say, “Hand me that other wrench there, will you?”

  Virgil was standing beside the truck fender a couple feet from the old man, and he turned and looked at the hood and realized that there wasn’t a wrench there, and then he was hit by lightning.

  The impact was right behind his ear, and he went down. No pain, no understanding of what had happened, it could have been an electrical shock. He hadn’t quite understood that Bunton had sucker-punched him, and he tried to push up to his hands and knees, and then Bunton hit him again.

  There was a confused space.

  He heard the motorcycle start up, he remembered later, and then it was quiet, and then there was some talk, and then he tried to get up and there was another old man there, who said, “What happened, buddy? What happened?”

  And he fell down again and he heard the old man shout, “I think he’s having a heart attack or something. Call 911.” And the old man asked Virgil, “Where’s Ray?”

  THE AMBULANCE took him to Hennepin Medical Center, and he woke up in a bed with a bunch of cops around, including Shrake and Jenkins. Virgil asked, “What happened? Was it that fuckin’ Bunton?”

  Jenkins looked at Shrake and said, “He’s back.”

  Maybe he was back, but Virgil’s head felt like it was in New Jersey. “What do you mean, I’m back?”

  “For the past hour, you’ve been asking, ‘What happened?’ and we’d tell you, but the needle was stuck, and after we told you, you’d say, ‘What happened?’”

  “Ah, man,” Virgil groaned. “That goddamned Bunton. Did he get my gun?”

  “Nope. You’ve got your gun, you’ve got your wallet, got your ID—which is why we’re here,” Shrake said. “You got a lump on the back of your head and a contusion and a bruise, like you were sapped.”

  “What happened to my truck?” Virgil asked.

  “I don’t know,” Shrake said. “Where’d you leave it?”

  “Ah, man . . .”

  A nurse stuck her head in. “He’s back?”

  “He’s back,” Jenkins told her. “Get the doc.”

  “I’ve been out?” Virgil asked.

  “Not exactly out,” Shrake said. “The lights were on, you know, but nobody was home.”

  “Not the first time you heard that, huh?” Jenkins asked. “So: who do we kill?”

  “Hey—I’m naked under here,” Virgil said, peering under the sheet that covered him.

  “That’s cool—don’t have to show us,” Jenkins said.

  The doctor came and told him that he’d suffered a concussion of modest severity—“Not terrible, but not nothing, either. You got hit pretty damn hard. You remember the MRI?”

  “No.”

  “Well, we did an MRI,” the doc said.

  “I remember a loud noise. . . .”

  “That was it. Anyway, there’s no fracture, and we didn’t see any real organic damage, no bleeding, but you took a hit and got your circuits scrambled. We want you here overnight, to make sure that everything continues to work. Make sure that a clot doesn’t pop out of the woodwork.”

  “Is that likely?” Shrake asked.

  “It’s getting less likely the longer it goes, but he doesn’t want to be out in a canoe somewhere if it happens,” the doc told Shrake. To Virgil: “So, stay overnight, and we’ll look at you tomorrow morning and then you can go home.”

  “My head hurts. . . .”

  “We can fix that,” the doc said. “You could use some sleep, too.”

  HE WOKE EARLY, feeling tired, drugged, and disoriented. A nurse looked in on him, gave him a piece of paper, and asked him to read the small type. He did. She said, “What do you want for breakfast?” He ate and went back to sleep.

  Davenport called from Washington and said, “Sounds like you’re making progress. I told you that you’d find him.”

  “Is that what you thought when you got your ass shot? That you were making progress?”

  Davenport laughed, then said, “Wasn’t my ass, it was my leg. Anyway—are you okay? You sound okay.”

  “Got a headache, but I’m not gonna die,” Virgil said. “Can’t say the same for fuckin’ Bunton when I find him.”

  “Don’t shoot him right away,” Davenport said. “Ask him some questions first. Find out if he did Sanderson and Utecht.”

  “Ah, I don’t think he did—but I think he knows why they were killed. I gotta get outa here, he could be anywhere by now.”

  “Jenkins and Shrake called me last night after they talked to you. They’ve been tracking him—or trying to. They oughta be coming by to tell you what they’ve got. You still got your cell?”

  “Yeah.”

  “All right. You’re doing good, Virgil,” Davenport said. “Keep it up. I want this cleared out before I get back there.”

  TEN O’CLOCK: he had to wait until the doc got to him before he could check out, and the doc took his time. After a perfunctory check, he told Virgil to take it easy for a couple of days and to stay away from aspirin for a few more.

  “What happens if I don’t take it easy?” Virgil asked.

  “Probably nothing, except that your head will hurt more,” the doc said.

  Virgil was getting dressed when Jenkins stuck his head into the room. “You okay?”

  “I’m good to go,” Virgil said. A headache lingered, but he ignored it. “Just signed the insurance papers. What about Bun
ton?”

  “That house you were at? It belonged to Bunton’s father’s step-brother, so he’s like a step-uncle, if there is such a thing. He’s the guy who called the ambulance. We landed on him pretty hard, and what we got is, Bunton is running around somewhere on a Harley. We’ve got the plates, we’ve got the description, we’re stopping half the Harleys in the state. Haven’t found him yet.”

  “What about my truck?”

  “Shrake and I moved it up here, across the street in the parking garage. I’ll walk you over.”

  “Thanks, man.” Virgil pulled on his boots. “That fuckin’ Bunton. Wonder what the hell was going through his head?”

  “Maybe nothing,” Jenkins said. “I looked at his file—he ain’t exactly a wizard.”

  “He’d know better than to whack a cop,” Virgil said, standing up, tucking in his shirt. “If he goes to Stillwater for ag assault on a cop, he might not get out.”

  “So what’re we doing?”

  “I’m gonna go back and talk to this uncle; make some things clear,” Virgil said.

  BUNTON’S STEP-UNCLE, whose name was Carl Bunton, had been laid off by Northwest Airlines, Jenkins said, and was working as a clerk in a convenience store. Virgil got his truck and followed Jenkins out of the parking garage, down south through the loop, to a no-name food shop on Franklin. A kid, maybe twelve, came running out of the shop, carrying a pack of Marlboros, as Virgil and Jenkins crossed the parking lot. A man’s face floated behind the dark glass, looking out at them; saw them checking out the kid.

  “He didn’t buy them,” the man said to Jenkins as they came through the door. He was standing behind the cash register, worried. “His pa is handicapped. He just came to pick them up.”

  Jenkins poked a finger at the guy and said to Virgil, “Carl Bunton.”

  Virgil nodded and said, “I wanted to thank you for helping me out last night.”

  “Glad to do it,” Bunton said. “But I don’t know where Ray went—he’s a goof, and I’m not responsible.”

  “He’s got to be hiding somewhere,” Virgil said.

  “Up at the res,” Bunton said.

  Jenkins shook his head. “It’s six hours up there. We were looking for him an hour after he left here. He didn’t get to Red Lake without being seen. There’s not enough roads.”

  “He knows every one of them, though,” Bunton said. “Once he gets back on the res, you ain’t getting him out. They got their own laws up there.”

  “But he ain’t up there,” Jenkins said.

  “Have any friends down here? People who’d put him up? More relatives?”

  “Ray’s got friends all over—I don’t even know who. He’s been a biker for fifty years, pretty near. They don’t give a shit about cops.”

  “Huh,” Virgil said. “And you don’t have any idea . . .”

  Bunton shook his head. “No. But I can tell you, he’s going to the res. No doubt about that. Once he gets up in them woods, he’s gone.”

  THEY STOPPED AT Bunton’s house, and Virgil walked back along the driveway and peered through a garage window. The Blazer was still there, still up on the portable ramps. Virgil thought Ray Bunton might have snuck back in the night to get the truck, but he hadn’t. Back at the curb, he said good-bye to Jenkins—“See you at the office”—then called Sandy.

  “How bad were you hurt?” she asked.

  “Ahhh . . . Anyway, this Ray Bunton guy. Check his latest arrests, see if anybody else was arrested with him. I’m looking for friends. I’m especially looking for a friend who might be able to get him a car, or loan him one.”

  By the time he got back to the office, Sandy had five names, with more to come. Virgil started calling local law-enforcement agencies, asking them to send cops around to check for Bunton. Nothing happened, and Virgil kept pressing until evening.

  Mc DONALD, THE COP from Bemidji who knew some Mounties, called halfway through the afternoon with information about Tai and Phem, the two Vietnamese-Canadian businessmen.

  “Unless you’ve got a specific string to pull, they’re pretty much what-you-see-is-what-you-get. Both were born in the Toronto area, no known criminal or histories, both have worked with the Canadian government in dealings with the Vietnamese, and because of that, they’ve both undergone security checks and have come up clean. Not that they’re perfect—they’ve both been involved in disputes with Canada Revenue. That’s the Canadian IRS. But the disputes are civil, not criminal.”

  “So they’re clean.”

  “That’s not what I said. What I said is, nobody knows the illegal stuff that they’ve done.”

  “You’re a cynical man, McDonald.”

  AT SIX O’CLOCK, with nothing moving and the office emptied out, he took stock: he smelled bad, he thought, his head still hurt, he wasn’t allowed aspirin or alcohol or caffeine, and he wasn’t finding Bunton. He had a dozen police agencies checking Bunton’s friends, and they all had his phone number; driving aimlessly around in the streets wouldn’t help. He fished Mead Sinclair’s card out of his pocket, stared at it for a moment, then dialed.

  Sinclair answered, and Virgil identified himself and asked, “Your daughter around?”

  “Oh, for Christ’s sakes.” Then Virgil heard Sinclair shout, “Mai—it’s the cops.”

  VIRGIL WENT BACK to the motel, cleaned up, put on fresh jeans and an antique Hole T-shirt and a black sport coat. With his usual cowboy boots and his long blond hair, he did look a little country, he thought, and not too drugstore, either. He’d told her jeans were appropriate, and whatever else she had.

  ON THE WAY to Sinclair’s place, his contact at the DEA called: “I got nothing. I talked to the FBI guys, and they got nothing. Nothing about lemons, nothing about serial vet murders. The guy I talked to wants you to drop him a line.”

  “You got my e-mail?” Virgil asked.

  “I do.”

  “Give it to the FBI guy, tell him to e-mail me. I’ll pop something back to him.”

  MAI HAD GONE WITH a man’s white dress shirt, unbuttoned about three down, jeans, and sandals, and had pulled her hair into a ponytail. She looked terrific, her heart-shaped face framed by the white collar, and country enough.

  “Dad’s writing,” she said, quietly, at the door. Most of the lights in the apartment were out.

  “He works at night?” he asked. He always asked when other writers worked.

  “And early. He gets up at dawn. Always has. He says he can get five hours of work done before anybody else is up. He’s still really angry with you, by the way. He doesn’t believe you found those Vietnamese by calling Larson.”

  “Well—suspicious old coot.”

  THEY TALKED ABOUT personal biography in the truck—growing up in Madison, Wisconsin, for her, in Marshall, Minnesota, for him. She told him about working as her father’s editorial assistant, about looking for work as an actress, as a dancer. He told her about being a cop; about killing a man the year before.

  “My father hates killing,” she said. “He spent his life fighting the idea of killing as a solution to anything.”

  “I hope he doesn’t find out about me calling up the intelligence guy,” Virgil said.

  “What? You called the CIA?” Eyebrows up.

  “No, no,” Virgil said. “I called the Vietnamese intelligence guy at their embassy in Ottawa. You know—their spy guy.”

  “Oh . . . you did not.”

  “Yes, I did,” Virgil said, glancing over at her. “His name was something like, you know, Wun Hung Low.”

  “It is not, and that’s racist,” she said.

  “Sorry. His name was, uh, Hao Nguyen,” Virgil said. “He was pretty surprised to hear from me, I can tell you.”

  She brushed it off. “You called a spy?”

  “Yup. He told me to get lost.”

  She had her phone out, dialed, waited a minute, then said, “Hey, Dad. Virgil and I are on the way to the dance club. He just told me that he called some spy up in the Vietnamese embassy in Ottawa. A
bout you. Yeah. He said ‘One Truck Load’ . . . No, no, he said, Hao Nguyen. Yeah. Yeah, I bet. Okay, I will.”

  She hung up, and Virgil said, “Boy, I sure hope he doesn’t hear about that.”

  She said, “Now he’s really pissed.”

  “You said, ‘I will.’ What was that?”

  “He wants me to see what else I can worm out of you,” she said.

  “Well, hell,” Virgil said, “I am the talkative sort.”

  HE TOOK HER TO One-Eyed Dick’s Tejas Tap in Roseville, where they had dancing and live music. They lucked into a booth, she got a Corona with a slice of lime, he ordered a lemonade. “You have a problem with alcohol?” she asked.

  It took him a second, then he said, “Oh. No. Not that way. I got whacked on the head last night.”

  He told her about it, dramatizing a little because she looked so good, and she said, “The same guy you were telling Dad about? The Indian guy?”

  “Yeah. I don’t know what’s up with him. He figures in here somehow. Anyway, he’s running. I’ll find him.” He took a sip of lemonade.

  “Why are you wearing a shirt that says, ‘Hole’?”

  “Just another band,” he said. “C’mon. Let’s dance.”

  So they danced, cheek-to-cheek, and she was a perfect dancer, like a warm, well-rounded shadow. He wasn’t bad himself, he thought. One-Eyed Dick’s didn’t do much in the way of line dancing, a fad that had faded, but still did some, including a beginner’s electric slide, and she caught on instantly and he had her laughing hard with it, dark eyes sparkling. Watching her, he thought he might give quite a bit to see her laughing over the years. But then, he’d had that same thought with three other women.

  While he was at the bar, getting another lemonade and beer, he watched her talking excitedly on her cell phone. She was putting it away when he got back, and she said, “Girlfriend from Madison. She found my perfect life-mate.”

  “Dancer?”