John Sandford - Heat Lightning

“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. About 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?”

“Psychiatrist,” she said, and they both laughed, and she said, “She was serious, too.”

She probed on murder investigations: how he did them, why he did them. Asked if cops still beat people up to get information.

“I wouldn’t,” he said. “It’s torture. Torture’s immoral.”