John Sandford - Heat Lightning

He slipped the elastic on the cover, flipped open the notebook, wrote, “cop.”

“You couldn’t see the other guy?” he asked.

“No. Not very well. But I got the feeling that he might have been an Indian.”

“You mean, like, a dot on the forehead? Or an American Indian?”

“American Indian,” Owen said. “I couldn’t see him very well, but he was stocky and had short hair, but there was something about the way he dressed that made me think Indian. He was wearing a jean jacket and Levi’s, and I think he came on a motorcycle and walked down here, because I heard a motorcycle before Bobby went out, and then, when he came back in, I heard a motorcycle pulling away. The cop guy came in a car.”

“What kind of car?”

She showed a small smile. She knew the answer to this one: “A Jeep. I had one just like it, my all-time favorite. A red Jeep Cherokee.” Then she turned away from him again, like the first time he lost her, and she said, “God, why did this happen?” and she shook a little, standing there with the coffee in her hands.

“You okay?” Virgil asked after a moment. He wrote “red Cherokee” in his notebook, and “Indian/motorcycle.”

“No, I’m not,” she said.

“I’m sorry,” he said. “You okay for a couple more questions?”

“Yeah, let me get this coffee going.” She spooned coffee into two china mugs, filled them with water, stirred, and stuck them in a microwave; the whole procedure was so practiced that Virgil would have bet she did it every morning with Sanderson. “Something else,” she said. “It’s possible that the Indian’s name is Ray. I don’t know that, but it could be.”

“Why Ray?” The microwave beeped and she took the cups out, and slid one across to Virgil. They both took a sip, the coffee strong and boiling hot, and Virgil said again, “Ray?”

Ray was an Indian, an Ojibwa, a Chippewa, from Red Lake. She’d never met him, but he was an old pal of Sanderson’s-Bobby never explained how they met-and the past three weeks they’d been going to vet meetings in St. Paul.

Virgil perked up. “Vet meetings?”

“Yes. Bobby didn’t tell me about those either. I mean, it’s starting to sound like he didn’t tell me about anything, but that’s not true. He could be a talkative man. But these men in the street, these meetings… it’s like he couldn’t talk to a woman about them. This was man stuff, like maybe it went back a long time.”

Virgil wrote “Ray/Indian” in his book, and “vet meetings.”

“When you say vet meetings,” he asked, “did you get the impression it was just a bunch of guys, a bull session, or was it more like group therapy or what?” Virgil asked.

“Group therapy. Maybe not exactly that, but more than a bull session.” She squinted at him across the work island. “I don’t know why Bobby would need vet’s therapy, though. He worked in a motor pool for some obsolete missile battalion. He said they’d shoot off their missiles, for practice, and they couldn’t hit this mountain that they used as a target.”

“In Korea.”

“Yes. Someplace up in the hills,” she said. “Chunchon? Something like that.”

“You know which vet center?” Virgil asked.

“I don’t know exactly, but it’s on University Avenue in St. Paul. He said something about parking off University.”

The meeting in the street, she said, had involved the cop-looking guy, the Indian, Sanderson, and a man who never got out of the car.

“The weird thing about that was, he was sitting in the backseat. Like the cop guy had chauffeured him out here. Like he was some big shot. Anyway, at one point, the window rolled down, the back window, and the cop guy got Bobby’s arm and tried to pull him over there, and the Indian guy pushed the cop guy away,” she said.

She was becoming animated as she remembered. “I thought there was going to be a fight for a minute; but then they all quieted down and they were looking around like they were worried that they disturbed somebody. Then they finished up and the Indian man went down the street, and the cop got back in the car and Bobby came in, and I said, ‘What the heck was all that?’ and he said, ‘Nothing. Some old bullshit. I don’t want to talk about it. Tell you some other time.’ That’s what he said, exactly. He was harsh about it, so I didn’t want to push him about it. I should of pushed.”

Virgil wrote it down, exactly.

Owen had an extra photograph of Sanderson, taken standing next to his boat, wearing a T-shirt and shorts. “I don’t need it back,” she said.

They talked for a few more minutes, but she had only one more thing, having to do with the bowel regularity of the dog. “It was like the train coming through town,” Owen said. “They were out the door every night, same time, within five minutes. Walked the same route. If you knew him, if you wanted to kill him…”

“I understand the dog was security-trained,” Virgil said.

“Sort of. You know, one of those Wisconsin places where they say their dogs are all this great, but you think, if they’re so great, why are they so cheap? I liked him, he was a good dog, but he wasn’t exactly a wolf.”

HE LEFT HER in the kitchen, staring at the future, went out the side door, took a look at the boat. Boats had always been big in Virgil’s life, and this was a nice one, a Lund Pro-V 2025 with a two-hundred-horse Yamaha hanging on the back, Eagle trailer, Lowrance electronics, the ones with the integrated map and GPS. Sanderson had fitted it with a couple of Wave Whackers, so he did some back-trolling; walleye fisherman, probably. Nice rig, well-kept, well-used.

Seemed like Sanderson had a nice life going for himself; nice lady, nice job, nice truck, nice fishing rig.

Virgil moved back toward the front of the house, saw a big man in a Hawaiian shirt coming along the street, limping a little. “Shrake?”

The big man stopped, peered into the dark. “Virgil?”

“You’re limping,” Virgil said, moving into the light.

“Ah, man.” Shrake was a BCA agent, one of the agency’s two official thugs. He liked nothing more than running into a bad bar, jerking some dickweed off a barstool in midsentence, and dragging his ass past his pals and into the waiting cop car. “I think I pulled a muscle in my butt.”

“Christ, you smell like somebody poured a bottle of Jim Beam on your head,” Virgil said.

“That fuckin’ Jenkins…”

Virgil started to laugh.

“That fuckin’ Jenkins set me up with a hot date,” Shrake said, hitching up his pants. “She was already out of control when I picked her up. Smelled like she’d been brushing her teeth with bourbon. She drank while she danced… then she fell down and I stupidly tried to catch her… Anyway-what should I do?”

“I don’t know,” Virgil said. And, “Why are you out here?”

“ Davenport called me up, said you might need some backup.” Shrake cocked his head. “He said you were banging Janey Carter when he called.”

“Actually, it’s Janey Small… ah, never mind. Listen, there’s not much to do. The locals are knocking the doors, we’re waiting for the ME-”

“The ME’s here,” Shrake said.

“Okay. But to tell you the truth, and I hate to say it, it looks professional,” Virgil said. “There ain’t gonna be much.”

“Yeah?” Shrake was interested. “Same guy as that New Ulm killing, you think?”

“Same guy,” Virgil said. “From looking at it, I’d say our best hope is that he only had two targets. I’ve got some stuff to check out in the morning, but this is gonna be tough.”

“Well, you know what they say,” Shrake said. “When the going gets tough, try to unload it on that fuckin’ Flowers.”