John Sandford - Heat Lightning

ON THE WAY up the driveway, Virgil got on the cell phone and called Davenport. “What happened?” Davenport asked as soon as he picked up the phone.

“We had a hell of a gunfight,” Virgil said. “We got three dead Vietnamese, and two got away, into Canada. We need to call the Mounties… hang on.” He turned to Queenen. “Did you call the Canadians?”

Queenen said, “I called the office, they’re gonna get in touch.”

Virgil went back to the phone. “I guess Bemidji’s getting in touch. There might be a little dustup coming there.”

“Virgil, tell me you didn’t cross the river,” Davenport said.

“I didn’t cross it by very much,” Virgil said. “I was in hot pursuit.”

Davenport pondered for a moment, then said, “You thought that if these desperate killers encountered any Canadians, they’d ruthlessly gun them down to cover their escape, and so, throwing legal nit-picking to the wind, you decided to put your own body between the murderers and any innocent Canucks. ”

“Yeah-that’s what I thought,” Virgil said.

Davenport said, “We had a good talk with Mead Sinclair. We put him in Ramsey County overnight until we decide what to do. I don’t think he’d run. But-we’ve got a couple of guys coming in from Washington to speak to us.”

“Who’s us?” Virgil asked.

“Rose Marie, me, you, Mitford, hell, maybe the governor,” Davenport said. “They’ll be here this afternoon. You gotta get down here. I’m going to call around, see if I can get you a plane out of International Falls. You got somebody you can give the scene to?”

“We’ve got a crew coming up from Bemidji, and there are two Bemidji guys here. There were three, but one got a scalp cut… One of our guys from Red Lake got dinged up…”

Virgil told him the whole story, a blow-by-blow. When he was done, Davenport asked, “Where’s this Raines guy?”

“Still at the hospital, I think. There were gunshot wounds, so he might be talking to the International Falls cops.”

Davenport said, “Okay… listen. Go talk to the deputies. Tell them to secure the scene. Keep them out of the house. Keep everybody out of the house. Then go in there and take a little look around. You were invited in… are there any file cabinets?”

Virgil said, “You’re an evil fuck.”

Davenport said, “Call me when you can move. I’ll find a plane.”

VIRGIL DID ALL THAT: brought the deputies in, made them feel like they were on top of things. Let them look at the bodies; kept them out of the house. Got Queenen to talk to the sheriff when he arrived.

A little over an hour later, Virgil was climbing into a Beaver float-plane that taxied right up to Knox’s dock. The plane felt like an old friend: Virgil had flown over most of western Canada in Beavers and Otters, and he settled down, strapped in. The pilot said her name was Kate, and they were gone.

Virgil hadn’t found much in Knox’s house. The big computer was used, apparently, for photography and games. There’d been another small desk in the main bedroom, with a satellite plug and a keyboard, and Virgil decided that Knox must travel with a laptop. In a leather jacket tossed on the bed, he had found a small black book full of addresses and phone numbers. There was no Xerox machine in the place, but he went and got his bag, took out his camera, and shot a hundred JPEGs of the contents, to be printed later. When he was done, he put the address book back in the jacket and tossed it back on the bed.

When Davenport had called about the plane, he’d asked, “How things go? You know?”

“Not much, but, um, I found like three hundred names and addresses in a private little book.”

“Not bad,” Davenport said. “For Christ’s sakes, don’t tell anybody about it.”

“Get me a plane?”

“Yup. Got you a bush pilot,” Davenport said.

VIRGIL TRIED TO chat with Kate, who was decent-looking and athletic and outdoorsy and had a long brown braid that reminded Virgil of all the women in his college writers’ workshop; but Kate, probably shell-shocked by being hit on by every fly-in fisherman in southwest Ontario, didn’t have much to say.

So Virgil settled into his seat and went to sleep.

KATE PUT him on the Mississippi across the bridge from downtown St. Paul. Davenport was waiting; Virgil threw him the backpack, thanked Kate, climbed up on the dock, and pushed the plane off: Kate was heading back north.

Davenport asked, “You okay?”

“Tired,” Virgil said. “Still alive. Anybody talking to the Canadians? Anybody seen Mai and the other guy?”

“We’re talking to them, they went down and recovered the boat, they’ve got some guys working the other side. But not too much.”

“Goddamnit,” Virgil said. “We were too goddamn slow getting across.”

“Nothing works all the time,” Davenport said. “On the whole, you did pretty damn good. Knocked it all down, settled it. Now, if we can get the Republicans in and out of town without anybody getting killed, we can all go back to our afternoon naps.”

Virgil handed him the manila envelope.

“What’s this?”

“Something to think about,” Virgil said.

DAVENPORT LOOKED AT the photos as they walked out to his car. When they got there, he put them back in the envelope and passed them across the car roof. “Hang on to these until I can figure something out.”

They were meeting the two guys from Washington in a conference room off Rose Marie’s office at the Capitol. “They want to talk about Sinclair-that’s all we know,” Davenport said.

“Is Sinclair still in jail?” Virgil asked.

“No. We let him out this morning. Put a leg bracelet on him, told him not to go more than six blocks from his house. He’s at his apartment now,” Davenport said. “There are some very strange things going on there-I’m not quite sure what. Some kind of inter-intelligence-agency pie fight, the old guys from the CIA against the new guys in all the other alphabet agencies.”

“Who’s Sinclair with?”

“The old guys, I think, but I’m just guessing,” Davenport said. “The thing is, he hasn’t asked for an attorney. He’s actually turned down an attorney, though he says he might ask for one later. He thinks the fix is in.”

“Is it?”

“Well, we’re having this meeting-”

“You can’t just throw dirt on the whole thing.”

“Maybe you can’t-but maybe you can. Who knows? Not my call.”

“We got bodies all over the place.”

“And we got three dead Vietnamese. There’s your answer for the dead bodies. If nobody mentions the CIA, why, then, should anybody get all excited about mentioning them?”

Virgil looked at Davenport and asked, “Where do you stand on this?”

Davenport said, “Basically, at the bottom of my heart: if you do the crime, you do the time. And I don’t like feds.”

ON THE WAY across the Mississippi, Davenport said, “You need to get over to Sinclair’s place. If you look behind the seat, you’ll see that laptop that Mickey carried into the meeting with Warren.”

Virgil twisted in the seat, saw the laptop, picked it up.

Davenport said, “Take it with you. What I want you to do is, while we’re all real hot, I want you to go into Sinclair’s place with the laptop turned on. You can stick it in your pack with those photographs-they ought to distract him from thinking too hard about you being bugged-and talk to him for a while. He seems to like you for some reason. Find out what he wants. Find out what he’d do. What he’d admit to. Might get him, you know, at home, when his guard’s down a bit.”

“Is that why you turned him loose?” Virgil asked.

“Maybe.”

“Did they take the bug out of the truck?” Virgil asked.