Heat Lightning

mood—eventually choosing one that said “WWTDD.” He pulled on a blue sport coat, stuck his notebook in the pocket, smiled at himself in the mirror.
    Not bad, except for the black rings under his eyes. He checked his laptop, which was hooked into the motel’s wireless system, and found an e-mail from Shrake with the vet center’s address. Shrake had also run Sanderson through the FBI’s National Crime Information Center, and the feds had come back with two hits, both DWIs in the 1980s.
    After pancakes and bacon and a glance at the Star Tribune at a Country Kitchen, Virgil rolled along behind the last car in the rush hour, west on I-94, got off at 280 and then immediately at University Avenue. The vet center was in a long, old, undistinguished brown-brick building, between an art studio and an architect’s office. Virgil dumped the truck on the street and went inside.
     
 
THE WOMAN AT THE reception desk took a look at his ID and called the director, listened to her phone for a couple of seconds, then pointed Virgil down the hall. The director was a Vietnam-era guy named Don Worth. He must have been coming up on retirement, Virgil thought, mild-looking with his gray hair in a comb-over, brown sport coat and khakis with a blue button-down shirt, brown loafers. He shook Virgil’s hand after looking at his ID, pointed him at a chair, and said, “You need . . .”
    Virgil took the photograph of Sanderson out of his briefcase and passed it across the desk. “He was murdered last night. Another man was murdered a couple of weeks ago in New Ulm, in exactly the same way. The bodies were left on veterans’ memorials. We think Mr. Sanderson was coming to a veterans’ discussion group, or therapy group, with a man named Ray.”
    He explained briefly about the scene in the street and that Sanderson had suddenly started carrying a gun. He didn’t mention that the New Ulm victim was not a veteran. “So what I need is Ray’s name, and the names of the other people in the group.”
    Worth leaned back in his chair and said, “The way the VA views these kinds of things is, all the information belongs to the veterans themselves, including names, and we’re not allowed to release it.”
    “Under the circumstances . . .” Virgil began.
    Worth picked up his sentence: “I’d be an asshole not to give you something. I don’t know Ray, but I think I’ve seen him. I don’t know what group he’s in, either. But we have a volunteer coordinator named Chuck Grogan who could tell you. Chuck owns Perfect Garage Doors and Fireplaces. It’s about two miles from here, on Snelling.”
     
PERFECT GARAGE DOORS was a storefront with parking in what looked like a burned-out lot next door; part of a brick wall still stuck up out of the ground in back, and had been thoroughly tagged by artists named Owl and Rosso. Virgil walked in, under a jingling bell, and found Grogan peering at an old paper wall-map of the Twin Cities. “You know what the trouble is,” Grogan said without preamble, “is that the roads aren’t always where the maps say they are.”
    “That is one of the troubles,” Virgil agreed. Grogan was a square man with a gray mustache and sideburns, a big gut tucked into jeans, and motorcycle boots. If there wasn’t a Harley in his life, Virgil would have been astonished. He held up his ID: “I’m looking for a guy named Ray....”
     
 
THEY SAT IN Grogan’s office, a drywall cube ten feet on a side, in squeaking office chairs, garage-door-opener parts in the corners, and Virgil told him about it. Grogan couldn’t believe that Sanderson had been killed. “Like assassinated? Holy shit. What do you think happened?”
    “I don’t know. That’s why I want to talk to Ray, and the other guys in the group,” Virgil said. “See if anything came up in the group.”
    Grogan was shaking his head. “I’m the moderator of that group. Bob was only there three times, I think. He came with Ray. Didn’t say much, asked some questions.”
    “Why was he there, then?”
    Grogan made his hands into fists and looked down at them, turned them over, then said, “I think . . . he had a problem. In Vietnam. What it was, I don’t know. We don’t push that. If it’s going to come out, it’ll come out. And it usually does, you know? Even with these hard guys.”
    “You mean, like, atrocities or something?” Virgil asked.
    “No, no. But seeing death, seeing dead people, having people trying to kill you, maybe trying to