Heat Lightning

both. I’ll go iron my underwear.”
    “You wrote a paper, about twenty years ago, about Agent Orange, and how the Vietnamese tried to refoliate with kudzu,” Virgil said.
    “So you looked up my vita on the Internet,” Sinclair said.
    “I did,” Virgil said. “But I also read the paper in my senior seminar—I majored in ecological science—and I remembered it when I looked it up. We talked about it for quite a while; about the unexpected effects of good intentions.”
    Sinclair was pleased. “The paper was controversial, but shouldn’t have been—it was a good piece of work,” he said. “But we were coming out of the Reagan years, and the triumphalism, and nobody wanted to hear about the collateral damage we’d caused around the world with these crazy military adventures.” He leaned forward, intent now, jabbed his finger at Virgil in a professorial, mentor-to-student way. “I’ll tell you, Virgil, what this country needs more than anything in the world—more than anything—is a sane energy policy. That’s what I’m writing about now. Energy, environment, it all ties together. Instead, we get wars, we get military adventures, we spend two years fighting about whether a president got a blow job, a little squirt in the dark? I mean, who could really care? This country does everything but take care of business. We just . . . ah, that’s not what you’re here for. . . .”
    He settled back, looked tired. “So. What’re you here for?”
    “I mostly agree with everything you just said, to get that out of the way,” Virgil said. “But. Robert Sanderson got himself killed in a pretty unpleasant way, and his body was dropped on a veterans’ memorial....”
    Virgil detailed the Sanderson killing, and then the Utecht murder, pointing out the similarities, and how, two nights before the killing, Sanderson was seen arguing with two men in the street outside his house.
    “At least one of them was Ray Bunton. We’re looking for him, but haven’t found him yet. When we went down to the vet center to inquire, they told us that you’d been sitting in on their therapy sessions, the talk. And that you’d spoken to Bunton and Sanderson afterward. We’re wondering if they might have said anything that would cast some light on this murder.”
    Sinclair made a moue and, after a moment’s consideration, said, “I have to tell you, Virgil, it runs against the grain to talk to the police about people who aren’t around to defend themselves.”
    “This is not a political deal,” Virgil said.
    “Well, it probably it is, at some level. The veterans’ memorials and all.” Sinclair leaned back in his chair, hands behind his head, fingers interlaced. “But I recognize what you’re saying. I can tell you that there was something strange, something . . . tense going on between Sanderson and Ray Bunton. Did you . . . do you know if Sanderson ever went to Vietnam? Was he in combat?”
    “Not unless he was some kind of special forces guy, undercover. As far as we know, he worked in a headquarters company in Korea as a mechanic. I can’t believe . . . I mean, he was pretty young at the time. I don’t see how he could have gotten trained enough, important enough, to have a heavy cover that would have been kept all these years. So I don’t think he was there. His records say Korea, and that’s what he told his girlfriend. On the other hand, he was at this vets’ session . . .”
    “And he said something about the Viets being a bunch of frogs . . . meaning Frenchmen . . . that made me think he’d been there,” Sinclair said. “He said it in a way . . . I don’t know. Anyway, at that point, Bunton was staring him down, and Sanderson saw it and shut up. On the street, I was just coming out the door, and they were already out there, and I heard Bunton say something about ‘keeping your mouth shut.’ I was curious, I dug around, but they told me to take a hike. I’d let that Fonda shit out . . .” He grinned wryly. “Some of those guys’ll never forget. If Jane doesn’t outlive them, her gravestone’s gonna have urine stains all over it.”
    “Huh,” Virgil said.
    “Are you going to ask me where I was last night?”
    Virgil yawned and said, “Sure. Where were you last night?”
    “Asleep.” He laughed. “Mai and I ordered out, ate in—around eight o’clock—and I did some correspondence on the Internet, and Mai and I had a little talk about my health . . . and then we went to