Heat Lightning

parking lot. A man’s face floated behind the dark glass, looking out at them; saw them checking out the kid.
    “He didn’t buy them,” the man said to Jenkins as they came through the door. He was standing behind the cash register, worried. “His pa is handicapped. He just came to pick them up.”
    Jenkins poked a finger at the guy and said to Virgil, “Carl Bunton.”
    Virgil nodded and said, “I wanted to thank you for helping me out last night.”
    “Glad to do it,” Bunton said. “But I don’t know where Ray went—he’s a goof, and I’m not responsible.”
    “He’s got to be hiding somewhere,” Virgil said.
    “Up at the res,” Bunton said.
    Jenkins shook his head. “It’s six hours up there. We were looking for him an hour after he left here. He didn’t get to Red Lake without being seen. There’s not enough roads.”
    “He knows every one of them, though,” Bunton said. “Once he gets back on the res, you ain’t getting him out. They got their own laws up there.”
    “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