Heat Lightning

the caller ID: “Number Not Available.”
    He clicked it: “Virgil Flowers.”
    “Flowers?” An old man’s voice, harsh with nicotine.
    “This is Virgil. Is this Ray?”
    “Yeah. Listen, man, some really heavy shit is going down,” Bunton said; slang from the sixties.
    “That’s what I want to talk to you about, Ray,” Virgil said.
    “Fuck that. I don’t know what’s happening, and neither do you. I’m digging a hole. Anyway, what happened is, two guys got shot up at the rest stop on I-35. The one up past North Branch. The one on the side going north. Maybe . . . half hour ago. I was there, but I didn’t have nothing to do with it. Some motherfucker come out of the woods with a fuckin’ silenced pistol and started mowing people down. . . . Jesus Christ, it’s like some kind of acid flashback . . .” And he made a huh-huh-huh sound as if he’d started trying to weep but couldn’t get it done.
    “Ray, Ray, stay with me, man. Two guys shot. Are they dead?” Virgil asked.
    “I think so, man. I think they’re gone. This motherfucker was a pro. I ran for my life, got the fuck out of there. I’m going to Wisconsin, man, you gotta get this motherfucker.”
    “Ray, you gotta know what’s going on,” Virgil said.
    “Fuck it, what I could tell you, that helps, is that the guy who got shot is John Wigge, he used to be a cop with St. Paul. Crooked motherfucker, too. Gone now. Gone now, motherfucker. They’re way down at the end, off to the side, there’s a, like, a shelter back in the woods. Dark, you can’t see shit back there.” After a second or two of silence, Bunton said, “I’m getting the fuck outa here.”
    “Ray, goddamnit, you gotta come in. We gotta talk. This looks really bad, man, you gotta . . .”
    “Fuck you guys. I’ll come in when you get this asshole,” Bunton said.
    And he was gone.
     
 
VIRGIL GOT on the line to the BCA: Shaver took the call.
    “We may have a homicide. Bunton says two guys got shot at a rest stop on I-35 up past North Branch.”
    “Let me look on the map,” Shaver said. Then: “Yep, I see it. Haven’t heard anything. I’ll talk to the Patrol, get somebody started. You going up?”
    “I’m on the way,” Virgil said.
     
 
VIRGIL WAS FIVE MINUTES from the I-35 junction in St. Paul, and fifty miles from there to the rest stop, running hard through the night, forty minutes, listening to Kid Rock singing “Cadillac Pussy.”
    Made him think of Mai: how in the hell could a woman who grew up in Madison, Wisconsin, as a dancer, for Christ’s sakes, not know about Hole? Courtney Love had been every girl’s hero—well, every girl of a certain kind, of which Mai was one. She must’ve been crying her eyes out when Kurt Cobain bit the big one. . . . Not know Hole ?
    Virgil looked at his watch on the way up: just after midnight. Fumbled out his cell phone, found Davenport’s cell number, and punched it.
    Davenport answered on the second ring. “You know what time it is here?”
    “Washington? Should be just after one o’clock,” Virgil said. “You’re always up late—what’s the big deal?”
    “Nothing, I guess.”
    “You know the band Hole?” Virgil asked.
    “Sure. Courtney Love. Pretty hot, twenty years ago.”
    “Thought you’d know,” Virgil said.
    Davenport said, “So—who’s dead?”
    “Bunton called me,” Virgil said. “He and a former St. Paul cop named John Wigge apparently got together at a rest stop off I-35. He says some guy, who he describes as a motherfucker and an asshole, shot and killed Wigge and another guy, whose name he doesn’t know. I’m on my way; we got the Patrol on the way.”
    “Where’s Bunton?”
    “He says he’s gonna dig a hole in Wisconsin,” Virgil said.
    “Gotta dig him out.”
    “Thanks for the tip.”
    “You know Wigge?” Davenport asked.
    “Yeah. Not well. He’d retired when I made detective. I ran into him a few times at crime scenes,” Virgil said.
    “I heard that Wigge might take a dollar or two,” Davenport said.
    “I heard that. Bad guy. That was my feeling. Made a lot of cases, though,” Virgil said.
    “He went to a security service . . .”
    “Paladin,” Virgil said.
    “That’s the one,” Davenport said. “Armed-response guys, celebrity bodyguards. You know who Ralph Warren is?”
    “The money guy? The real estate guy?”
    “Yes. He owns Paladin. The word was, when Warren was building that shopping center/condo complex on the river, the lowlife was screwing