Heat Lightning

“Do you know what they were talking about? Why they were meeting?”
    “I don’t know any Ray Bunton,” Warren said. “Is this about the veterans thing?”
    “If you don’t know, how did you put that together?” Virgil asked.
    “John told me. He said he knew the guys who were killed,” Warren said. “That’s why he had Dave Ross hanging out with him.”
    “But why are you stacking up with security?” Virgil tipped his head toward the bodyguard still in the room. The other two had moved back to their posts, wherever they were. “Three guys around the clock?”
    Warren shook his head. “Nothing to do with that. I’m providing security for the convention. I’ve got two hundred guys in it, armed-response guys, bodyguards. I’ve got plans for the whole works right here in my briefcase, and the Secret Service requires, you know—they require that we keep it all under guard. The plans, me, everything.”
    “So this doesn’t have anything to do with Wigge?” Virgil was skeptical.
    “No, no. This is strictly the convention,” Warren said. “You think this guy, the killer—you don’t think he’d come after . . . people who know John?”
    Virgil shrugged. “We don’t know what he’s doing, Mr. Warren. So the security is not a bad idea. But you’re telling me that you didn’t know about this meeting, about what’s going on. Wigge never told you anything about it?”
    “I think it might go back to his cop days—he said the Mafia might be involved,” Warren said.
    “The Mafia.” Virgil let the skepticism show.
    “That’s what he said.”
    “In Minnesota?” Virgil asked.
    “The Mafia is here,” Warren said. “If you don’t believe that, I can’t help you.”
    “I know it’s here—I know both guys,” Virgil said. “Their average income last year was fourteen thousand dollars, from delivering pizza.”
    They talked for another five minutes, but Warren didn’t know what was going on; he wanted a few details about Wigge’s death, shook his head when Virgil told him about the torture.
    “Why did they torture him?” he asked.
    “They must think he knows something. They’re trying to find something out. I don’t know what that is.”
    “Well, I sure as shit don’t—”
    The conversation was interrupted by Virgil’s cell.
    Carol said, “We got a break, I think. I got a number for you, it’s a cop out in Lake Elmo.”
     
 
VIRGIL EXCUSED himself, walked out on the front lawn, and called Roger Polk, who was in Lake Elmo, all right, but turned out to be a Washington County deputy sheriff. “The Liberty Patrol is on a run up to Grand Rapids for a funeral—”
    Virgil said, “Wait, wait. The Liberty Patrol?”
    “Bunch of bikers who provide security for the funerals of guys who get killed in Iraq. You know—they’ve got these antiwar church goofs who show up at the funerals to scream at the kid’s parents? About how the kid deserved to die?”
    “Yeah, I read something about that,” Virgil said.
    “The Patrol backs them off. Anyway, they met yesterday after work, and rode up to Duluth, sixty of them, about, riding in a pack. They’re staying overnight in Duluth, and then they’re heading over to Grand Rapids. One of the guys’ wives is my sister-in-law, and she heard the thing on the radio, about Ray Bunton. She says that Ray Bunton was riding with them. She knows him. He’s gone before.”
    “All right, all right. That’s good, that’s terrific,” Virgil said.
     
 
VIRGIL SAID GOOD-BYE to Warren, trotted back to his truck, got out his atlas. Minnesota is a big state, but a good part of the northern third, where Bunton was heading, was vacationland: thousands of cabins on hundreds of lakes, surrounded by thirty thousand square miles of forest, bogs, and prairie.
    As long as Bunton stayed on a highway, it’d be possible to locate him. If he were headed into the Red Lake reservation, as his uncle said he was, he’d be a lot harder to find. There was a history of animosity between the Red Lake tribal cops and outside cops, especially when it came to arresting tribal members.
    And if Bunton weren’t headed specifically to Red Lake, if he was planning to stop at one of the tens of thousands of cabins scattered all over hell, all off-highway, he’d be impossible to locate.
    Best shot to catch him was on the highway and Bunton knew it—that was probably why he went up in a pack, using the other riders for cover.
     
VIRGIL GOT on the phone, talked to the