Heat Lightning

highway patrol office in Grand Rapids. Because of the potential for trouble at the funeral, the Grand Rapids office knew where the Liberty Patrol was—still in Duluth. “They’re eating down on the waterfront, making a little tour of it, picking up some Duluth guys.”
    “Do you have anybody traveling with them?”
    “Nope. We’re just talking to local deputies, who’re passing them through,” the Grand Rapids patrolman said.
    “Have them take a look at the plates,” Virgil said. He read off Bunton’s plate number. “Don’t be too obvious about it. We don’t want to spook him.”
    “If your guy is in there, we’d have trouble pulling him out,” the patrolman said. “Everybody’s cranked about this funeral. We could have a riot here tomorrow, if those church people show up. We’d rather not have a riot tonight, busting one of the riders.”
    “So take it easy. I think he’s riding up there as cover, so he can shoot the rest of the way up to Red Lake,” Virgil said. “I’m coming up, I’ll take him out. But keep an eye on him. If he makes a run for Red Lake, you gotta grab him.”
    “We’ll keep an eye out,” the cop said. “When’ll you get here?”
    “I’m driving and I got lights, so I’ll be coming fast—but it’s gonna be a while,” Virgil said. “I won’t catch them before they get there. Call me when you know anything at all.”
    “We’ll do that.”
     
 
HE CALLED Carol and told her where he was going; stopped at the motel, grabbed a change of clothes and his Dopp kit, but didn’t check out; stopped at a Cub supermarket and bought some premade cheese-and-meat sandwiches, a six-pack of Diet Coke, and a sack of ice for his cooler. He packed it all up and headed north on I-35, lights but no siren, moving along at a steady hundred miles an hour, past the rest stop where he’d been at midnight—still cop cars where Wigge had been killed—almost to Duluth.
    From there he hooked northwest through Cloquet toward Grand Rapids.
    On the way, he got two calls. The first came an hour and ten minutes out of St. Paul, the highway patrolman reporting that Bunton had been spotted by a deputy who’d cruised the whole pack as they left Duluth. “Not sure it’s him, but it’s his bike.”
    “I’m coming,” Virgil said. He was tired now, too long without sleep. Needed some speed, didn’t have it.
    When he was twenty minutes out of Grand Rapids, the Grand Rapids patrolman called again and said, “Your guy is still with the group. They just rode into town and we picked him out. It’s the guy in your pictures. He’s wearing a bright red shirt with a black do-rag on his head. Easy to track.”
    TOM HUNT, the state trooper, was waiting on the shoulder of the road just south of town. Virgil followed him into the patrol station, where Hunt transferred to Virgil’s truck, tossing a shoulder pack in the backseat. “Saw him myself,” Hunt said. Hunt was a sandy-haired man with wire-rimmed glasses, dressed in khaki slacks and a short-sleeved shirt. He looked more like a junior high teacher than a cop. “He wasn’t trying to hide. He was like the third guy in line.”
    “Well, nobody ever said he was the brightest guy in the world,” Virgil said.
    Hunt looked out the side window and said, “Huh.”
    Virgil grinned. “So what you’re wondering is, if he’s so damn dumb, how’d he kick my ass?”
    “Well, I figure, shit happens,” Hunt said, being polite.
    “Truth is, we were having a little talk—polite, not unfriendly,” Virgil explained. “And he’s an old guy. Got me looking in the wrong direction and sucker-punched me. He’s old, but he’s got a good right hand.”
     
 
THE LIBERTY PATROL had taken a block of rooms at an AmericInn, but after checking in had begun heading out to Veterans Memorial Park for an afternoon barbecue. Hunt directed Virgil through town to the park, which was built on the banks of the Mississippi. They left the car a block away, Hunt got the shoulder pack out of the backseat, and they ambled on down the street, cut through a copse of trees, onto a low mound covered with pine needles, the fragrance of pine sap all about them. Another guy was there, leaning on a tree. He turned when he heard them coming, and as they came up, Hunt said to Virgil, “Josh Anderson, Grand Rapids PD.”
    “He’s still down there,” Anderson said. “Got a beer, over by the barbecue.”
    The bikers were a hundred yards away, their bikes on one side of a