Heat Lightning

pavilion, a few women clustered around a couple of picnic tables on the other side, the guys around two smoking barbecue pans. The afternoon breeze was coming at them, and Virgil could smell the brats and sweet corn, and the fishy scent of the river. Hunt unslung the pack, took out a pair of binoculars, looked over the gathering. After a moment, he said, “Huh,” just like he had in the car. A rime of skepticism.
    “What?” Virgil asked.
    “There’s a guy in a red shirt and a black do-rag . . . but he sort of doesn’t look exactly like the guy I saw.”
    “Let me look.” Virgil took the glasses and scanned the gathering, found the man in the red shirt, studied him, took the glasses down, and said, “We’re too far away. We need a closer look.”
    Hunt asked, “You want more backup?”
    “Ah . . . nah. If it’s him, and he sees me, he’ll either run or try to get the other guys to back him up. These other guys—they’re not bad guys. I don’t think they’ll have a problem with an arrest for assault on a cop. And if he runs . . . we’ll take him.”
    Anderson, the Grand Rapids cop, took a radio out of his pocket. “We’ve got a couple more guys around. We got a car across the bridge, we could block that.”
    “Do that,” Virgil said.
    ANDERSON MADE A CALL, then the three of them walked down to the pavilion. Something about cops, Virgil thought, got everybody looking your way. By the time they got to the group, most of the men were looking at them, but not the guy in the red shirt. He’d turned his back. Virgil let Hunt take the lead. He produced an ID and asked a guy, “Is there somebody in charge? We’ve had an issue come up. . . .”
    While he was talking, Virgil walked over to the barbecue to get a closer look at the man in the shirt. As he walked around him, the guy first looked away, then glanced up. Not Bunton. But Bunton had been there—the way the guy looked at Virgil, half defiant, half placating, meant that he was wearing the red shirt and do-rag as a decoy. Virgil could see it in his eyes.
    Virgil said, “Goddamnit,” and turned and walked back to Hunt, who was talking to a gaunt, gray-bearded man who must have been pushing seventy.
    “Darrell Johnson,” Hunt said when Virgil came up. “He’s the president.”
    Virgil stepped close to Johnson. “How long ago did he leave? Is he on his bike?”
    Johnson’s eyes shifted and he started, “You know . . .”
    “Darrell, don’t give us any trouble,” Virgil said. “There’s a felony warrant out on Bunton. I’m amazed you don’t know—it’s been all over the radio and television.”
    “We been ridin’. We didn’t know,” Johnson said.
    “It’s part of an investigation into the murders of four people— including the three guys whose bodies got dumped on the veterans’ memorials. You know about those? I guess the question is, are you guys only going to funerals? Or are you manufacturing them?”
    Johnson sputtered, “What’re you talking about? We didn’t know Ray had anything to do with that. He said it was traffic tickets.”
    “It’s murder, Darrell,” Virgil said. “When did he leave?”
    A couple more bikers had eased up to the conversation, including a woman with a plastic bowl of potato salad. Before Johnson could answer, one of the other bikers said, “I told you he was bad news. Something was up.”
    Johnson said, “Look, we came up here for this funeral. Those crazies are coming up, and we’re gonna get between them and this boy who got killed.”
    Virgil said, “I’m a veteran, Darrell. I appreciate what you do. But we got four bodies. We gotta deal with that.”
    Johnson nodded, and sighed. “He got out of here probably fifteen minutes after we rode in. He went out the back. He said he was meeting a friend here.”
    “You see the friend?”
    A few more of the bikers had stepped up. “I did,” one of them said. “He was driving a piece-of-shit old white Astro van. Said something on the side about carpet service. Somebody’s carpet-cleaning service. I think they put the bike inside of it.”
    Virgil nodded. “Thanks for that. Now, could you ask this guy in the red shirt to come over here? We don’t want to disturb anybody, but we need to talk.”
    The guy in the red shirt was named Bill Schmidt. “He said he was dodging parking tickets,” Schmidt said, not quite whining. “I don’t know anything about any murders. He said the cops had a scofflaw warrant out for him.”
    Schmidt