Heat Lightning

said Bunton was headed for the res, that a cousin had picked him up. He asked, “Are you gonna arrest me?”
    “Not unless I find out you’re holding something back,” Virgil said. “This is serious stuff, Bill.”
    “He said traffic tickets . . .”
    Virgil looked at Hunt: “He sucker punched me again.”
     
 
VIRGIL LEFT Hunt and the others in Grand Rapids, put the truck on Highway 2 and headed northwest toward Bemidji, and called into the BCA regional office. The agent in charge, Charles Whiting, said he would touch base with every cop and highway patrolman between Grand Rapids and Red Lake.
    “We can’t play man-to-man, we’ve gotta set up a zone defense,” Virgil said. “We need to get as many people as we can, sheriff’s deputies and patrolmen and any town cops who want to go along, get them up on the east and south sides of Red Lake.”
    “ ’Bout a million back roads up there.”
    “I know, but hell—he’s trying to make time, he won’t be sneaking around the lakes, he’ll try to get up there quick as he can. If we flood the area up there, keep people moving, we should spot him.”
    “Flood the area? Virgil, we’re talking about maybe twenty guys between here and Canada.”
    “Do what you can, Chuck. I’m thinking he probably won’t risk Highway 2 all the way, there’ll be too many cops,” Virgil said. “He’d have to go through Cass Lake and Bemidji—I’m thinking he’s more likely to take 46 up past Squaw Lake and then cut over.”
    “What if he’s not going to Red Lake? What if he’s going to Leech Lake?”
    “Then he’s already there and we’re out of luck. But he’s enrolled at Red Lake, that’s where his family is, that’s where they know him. . . . You get the people up there, I’m getting off 2, I’m turning up 46.”
    Virgil figured Bunton and his cousin had a half hour head start. They’d be moving fast, but not too fast, to avoid attention from cops.
    Virgil, on the other hand, running with lights and occasionally with the siren, tried to keep the truck as close to a hundred as he could. He didn’t know exactly how far it was from Grand Rapids to Red Lake, but he’d fished the area a lot and had the feeling that it was about a hundred miles by the most direct route. Longer, if you were sliding around on back roads.
    Did the math; and he had to move his lips to do it. He’d take a bit more than an hour to get to Red Lake, he thought. If they had a thirty-mile jump on him, and were going sixty-five, and went straight through . . . it’d damn near be a tie. Even closer, if they were staying on back roads, where it’d be hard to keep an average speed over fifty.
    Red Lake, unlike the other Minnesota reservations for the Sioux and Chippewa, had chosen independence from the state and effectively ran its own state, and even issued its own license plates and ran its own law-enforcement system, including courts, except for major crimes. And for major crimes, the FBI was the agency in charge.
    In addition, the relationship between the Red Lake cops and the state and town cops had always been testy, and sometimes hostile.
    Though it wasn’t all precisely that clear, precisely that cut-and-dried. Some of the reservation’s boundaries were obscure, some of the reservation land had been sold off, scattered, checkerboarded. Sometimes, it wasn’t possible to tell whether you were on the res or off . . . and sometimes, maybe most of the time, all the cops got along fine. A complicated situation, Virgil thought.
    Virgil came up behind an aging Volkswagen camper-van, blew past, listened to the road whine; lakes and swamp, lakes and swamp, and road-kill. A coyote limped across the road ahead of him, then sat down on the shoulder to watch him pass, not impressed by the LED flashers.
     
 
WHITING CALLED: “Got all the guys I can get and a bunch of crappie cops will help out, stay in their trucks instead of hitting the lakes.”
    “Okay, but tell those guys to take it easy,” Virgil said. “They’re a little trigger-happy.”
    “Yeah, well—I’m not going to tell them that,” Whiting said. “ You tell them that.”
    “Chuck ...”
    “And listen, goddamnit, Virgil, you take it easy when you get up to Red Lake. We’ve got a decent working relationship with those folks, right now, and we don’t want it messed up.”
    “Chuck, you know me. I am the soul of discretion,” Virgil said.
    “Yeah. I know you,” Whiting said. “I’m telling you, take it