Heat Lightning

then Whiting called again. “They found him. Here in Bemidji. At the veterans’ monument on Birchmont Drive. Got the lemon in the mouth. Shot in the heart and the legs.”
    “Any sign that he was interrogated?”
    “No; he’s got some fingernails ripped loose, but it looks like he was fighting. Looks like he got the killer by the coat.”
    “DNA?” Virgil asked.
    “Don’t know. Don’t know anything but what I told you. I’m in my car, on the way over there. You know, the other night, when you guys went for the walk?”
    “Yeah?”
    “You must’ve walked right past the monument,” Whiting said. “It’s right there, where you guys were.”
    VIRGIL WENT and looked at the body, another puddle of light with cops, but there was nothing to see other than Bunton’s distorted face. A local television reporter tried to get him to talk, but he referred everything to Whiting, said good-bye to the agent, and headed on north to Red Lake. As he crossed the line, he called Rudy Bunch on his cell phone, and Bunch said that Louis Jarlait would meet him in Red Lake.
     
 
JARLAIT FLAGGED HIM down outside the Red Lake Criminal Justice Center, said, “Follow me,” got in his own truck, and led Virgil through a profound darkness into the woods. Two or three miles out of town, Virgil saw the lights coming up: ten or fifteen cars lined up along the road, cops standing around.
    They parked and climbed out, and Jarlait had a lollipop in his mouth and asked, “You want a sucker? Chocolate?”
    “Sure.” Jarlait got a Tootsie Pop out of his truck, and Virgil unwrapped it as they walked toward the house.
    Jarlait said, “I heard about Ray.”
    Virgil: “Yeah. . . . Who’s here?”
    “Most of us Red Lake guys. Some of your people here from Bemidji we invited in. FBI is still on the way, they probably won’t get here till morning.”
    “Anybody have any ideas about who did this? Strange cars, strange guys—how in the hell could he come in here and just do this?”
    “White van,” Jarlait said. “It might have been a guy in a white Chevy van. We got people coming through here all the time, but there was a white van going kind of slow around, and one of our guys, Cliff Bear, passed it, and he, uh . . .”
    Jarlait paused, and Virgil said, “What?”
    “Well, he said the guy was an Indian man,” Jarlait said. “So he didn’t pay much attention.”
    “He didn’t recognize him? Or the van?”
    Jarlait shook his head. “No. Here’s the thing—Cliff thought he was an Indian man, but not one of us. He thought he looked like an Apache.”
    “An Apache.”
    “Yeah. You know, those skinny string bean little assholes,” Jarlait said. “BIA has a lot of Apache cops for some reason. They get sent up here sometimes.”
    A half-dozen Red Lake cops were looking down at them as they walked up the road, working on the suckers, and one of the cops, Rudy Bunch, broke away from the group. Virgil noticed a man sitting on the side of the road, weeping. Jarlait walked over to him and squatted down next to him.
    “Did you stop and see Ray?” Bunch asked.
    “Yeah. Shot in the legs and head. Probably killed here, transported down there,” Virgil said. “What’s the situation with your guy?”
    “Shot in the head. Cold. Looks like he was sitting right at the wheel. Looks like a .22.”
    “That fits,” Virgil said. “Any reason that he’d be here?”
    Bunch pointed back up the road. “Well, you were at Ray’s place, Ray’s mom’s place, it’s about a mile up that way. She says Ray and Olen was going into town. Looks like they got this far. . . .”
    Virgil scratched his head, looking up and down the road. “So . . . what’d he do? Flag them down? Fake an accident?”
    “Olen never called in, so that’s not it,” Bunch said. “If he’d seen an accident, he would have called. I don’t know why he stopped, but he did, and here he is.”
    “Would he have called for something like a flat tire?” Virgil asked.
    “Ah, probably not. He didn’t . . . but who knows?”
    Virgil looked up and down the road, shook his head. He didn’t know why Olen Grey had stopped, but he suspected that whatever happened, neither Grey nor Bunton had taken the situation as seriously as Virgil had. Maybe, Virgil thought, he hadn’t pounded it home hard enough. Ray had been frightened but had seemed to think once he got across the line into Red Lake, he’d be safe. As though that, alone, would be enough.
    Then he’d gone to his