Heat Lightning

about it, Sinclair had shown up here in St. Paul shortly after Chester Utecht died in Hong Kong. He’d apparently taken leave from the University of Wisconsin, one of the great universities in the country, to work part time at Metro State? Now that he thought about it, that seemed passing strange. . . .
    The thoughts all tumbled over each other, and he got nowhere. He cooled out by thinking briefly about God, and considered praying that there wouldn’t be another murder and another middle-of-the-night call. He decided that praying wouldn’t help, and went to sleep, and dreamed of the fisherwoman with strong brown arms and gold-flecked married eyes.
    VIRGIL WAS picking the day’s T-shirt, undecided between Interpol and Death Cab for Cutie, when he remembered to check his cell for messages—there were none. Maybe Hawn hadn’t made the connection, or maybe the Chinese didn’t care, or maybe the request was bouncing around the halls of bureaucracy like a Ping-Pong ball, to be coughed up after Virgil was retired. He’d think about calling again later in the day.
    He slipped into the Death Cab for Cutie shirt, a pirated model sold by street people outside shows, checked himself in the mirror, fluffed his hair, and headed out into the day.
    Early and cool. Jenkins and Shrake would be helping with the surveillance on Warren, but they wouldn’t be around until 10 A.M. or so, and Del Capslock had suggested an early start with a real estate consultant named Richard Homewood, who, Del said, would be at his office anytime after six in the morning.
    Homewood worked out of a business condo on St. Paul’s west side, off the Mississippi river flats beside the Lafayette Freeway. Virgil called ahead, mentioned Del’s name, and Warren’s, and Homewood, who might have provided the voice for Mr. Mole in Wind in the Willows, suggested that he stop at a Caribou Coffee for a large dark with plenty of milk, and come on over.
    Virgil got the coffees, and found Homewood’s office by the street number: there was no other identification. He rang, and Homewood, who could have played Mr. Mole—he was short, chubby, bespectacled, long-haired, and bearded—answered the door, took the coffee, sipped, said, “Perfect,” and invited him in. The office was a paper cave, with bound computer printouts stacked on floor-to-ceiling shelves that completely covered the walls except for two windows and a gas fireplace. The center of the big room was taken up by three metal desks, each with a computer and printer and office chair, but there was no sign that anyone worked there but Homewood.
    Homewood sipped, pointed Virgil at an office chair, asked, “How’s Del?” but didn’t seem too interested when Virgil told him about Del’s wife being pregnant; and then he asked, “Are you really looking at Ralph Warren?”
    “Yes—but not the way you probably think,” Virgil said. “This is not a corruption investigation.”
    “Then what?”
    Virgil said, “I can’t give you all the details, but a group of men went to Vietnam a long time ago, when they were still young, and this group is now being murdered. The men whose bodies are being left at the veterans’ monuments.”
    “The lemon murders. The lemons in the mouth.”
    Virgil frowned. “Where’d you hear that?”
    “Television, last night, and this morning. The papers must have it. The lemon murders.”
    “Damn it. We’d held that back,” Virgil said.
    “Well—it’s on the news now. So, Warren, how’s he tied in?”
    “He was one of the guys,” Virgil said.
    Homewood leaned forward, hands on his knees, intent. “Wait a minute. You think Warren’s a killer?”
    “We don’t think anything, other than this killer is killing these guys. There are only two left alive, and I’m going to talk to Warren. Del told me you might have some background that I couldn’t get anywhere else.”
    Homewood leaned back, looked around the jumble of the office, and then waved a hand at it. “I’m a real estate consultant, Virgil. Nobody knows as much about real estate in the Twin Cities as I do. I know what the values are, what the values should be, what the values will be. Ralph Warren has made a living by selling pie in the sky to a dozen city councils. Bullshitting them into providing taxpayer financing, buying council votes when he had to, buying planners and inspectors, threatening people. Makes a hash out of my values: I tell you, I can see what’s going to happen. He sold the city