Storm Front

lived across the river in North Mankato. He was, the duty officer said, a mailman.
    Virgil crossed the river, found Sugarman’s address, and Sugarman riding a lawn mower in diminishing squares on his half-acre lawn. Virgil flagged him down.
    Sugarman was a balding, sweating man in a Hawkeye T-shirt, with a short blond mustache, who could have played a half-dozen different roles in Hollywood movies, just by changing clothes: outlaw biker, truck driver, friendly neighborhood bartender, fat guy on the other side of the fence, the Number Three movie cop who has one line and uses it to crack wise, probably about somebody’s bowel movement or manhood. This version said he hadn’t heard from Jones. “You know he’s dying?” he asked, as he wiped his face on his shirtsleeve.
    “I’ve heard that,” Virgil said. “He just shot a couple of guys over in Mankato—didn’t hurt them too bad, but we need to find him. The whole cancer thing, the drugs and pain pills and all, may have pushed him over the edge. We think he could be camping out somewhere.”
    Sugarman suggested one riverside camping spot, plus a lakeside hunting cabin in a chunk of woods east of town. “I’d check the cabin first,” he said. “It’s pretty comfortable, there’s nobody around, and it’s out of sight. You can drive right up to it.”
    Virgil got directions, and pulled up a satellite view on his iPad, and spotted the cabin exactly. Sugarman said, “You know, to be honest, I wouldn’t help find him, even for a cop, but if he’s shooting people, that’s not the Elijah Jones I know. He’s a good guy, or used to be. Give you the shirt off his back. Take it easy on him.”
    —
    V IRGIL THANKED HIM , got back in his truck, turned around in the street and was headed out when he took a call from an unknown number.
    “Is this Agent Flowers?” a woman asked in a husky, strongly accented voice.
    “Yes?”
    “This is Yael Aronov. I’m in Chicago, and was told I should call you. My plane will arrive in this Minneapolis airport at seven o’clock. I was told to tell you this, that you could find me there and help me to this Mankato.”
    Virgil thought about that for a second, rubbed his forehead. “You know, you speak really good English.”
    “Thank you,” she said. “I was actually born in Miami Beach, where my parents have a condo.”

9
    D avenport was not amused.
    “So you’ve got two Israelis claiming to be Yael Aronov, and the one you have now . . .”
    “I’m calling her Yael-1,” Virgil said.
    “. . . was carrying an illegal gun and you suspect that she knows how to use it and think she may be
willing
to use it.”
    “Eager, almost. She said she hadn’t had, and I quote, a chance to test herself in combat, unquote. If she’s the real Yael, most of the people who’ve looked at her think she’s with the Mossad. Or this Shabak. Apparently something about her . . . Everybody who’s looked at her also thinks she’s an Israeli, so she probably is.”
    “Sounds like you’ve got a conundrum,” Davenport said.
    “Really? I thought it was a clusterfuck,” Virgil said. “So, two requests: I need somebody with some clout to get on to the Israelis, the antiquities authority or whatever, and get me a picture of the real Yael Aronov. Without, you know, getting anybody too excited.”
    “I’ll have Sandy call, and if that doesn’t work, maybe Rose Marie would wade into it, speaking for the governor,” Davenport said. Rose Marie Roux was the state commissioner of public safety. “What’s the other thing?”
    “We got that bunch of magnetic GPS trackers in the other day. We had a class. I’d like to borrow four of them, along with a tracking tablet.”
    “I’ll check,” Davenport said. “When do you need them?”
    “I’m going up to the airport to get Yael-2. I’ve got a little time, I thought I’d stop in St. Paul on the way. I think Jones is talking to at least the Texas guy and the Turks and maybe his daughter, and maybe even Yael-1, or she might find out where he is: so I want to cover all of them.”
    “I’ll call you back,” Davenport said. “I’ll e-mail you the photo of the real Aronov, when we get one.”
    “Quick as you can. I’ll try to get a shot of Yael-1. Maybe the feds could identify her. They’ve gotta have a file on Mossad agents. If not, they might want to start one.”
    —
    V IRGIL WENT back to the Holiday Inn. The Channel Three truck was gone, so he called a Mankato cop