Heat Lightning

17

VIRGIL THOUGHT about the woman and daughter as he drove back. Had Mom been hitting on him, just the lightest, mildest of hits? What was the sadness in the small girl’s eyes? Had she seen other men spoken to when Dad wasn’t there?

The whole thing seemed less like an invitation to romance than an invitation to a story of some kind. Not journalism, a short story. Something Jim Harrison might write.

Virgil had had an interest in short stories when he was in college, but journalism seemed more immediate, something with its claws in the real world. The older he got, though, the wider he found the separation between reported facts, on one hand, and the truth of the matter on the other hand. Life and facts were so complicated that you never got more than a piece of them. Short stories, though, and novels, maybe, had at least a shot at the truth.

He was so preoccupied by the idea that he almost ran over a mink that crawled out of a ditch, poised for a dash across the road. He dodged at the last minute, wincing for the crunch as the animal went under the tire, felt nothing, looked in the wing mirror and saw it scurry across the tarmac, unhurt.

A small blessing.

THE WORLD was little more than a month past the summer solstice, so the sun was still high in the sky when he got off I-94 and turned south on Cretin Avenue in St. Paul, past the golf course with all the rich guys with their short pants and stogies, and farther south, hooked west on Randolph, then over to Davenport’s house on Mississippi River Boulevard.

He parked on the street so he wouldn’t block the three cars already in the driveway, and as soon as he stepped out, smelled the barbecue, heard the people talking in the back. He walked around the garage and pushed through the back gate, and Weather, Davenport ’s wife, spotted him and called, “Virgil Flowers!”

Davenport was there, with a former Minneapolis cop turned bar owner named Sloan, and his wife; and fellow BCA agent Del Capslock and his pregnant wife; and a spare, bespectacled woman named Elle, who was a nun and a childhood friend of Davenport’s; and Davenport’s ward, a teenager and soon-to-be-gorgeous young woman named Letty; and Davenport’s toddler, Sam.

Weather came over and pinched his cheeks and said, “It’s about time you got here, you hunk.”

He gave her a little squeeze and asked, “Why don’t you run away with me?”

“Then you wouldn’t have a job and I’d have to support you,” Weather said.

“Then he’d be dead and you wouldn’t have to support him,” Davenport said.

“Still, couple good days at a Motel 6 in Mankato… might be worth it,” Virgil said to her.

Davenport said, “Yeah, it would be. When you’re right, you’re right.”

Elle, the nun, amused, said, “You guys are so full of it.”

“The shrink speaks,” Del said. Elle was a psychologist.

“Give the poor boy a hamburger, Lucas, and then let’s hear his story,” Elle said to Davenport. She patted a chair next to her in the patio set. “Sit next to me, so I can ask questions.”

DEL HAD BEEN doing counterculture intelligence for the upcoming Republican convention, and had been out of the loop on Virgil’s investigation. All the others had read about the killings in the newspapers, but knew nothing else. Davenport told him to start at the beginning, with Utecht, and let it all out. Virgil did, all the details he could think of, ending with the conversation with Knox.

Then they wanted to see the pictures, and Virgil went out to the car to get them, and Davenport looked through them and handed them to Del and Sloan, and Elle got up to look, and Letty wanted to see, but Davenport snapped at her, “Get your nose out of there.”

“It’s not fair,” and she sat down and put on a pout; Weather patted her on the leg.

“If that’s actually Mr. Warren, then he is a very troubled man, with the kind of trouble you don’t cure yourself of,” Elle said. “If he did this, I would not be surprised to learn that he did similar things, here, over the years.”

“Really,” Virgil said. He put the pictures back in the envelope. “What would we be looking for?”

“If he’s a smart man… maybe dead prostitutes. Perhaps dead prostitutes in other cities. Bigger cities that he knows well, or that attract prostitutes, or an anonymous population of women. Brown women-Latinas, Filipinas, Malaysians, Vietnamese. Miami, Los Angeles, Las Vegas, New York, Houston.”

“Tortured?” Virgil asked. He was thinking of Wigge.

She shook her head. “Not as such. Not coldly. Not calculated. He’d kill them in an excess of violence. Beat them. Strangle them. A violent show of dominance and sexuality.”

Virgil looked at Davenport. “ Miami, Los Angeles, Las Vegas, New York, Houston.”

Davenport shook his head. “There’s so much background noise, we’d never sort them out.”

“DNA,” Sloan said. “If he’s raping them, they’ll have DNA in a DNA bank. Get some DNA from Warren, send it out there. Hell, circulate it everywhere.”

“YOU THINK Knox was really scared?” Del asked. Del knew Knox better than any of them.

“Not scared-careful,” Virgil said.

Del nodded. “That sounds like him. Where’d he get those guys?”

“One of them told me Chicago – Chicago came up a couple of times during the conversation,” Virgil said. “There was a woman there, fishing, who told me when I was leaving that they looked like hoodlums. I guess they sorta did.”

Del said to Davenport, “When we find him again, it’d be good to get some surveillance shots of these guys. If they’re heavy-duty, it might tell us where Knox’s connections go.”

“We can do that,” Davenport said. To Virgil: “What kind of vibe did you get from him? From Knox? Does he know more than he’s telling us?”

“Don’t think so,” Virgil said. “The guys he had with him, they were definitely working. They were looking out for somebody. Knox thinks Warren ’s coming for him.”

“Maybe,” said Sloan’s wife, “Warren’s afraid not so much of… of… what happened back then, but what it’d tell you guys. That you’d get DNA from him, based on the pictures, and then something would pop up.”

Davenport said, “Hell of a thought.”

Sloan said, “ Warren has been walking along the edge for years-he’s got a full-time lawyer who does nothing but yell at city inspectors. Some of those places over on the riverfront, in Minneapolis, you could punch your fist through the walls.”

“That’s a long way from being a killer, though,” Davenport said.

“But he is a killer,” Virgil said. “We know that for sure. I got it from Ray, who knew there’d been killing, and I got it specifically from Knox, and I don’t think Knox was lying. That isn’t Knox in those pictures.”

ELLE SAID,“Virgil, I’m very interested in the older Utecht. Chester. Am I wrong to think that he’s actually the beginning of the sequence of deaths?”

“Well-that’d be one way to look at it,” Virgil said. He hadn’t looked at it that way. “I didn’t ask, but I get the impression that he was an old guy who died, you know, a while back. Like a year or so. Nobody ever said it wasn’t a natural death, so I assumed that it was.”

She had cool, level eyes. “The circumstances of his death-they would be interesting to know.”

“Yeah. Now that you mention it, they would. I’ll check. Anybody know what time it is in Hong Kong?”

“Early morning, I’d guess,” Davenport said.

“I’ll try to call somebody before I go to bed,” Virgil said. “The embassy maybe? There must be some kind of police liaison in the embassy.”

Elle said, “I have another… interest. This man Sinclair. If I understand you correctly, he would be almost exactly as old as the murder victims. And we know he was in Vietnam at that time, or around that time. Where was he when these murders took place in Vietnam?”

Virgil pulled on his lip, shook his head. “All right. That’s another thing I can check. I’m friendly with his daughter; maybe I can start with her.”

THEY WORKED through it, and Davenport asked, “How’d they get to Bunton? There’s a mystery for you. An Indian hitter? An Apache?”

“Geronimo returns,” Del said.

So they sat and ate hamburgers and hashed it all over, and drank some beer, and Virgil lay back in a wooden recliner, looking at the stars that peeked out from behind the shine of city lights, and Letty came over and perched on the end of the recliner and was very cute and tried to wheedle the photos from him. He told her that she was too young, and she went steaming off.

Davenport had been watching from the corner of his eye and gave Virgil the thumbs-up. Virgil stood up and stretched and said, “Think I’ll go call China,” which was something that he’d never done.

BACK AT the motel, he sprawled on the bed and started by calling the phone company to find out how he called Hong Kong, and whom to call.

What he needed, it turned out, was the American consulate. After some switching around, he was told that the man he needed to talk to had gone to lunch and would be back in an hour. Virgil asked the woman how hot it was there, because he had the impression that Hong Kong was a hot place, and she said that it was eighty-four, and Virgil said that Minneapolis had been ninety that day, and the woman didn’t have a comment about that, so Virgil said he’d call back in an hour.

He gave it an hour and a half, twelve-thirty in Minnesota, then talked to a man named Howard Hawn, who actually seemed interested in Virgil’s question, and explained that he spent quite a bit of time getting puke-covered American tourists out of the drunk tank. Hawn said that he had some contacts who would know about Utecht’s death, and he would find one and get a name back to Virgil.

“But it probably won’t be until late in the afternoon-it’s hard to get people at this time of day. Lot of people take a break.”

“Leave a name and number on my phone,” Virgil said, and Hawn said he would.

“Pretty cool in Minneapolis today?” Hawn asked.

“No, it was ninety-but I was up north yesterday, and it was cool at night, probably forty.”

“Good sleeping weather,” Hawn said. “It was about eighty-seven here when I came in.” After that, there wasn’t much more to say, and Hawn said he’d leave a name and number when he got them, or have somebody call him directly.

Virgil set his alarm clock for 7 A.M. and thought about Mead Sinclair, talking to two of the victims that night at the vet center, who spent all that time in Vietnam. Sinclair caused an itch, and had since Virgil first met him.

And the nun, Elle, who knew a lot about crime and criminals, had picked him out of the whole circus to ask about… and she’d asked about Chester Utecht, and now that Virgil thought 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 on one deal, twenty years ago, it’s now in its twelfth refinancing; the city’s still on the hook for eight million dollars, sixteen million if you count all the interest over the years, all so Ralph Warren could take out a mil. I mean, the guy-if you’d told me that he’s a killer, I’d say, probably.”

“Who’s he threatened? That you know for sure?”

“Me,” Homewood said. “I testified for the Minneapolis Planning Board against a ridiculous, absurd proposal for low-income housing-and I’m in favor of low-income housing, don’t misunderstand me, but this was a fraud. A straight-out fraud. We came out of the hearing and Warren was laughing, and he came over to me, joking, and he said, ‘Don’t fall off no high bridges,’ like it was a joke, but it wasn’t a joke. I kept a gun in my desk drawer for six weeks after that. Every time I heard a sound at night, I jumped.”

“But he never did anything,” Virgil said.

“People don’t believe me when I tell them what’s going to happen,” Homewood said. He shrugged. “ Warren figured that out. If I’m not going to have any effect, why worry about me? People believe what they hope will happen, and that’s what Warren peddles to them-hope that something good will happen. Something good does happen, but only for Warren. And then the taxpayers wind up holding the bag, just like they have with Teasdale Commons.”

“So he’s an asshole,” Virgil said.

“More than that.” Homewood shook a finger at him. “He’s a criminal and a sociopath. How often do you have one of those, in the same… environment… as a bunch of crazy awful murders, and he didn’t have anything to do with them?”

“That’s a point,” Virgil said. “That’s a point.”

JENKINS AND SHRAKE were throwing a Nerf football around the BCA parking lot when Virgil pulled in, and Virgil took a pass and the three of them threw it around for a few more minutes. The NFL preseason was around the corner, and as they headed inside, the three of them agreed that the Vikings were screwed this year.

Inside, they borrowed Davenport ’s office again and Virgil briefed them on Ralph Warren. “I’m going to get Sandy to research him, but to tell you the truth, I don’t think we’re going to find anything in research. We’ll find it in some kind of action. He’ll do something. So we watch him. If nothing happens for a couple of days… we might try a sting.”

“What do we have to sting him with?” Jenkins asked.

“I’ve got some photos from Vietnam, of him raping a dead woman. Or a dying woman, anyway,” Virgil said. “If somebody were to call him, and offer them for sale, and if that guy were an out-of-town hoodlum like Carl Knox might hire… it might have enough credibility to get him to act.”

“Yeah, and if he’s as bad a dude as you think, his action might be to blow somebody’s head off,” Jenkins said.

“There’re ways around that. We could work that out,” Virgil said. “But we’d have to work it so that he talked about it.”

“So let’s watch him for a while,” Shrake said. “Just the three of us?”

“Just the two of you, for today,” Virgil said. “I’m running around poking sticks into things. You can talk to Lucas and see if he can give you somebody else.”

“What’re you poking your stick into?” Shrake asked.

“I’m going to ask a woman up to Davenport ’s cabin for the day and I’m gonna try to get her on the couch so that…” He spun and looked at the big map of Minnesota on Davenport ’s wall.

Jenkins said, “You gonna get this chick on the couch so that… what?”

“So I can betray her,” Virgil said. “I need to get some stuff out of her about her father. Without her knowing what I’m doing. So I can fuck with her old man.”

They all thought about that for a while, then Shrake said, “Well, shit. We’re cops.”