Heat Lightning (28 page)

She propped herself up on one elbow. "Why would I know anything about it? Why would you ask?"

"Because your father, you know, he was talking to Ray and Sanderson, and when I asked what they were talking about, he didn't have much to say. The thing is, if this killer even thinks your father was involved, he might go after him. And if you're in the way . . . Look, I really, really don't want you to get hurt, and if your father's involved, you could be in the line of fire."

"Oh . . . Virgil. You don't really think so? I mean, my father . . ." She trailed away.

"Was he in Vietnam in 1975?"

"He's been there a lot. When I was a child, it seemed like he was gone all the time, but that was in the eighties. As I understand it, the Vietnamese really thought they had allies with the American people, and that he was one of them. So he was there during the war, and right after it, and later, he was there more. . . . He was there a lot. But 1975, I don't know."

"I'm amazed he was never busted," Virgil said.

"Busted ..."

"Arrested. By the feds . . . you know, 'giving aid and comfort.'"

"Well, when he went, he went as a journalist," Mai said. "So that gave him some status."

"Still. You gotta ask him about it," Virgil said. "If there's anything, he's got to talk to me."

"How many more killings do you think--"

"I don't know. . . . I'll tell you something, but you gotta promise not to tell."

"All right, sure," she said.

"The last one, the killer was probably seen, and he was an Indian guy. Ray was an Indian guy. Some of these guys were living on the edge, and there's a question of whether there was a dope deal going down somewhere. So . . . it's all really confusing."

"Do you know who the other targets might be?"

"Yeah, I talked to one the other day. I can't really tell you his name--it's, like, a legal thing. But he's out there traveling around. He told me he's safe. He's got a security guy who travels with him, he says the president couldn't find him. But hell, it's possible he's involved somehow."

"You'll figure it out. Dad says you're a pretty smart guy," Mai said.

"I don't feel so smart; I feel like my head is stuffed full of cotton. Something is going on, and I don't know what it is."

She squeezed him. "Feels like something is going on down here."

"I know what that is," he said. "I have that completely under control."

"Right. Mr. Control." She gave him a yank. "How many women have you slept with, Mr. Control?"

"I have a list on my laptop," Virgil said. "I'd hate to say without consulting my list."

"Just names, or . . . talent, as well?"

"Everything. Names, photographs, resumes, criminal records. I give them all grades, too. For example, a couple of women might call me up, and I don't remember them that well in the fog of all the women, but I've got to make a decision. So I look at my computer records, and one of them I've given a B-minus, and the other a C-minus. So the decision is clear."

"What'd I get?"

"You got a B-plus," Virgil said. "You could easily move up to an A, if you play your cards right."

"Lying in bed," she said. "Joking."

"Ah, well . . ." He sat up, looked down at her. "It's what happens when you become a cop. Something curdles your sense of humor. My problem is not really that I sleep with so many women. My problem is that I fall in love with them."

She was lying facedown on top of the sheet with her face turned toward him, and he ran his hand down her back and over the rise of her butt. "Women don't understand how beautiful they are. They don't understand it. They get beauty all confused with personality, or charisma, or a nice smile . . . but they really don't see the simple beauty of this . . ." and his hand glided again over her bottom. "It's a goddamn tragedy that you can't see it. But you can't; I know you can't. And it's just so beautiful."

Chapter
19

VIRGIL WAS moving early the next morning, out at dawn, heading southwest out of the Twin Cities, still feeling the glow of the afternoon and evening with Mai. He'd spoken with Shrake the evening before, after he'd dropped Mai, and Shrake said that he and Jenkins had spotted several more bodyguards working the streets around Ralph Warren's home.

"We gave it up. We were staying way back, but they were still going to see us. We can get on him again tomorrow, but it seems like he's moving at night, if he's doing these killings. We need to do something electronic with his truck, to follow him, or something--this ain't working."

Virgil spoke to Davenport, and they agreed that Shrake and Jenkins would resume the surveillance in the morning, just tight enough to keep track of Warren's general location. "We ought to try the sting, see what happens," Virgil told Davenport. "We need an undercover guy who Warren wouldn't know, and between him and his pals, they'll know a lot of cops around town."

"I'll make some calls," Davenport said. "I've got an ex-cop in Missouri who could do it. He'd be perfect for the job."

SO VIRGIL got up early, headed back to Mankato, his home base, with ten pounds of dirty clothes. He lived in a compact 1930s brick house on the edge of downtown, on a block with trees and quite a few kids. When he bought it, the house had belonged to an elderly widower whose children were moving him to a nursing home. The old man had been a mechanic before he retired, and had restored cars as a hobby. His two-and-half-car garage was nearly as big as the house, and provided good room for both Virgil's truck and his boat.

He left the truck in the driveway, checked the place to make sure everything was okay, stuck the dirty clothes in the washing machine, collected his mail, paid bills, and walked downtown and dropped them off at a mailbox. He got an early-morning cup of coffee and a croissant at a coffee shop.

Eating the croissant as he went, he walked back home, put the clothes in the dryer, and made a phone call to Marilyn Utecht, hoping he wasn't waking her up; but she was an early riser, and said, "Come on ahead." He got in the truck and headed to the town of New Ulm, which had at one time been the least ethnically diverse town in the United States--everybody had been of German ancestry.

UTECHT WAS working in her still dew-wet yard when he got there, digging dandelions with a paring knife, tossing them into a bucket.

"How're you doing?" Virgil asked as he crossed the lawn.

She said, "Okay," and stood up, and "I got a job."

"Good. Get you out and about," Virgil said.

She smiled and said, "It's not much of a job . . . part time at a day-care center. But I always liked little kids, and I don't really need a lot of money."

"Don't you get diseased?"

"Oh, yeah. Keeps your immune system going, that's for sure," she said. "So, Virgil--what's up? You want a root beer or anything? Or is it still too early?"

"Sure, I'll take a root beer."

THEY SAT in lawn chairs in the backyard, a pool of uninflected grass surrounded by a white board fence, and drank root beer, and Virgil said, "You've been reading about what's going on."

She shivered and said, "I can't believe it. I just . . . can't . . . believe it. Are you going to catch him? Whoever's doing it?"

"Hope so. He's a psycho, whoever he is, and I think he's compelled to do this," Virgil said. "We've got one suspect, who we're watching, and one fellow who we know is a target, who's protected, and sooner or later, something is going to crack open. I hope we're in a position to move when it does."

"I should hope," she said. "I still cry about Chuck, poor guy. I'll be standing by the sink, and I'll start crying."

"You were married a long time."

"Yup," she said, and took a sip of root beer.

"What do you know about Chuck's dad, Chester?" Virgil asked. "When he died, did you guys go over?"

"Chuck did--just to see . . . well, there wasn't much of an inheritance. Eighteen thousand dollars, that was about it. He had an annuity, but that was gone the minute he died. Chester was cremated, and they put his ashes in the ocean, so . . . there wasn't much left."

"I talked to a guy from China. A Hong Kong cop. He said that Chester might have had some contact with the CIA."

Utecht's eyebrows went up, and she said, "You know, I wouldn't doubt it. We used to joke about him being a spy. We even asked him once, and he joked about it--but when he was joking about it, his eyes didn't look funny, if you know what I mean."

"I do."

"Chester was all over that area when he was young, after World War Two--Hong Kong, North Vietnam, South Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia, Thailand. He knew a lot of French people from North Vietnam," Utecht said. "He even spoke French. He stayed here a few times when he was in the States, and once he was joking about having kids in Thailand, but I'm not sure that was completely a joke, either. How does all of this figure in?"

Virgil told her about the bulldozer heist and she said, "I knew about that. Chuck . . . it was the big adventure of his youth, but it was in seven or eight years before we got together, so I didn't know the details. Do you really think all of this"--she waved her hand, meaning the killings--"could have anything to do with that?"

"I'm pretty sure it does," Virgil said. "I'm just not sure how. Have you ever seen or heard the name Mead Sinclair in any of Chuck's papers, or did he ever mention that name?"

She thought a moment, then said, "No, I don't think so. Odd name. I can look, if you want. We've still got a lot of stuff."

"Well, if you see anything . . ."

"Who is he?"

So he explained about Mead Sinclair. She said, "If Sinclair was an antiwar activist, and Chester had contact with the CIA . . . do you think they might have been enemies or something? That this man is running a revenge feud?"

"I don't know. Honest to God, I keep going around in circles. My problem is, I've got two things in my head. One loop involves the guys getting killed here, because they did something that one of them is trying to cover up. The other loop involves Mead Sinclair and the CIA and people getting killed in Hong Kong, maybe, and God only knows what that motive would be. If I could put the two loops together, I might have something. And it seems like there should be a fit somewhere."

"Be careful," she said. "Don't get hurt."

BACK IN Mankato he picked up his dry clothes, repacked, and headed north to the Cities again. So Chester may have worked with the CIA, he thought. Which meant that there may have been more to the bulldozer heist than was apparent--and more to the Vietnam killings than was apparent.

Or not.

Damnit.

He got on his cell phone and called Sandy. "Are you working today?"

"Uh, I've got a class, but I could do a couple hours."

"I need to find out if Mead Sinclair had any direct clashes with the CIA, or has ever said anything about the CIA coming after him, or about CIA killers in Vietnam, or any kind of intelligence agencies doing anything to him, or about him, or bringing charges against him . . . anything like that."

"I'll call you," she said. "Or I might be around the office this morning, before lunch."

"I GOT A bunch of stuff," Davenport said when Virgil checked in at the BCA at ten-thirty. "I've got a meeting I can't miss, so I won't be around. Andreno just called in, he's on his way from the airport. He'll be here in fifteen minutes or so. I'll send him down to you--I got you John Blake's office while he's on vacation."

"What's the guy's name? Your friend?" Virgil asked.

"Micky Andreno. I told him to bring a gold neck chain. Also, I got the Secret Service and the FBI asking about you--they want to know what the status is, they're getting a little worried about the killings, especially after Wigge. Too many important people are going through town to have a psycho running loose, so you need to call a couple people and give them status reports."

"Pressure starting to build?"

"Of course. I'm not unhappy with what you've done, but these people don't want to know about processes, they want the problem to go away," Davenport said. "If you don't get something quick, they may want to help. As in, use a bunch of their own people."

"That'd slow things down pretty good," Virgil said.

Davenport nodded. "Absolutely. Anyway, that means if Warren is a legitimate suspect, then let's squeeze now, and hard. Get it done."

VIRGIL MADE calls to the FBI and the temporary Secret Service office that had been set up to protect the Republican National Convention. The agents he'd talked to seemed cool and skeptical, and when he was done, Virgil threw the receiver at the desk set and said, "Fuck you."

Shrake and Jenkins came by: "We gonna do it?"

"Yeah. Our setup guy is on the way from the airport. We gotta round up Dan Jackson, I want to get the whole thing on video if we can, and get the guys in tech services to wire up Andreno, if we can pull this off today...."

"Where're we going to do it?" Jenkins asked.

"Gotta be some place public or Warren won't buy it," Virgil said.

"Be best if it was our choice," Jenkins said. "We could set up in advance. With the security guys he's got, if they pick location, they'll spot us coming in to monitor the place."