Heat Lightning

by John Sandford

  “We all knew him,” Brandt said. “He used to be a building inspector for the city. He was a carpenter before that. He was around all the time.”

  “Nice guy? Bad guy?”

  “You know—had a little mean streak, but wasn’t too bad when you got to know him. Short-guy stuff,” Brandt said. “He’d get in your face. But nobody, you know, took him all that seriously. Never knew him to actually get in a fight or anything. You’d see him, you might stop and chat. One of the guys around town.”

  “So . . . you said he used to work for the city,” Virgil said. “What was he doing now?”

  “He retired, took the pension, started rehabbing these old Victorians. He’d buy one, live in it, and rehab it,” Brandt said. “That’s how he met Sally. His girlfriend’s Sally Owen, she’s a decorator in one of the shops downtown.”

  “Younger woman?”

  “No, they must be about the same age. Sanderson was fifty-nine. Sally might even be a year or two older. Her husband was a contractor, died of a heart attack maybe three, four years ago. She and Bobby hooked up a couple of years back.”

  “Building inspectors have a reputation, sometimes, for taking a little schmear here and there,” Virgil said.

  Brandt shook his head. “Never heard anything like that about him. Didn’t have that smell. He’d tag a site, but I never heard that he was taking money.”

  “So, just a guy,” Virgil said.

  “Yeah, pretty much.”

  “A veteran.”

  Brandt’s forehead wrinkled. “Yeah. We asked Sally when we talked to her. Two years in Korea, during the Vietnam War. Drafted, got out as quick as he could. We could check, to pin it down, but that’s what she said.”

  “Probably need to check,” Virgil said.

  “The guy in New Ulm—he was a vet?”

  “Nope. No, he was the right age for the draft, but he had a heart murmur or something,” Virgil said. And it bothered him—why had a nonvet been left at a veterans’ monument?

  WALKED ALONG A BIT. Then Virgil asked, “You find anybody who heard the shots? Three shots?”

  “Nope. That’s unusual. Every time a car backfires, we get calls,” Brandt said. “Even a .22 is pretty noticeable, especially in the middle of the night. We’re still knocking on doors, but the further away we get from the scene, the less likely it is that somebody would have heard anything.”

  Virgil thought: Silencer? Silencers were so rare in crime circles as to be almost mythical. A few leaked out on the street from military sources, but that was almost all on the East Coast, and people who got them were usually jerkwaters showing off for their gun-club pals. Still, somebody should have heard a shot on a quiet street, with houses only a couple hundred feet away.

  A professional assassin might have a silencer . . . but the only professional assassins he knew about, other than one that Davenport had tangled with, were like copycat killers—on television.

  SANDERSON’S HOUSE was an 1890s cream-and-teal clapboard near-mansion that had been reworked into a duplex, set back and screened from the street by a hedge of ancient lilacs. A scaffold was hung on one side of the house, with a pile of boards set up on two-by-sixes, and covered with a plastic sheet, on the ground below it.

  As they passed the driveway on the way to the front walk, Virgil could see a pickup truck and, behind it, the dark rounded shape of a fishing boat. A Stillwater cop answered the doorbell. They stepped inside to heavy-duty air-conditioning that made the hair prickle on Virgil’s forearms.

  Sally Owen was sitting on a bar chair next to a work island in the kitchen. The kitchen had been recently refurbished with European appliances with a deep-red finish and black granite countertops. Virgil could smell fresh drywall, and the maple flooring was shiny and unblemished by sand or age.

  “Miz Owen,” Brandt said. “This is Virgil Flowers, he’s with the state Bureau of Criminal Apprehension, he’s going to be handling this . . . incident. Uh, he wanted to chat with you. . . .”

  “You don’t look like a police officer,” Owen said, with a small sad smile. “You look like a hippie.”

  “I was out dancing last night,” Virgil said. “I came on the run.”

  “I’ll leave you to it,” Brandt said. “I gotta get back.”

  When he’d gone, Owen said, “So. You’re telling me that you got rhythm?”

  “Hard to believe, huh?” Virgil said. There was another bar chair across the counter from her, and he pulled it out and slid onto it.

  “Hard to believe,” she said, and then she turned half away and her eyes defocused, and Virgil had the feeling that he wasn’t really talking to her at that instant, she’d gone somewhere else. Owen had short brown hair with filaments of gray, and deep brown eyes. She’d never been a beautiful woman, but now she was getting a late-life revenge on her contemporaries who had been: she had porcelain-smooth skin, with a soft summer tan; slender face and arms, like a bike rider’s; an attractive square-chinned smile.

  Virgil let her go for a moment, to wherever she’d gone, then brought her back. “Did you know that Bobby took a gun with him tonight?”

  Brown eyes snapped back: “No . . . are you sure?”

  “Yes. You knew he had a gun?”

  She nodded. “He has some hunting rifles, but there’s only one pistol . . . it was a pistol? It must have been.”

  “Yes.”

  She stood up. “Let me look.” She led him back through the house, to the bedroom, a neat, compact cubicle with a queen-size bed, covered only with sheets, with a quilt folded back to its foot, two chests of drawers, and a closet with folding doors. Owen knelt next to one of the bureaus, pulled out the bottom drawer, pushed a hand under a pile of sweatshirts, and said, “It’s gone.”

  She stood up and shook her head. “He never took it before. I would have known.”

  “Chief Mattson said you had a story about Bobby,” Virgil said. He drifted back toward the kitchen, pulling her along as if by gravity. “What happened the other night?”

  She busied herself, getting coffee. “All I’ve got is instant. . . . I told him not to go out.”

  “Instant’s fine,” Virgil said. “Why shouldn’t he walk the dog?”

  “Something was going on, and he wouldn’t tell me about it. Two nights ago, some men came to see him—they were talking in the street. Arguing.”

  “Was he afraid of them?”

  She paused with a jar of instant coffee, a puzzled look on her face. “No, no, he wasn’t afraid of them. Whatever it was, whatever they were talking about, that’s why he took the gun with him. He was really upset when he came back in.”

  “What did the guys look like?” Virgil asked.

  “I only saw one of them clearly—I didn’t know him, but he looked like a cop,” Owen said. “Like a policeman. He had that attitude. He was always hooking one thumb in his belt, like you see cops do. I don’t know—I thought he was a cop.”

  Virgil took his notebook out of his jacket pocket. It was a black European-style notebook called a Moleskine, with an elastic band to keep it closed. He bought them a dozen at a time, one for each heavy case he worked. When he was done with a case, he put the notebook—or several of them sometimes—on a bookshelf, a vein to be mined if he ever started writing fiction.

  He slipped the elastic on the cover, flipped open the notebook, wrote, “cop.”

  “You couldn’t see the other guy?” he asked.

  “No. Not very well. But I got the feeling that he might have been an Indian.”

  “You mean, like, a dot on the forehead? Or an American Indian?”

  “American Indian,” Owen said. “I couldn’t see him very well, but he was stocky and had short hair, but there was something about the way he dressed that made me think Indian. He was wearing a jean jacket and Levi’s, and I think he came on a motorcycle and walked down here, because I heard a motorcycle before Bobby went out, and then, when he came back in, I heard a motorcycle pulling away. The cop guy came in a car.”
/>   “What kind of car?”

  She showed a small smile. She knew the answer to this one: “A Jeep. I had one just like it, my all-time favorite. A red Jeep Cherokee.” Then she turned away from him again, like the first time he lost her, and she said, “God, why did this happen?” and she shook a little, standing there with the coffee in her hands.

  “You okay?” Virgil asked after a moment. He wrote “red Cherokee” in his notebook, and “Indian/motorcycle.”

  “No, I’m not,” she said.

  “I’m sorry,” he said. “You okay for a couple more questions?”

  “Yeah, let me get this coffee going.” She spooned coffee into two china mugs, filled them with water, stirred, and stuck them in a microwave; the whole procedure was so practiced that Virgil would have bet she did it every morning with Sanderson. “Something else,” she said. “It’s possible that the Indian’s name is Ray. I don’t know that, but it could be.”

  “Why Ray?” The microwave beeped and she took the cups out, and slid one across to Virgil. They both took a sip, the coffee strong and boiling hot, and Virgil said again, “Ray?”

  Ray was an Indian, an Ojibwa, a Chippewa, from Red Lake. She’d never met him, but he was an old pal of Sanderson’s—Bobby never explained how they met—and the past three weeks they’d been going to vet meetings in St. Paul.

  Virgil perked up. “Vet meetings?”

  “Yes. Bobby didn’t tell me about those either. I mean, it’s starting to sound like he didn’t tell me about anything, but that’s not true. He could be a talkative man. But these men in the street, these meetings . . . it’s like he couldn’t talk to a woman about them. This was man stuff, like maybe it went back a long time.”

  Virgil wrote “Ray/Indian” in his book, and “vet meetings.”

  “When you say vet meetings,” he asked, “did you get the impression it was just a bunch of guys, a bull session, or was it more like group therapy or what?” Virgil asked.

  “Group therapy. Maybe not exactly that, but more than a bull session.” She squinted at him across the work island. “I don’t know why Bobby would need vet’s therapy, though. He worked in a motor pool for some obsolete missile battalion. He said they’d shoot off their missiles, for practice, and they couldn’t hit this mountain that they used as a target.”

  “In Korea.”

  “Yes. Someplace up in the hills,” she said. “Chunchon? Something like that.”

  “You know which vet center?” Virgil asked.

  “I don’t know exactly, but it’s on University Avenue in St. Paul. He said something about parking off University.”

  The meeting in the street, she said, had involved the cop-looking guy, the Indian, Sanderson, and a man who never got out of the car.

  “The weird thing about that was, he was sitting in the backseat. Like the cop guy had chauffeured him out here. Like he was some big shot. Anyway, at one point, the window rolled down, the back window, and the cop guy got Bobby’s arm and tried to pull him over there, and the Indian guy pushed the cop guy away,” she said.

  She was becoming animated as she remembered. “I thought there was going to be a fight for a minute; but then they all quieted down and they were looking around like they were worried that they disturbed somebody. Then they finished up and the Indian man went down the street, and the cop got back in the car and Bobby came in, and I said, ‘What the heck was all that?’ and he said, ‘Nothing. Some old bullshit. I don’t want to talk about it. Tell you some other time.’ That’s what he said, exactly. He was harsh about it, so I didn’t want to push him about it. I should of pushed.”

  Virgil wrote it down, exactly.

  Owen had an extra photograph of Sanderson, taken standing next to his boat, wearing a T-shirt and shorts. “I don’t need it back,” she said.

  They talked for a few more minutes, but she had only one more thing, having to do with the bowel regularity of the dog. “It was like the train coming through town,” Owen said. “They were out the door every night, same time, within five minutes. Walked the same route. If you knew him, if you wanted to kill him . . .”

  “I understand the dog was security-trained,” Virgil said.

  “Sort of. You know, one of those Wisconsin places where they say their dogs are all this great, but you think, if they’re so great, why are they so cheap? I liked him, he was a good dog, but he wasn’t exactly a wolf.”

  HE LEFT HER in the kitchen, staring at the future, went out the side door, took a look at the boat. Boats had always been big in Virgil’s life, and this was a nice one, a Lund Pro-V 2025 with a two-hundred-horse Yamaha hanging on the back, Eagle trailer, Lowrance electronics, the ones with the integrated map and GPS. Sanderson had fitted it with a couple of Wave Whackers, so he did some back-trolling; walleye fisherman, probably. Nice rig, well-kept, well-used.

  Seemed like Sanderson had a nice life going for himself; nice lady, nice job, nice truck, nice fishing rig.

  Virgil moved back toward the front of the house, saw a big man in a Hawaiian shirt coming along the street, limping a little. “Shrake?”

  The big man stopped, peered into the dark. “Virgil?”

  “You’re limping,” Virgil said, moving into the light.

  “Ah, man.” Shrake was a BCA agent, one of the agency’s two official thugs. He liked nothing more than running into a bad bar, jerking some dickweed off a barstool in midsentence, and dragging his ass past his pals and into the waiting cop car. “I think I pulled a muscle in my butt.”

  “Christ, you smell like somebody poured a bottle of Jim Beam on your head,” Virgil said.

  “That fuckin’ Jenkins ...”

  Virgil started to laugh.

  “That fuckin’ Jenkins set me up with a hot date,” Shrake said, hitching up his pants. “She was already out of control when I picked her up. Smelled like she’d been brushing her teeth with bourbon. She drank while she danced . . . then she fell down and I stupidly tried to catch her. . . . Anyway—what should I do?”

  “I don’t know,” Virgil said. And, “Why are you out here?”

  “Davenport called me up, said you might need some backup.” Shrake cocked his head. “He said you were banging Janey Carter when he called.”

  “Actually, it’s Janey Small . . . ah, never mind. Listen, there’s not much to do. The locals are knocking the doors, we’re waiting for the ME—”

  “The ME’s here,” Shrake said.

  “Okay. But to tell you the truth, and I hate to say it, it looks professional,” Virgil said. “There ain’t gonna be much.”

  “Yeah?” Shrake was interested. “Same guy as that New Ulm killing, you think?”

  “Same guy,” Virgil said. “From looking at it, I’d say our best hope is that he only had two targets. I’ve got some stuff to check out in the morning, but this is gonna be tough.”

  “Well, you know what they say,” Shrake said. “When the going gets tough, try to unload it on that fuckin’ Flowers.”

  The problem with a pro was that there’d be none of the usual skein of connections that tied a killer to a victim. The crime scene would be useless, because a pro wouldn’t leave anything behind. If a bunch of bodies added up to a motive for some particular person—the person who hired the pro—that person would have an alibi for the time of the killings, and could stand silent when questioned. The pro, in the meantime, might have come from anywhere, and might have gone anywhere after the killings. With hundreds of thousands of people moving through the metro area on any given day, how did you pick the murderous needle out of the innocent haystack?

  VIRGIL AND SHRAKE walked together back to the veterans’ memorial. The TV trucks had all come in, and Mattson was standing in a pool of light, talking to three reporters. Brandt came over and asked, “You done with Miz Owen?”

  “For tonight. If you could find a friend . . .”

  “Got her sister coming over. She lives in Eagan, it’ll take a while, but she’s coming,” Brandt said.

  “Good,�
�� Virgil said. He nodded toward the monument. “The ME’s guys say anything?”

  “Yeah. He was shot twice. In the head.”

  “Well, shit, what more do you want?” Shrake asked. Brandt’s nosed twitched, picking up Shrake’s bourbon bouquet, and Shrake sidled away.

  Brandt said to Virgil, “The mayor would like to talk to you.”

  “Sure,” Virgil said. “Where is he?”

  BRANDT TOOK THEM OVER, Shrake staying downwind. The mayor was a short, pudgy man, a professional smiler and a meet-your-eyes-with-compassion sort of guy, whose facial muscles were now misbehaving. He said to Virgil, “What-a, what-a, what-a . . .”

  Virgil knew what he was trying to ask, and said, “This doesn’t have anything to do with your town—I think Mr. Sanderson was a specific target. The same man killed another victim down in New Ulm. That’s what I think. You don’t have much to worry about.”

  “Thank you for that,” the mayor said. He rubbed his hands nervously, peering about at the crime scene. “I feel so bad for Sally. Gosh, I hope she gets through this okay.” He seemed to mean it, and Virgil nodded and said to Shrake, “We oughta head back. We need to get at some computers.”

  Shrake nodded. Virgil said a few more words to the mayor, gave his card, with a couple of spares, to Brandt, and told him to call if anything turned up. “The guy had to get here somehow. If anybody even thinks they might have seen a car, or a guy . . .”

  “We’re doing it all, man,” Brandt said.

  The mayor said to Brandt, “And good for you. Good for you, by golly.”

  On the way back to his car, Virgil asked Shrake if he knew anything about a veterans’ center on University Avenue.

  “Sure. Something going on there?”

  Virgil told Shrake about Sanderson and the therapy group, and Shrake said, “Sounds right. That’s what they do there.”

  “E-mail me an address or something,” Virgil said. “I gotta get some sleep before I go back out.”