Heat Lightning

by John Sandford

  He could hear people yelling behind him, and then the driver got out of the van with his hands over his head but still laughing, and then Ray Bunton got out on the other side and began running across the swampy scrub, and Virgil turned and shouted, “Watch this guy,” to whoever was behind him, and he took off after Bunton.

  Virgil was in his thirties and ran on most nice nights. He liked to run. Bunton was sixty-something, had smoked since he was fourteen, and was wearing a leg brace. Virgil caught him in thirty yards, ran beside him for a second, and when Bunton looked at him, Virgil clouted him on the side of his head and the old man nose-dived into the dirt.

  Virgil put a knee in the small of Bunton’s back, with some weight, pulled the cuffs out of his belt clip, and wrestled Bunton’s arms behind his back and cuffed his wrists.

  “C’mon, dickhead,” he said, and pulled Bunton to his feet. As they came back to the trucks, and the van in the ditch, the DNR cop was just pulling up, trailing his boat. Two Indian men, one older, in his fifties, the other young, maybe twenty-five, were standing between Virgil and his truck. Neither one wore a uniform, but both were wearing gunbelts. “Where’re you going with him?” asked the older of the two.

  “Jail,” Virgil said, tugging Bunton along behind.

  Bunton said, “Don’t let him do it, Louis. I’m on the res.”

  “You can’t have him, son,” the older man said. “You’re on reservation land.”

  “Sue me,” Virgil said.

  The two men stepped down to be more squarely between him and the truck, and the younger man dropped his hand to his gun and Virgil picked it up. “You gonna shoot me?” he demanded. He edged up closer to the younger one. “You gonna shoot me?” He looked at the sheriff’s deputy still at the side of the road, with the DNR guy coming up behind. “If these assholes shoot me, I want you to kill them.”

  The deputy called, “Whoa, whoa, whoa . . .”

  Virgil was face-to-face with the younger man. “C’mon, take your gun out and shoot me. C’mon. You’re not gonna pussy out now, are you?”

  “Son—” the older man began.

  “I’m not your son,” Virgil snapped. “I’m a BCA agent and this guy”—he jerked on Bunton’s arm—“is involved in the murders of four people. I’m taking him.”

  “Not gonna let you do it,” the younger man said, and his hand rocked on the butt of his pistol. “If I gotta shoot you, then I’m gonna shoot you.”

  Virgil was quick, and his pistol butt was right there. He had his gun out in an instant, and he stepped close to the younger man, who’d taken a step back, and he said, “Pull it out. C’mon, pull it out, Wyatt Earp. Pull the gun, let’s see what happens.”

  “Wait, wait, wait, wait,” the older man said, his voice rising to a shout. “You’re crazy, man.”

  “I’m taking him,” Virgil said.

  “Louis . . .” Bunton said.

  The older man’s eyes shifted to Bunton. “Sorry, Ray. Little too much shit for a quarter-blood. Maybe if we had some more guys here . . .”

  The younger man looked at Louis, said, unbelieving, “We’re gonna let him take him?”

  “Shut up, stupid,” the older man said. “You want a bunch of people dead for Ray Bunton? Look at this crazy fuckin’ white man. This crazy white man, he’s gonna shoot your dumb ass bigger than shit.”

  He turned back to Virgil. “You take him, but there’s gonna be trouble on this.”

  “Fuck trouble,” Virgil snarled.

  The younger man nodded. “I’ll come down there . . .”

  But the tension had snapped. Virgil said to Bunton, “Come on.”

  As they passed the sheriff’s deputy, the deputy said, “That was pretty horseshit,” and to Louis, “Man, I’m sorry, Louis. This is a murder thing. I hate to see it go like this, you know that.”

  Louis said, “I know it, but you got a crazy man there. Hey, crazy man—fuck you.”

  Virgil gave him the finger, over his shoulder without looking back, and heard Louis start to laugh, and Virgil put Bunton in the truck, cuffed him to a seat support, shut the door. Then he stepped back and put his head against the window glass, leaning, and stood like that for a moment, cooling off.

  After a moment, he walked back to the two Indians and said to the older man, “I’ll come and talk to you about this sometime. I drove from St. Paul to here at a hundred miles an hour—I’m not kidding. Hundred miles an hour, just to take this jack-off. He put me in the hospital a couple of days ago, and there really are four dead men down there, executed, shot in the head, and he knows about it. If you’d taken him on the res, you’d be up to your ass in FBI agents. This is better for everybody.”

  “Well, you were pretty impolite about it,” Louis said.

  “Yeah, well.” Virgil hitched up his pants. “Sometimes it just gets too deep, you know? You can have the other guy and the van, if you want them. I’m not interested in him.”

  “Still gonna kick your ass,” the younger man said.

  “Keep thinkin’ that,” Virgil said, and clapped him on the shoulder before he could step back, and walked back to his truck.

  The DNR guy was there, looking stoned, like most of them do. “That was way fuckin’ cool,” he said.

  12

  IN THE TRUCK, Virgil backed in a circle, careful on the narrow road, held a palm up to the deputy, and headed back east, away from the reservation.

  “Where’re we going?” Bunton asked. One hand was pulled forward and down between his legs, almost under the seat, and Bunton was humped over and down.

  “Bemidji. I’m gonna put you in a little dark room in the county jail and I’m gonna kick your ass. By the time you get out of there, you’re gonna look like a can of Campbell’s mushroom soup.”

  “Ah, bullshit,” Bunton said. “Why don’t you undo my hand? This is gonna kill my back, riding to Bemidji this way.”

  Virgil looked at him, sighed, pulled the truck over. “If you so much as twitch the wrong way, I’ll break your goddamn arm,” he said, and he got out, walked around the truck, unsnapped the cuff, and snapped it back onto the safety belt. As he was walking around to get into the truck again, the deputy rolled by, dropped his passenger-side window.

  “If I were you, I’d get out of rifle range,” he said.

  “Think I’m okay,” Virgil said.

  The deputy shook his head. “Don’t call me again,” he said. “You might be okay, but I gotta roam around here on my own.”

  Virgil opened his mouth to apologize, but the deputy was rolling away. The DNR guy came up, dropped his window, and said, “You’re the writer guy, huh?”

  Virgil said, “Yeah, I do some writing.”

  “I read that piece on ice-fishing on Winni . . . Wasn’t as bad as it might have been, but, anyway, you just weren’t drinking enough.” He said it with a smile.

  “Well, thank you, I guess,” Virgil said.

  “We got a regional meeting up here in September, we’re looking for a speaker . . .”

  What he meant was cheap speaker. Virgil gave him a business card, told him he was available to talk if he could get the time off.

  “We’ll be in touch,” the guy said. “Hell of a run; that’s why I love this shit. But I gotta tell you, man, it’s better in a boat.”

  “I hear you,” Virgil said.

  WHEN HE GOT BACK in the truck, Bunton had managed to dig a cigarette out of his shirt pocket and light it. Virgil said, “This is a no-smoking truck.”

  “I’ll blow the smoke out the window,” Bunton said.

  “One cigarette,” Virgil said, and he touched the passenger-window button and rolled it down.

  Bunton nodded. “You lost. I made it across the line. You had to cheat to get me.”

  “Wasn’t a race, Ray. There are four people dead now, and you know who did it,” Virgil said.

  “No, I don’t.”

  “Ray, goddamnit, you know something. What I want to know is, are there more people gonna get killed? Are you gonn
a get killed?”

  “Maybe,” Bunton said. “But I need to talk to a lawyer.”

  “Fuck a bunch of lawyers. Talk to me. I’ll give you absolution right here. Your sins won’t count.”

  “How about the crimes?” Bunton asked.

  “Those might count,” Virgil admitted. “But you’re obligated—”

  Bunton cut him off. “Here is why I can’t talk to you, okay? I’ll tell you this.”

  Virgil nodded. “Okay.”

  Bunton thought it over for a minute, taking another drag on the cigarette, blowing the smoke out the side window. “I once did something that, if I tell you about it, I might get put in Stillwater. Not murder or anything. Not really anything that bad—not that I did, anyway. But if I go to Stillwater, I’ll get murdered just quicker’n shit. I won’t last a month, unless they put me in solitary, and even then, something could happen.”

  “Okay ...”

  “And if I don’t tell you . . .” Bunton looked out at the low, crappy landscape. “If I don’t tell you, and you don’t catch this asshole who’s killing us . . . then I might get killed. Shit, I probably will get killed. So I don’t know what the fuck to do, but I got to talk to a lawyer.”

  “We’ll get you a lawyer as soon as you heal up,” Virgil said.

  “Heal up?”

  “From me puttin’ you in that room and beatin’ the crap out of you.”

  Bunton half laughed. “I had you figured out way back in the garage. You’re one of those good-old-boy cops. Now, if you were John Wigge, I might tell you what I know, because if I didn’t, Wigge’d get out a pair of pliers and start pulling off my balls.”

  Virgil thought about Wigge for a moment, and the cut-off fingers.

  “Let me tell you about Wigge,” Virgil said. “We found his body, but not at the rest stop. Whoever did this . . .”

  He told Bunton about it, Bunton’s face stolid, like it had been carved from oak. When Virgil finished, Bunton took another drag and said, “I just . . . shit. I gotta talk to a lawyer.”

  They rode along for a minute, and then Virgil said, “I’ll have a lawyer waiting for you in Bemidji. But you gotta make up your mind quick. Things are happening.”

  “I’ll tell you what, I might be fucked,” Bunton said. They crossed a patch of swamp and he snapped his cigarette into it. “My best chance would be up on the res. If I was up there, they couldn’t get at me. Even people who live up there, they can’t find you if you don’t want to be found.”

  Virgil said, “You said, ‘this asshole who’s killing us.’ Can you tell me who ‘us’ is?”

  Bunton shook his head. “Not until after I talk to the lawyer. ‘Us’ is part of the problem. ‘Us’ is why I want to get up in the woods.”

  HE WOULDN’T TALK about it anymore; he’d talk, but not about the killings. “I had enough dealings with the law to know when to keep my mouth shut,” he said.

  “Then you gotta know you’re in some fairly deep shit, Ray. When you whacked me on the head, put me in the hospital . . .”

  “The hospital? You pussy.”

  “Hey, I didn’t ask to go. They took me in an ambulance, I was out.”

  “Didn’t mean to hit you that hard,” Bunton said.

  “Shouldn’t have hit me at all. Whacking me earned you two years in Stillwater, my friend. Ag assault on a police officer. And if you don’t want to be in Stillwater . . .”

  Bunton said, “It’s not Stillwater—it’s the guys who could get me killed in Stillwater. If you bust them, then Stillwater’s okay. Sort of like having really good Social Security. I could get my teeth fixed, for one thing, and maybe even my knees.”

  “So you’re saying that there are people outside, who could order you killed inside. Like dopers?” Virgil asked.

  “Fuck you,” Bunton said. “You’re trying to sneak it out of me. I ain’t talking to you anymore.”

  He did, but only about rock ’n’ roll. “What’s that shirt you’ve got on?” he asked. “Is that a band?”

  Virgil looked down at his chest. He was wearing his KMFDM “Money” shirt: “Yeah, over on the industrial end,” he said. “You know, they’re the guys who became MDFMK? Then they went back to KMFDM. And I think a couple of them spun off and became Slick Idiot at some point.”

  That was more information than Bunton needed. “The only fuckin’ slick I know is Gracie Slick,” Bunton said. “Fuckin’ ABC, DEF.”

  Bunton liked the old stuff, acid and metal, narrative music, Jefferson Airplane, Big Brother, middle Byrds, Black Sabbath up to AC/DC, and some of Aerosmith and even selected Tom Petty; and some outlaw country.

  Virgil tuned his satellite radio to a golden-oldie station and Steppen-wolf came up with “Born to Be Wild.”

  “That’s what I’m talkin’ about,” Bunton said, slapping time on the dashboard with his free hand. “That’s what I’m talkin’ about, right there,” and they got back to 72, and turned to head out on the highway, looking for Bemidji.

  THEY CUT A DEAL after two hours in a small office on the second floor of the Beltrami County Jail. Bunton had the advice of a public defender, a tall, gray-haired, heavyset woman named Jasmine (Jimmy) Carter who wore a strawberry-colored dress and a scowl.

  The arguments:• Bunton believed he would be killed if jailed or imprisoned, for reasons he wouldn’t divulge to anyone but the public defender. He refused to allow Carter to pass on the details, but did allow her to tell Virgil and Harry Smith, the Beltrami County chief deputy, that she thought Bunton’s fears might have some basis in reality, although she couldn’t say so for sure.

  • Virgil, speaking for the state, said that Bunton was guilty of assault on a police officer, resisting arrest, and numerous traffic offenses, some of which might be felonies. And he was almost certainly guilty of conspiracy to conceal a number of felonies and accessory after the fact to four murders. He would be held in jail, where he’d almost certainly be safe, maybe. Virgil suggested that some accommodation might be arranged if Bunton talked.

  • Carter said that any accommodation would have to be arranged by herself through the Beltrami, Chisago, Hennepin, and Ramsey County attorneys, where the alleged crimes had taken place. The deal would have to be approved by a judge.

  • Virgil said that all the bureaucratic maneuvers would take a lot of time, in which time more people might be murdered, adding to the list of charges that Bunton already faced, and that in the meantime he’d be held in a jail, where he’d probably be safe, depending.

  • Bunton said he needed a cigarette really bad, and Smith said that the Beltrami County Jail was a smoke-free facility, and Bunton said, “You gotta be fuckin’ kiddin’ me.”

  • Virgil wondered aloud what would happen if a police officer, acting on his own, made a deal with a prisoner, that he wouldn’t use any incriminating information divulged by the prisoner against him, but instead would consider it information from a confidential informant.

  • Carter said it might be too late for that, that arrests had already taken place. Bunton said, “Wait a minute, I could go for that.” Carter said, “You probably could, but it’s probably illegal.” Virgil said, “He’s already up to his ass in alligators. He’s gonna get bit—this would at least give you an argument. Fact is, I don’t give a shit about Ray Bunton if I can stop the killing.”

  • Carter said, “Let me think about it for a minute.”

  She took Bunton to an interview room, where they talked for fifteen minutes, and then emerged and said, “This is the deal. It’s all oral, no paper. You go for a walk with Ray, and talk. When you’re done, Ray is released to the custody of the Red Lake police force, and he agrees to testify for you in court in return for dropping charges.”

  “That’s a deal,” Virgil said.

  She shook her head: “We’re all going to hell for this.”

  THEY GAVE Bunton his cigarettes and lighter, but kept his wallet and all of his money and ID, and when they got out the door, Virgil said, “I’ll tell you what, dic
kweed. You best not try to run.”

  “I’m not gonna run,” Bunton said. He lit a cigarette and blew smoke and said, “This fuckin’ state. Whoever heard of smoke-free jail? Christ, you can only jack off so much. Then what’re you going to do?”

  “Keep that in mind,” Virgil said. “Which way?”

  Bunton tipped his head. “Let’s go down toward the lake.”

  They walked over to the lake, south and east, along a leafy street, a cool wind coming off the water, Bunton smoking, Virgil letting it go, and finally Bunton said, “You know who Carl Knox is?”

  Virgil did. “What does Carl Knox have to do with this?”

  “I don’t know, and I’m afraid to ask.”

  “Tell me.”

  “It started with a bunch of bulldozers in Vietnam . . .”

  CARL KNOX, and more lately, his eldest daughter, Shirley, were the Twin Cities’ answer to the Mafia—a kinder, gentler organized crime, providing financing for loan sharks and retail drug dealers. They neither sharked nor dealt, but simply financed, and earned a simple two hundred percent on capital.

  Knox, now in his middle sixties, also ran the largest used-heavy-equipment dealership in the area, buying, selling, and trading mostly Caterpillar machines. He also—law-enforcement people knew about it only through rumor—bought and sold large amounts of stolen Caterpillar equipment, and moved it in Canada north of the Fifty-fifth Parallel.

  “Half the stuff up in the oil fields came through Knox, one way or another,” Bunton said. “I was right there at the beginning.” His voice trailed off. “Jesus Christ, this is awful.”

  “Is he the guy you’re afraid of?” Virgil asked.

  “Damn right I am. He’s the fuckin’ Mafia, man,” Bunton said. “He needs to get rid of us. He’s got some shooters from fuckin’ Chicago on our ass.”

  “You know this for sure?”

  “Well—no. But who the fuck else is it gonna be?” Bunton asked. “Who else has the shooters?”

  “Tell me about it,” Virgil said.