Free Heat Lightning by John Sandford

Sinclair crossed the street and started along the next block, and Virgil watched him through the windshield. At the end of the second block, he wrapped around to his right, headed out to Grand Avenue.
    Virgil followed in the truck, crossed the street that Sinclair had taken, saw him walking up the block. Virgil took the opportunity to back up a bit, watched him in a narrow gap between the edge of a house and a tree trunk. Sinclair crossed the street at the corner, carefully looking both ways before he crossed, and a moment later was out of sight again.
    He could lose him right there, but Virgil took the chance and drove on another block, then right, to the end of the block, and eased out, looking down the block, and saw Sinclair crossing Grand, heading into a restaurant.
    Sinclair had just eaten, he’d said. Virgil hadn’t been invited. . . . So why the restaurant? Virgil parked, waiting to see who he might come out with—or who might come out that was interesting.
    Nobody came out but Sinclair, a minute or so after he went in. He recrossed the street, then turned away, down the block, retracing his steps: might be headed home. Virgil made a quick turn, went down to the end of the block, found a bush he could stop behind. A minute later, Sinclair appeared a block away, crossed the street again, and headed back toward his house.
    Virgil said, “Shoot,” and wrestled the truck in a quick U. Had he missed somebody? He should have waited outside the restaurant.
    Nobody came out for ten minutes, and then it was two elderly ladies. Another five minutes, and two fat guys in golf shirts, one picking ferociously at his teeth with a toothpick. They got into a Cadillac and drove away; they seemed unlikely.
    Virgil decided to look for himself. Walked down to the restaurant, stood at the hostess stand for a moment, checking out the ten or twelve people in the booths. They all looked unremarkable, and seemed focused on food or conversation. The hostess, who might have been a college girl from Macalester, came over and said, “One?”
    “Ah, I was here to meet a guy, but I’m late, and I’m afraid I might have missed him. Good-looking older guy, still blond . . .”
    “Oh—the professor?”
    “Yeah. That’s him,” Virgil said.
    “He was here, but made a call and then he left again. He might be trying to call you.”
    “Thanks,” Virgil said. He backed away, glanced toward the rest-rooms, saw the old-fashioned black coin phone on the wall. “I’ll try him again on the phone.”
    He went back and looked at it: the phone dial showed a number, and he jotted it down in the palm of his hand, under the number that Mai had written there.
    Outside again, he thought about it. Sinclair had just walked four blocks to a cold phone to make a call. Interesting. . . .
    He noted the time and called Carol. “See if you can get a subpoena for the phone records for a pay phone at Stern’s Café, on Grand. Here’s the number . . .”
    “You want me to check informally first?” She meant that Davenport knew a guy who could tell them whether a subpoena would be a waste of time.
    “If you could. Get in touch with Red Lake?”
    “Not yet; still trying.”
     
 
VIRGIL RANG OFF, looked at the phone for a moment, groped in his briefcase for his black book, punched in a number.
    “Harold; it’s Virgil Flowers in Minnesota.”
    “Yeah, Virgil. What’s up?”
    “I got a killer who’s executed two older guys, left their bodies on vet memorials, with lemons stuck in their mouths. Killed them with a .22, two shots, maybe silenced. You ever hear of anything like that, with the cartels, the mob, or anybody?”
    “New one on me,” Harold Gomez said. He was an agent with the DEA. “You got weird shit up there. I always said that.”
    “If you have a line into the FBI, into that serial-killer unit, whatever it is . . . could you check the lemon thing? Without burning up any of your personal credit?”
    “Sure. I know a guy who knows those