Free Heat Lightning by John Sandford Page A

guys,” Gomez said. “How fast you need it?”
    “Well, if you get a hit, I need to know right away,” Virgil said. “The killer guy, we don’t know that he’s left town. If he’s crazy, if it’s business, or what it is. If he’s got a list, it could get ugly.”
    “I’ll call—but to tell you the truth, it sounds more like some kind of goddamn Russian thing or Armenian or Kazakh. They’re into the rituals and warnings and shit. The mob, those assholes just shoot your ass and bury you in the woods with Jimmy.”
    “Jimmy?”
    “Hoffa.”
    “Oh, yeah. Listen—another guy told me that the Vietnamese executioners sometimes stick lemons in the mouths of the people they’re going to execute,” Virgil said. “Like gags. If you can find any reference to that . . . maybe old Vietnam guys or something?”
    “Sounds kinky. Let me check,” Gomez said. “You on your cell phone?”
    “I am. One more thing, Harold? See if the guys in the serial-killer unit are looking at any chain of old veteran deaths. Even without lemons and memorials.”
    “Sure.”
    “I owe you, Harold.”
    HE CLICKED OFF, got ready to move, but Carol called back.
    “We talked to a guy in Red Lake who knows Bunton, and they’re out looking for a guy to call you back. Sandy dug up some pictures of him, she e-mailed them to you, along with every file she can find on him. Income tax, all of that. She can’t get into the military records, but there’s a reference in one of his DWI files that he was treated for alcoholism at the Veterans Administration Hospital, and that he did service in Vietnam . . . so he’s ex-military.”
    “All right. I sort of knew that, but it all helps.”
     
 
HE WAS FIVE MINUTES from a Starbucks, where he had an online account. He got a white chocolate mocha Frappuccino, found a table, and brought the computer up as he sipped.
    The photos of Bunton showed a hard, square-looking man, always in T-shirts. In one photo, he glared at the camera, a headband tight around his forehead, an eagle feather dangling over one ear. With his pale eyes, he didn’t look particularly Indian, Virgil thought—more like an IRA dead-ender. Was Bunton an Irish name? Or maybe Scots? Didn’t sound a hell of a lot like Ojibwa.
    Whatever.
    The rest of the Bunton file told him what he’d already guessed—Vietnam, hanging out, motorcycles, alcoholism, dope, and sporadic employment involving automobile parts.
    When he finished, Virgil shut down the computer, looked at his watch.
    Goddamn Bunton.
    He stood up to leave, but his phone rang. Carol. He sat down again, flipped it open, and said, “Yeah?”
    “Informally, the phone call went to the Minneapolis Hyatt. I’ve got the number, but not the room. . . .”
     
THE MINNEAPOLIS HYATT is all tangled up in the Skyway system, and Virgil, operating on Kentucky windage, put his truck in the wrong parking ramp and debouched into the Skyway, not realizing that he wasn’t where he thought he was. He spent ten minutes running around like a hamster in a plastic habitat, before he found a map and realized his mistake.
    The hotel’s lobby was empty, but the Hyatt desk was being run by a young woman who was far too sophisticated and generally out there to be running a hotel desk. Virgil had the uneasy feeling that if he asked her to connect a phone number to a room and a name, she’d call a manager, who might want to see a subpoena . . . blah-blah-blah.
    He looked around and saw an elderly rusty-haired bellhop sitting on a window ledge, reading a sex newspaper called Seed , which, Virgil happened to know, was the publishing arm of an outlaw motorcycle gang.
    Virgil went over and sat down next to him. The bellhop looked like a model for the next Leprechaun horror film, with a nose the size of a turnip and a bush of red hair shot through with gray.
    He glanced at Virgil and said, “You look like a hippie, but you’re a cop.” He was wearing a tag that said George . “Looking for