Bunch shrugged. “That was Cliff Bear who saw him-but he didn’t recognize him, and he would have recognized him if the guy was from up here. He could be from the Cities…”
“There are some drug connections between here and some Indian people down in the Cities, the way I understand it,” Virgil said. “Was Ray tied into that?”
“Not as far as I know. Ray used to do a little reefer, but you know-nothing serious,” Bunch said. “He wasn’t dealing or anything. Not up here, anyway.”
“It seems like Ray had to be fingered somehow,” Virgil said. “How would a guy who doesn’t know this place find his way back to Ray’s mom’s house, then shoot a cop who never even took his pistol out?”
Another Indian cop had edged over to listen, and now he chipped in: “You’re thinking what I’m thinking?”
“What are you thinking?” asked Virgil.
“That Olen recognized the guy who flagged him down? Didn’t think it was a big deal because it was another Indian guy?”
Virgil nodded at him. “Actually, I wasn’t thinking that, but it’s a good thought.”
Bunch said, “We got some assholes up here, and I’m not saying there aren’t people up here who wouldn’t shoot a man, because there are. So if Ray turned up dead, and you say, okay, Red Lake did it, I’d think about it. It’s possible. But this lemon deal? What about all these other people killed with lemons? You think Indian people did all of them?”
Virgil said, “No. I don’t. What I’m thinking is, they were killed by somebody who had the connections to get a killing done up here.”
The second Indian cop said, “Have to be drugs, then. That’s the only kind of organized crime we’ve got. Everything else is disorganized.”
THE GUY who’d been working in the car stood up, walked around the car, and asked Virgil, “You’re Virgil?”
“Yes.”
“Ron Mapes. I’m with the Bemidji office.” He was a balding, ginger-haired man wearing surgical gloves. “I just talked to our guys in Bemidji at the veterans’ memorial. They say that Bunton may have slashed him with his fingernails. Got some blood and a little skin.”
“That’s terrific. Get it to the lab quick as you can.”
Mapes nodded. “Of course. Not much up here, so far, except footprints.”
“Yeah?”
Mapes led the way back down the road, pointed out two footprints marked with little orange plastic flags.
“Can you tell anything from them?” Virgil asked.
“Couple things-he’s got a small foot. Size eight or nine, I’d guess,” Mapes said. “The shoes had no cleats or even ripples-they were flat leather bottoms with low heels. Like loafers. They weren’t boots of any kind, or sneakers. More like dress shoes.”
“So a small guy,” Virgil said.
“Yeah. The ground is damp and he didn’t sink in too deep. Put that with the small foot, and I’d say a small guy with small feet. We figure-the officers here figure-that he had the Bunton house under surveillance somehow, which means that he had to be parked back in the woods somewhere. There’s a boat landing road a hundred yards or so from the Bunton place; it’s possible he was back in there. We’ll check in the morning when it gets light-can’t see much with just a flash.”
“What do you think you’d find?”
Mapes shrugged. “Well, I’m hoping for a matchbook that says ‘Moonlight Café, St. Paul, Minnesota,’ and inside is written, ‘Call Sonia.’”
“That’d be good,” Bunch said.
Virgil was patient. “What,” he asked, “do you think you’ll find?”
“Best case? More blood. If he was doing surveillance from up close, he was walking through heavy brush in the dark. If he scratched himself… But that’d be best case. More likely, a little fabric, which we might be able to match with some of his clothing, if we find him. If he fell, maybe a handprint. Or maybe he did drop something-who knows?”
“Find any.22 shells on the street?” Virgil asked.
“Nope.”
“So if he’s using a silencer-we think he might be using a silencer-he either took the time to pick up the ejected shells, or he had some kind of little catch basket rigged on the side, or he’s really good at hand-capturing them.”
“That seems likely,” Mapes said. “You could silence a single-shot, but this isn’t a single-shot. These people were shot in a hurry.”
“He’s a professional,” Bunch said.
“That’s right,” Virgil said.
VIRGIL STAYED until four in the morning, hoping against hope that they might find something. They went back to Bunton’s place, where his mother sat in a rocker staring at a wall, and looked at what Bunton had left behind: a motorcycle saddlebag with a few shirts and a pair of jeans, but not a single piece of paper.
At four o’clock, he told Jarlait and Bunch that he was heading back to Bemidji to get some sleep.
“Let me ask you something,” Jarlait said. They were off by themselves, leaning on Jarlait’s truck. Up and down the street, people were standing in their yards, watching the cops at Bunton’s place. “We’ve been talking about the white van and the Indian man, and dope. I know goddamn well that the dope people in Minneapolis got shooters. Or they could get them if they needed them. And when we started talking about dope, you were thinking about something. Do you know something? Do you know where the connection is? Between all the lemons and Ray? That has to do with the dope people?”
Virgil thought about Carl Knox. Carl Knox had put money into dope dealers, the BCA’s organized-crime people said, but nobody had been able to prove it, because he’d never dealt dope himself. All he did was provide financing, and then only at four or five levels above the street. His return was smaller, but also safer.
“Virgil?”
“It’s something I gotta think about,” Virgil said. “I’ve got a guy… I can’t talk about it, really… but there’s a guy in all of this who was a moneyman for dope dealers. Might still be.”
“We need to know this shit, because that’s one of our friends sitting back there dead in that cop car,” Jarlait said. “Ray… Ray was okay, but this was gonna happen sooner or later, one way or another, with Ray. He was gonna ride his bike into a phone pole, or he was gonna piss off the wrong guy. But Olen… Olen didn’t deserve anything like this. He was a good guy.”
“Like I said, I got a guy,” Virgil said. “I don’t know if he’s involved, but I’m going after him.”
“Like soon?”
“Like tomorrow morning,” Virgil said. “You guys: stay in touch.”
“We will. You stay in touch with us, too,” Jarlait said. “If something happens, and we can get in on it, we want in.”
16
VIRGIL FOUND a bed at the RootyToot Resort on Candi Lake, a place with tumbledown brown-painted fake log cabins and beds that were too short, and mattresses that were too thin, and pillows that were flat and hard and smelled like hair and Vaseline; but that also rented fourteen-foot aluminum boats with 9.9-horse Honda kickers, that came with the cabin and he could take out anytime.
Virgil had stayed there twice before and didn’t mind having a beer or two with the resort’s alcoholic owner, Dave Root, though at five o’clock in the morning, Root was unconscious and Virgil took a key out of a mailbox, left a note on Root’s door, and checked himself in.
He lay in bed and thought about God and the people who were dead on this case, and who’d died years ago in Vietnam, if Ray Bunton had been telling the truth, and wondered what all that was about, and how somebody like the dumb-ass preachers on TV could think this could all be part of God’s Plan.