A Cold Day in Paradise (Alex McKnight Mysteries) Read online

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  BLOOD IS ALWAYS THE SAME.

  I tried not to think. It didn’t happen, it was a bad dream.

  Uttley thanking me. Telling me to go home and get some sleep. Edwin standing there with that lost look on his face. For once all the money in the world wasn’t going to make a problem go away. Chief Maven, playing his little hard-ass games with us. I had known so many cops just like him.

  Way back when, Alex. Back in Detroit.

  Stop right there. Don’t think about anything else. You didn’t really go into that motel room. You didn’t really see it. The red, the red, all that red.

  I tried to stop the next image from coming into my mind, but I could not. I saw the blood again. A vast shivering red lake of blood.

  That day in Detroit. I am there again. The blood, just like tonight. The same color. The same quality. Blood is always the same.

  “Hamilton combines crisp, clear writing, wily, colorful characters and an offbeat locale in an impressive debut.”

  —Publishers Weekly

  “A good combination of crafty and colorful chaeracters, an offbeat locale in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula, and really crisp, clear writing … There are several plots, all woven together very well. Alex is a very likable character, as are other townspeople, and the writing moves very swiftly, making this an easy and enjoyable book to read.”

  —Sullivan County Democrat

  “P.I. Alex McNight’s ‘mean steets’ are the deep pine woods and the small lakeside towns of Michigan’s Upper Peninsula, and here the past comes to find him, chilling as the November wind. A must for PI and suspense fans.”

  —Charles Todd, author of Wings of Fire

  ST. MARTIN’S/MINOTAUR PAPERBACKS TITLES

  by STEVE HAMILTON

  Ice Run

  Blood is the Sky

  North of Nowhere

  The Hunting Wind

  Winter of the Wolf Moon

  A Cold Day in Paradise

  A COLD

  DAY IN

  PARADISE

  STEVE HAMILTON

  St. Martin’s Paperbacks

  A COLD DAY IN PARADISE

  Copyright © 1998 by Steve Hamilton.

  Excerpt from Winter of the Wolf Moon copyright © 1999 by Steve Hamilton.

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews. For information address St. Martin’s Press, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10010.

  Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 98-19399

  ISBN: 0-312-96919-8

  EAN: 978-0-312-96919-6

  Printed in the United States of America

  St Martin’s Press hardcover edition / September 1998

  St. Martin’s Paperbacks edition / February 2000

  St. Martin’s Paperbacks are published by St. Martin’s Press, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10010.

  15 14 13 12

  TO JULIA AND NICHOLAS

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  I’d like to thank the people of Chippewa County, Michigan, for their hospitality, and for their patience with downstaters like me. To anyone who hasn’t been there, if you ever find yourself driving from Sault Ste. Marie to Paradise, don’t worry about getting your car stuck in the snow. That’s not to say it won’t happen. If it’s between November and March, it probably will happen. But the first person to come by will help you. You can bet on it, because that’s the kind of people who live there. So if any local characters in this book behave less than honorably, please believe that they’re nothing more than a product of my overactive imagination.

  Thanks, also, to my writing group—Bill Keller, Frank Hayes, Vernece Seager, Douglas Smyth, Kevin McEneaney, and Laura Fontaine. Without you I’d still be promising myself that I’d start writing again some day. Thanks to Liz Staples and Taylor Brugman for your time and local knowledge. To Chuck Sumner and Alfred Schwab for your encouragement. To Ruthe Furie, Bob Randisi, and Jan Grape from the Private Eye Writers of America. To the incomparable Ruth Cavin, Marika Rohn, and everyone else at St. Martin’s Press.

  For technical assistance, I need to thank Cheryl Wheeler from the Private Security and Investigative Section of the Michigan State Police; Larry Queipo, former Police Chief, Town of Kingston, New York; and Dr. Glenn Hamilton from the Department of Emergency Medicine at Wright State University.

  And most of all, thank you, Julia, my wife and best friend. And Nickie—you are my perfect little boy, and always will be.

  Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Preview

  CHAPTER ONE

  THERE IS A bullet in my chest, less than a centimeter from my heart. I don’t think about it much anymore. It’s just a part of me now. But every once in a while, on a certain kind of night, I remember that bullet. I can feel the weight of it inside me. I can feel its metallic hardness. And even though that bullet has been warming inside my body for fourteen years, on a night like this when it is dark enough and the wind is blowing, that bullet feels as cold as the night itself.

  It was a Halloween night, which always makes me think about my days on the force. There’s nothing like being a policeman in Detroit on Halloween night. The kids wear masks, but instead of trick-or-treating they burn down houses. The next day there might be forty or fifty houses reduced to black skeletons, still smoking. Every cop is out on the streets, looking for kids with gasoline cans and calling in the fires before they rage out of control. The only thing worse than being a Detroit policeman on Halloween night is being a Detroit fireman.

  But that was a long time ago. Fourteen years since I took that bullet, fourteen years and a good three hundred miles away, due south. It might as well have been on another planet, in another lifetime.

  Paradise, Michigan, is a little town in the Upper Peninsula, on the shores of Lake Superior, across Whitefish Bay from Sault Ste. Marie, or “the Soo,” as the locals call it. On a Halloween night in Paradise, you might see a few paper ghosts in the trees, whipped by the wind off the lake. Or you might see a car filled with costumed children on their way to a party, witches and pirates looking out the back window at you as you wait at the one blinking red light in the center of town. Maybe Jackie will be standing behind the bar wearing his gorilla mask when you step into the place. The running joke is that you wait until he takes the mask off to scream.

  Aside from that, a Halloween night doesn’t look much different from any other October night in Paradise. It’s m
ostly just pine trees, and clouds, and the first hint of snow in the air. And the largest, coldest, deepest lake in the world, waiting to turn into a November monster.

  I pulled the truck into the Glasgow Inn parking lot. All the regulars would already be there. It was poker night. I was a good two hours late, so I was sure they had started without me. I had spent the entire evening in a trailer park over in Rosedale, knocking on doors. A local contractor had been setting a new mobile home when it tipped over and crushed the legs of one of the workers. He wasn’t in the hospital more than an hour before Mr. Lane Uttley, Esquire, was at his side, offering the best legal services that a fifty-percent cut could buy. It would probably be a quick out of court settlement, he told me on the phone, but it was always nice to have a witness just in case they try to beat the suit. Somebody to testify that no, the guy wasn’t stone drunk and he wasn’t showing off by trying to balance five tons of mobile home on his nose.

  I started at the scene of the accident. It was a strange sight, the mobile home still tipped over, one corner crumpled into the ground. I worked my way down the line as the sun set behind the trees. I wasn’t having much luck, just a few doors slammed in my face and one dog who took a nice sample of fabric out of my pant leg. I’d been giving the private investigator thing a try for about six months. It wasn’t working out too well.

  Finally, I found one woman who would admit to seeing what happened. After she described what she had seen, she asked me if there might be a few bucks in it for her. I told her she would have to take up that matter with Mr. Uttley. I left her his card. “Lane Uttley, Attorney at Law, specializing in personal injury, workers’ compensation, automobile accidents, slip and fall, medical malpractice, defective products, alcohol-related accidents, criminal defense.” With his address in the Soo and his phone number. She squinted at the tiny letters, all those words on one little business card. “I’ll call him first thing in the morning,” she said. I didn’t feel like driving all the way back to Lane’s office to drop off my report, so she’d probably call him before he even knew who she was. Which would confuse the hell out of him, but I was cold and tired, much in need of a drink, and already late for my poker game.

  The Glasgow Inn is supposed to have a touch of Scotland to it. So instead of sitting on a stool and staring at your own face in the mirror behind the bar, you sit in an overstuffed chair in front of the fireplace. If that’s the way it works in Scotland, I’d like to move there after I retire. For now, I’ll take the Glasgow Inn. It was like a second home to me.

  When I walked into the place, the guys were at the table and already into the game, like I figured. Jackie, the owner of the place, was in his usual chair with his feet by the fire. He nodded at me and then at the bar. There stood Leon Prudell, one hand on the bar, the other wrapped around a shotglass. From the looks of him, it was not his first.

  “Well, well,” he said. “If it isn’t Mr. Alex McKnight.” Prudell was a big man, two-fifty at least. But he carried most of it around his middle. His hair was bright red and was always sticking out in some direction. One look at the guy, with the plaid flannel shirt and the hundred-dollar hunting boots, you knew he had lived in the Upper Peninsula all his life.

  The five men at the poker table stopped in midhand to watch us.

  “Mr. McKnight, Private Eye,” he said. “Mr. Bigshot, himself, ay?” With that distinctive “yooper” twang, that little rise in his voice that made him sound almost Canadian.

  There might have been a dozen other men in the place, besides the players at the table. The room fell silent as they all turned one by one to look at us, like we were a couple of gunslingers ready to draw.

  “What brings you all the way out to Paradise, Prudell?” I asked.

  He looked at me for a long moment. A log on the fire gave a sudden pop like a gunshot. He drained the rest of his glass and then put it on the bar. “Why don’t we discuss this outside?” he said.

  “Prudell,” I said. “It’s cold outside. I’ve had a long day.”

  “I really think we need to discuss this matter outside, McKnight.”

  “Let me buy you a drink, okay?” I said. “Can I just buy you a drink and we can talk about it here?”

  “Oh sure,” he said. “You can buy me a drink. You can buy me two drinks. You can get behind the bar and mix ’em yourself.”

  “For God’s sake.” This I did not need. Not tonight.

  “That’s the least you can do for a man after you take his job away.”

  “Prudell, come on.”

  “Here,” he said. He stuffed one of his big paws into his pockets and pulled out his car keys. “You forgot to take these, too.”

  “Prudell…”

  I didn’t expect the keys to come at me so quickly, and with such deadly aim. They caught me right above the left eye before I could even flinch.

  All five men rose at once from their table. “No need, boys,” I said. “Have a seat.” I bent over to pick up the keys, feeling a trickle of blood in the corner of my eye. “Prudell, I didn’t know you had such a good arm. We could have used you back when I was playing ball in Columbus.” I tossed his keys back to him. “Of course, I got to wear a mask then.” I wiped at the blood with the back of my hand.

  “Outside,” he said.

  “After you,” I said.

  We went out into the parking lot and stood facing each other in the cheap light. We were alone. The pine trees swayed all around us as the wind picked up. The air was heavy with moisture off the lake. He took a couple swings at me without connecting.

  “Prudell, aren’t we a little too old for this?”

  “Shut up and fight,” he said. He swung at me with everything he had. The man didn’t know how to fight, but he could still hurt me if I wasn’t careful. And unfortunately, he probably wasn’t quite as drunk as I hoped he was.

  “Prudell, you aren’t even coming close,” I said. “Maybe you should stick to throwing your keys.” Get him mad, I thought. Don’t let him settle down and start finding his range.

  “I’ve got a wife and two kids, you know.” He kept throwing big roundhouse punches with his right hand. “My wife isn’t going to get her new car now. And my kids won’t be going to Disney World like I promised them.”

  I ducked a right, then another right, then another. Let’s see a left, I thought. I want a nice lazy drunken left hand, Prudell.

  “I had a guy working for me, helping me out when I was on a job,” he said. “I swear to God, McKnight, that was the only thing keeping him together. If something happens to him now, it’s all on your head.”

  He tried a couple more right-hand haymakers before the idea of a left-hand jab bubbled up through all the rage and whiskey in his brain. When it came, it was as long and slow as a mudslide. I stepped into him and threw a right hook to the point of his chin, turning the punch slightly downward at the end, just like my old third base coach had taught me. Prudell went down hard and stayed down.

  I stood there watching him while I rubbed my right shoulder. “Get up, Prudell,” I said. “I didn’t hit you that hard.”

  I was just about to get worried when he finally pulled himself up from the gravel. “McKnight, I will get you,” he said. “I promise you that right now.”

  “I’m here most Saturday nights,” I said. “Hell, most nights period. You know where to find me.”

  “Count on it,” he said. He stumbled around the parking lot for a full minute until he remembered what his car looked like. In the distance I could hear the waves dying on the rocks.

  I went back into the bar. The men looked at me, then at the door. They reached their own conclusions and went on with the poker hand. It was the usual crew, the kind of guys you didn’t even have to say hello to, even if you hadn’t seen them in a week. You just sat down and looked at your cards. I held a napkin over my eye to stop the bleeding.

  “That clown must have stood there for two hours waiting for you,” Jackie said. “What was his beef?”

  “
Thinks I took his job,” I said. “He used to do some work for Uttley.”

  “A private investigator? Him?”

  “He likes to think so.”

  “I wouldn’t pay him two cents to find his own dick.”

  “Why would you pay a man to find his own dick?” a man named Rudy asked.

  “I wouldn’t,” Jackie said. “It’s just an expression.”

  “It’s not an expression,” Rudy said. “If it was an expression, I would have heard it before.”

  “It’s an expression,” Jackie said. “Tell him it’s an expression, Alex.”

  “Just deal the cards,” I said.

  I played some poker and had a few slow beers. Jackie went over the bridge every week to get good beer from Canada, just one more reason to love the place. I forgot all about trailer parks and pissed-off ex-private eyes for a while. I figured that was enough drama for one night. I figured I was allowed to relax a little bit and maybe even start to feel human again.

  But the night had other plans for me. Because that’s when Edwin Fulton had to come into the place. Excuse me, Edwin J. Fulton the third. And his wife, Sylvia. They just had to pick this night to drop by.

  They had obviously just been to some sort of soiree. God knows where you’d even find a soiree in the whole Upper Peninsula, but leave it to Edwin. He was decked out in his best gray suit, a charcoal overcoat, and a red scarf wrapped around his collar just right. The suit was obviously tailored to make him look taller, but it could only do so much. He was still a good six inches shorter than his wife.

  Sylvia was wearing a full-length fur coat. Fox, I would have guessed. It must have taken about twenty of them to make that coat. She had her dark hair pinned up, and when she took off her coat, we all got to see a little black number that showed off her legs and her perfect shoulders. Goddamn it, that woman had shoulders. And even on a cold night she had to go and wear something like that. She knew that every man in the place was looking at her, but I had a sick feeling that she wouldn’t have taken her coat off at all if I hadn’t been there. She slipped me a quick look that hurt me more than Prudell’s keys.