Let It Burn Page 10

  I got home at midnight. I lived in a little brick house on a block of little brick houses, in one of the original Detroit suburbs, now a working-class enclave for folks like me, who didn’t want to live in the city itself but didn’t have the money to move out to Livonia or Dearborn Heights.

  I parked the car in the thin little driveway that ran between my house and the house next to me. I got out and took a breath. The dog was barking next door, just like every other time I came home.

  I went inside, took off my clothes, and lay on the bed without turning the lights on. I could hear Jeannie breathing on the other side of the bed.

  “I’m sorry,” I said. “I forgot to call you.”

  She didn’t say anything for a while. I thought maybe she was asleep.

  “I was worried,” she finally said. “You promised me you’d call if you were going to be late. You remember?”

  “There was a murder. A woman who’s taking classes at Wayne State. Her name’s Elana Paige. Do you know her?”

  “Doesn’t sound familiar, no.”

  “She was taking a photography class.”

  Another few moments of silence. The dog stopped barking.

  “Who killed her?”

  “Some kid. Seventeen, eighteen years old.”

  “Did you catch him?”

  “No. Not yet.”

  That was the last thing I said before I closed my eyes. There was nothing else to say anyway.

  In my dreams I was standing over the dead body again, but a strong wind was blowing through the building. Then I was chasing the young man in the jeans and gray shirt again. Chasing him and chasing him and never catching him, down a set of railroad tracks that went on forever.

  CHAPTER NINE

  I had left my cell phone in the truck, as usual. I picked it up as I drove away from Mrs. King’s house. I had a voice message from Sergeant Grimaldi. I pulled over and listened to it, then called him back. He answered on the first ring.

  “What can I do for you?” the sergeant said. “You’re not back in Paradise already, are you?”

  “No, I spent the night down here,” I said. “It was a long day, and I didn’t feel like driving five hours.”

  “That sounds smart. So where are you now?”

  “I’m just driving around the city a little more. I still can’t believe what I’ve been seeing.”

  “Yeah, I know what you mean. It’s like postwar Berlin or something. Although, at least, they rebuilt Berlin. Detroit, I guess they’re just gonna let it rot.”

  “Well, I hope not, but…”

  “Alex, what’s on your mind?”

  “Listen, this is going to sound a little crazy.”

  “I can do crazy, believe me. Let me have it.”

  “You said you called me and you called Detective Bateman, right? About Darryl King getting out?”

  “I did.”

  “How is the detective, anyway?”

  “He’s not the man he was,” the sergeant said. “Put it that way. But I’m pretty sure he still sees himself as the star of his own personal prime-time crime drama. Even now that he’s retired.”

  You didn’t spend enough time with him, I thought. You never saw the other side of Detective Bateman, when he turned off the charm and got down to real police work.

  “Well, he was a character,” I said, figuring this wasn’t the time to be the detective’s publicist. “But do you think there’s any chance I could talk to him?”

  “I’m sure he’d love to hear from you. You want his number?”

  “I’d appreciate it.”

  A moment of hesitation. “Why do you want to call him, anyway? Just to catch up? Or is there something else on your mind?”

  “If you want to know the truth,” I said, “something’s been bothering me about that old case.”

  “Yeah, see, I wasn’t even going to go there, but now that you mention it…”

  “Wait,” I said, “how do you even know what I’m talking about?”

  It was the same feeling of disorientation I’d felt at Mrs. King’s house. How come everybody thinks they know what’s going through my mind today, when I don’t even know myself?

  “I know what’s bothering you, Alex, and I don’t blame you. That was a high-profile case, probably the biggest of the year. Bateman made a lot of hay out of it. You might even say it made his career.”

  “I’m not following you.”

  “Come on, you know exactly what I’m talking about. Bateman was all over the television after King was arrested. He even got that award, remember? But what did you get?”

  “You know what I got.”

  “Yeah, you and Franklin. I know. But that was a totally separate thing. You should have gotten a lot more credit for tracking down the man who butchered that woman.”

  “Well, that’s not where I was going at all,” I said. “I honestly haven’t even thought about it that way, not once in all these years.”

  “Then I’m sure I have no idea what you’re talking about, Alex. What exactly is bothering you?”

  “Well, that’s the crazy part. I actually sorta stumbled upon Darryl King’s mother today, and—”

  “Excuse me, what?”

  “I was just driving by the house where we picked him up. I wanted to see it. She was sitting right there on the porch.”

  I wasn’t about to tell him I went inside and had chocolate cake with the woman. That would be too unbelievable, even if it was the truth.

  “That’s a new one,” he said. “I’m sure she was glad to see you. The man who helped put her son away.”

  “She couldn’t have been nicer about it. And I don’t know, even last night … I was just thinking about the case, and I guess I just want Detective Bateman to fill in some gaps for me, help me to understand how that case got closed in the end. Because I wasn’t there to see it.”

  “It got closed because he confessed. You know that.”

  “I know. But I never got to see the tape. I never even read the transcript. So I guess I just want to know how it went, that’s all. Call it curiosity, after all these years.”

  “It sounds like you’ve got something else on your mind,” he said. “More than just curiosity. But I can tell you, I did see the tape of the confession. It was airtight.”

  “Okay, I appreciate you telling me that. That makes me feel better.”

  “But you’re still going to call the detective, aren’t you.”

  “I thought I might. Unless you think it’s a bad idea.”

  “I suppose it might rattle his cage a little bit, you showing up after all these years, wanting to know how he closed out the case. But you know what? That sounds like a good enough reason right there. Hell, I wish I could be there myself.”

  “You’re sounding just like the sergeant we all knew and loved.”

  “Let me get you the number,” he said. I wrote it down as he read it off to me.

  “Okay,” I said. “I got it. Thank you.”

  “Let me know how it goes, all right? Let me know what shade of red his face turns when you ask him if it was a clean confession.”

  “It’s a deal.”

  “Oh, by the way,” he said. “I know I said he’s not the man he used to be, but you should know, he’s really had some health problems over the past few years. So don’t be surprised when you see him, is all I’m saying.”

  “I appreciate the warning.”

  “You take care of yourself, Alex. It was good seeing you again.”

  I thanked him again and hung up. Then I sat there for a while on the side of that empty street. It was a clean confession, I told myself. The sergeant saw it himself, and he would know.

  So why do I still have Mrs. King’s voice in my head, telling me her son was innocent?

  I picked up the phone again and dialed Detective Bateman’s number.

  *

  A few minutes later, I was on the road, driving north. I took the Lodge Freeway out of the city. When I hit Eight Mile Road
, the infamous northern border, I had a strange moment of regret and something almost like heartache. This city wasn’t a part of my life anymore. I lived over three hundred miles away. Yet it had meant something to me, once upon a time. I grew up rooting for its sports teams. I went to work here every day for eight years. I saw a thousand terrible things here back in the day, but I also saw what the people of Detroit were really made of. When people tell you this city essentially won the Second World War, it’s not crazy. Even back in the eighties, when things were really starting to fall apart, I still felt like the people who lived here could put the city back together. Now it felt like most everyone had given up on the place. I couldn’t even imagine what it would look like in another twenty years.

  I was heading back to Paradise, but with a little detour in mind. When I had reached the retired Detective Arnie Bateman, after exchanging the standard pleasantries, he had told me that he lived “up north” now. “On the lake.” I was already wondering if he had ended up in Marquette, or maybe Eagle Harbor. That was the real “up north,” after all, and the real “on the lake.” But no, he lived on Houghton Lake, the inland lake right in the middle of the mitten. It was about halfway home for me. Hell, not more than a few minutes out of my way, so we ended up arranging to grab a bite to eat on his boat.

  He would no doubt want to show me the lake, and I’d have to act like I was impressed. I’d have to resist the urge to tell him that my lake was a thousand feet deep and bigger than ten states.

  It took me less than three hours to get there, through Saginaw and Bay City. I got off at the exit and worked my way around the southern shore to the town of Houghton Lake. There were plenty of lakeside motels, restaurants, bars, places to buy fishing tackle. There was a week left until Labor Day, so the place was still moderately busy.

  I passed another Ash Street. The day winking at me, if you believe in that sort of thing. Soon after, I left the main road and found the marina. Another quarter mile up the shoreline, I found the address. I’m not sure what I was expecting. Maybe a big white Cape Cod with a sign up front bearing the house’s name, BATEMAN’S BEACH HOUSE or something like that, but I was surprised to see nothing but a mailbox with a number and his last name assembled with those reflective letter decals you buy at the hardware store. I turned down the driveway and pulled up next to a Jeep. The house was a simple log cabin, not much different from my own.

  When I got out of the truck, the side door to the cabin opened, and out stepped a man I wouldn’t have recognized in any other context. I mean, I knew Sergeant Grimaldi gave me the heads-up, but the man I saw was at least fifty pounds heavier than the detective I remembered, and he was walking slowly, gripping a cane in his right hand. As he got closer, I could start to see that old face from the precinct, but there wasn’t one single bit of flash left to the man. He looked, honestly, like he was seventy years old.

  If Sergeant Grimaldi had lost a step or two with age, then Detective Bateman had lost a whole staircase.

  “Officer McKnight,” he said, looking me up and down. “I swear, you don’t look any different.”

  I shook his hand. He still had some strength left, at least.

  “I’m afraid I’m not moving around quite as well,” he said, looking down at his cane. “But they’re gonna give me a new hip soon, so I’ll be good as new. I told the doctor he should keep going, just turn everything bionic.”

  “I could use some of that myself,” I said, rubbing my right shoulder.

  His smile went away for a moment, as he made the connection. The reason my shoulder should need such attention when the rest of me seemed to be holding up just fine.

  “Yeah,” he said. “How are you doing with that, anyway? I never really got to talk to you after … You know.”

  “I don’t even think about it anymore.” Half a lie on my part.

  “I heard they left one inside you. Was that just for a souvenir?”

  “Something like that.”

  The smile came back as he patted my other shoulder. “Come on,” he said. “Let’s have a little something on the lake.”

  I followed him around the cabin, down to his dock.

  “You live in Paradise now? Is that right?”

  “I do.”

  “Well, then, I know this lake is just a pond to you.”

  Another surprise, from this man who once lived to one-up everyone around him. At least a hundred times a day.

  “It’s a nice lake,” I said, looking out over the water. I could see maybe a dozen boats, not nearly as many as I would have thought. “You’ve got a nice quiet place here.”

  “Hell, you should see this lake during the Bud Bash.”

  “What’s that?”

  “Every summer, they get thousands of people here, all these boats tied together in a big flotilla down the shoreline a bit. People drinking like crazy, just going insane.”

  “Funny, we don’t get that in Paradise.”

  “It’s enough to drive an ex-cop out of his mind, Alex. All those drunks driving their boats around. Then later on their cars when they’re going home. It’s a miracle they don’t have a dozen people killed every year.”

  The final surprise came when we got to his dock. I would have guessed a sleek speedboat for good old Detective Bateman. Instead, I saw a big fat lazy pontoon boat, with deck chairs, a full roof, and a motor just big enough to move it along at two miles per hour.

  “I know what you’re thinking,” he said. “This thing is just a floating gazebo. But on this lake, it’s perfect. I can anchor anywhere, throw a fishing line out, catch a few walleye, maybe take a little nap.”

  “Nothing wrong with that.”

  “Come on, I’ve got the cooler packed already.”

  He opened up the little gate and stepped onto the deck. I followed him. The boat barely dipped as I stepped on board.

  “Rock solid,” he said, sitting in the captain’s chair and pushing the electric starter. I untied the front end and we were off, backing out into the lake. When we were clear of the dock, he put it into forward and gunned it. A baby duck could have paddled faster.

  We moved north for a while, Bateman pointing out resorts and bars on the western shore. Then he cut over by Houghton Point, and we started on a great loop that would keep us out here all afternoon. The sun was hot now, even with the awning over our heads.

  “So why did you look up your old buddy Detective Bateman after all these years?” he finally said. “Let me guess. It has something to do with that call we both got from Sergeant Grimaldi.”

  “Well, I did come down to have a drink with him. Your name came up once or twice.”

  “I bet it did. Grimaldi never did like me that much.”

  “I wouldn’t go that far. He just never got to know you like I did.”

  Bateman looked at me. “We spent a lot of time together that month, didn’t we? I’m glad it all paid off in the end. Although now that he’s getting out…”

  “Nothing we can do about that,” I said. “But the thing is, I never got the chance to see how that case was closed. With what happened to me…”

  “The only thing that happened after you left was his plea and then his sentencing.”

  “I never heard his confession.”

  He looked at me again. “You didn’t see the tape?”

  “No, I didn’t.”

  “Too bad. It was my finest hour.”

  He was smiling when he said it, but I knew he wasn’t completely joking. It was the biggest case of his career, for all the obvious reasons, spoken or unspoken. A photogenic white woman from Farmington Hills, stabbed two dozen times by a young black male. That same pretty face on the six o’clock news, and in the paper, every day for most of that month. The frustration building every day we couldn’t find our suspect. The pressure from every direction. Until finally we had our man and he was locked in a room with a homicide detective who did things his own way. If this was a television show, you might even say he played by his own rules. Of cou
rse, it wasn’t a television show, and the blood on the floor of that balcony was very much real.

  “I’ve always wondered how it went down,” I said. “That call from the sergeant was sort of a reminder, I guess.”

  Bateman nodded his head. Then he cut the engine. He got up, fished out the anchor, and threw it overboard.

  “I take it we’re stopping?”

  “Good a place as any,” he said. “It’s only fifteen feet deep here. Most of the lake’s about that. I’m guessing Lake Superior gets a little deeper.”

  “Just a little.”

  “Interest you in a cold beer?”

  “You could twist my arm.”

  He opened up the cooler and pulled out two bottles of Sierra Nevada. Not bad if a Canadian isn’t available, especially in the summer.

  “I’ve got some sandwiches in here, too.”

  The only thing I had eaten that day was the slice of Mrs. King’s chocolate cake, so I was ready for a real lunch. We sat there and had our ham and cheese sandwiches while the other boats on the lake zoomed right by us.

  “Okay,” he said, when he was done eating and was wiping his hands on his napkin. “You want to know how I got that confession.”

  “If you don’t mind telling me.”

  He smiled. “You know how much I hate talking about myself, but I’ll see what I can do.”

  I took another hit on my beer, squinting at the sunlight reflected off the water. I ended up closing my eyes, all the better to listen to him, and to bring back that summer and the case that would bind the two of us together forever.

  “So we’ve got this kid,” he said. “Remember how we were thinking he was seventeen, eighteen years old? And he turns out to be sixteen?”

  “I remember.”

  “Sixteen on paper, but he was already a hard case. That day we finally caught him, when he just stood there in the doorway with a dozen cops all aiming their guns at him? The way he didn’t even blink?”

  I thought back to that day. That strange, almost anticlimactic arrest, after everything we’d gone through to get there.