Die a Stranger: An Alex McKnight Novel Page 12

  “The off-roads. There’s hundreds of them, all over the place. Hell, we got more off-roads up here than regular roads. I even got this map out and showed them. Right there at the airport, you can jump right on a trail and go to another trail, and pretty much go wherever you want to go, all over the UP. You practically never have to hit a main road once.”

  “I’m sure they appreciated your creative thinking,” I said, “and that would explain that truck I saw at the airport. I’m sure it was four-wheel drive, big tires, perfect for getting down those trails, right?”

  He nodded.

  “So let’s get to the part of the story where Buck gets involved.”

  He didn’t say anything for a moment. He didn’t have to. I was already racing to the answer, picturing that all-terrain vehicle parked on the grass next to Buck’s driveway.

  “Oh, don’t even tell me,” I said. “I don’t even want to hear this.”

  “What?” Lou said. “What happened with Buck?”

  “He’s the guy who knows the trails,” I said. “Am I right?”

  Dukes nodded again.

  “And you actually hooked him up with those people? Is that what you’re gonna tell me?”

  “Buck was always riding out there,” Dukes said. “He talked about it a few times. So I just introduced him.”

  “You just introduced him,” I said. “To a gang of drug dealers from downstate.”

  “It’s not like that. You don’t know these people.”

  “Oh, am I misrepresenting them? Are they not a gang of drug dealers who fly in massive amounts of pot from Canada and sell it to people all over the state? Is that not an accurate description?”

  “They’re not a gang, for one thing. There’s just two of them, and they’re old. Like in their fifties.”

  As if I didn’t already have enough reason to smack him in the face.

  “Two old pot dealers,” I said, trying hard to maintain my composure. “So those were two of the dead bodies at the airport? Is that what you’re saying?”

  “No, they don’t take the deliveries themselves. They don’t do that kind of stuff anymore.”

  “On account of being in their fifties and therefore so old and decrepit,” I said. “Is that it?”

  “They just don’t. They always have these guys hanging around them all the time, working on the farm or whatever. Which kinda explains why they took such a shine to Buck.”

  I looked over at Lou. He didn’t seem to be understanding this any better than I was.

  “What in holy hell are you talking about?” I finally said. “Who are these people?”

  He kept quiet then. Maybe he was thinking he had already said too much. Not that I cared at that point.

  Eddie raised his hand like an elementary-school student. “Can I go now?” he said.

  “Shut up and don’t move,” I said to him. Then I turned my attention back to Dukes. “Tell me who these people are.”

  “I can’t.”

  “I’m pretty sure you can.”

  “No. Really.”

  “Really, you can. Lou, shoot him in the hand. Either hand will do.”

  “I really need to use the bathroom,” Eddie said.

  “If Eddie says one more word, shoot him in the hand, too.”

  Lou took one step forward and that was all it took. I didn’t like having to threaten these men, but I was getting sick of everything and I just wanted to get the hell out of there as soon as possible. With some answers.

  “Okay,” Dukes said, “just take it easy. Let’s not get crazy here.”

  “Their names. Now.”

  “Harry and Josephine!”

  “I swear to God, Lou—”

  “That’s their names! Harry and Josephine Kaiser!”

  “These are the major drug dealers we’re talking about. Harry and Josephine Kaiser.”

  “Yeah, they’re like old hippies or something. They have this farm downstate. They used to grow themselves, but they don’t do that anymore. Now they just import.”

  “Old ‘hippies’ don’t run major drug rings, I’m thinking.”

  “That’s what they look like. I’m not saying they’re really hippies. They just wear hippie clothes and they have hippie hair. That kind of thing.”

  I dropped my head and rubbed my forehead for a while.

  “Okay, you’ve already proven that you’re a terrible liar,” I finally said, “and coming up with those names and the dress-like-a-hippie angle would be absolute genius if it wasn’t true. So I’m gonna have to believe you. So tell me about how Buck got hooked up with these people.”

  “I told you, as soon as they took one look at Buck, they just ate him up, man. A real Indian, you know? Oppressed by the white man, driven off his land…”

  “I’m pretty sure Buck never got driven off his land. In fact, he recently bought a hot tub.”

  “I know, but it’s just the idea. That’s the way these people are. Everything’s about freedom and not having the government telling you what you can do or what you can smoke. That whole trip they’re on. So having a real Indian guide on this deal…”

  “All right, I get the picture,” I said. “These people, the Kaisers, you say? These Kaisers fall in love with Buck and that’s how he ends up doing this little favor for them at the airport. The regular couriers probably picked him up in their truck. They drive out there in the middle of the night, expecting not to have any company this time. But surprise, the hijackers show up. What can you tell me about them?”

  “Nothing,” Dukes said. “They’re just people who are trying to take over.”

  “Come on, you gotta know more than that.”

  “I’m telling you, I don’t. I don’t know anything. In fact, I thought you guys were probably hooked up with them. That’s why I was carrying the gun around.”

  “So you’re expecting them to find you?”

  “I don’t know what to expect. It’s just all getting turned upside down right now. I didn’t sign up for this.”

  “Yeah, nobody did. But surprise, the hijackers show up, and this time everybody starts shooting. Buck’s the only one left standing, apparently. But instead of driving the truck away, he calls his cousin Vinnie.”

  “That part makes sense,” Lou said. “I wouldn’t drive the truck, either.”

  “Or maybe he just runs for a while,” I said. “He runs and maybe he ends up in town. Or wherever. He calls Vinnie and says you gotta come pick me up. Vinnie gets out there, he hears the story. Hell, maybe Buck’s got blood all over him. Who knows? The one thing we do know is that he takes Buck away somewhere. To hide out, to figure out what to do next, whatever they think they have to do.”

  “They went to another reservation,” Lou said. “We already know that.”

  “We thought we knew that,” I said. “But now I’ve got another idea.”

  “What’s that?”

  “If these old so-called hippies downstate, the Kaisers, if they took such a shine to Buck and they’re the ones who got him into this mess…”

  “Then maybe Vinnie and Buck went down there,” Lou said. “That’s what you’re saying.”

  “It’s the best idea we’ve got right now.”

  I pulled my chair up closer to Dukes. I leaned over so that I was just a few inches from his face.

  “We just need a couple more things from you,” I said to him. “And then we’ll be gone. I promise.”

  *

  Ten minutes later, we were back in the car. Lou was driving. He had kept the gun and it was tucked under the driver’s seat. I was keying in a number on my cell phone. It went right to voice mail, and, oddly enough, there was no recorded message telling me I’d reached a full-service wholesale marijuana distributorship. Just a beep.

  “I’m a friend of Buck’s,” I said. I gave them my number, told them to call me back.

  “How long to get there?” Lou said. “Two and a half hours?”

  I turned the page over and read it again. Dukes hadn’t
had an exact address to give me, but he had written out the directions. It could all have been fake, but something told me he was just as bad a liar on paper as he was in person.

  “Maybe closer to two hours,” I said, “if you gun it.”

  He gunned it. We crossed the bridge and kept going straight south. Next stop, a farmhouse just outside Cadillac. We were going for some answers, but hell, maybe Vinnie and Buck would be there. Maybe we’d pull up and they’d all be sitting there in the shade, Harry and Josephine Kaiser and their two guests from the UP.

  Maybe, just this once, we’d catch a break and this whole thing would be over.

  I wasn’t betting on it.

  CHAPTER TEN

  I had two hours to think about things. I wasn’t even driving, so I put my head back, closed my eyes, and played it all back in slow motion. I had come way too close to getting my ass shot off, that was the first thing that hit me. I had jumped in front of a drug dealer who was obviously scared out of his mind, and I had done this completely unarmed. If Lou hadn’t stepped up behind him, I might well have been still lying on that asphalt, looking up at the sky with yet another bullet in my chest. If there really is a place you go after you die, where you need to justify your life, surviving two shootings and yet somehow dying in a third was something I would have had a hard time explaining.

  I opened my eyes and looked over at Lou. He was staring dead ahead, both hands on the wheel. That scar on his jawline went all the way back, under his ear, into his hair, and it was just one more reminder that this man had led a hard life I knew very little about. Like him chopping that man right in the throat, or later, pulling out that gun and pressing it against the man’s head. I mean, I knew these were extraordinary circumstances. The man was looking for his only remaining son, after all. But some things you make yourself do because you have to, and some things you do because you’ve done them in the past and you know they work. It’s so easy and immediate, it’s practically muscle memory.

  “That gun,” I said, finally making a sound after sixty or seventy miles. “I’m just thinking…”

  “You didn’t expect me to give it back to him, did you?”

  “No, I didn’t. But I’m not sure keeping it under the car seat is such a hot idea.”

  “You may have a point,” he said. “As a convicted felon, I’m not supposed to be in possession of a firearm. That’s what you’re saying, right? I guess maybe I shouldn’t have taken it away from him? I should have just let him shoot you?”

  “That’s not where I was going. I was just thinking there might be a better place for it. Like in the glove compartment. Unloaded.”

  He worked that over for a mile, mile and a half. Then he reached under the seat and brought out the gun. It was a Smith & Wesson .357, now that I was finally getting a closer look at it, and it looked a lot like the service weapon I’d carried in Detroit. He passed it to me handle first without taking his eyes off the road. I swung open the cylinder and emptied the six rounds into my left hand. I opened up the glove compartment and put the works on top of his rental agreement. Then I closed it.

  “I should probably thank you at some point,” I said. “If that thing really was cocked and ready, he could have shot me without even thinking of it.”

  “Buy me a beer later,” he said. “You would have done the same thing.”

  Another mile went by.

  “Besides,” he said, “it was your idea that got us here. I was just doing my part. But now that we’ve got something to go on, I mean, what do you think we’re gonna find at this farmhouse? You think the Kaisers will be there?”

  “Only one way to find out.”

  “What kind of people do you think we’re talking about, anyway?” he said. “A couple of heavy hitters pretending to be hippies? Does that make any sense at all to you?”

  “I don’t even care,” I said. “As long as we get some answers.”

  A point he couldn’t argue with. We were into the Lower Peninsula now, still making good time down I-75. We passed by Gaylord and then Grayling, then we got off the expressway around Houghton Lake and made our way west. It was yet another flat and empty part of the state, and we passed through small towns named Merritt and Lake City. We drove right into the center of Cadillac, where the road came to a T on the shores of Lake Cadillac. There were restaurants and people walking down the sidewalks with ice cream cones. Historical markers and an old locomotive sitting right in the middle of a park, but we had no time for any of it. We were looking for a street just north of town, so we made our way up the main road. As we cut back west, we drove right past the Wexford County Airport.

  “You think they ever flew in here?” Lou said.

  “It’s right in their backyard,” I said. “Kinda dangerous, you’d think. But who knows? It was probably easy the first few times, no matter where they did it.”

  “Yeah, funny how the wrong people always seem to notice what you’re doing, if it happens to be making you some money.”

  “Even around here,” I said as we passed the little airport and saw nothing but small houses and open fields ahead, “I bet it’s hard to keep a secret.”

  We kept driving west. The few houses dwindled to almost nothing. We crossed some railroad tracks and then they fell into line just off the right side of the road, even as we cut north and drove through a tiny town called Boon. The tracks left us as we cut west again. The road was so thin and empty now, it felt like we were back in the Upper Peninsula, the trees getting thicker on each side of us until I began to doubt we were being sent to the right place after all. Then finally we saw a lone, nameless mailbox with the number we were looking for and an opening in the trees just wide enough for a car to fit through.

  The branches scraped against both sides of the car until we broke through into a clearing. A lone, tall house stood at the end of the gravel driveway. It was a classic farmhouse with rough wooden siding, and there were two separate outbuildings, one on either side of the house. There were no signs of life, and I didn’t see any vehicles until we got closer to the house. That’s when I saw the bright red sports car parked over by one of the sheds, and then in the next second as we came around the bend I saw the black truck parked next to it.

  It was Vinnie’s.

  Lou slammed on the brakes. I had the door open before we even came to a complete stop. I ran out through the cloud of dust kicked up by the tires and opened up Vinnie’s driver’s-side door. There was a thick layer of pebbled glass all over the front seat, with a long piece of metal protruding from what had once been the windshield.

  “Is that his?” Lou said, coming up behind me.

  “Yes.”

  I pulled out the hunk of metal. It was a heavy, galvanized U-channel, the kind of thing you’d use to mount a road sign. As I let it drop to the ground, I noticed the faint odor of bleach. I went over to the other side and opened that door, and the smell was stronger. I felt the seat.

  “What is it?” Lou said.

  “This seat is damp.”

  “Not this side,” he said, his hand on the driver’s seat.

  “Vinnie’s a fanatic about keeping his truck clean. He was obviously washing something off the—”

  I stopped and bent down to look at the edge of the floorboard.

  “What is it?”

  “It looks like a drop of blood,” I said. “This is what he was cleaning up, but he didn’t quite get it all. So now we know Buck was bleeding, probably because he got shot at the airport. But it couldn’t have been too bad.”

  “Why’s that?”

  “Because he was able to clean it up,” I said. “He had time to clean it up. If Buck was bleeding seriously in here, it would be a goddamned mess, and Vinnie would have had more important things to do.”

  “Okay, so then who smashed his windshield? And where the hell is he? If somebody was home, you’d think they would have noticed us by now.”

  “I think you’re right about that.”

  “What’s this?” Lou
said. He picked up a crumpled bag from the floor and opened it. “Looks like they stopped for hamburgers.”

  “That’s not like Vinnie to leave garbage in his truck. Hell, if he spent all this time cleaning up the blood…”

  “He cleaned up the seat and then they stopped for hamburgers later,” Lou said, slamming the door shut and sending a few more pieces of the windshield onto the seat. “Then apparently he got somebody really mad at him. Or at least at his truck.”

  I closed the passenger’s-side door and looked up at the farmhouse. It was just past the middle of the day now, and the sun was out from behind the clouds and casting a blinding hot light on everything around us. There was only the hum of insects in the grass and no other sound. That’s when I noticed that the front door to the house was ajar.

  “What’s going on here?” Lou said as he spotted the same thing. “Why is that door open?”

  I stepped forward, a sick feeling already rising in my gut. I was afraid to look inside the house, but I knew we had to. We were set on this course the moment we left Dukes and his neighbor in Sault Ste. Marie, and here we were almost two hundred miles away, about to find some answers whether we wanted them or not.

  I saw the debris on the floor as soon as I got close to the doorway. I was looking into the kitchen, where someone had apparently taken out every single drawer and upended the contents on the tile. Silverware, paper, pencils, hand tools, electrical cords, a thousand different things all scattered around the place. I stood there in the doorway and was about to knock on the frame. As if somebody would come shuffling through from another room to greet me with a smile and to apologize for the mess.

  “We have to go in,” Lou said. “You know we have to.”

  I didn’t say anything. I just nodded my head.

  “Don’t touch anything,” he said.

  Normally, this would have set me off. Like maybe I shouldn’t sign the guest book, either? But my mind was already running ahead of me and I couldn’t help imagining the worst. I took a step inside and heard a sudden pop that made my heart leap out of my chest, followed a millisecond later by the crunch of a tiny Christmas tree light bulb under my shoe.