Let It Burn Read online

  I found the detective at his desk a few minutes later. All of the homicide detectives sat together in a random assortment of desks on the second floor. He was reading something. It took a moment for him to even notice me standing there. He asked me to sit down.

  “This is the initial coroner’s report,” he said. “I’m not sure how much of this I should share with the family.”

  “What does it say?”

  “She was stabbed twenty-three times. There were many defensive wounds on her hands. Meaning she fought back. Also meaning it probably took a while for her to lose consciousness.”

  I took my hat off and held it in my hands.

  “She was not sexually violated prior to the stabbing,” he said. “But several of the stab wounds were, um … let’s just say, in that area.”

  He didn’t say any more. He didn’t have to. He sat there looking down at that sheet of paper. At that string of words that could never really capture what she went through.

  “We’re going to find him today,” he said, finally looking up at me, “if I have to personally take you to every house in the city.”

  Of course it wasn’t that easy. It never is. By the end of that workday, we had a few dozen leads that went nowhere. The case was once again the lead story on Channels 2, 4, and 7, only now they had a sketch to show and a plea to call the Detroit police with any information. That led to a number of phone calls, none of which panned out. I had been out in the car with Detective Bateman all day. I was still at the station when the calls came in. It was another double-shift day for me.

  By the time I went home, it was dark. Elana Paige had been dead for thirty hours.

  *

  We went through the same process the next day, although this time there was a backlog of leads for us to follow up on. Information developed by officers on patrol, or tips called in to the station. Toward the end of that day, the detective asked me to accompany him on one more trip. It was starting to get dark now. We were no closer to finding our suspect. The detective was starting to wear his frustration as visibly as one of his tailored sports jackets. God help you if you happened to be standing in his way while he was walking down the hall, or making any noise while he was on the phone.

  “Where are we going?” I said. We were heading south, away from our so-called target horseshoe.

  “To the train station.”

  I thought maybe we were going to start at the beginning again, like we had done the previous morning. But no, he had something different in mind.

  He slowed down on Michigan Avenue as we got close to Roosevelt Park. He was looking carefully at the people walking on the sidewalk. There were plenty of men out enjoying the warm summer night. A few women. The female prostitutes couldn’t have been more obvious, but that’s not what the detective was looking for.

  When we passed Sixteenth Street, he did a quick U-turn and came up slowly on the opposite side of the street. We were in his unmarked car, so he wasn’t turning any heads yet. The detective let the car roll to a stop. There was a young man leaning against an iron fence. He took a quick look up and down the street. Then he came closer. He stopped when he saw my uniform, but by then the detective had already put the car in park and thrown open his door.

  “Stop right there!” he said. It was a voice that carried across the entire park, I’m sure. The kid started to run, but the detective caught up to him easily and pushed him from behind. It’s the perfect move when someone is running away from you. One good shove and your man is eating dirt.

  I was just getting out of the car myself at that point. I was thinking how nice it would have been for the detective to share his plan with me before executing it.

  “Open the back door,” Bateman said to me. I opened the door, and Bateman threw the kid into the backseat. I wasn’t positive that this car had the one-way locks standard on squad cars, but from the look on this kid’s face, it didn’t matter. He was not about to try anything stupid.

  “All right,” Bateman said as he got back behind the wheel, “it looks like we’ve got our murder suspect.”

  “What?” the kid said, his eyes wide. “Are you crazy?”

  I looked over the front seat at him. He was about the right age, but the similarity ended right there. This kid was at least twenty pounds thinner. His eyes were more wide set, the nose was bigger, the hair was shorter. This was certainly not our suspect.

  “What do you think, Officer?” he asked me. “Is this our man?”

  “I think he might be,” I said, wondering how I was supposed to play along. “I guess close enough, right?”

  “Damn straight,” Bateman said, putting the car in gear. “We just need somebody to go down for it.”

  “I wasn’t even around here that night,” the kid said. “You totally got the wrong guy.”

  “Ah, so you do know something,” Bateman said, slamming the car back into park.

  “No! I don’t know nothing!”

  “You just referred to the night of the murder. Because you didn’t ask which murder, I’m assuming you know exactly what we’re talking about.”

  “That woman. In the train station.”

  “For someone who claims to know nothing,” Bateman said, “you sure have a basic working knowledge of the pertinent facts.”

  “The what? No, man, I just know that some woman got killed in the station two nights ago. That’s all I know!”

  “You work this park,” Bateman said. “You must have some idea who did it.”

  “I don’t work anything,” the kid said. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  Bateman put the car in gear again. “Look, I don’t care what you do here. Drugs, hustling … Right now, I don’t give one little goddamn about any of that. I’m not going to take you down for anything, as long as you start telling me the truth. But if you don’t, we’ll go right down to the station.”

  The kid just sat there, not saying a word. Bateman put his foot on the gas and we started to move.

  “All right!” the kid said. “I’ll be straight with you, okay? I’ll tell you everything I know. Which is pretty much nothing.”

  The car stopped. “Pretty much nothing? What does that mean?”

  “It means I don’t know anything. I swear. I didn’t kill her, and nobody I know killed her. Everybody’s freaked out about it. It’s been so strange around here the last couple of days.”

  “Strange how?”

  “Just strange. Nobody’s doing any business. It’s like everybody knows the place is being watched now.”

  The detective looked over at me. He shook his head and took a long breath.

  “Okay, here’s the deal,” he said to the kid. “You get out of the car and you go find everybody who hangs out here. You hear me? Every single one. You tell them that if they have any information about this crime, they need to contact me immediately. My name is Detective Bateman. You got that?”

  “Yes.”

  “What’s my name?”

  “Detective Bateman.”

  “No other questions asked. Just like I told you, whatever else they’re doing, I don’t care. I just want to find the killer, and I will personally make sure this place is closed down for you guys until I find him. Is that clear?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Okay, then. Get out and spread the word.”

  The kid got out of the car. Turns out the doors weren’t one-way locked. He stood there watching us as we pulled away.

  Bateman’s hands were tight on the wheel as he drove back up Woodward Avenue.

  “How many years do you have in?” he finally said.

  “Eight.”

  “You’re gonna take the test?”

  “The detective’s test? Yeah, I was thinking about it.”

  “I’ve been watching you the last couple of days,” he said. “You’ve got a good way with people. You keep your eyes open.”

  “I try.”

  “Okay, so let me ask you this. Do you have any problem with w
hat I just did to that hustler? You think you could have done that yourself?”

  “I honestly don’t know if I could, Detective. Maybe that’s something they teach you when they give you the gold shield.”

  He thought about that for a moment, maybe trying to decide if he should take offense.

  “I’m going to call the family tonight,” he finally said. “They’ll want to know if we’re any closer to finding the man who killed Elana.”

  “Yes?”

  “That’ll be you someday. When you make that call, you’re going to ask yourself something first. You’re going to ask yourself, ‘Am I doing everything I can to solve this case? I mean, no matter what, am I doing whatever it takes?’”

  I didn’t answer. He didn’t seem to want an answer yet. Not that night. He drove us the rest of the way back to the precinct without saying another word.

  When I finally went home that night, Elana Paige had been dead for fifty-four hours.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  If they had such a thing as an “Indian summer” in the Upper Peninsula, it would probably have to happen in late August, when it’s supposed to be turning cold already. Of course, the whole idea of Indian summer borders on offensive, if you think of it as being just a false summer, in the same way that an Indian giver gives you something and then takes it away. There are plenty of real Indians in the Upper Peninsula, including my neighbor Vinnie Red Sky LeBlanc, and I’ve never heard him use the term. He just says niibin when it’s summer, and then dagwaagin when it’s fall. He won’t actually put a coat on until it’s biboon and there’s a foot of snow on the ground.

  He was there at the Glasgow Inn when I got back home that night. Three hours on the road to get to Houghton Lake, then another two and a half hours after leaving the detective’s house. Plenty of time to think about everything he had said to me. I still wasn’t sure exactly what was bothering me, but now that I was home it didn’t seem to matter quite as much. I was back above the bridge, in another world.

  Vinnie waited for me to get my cold Canadian and sit down by the fireplace. “How did it go?” he asked me. “Jackie told me you were going down there to get lucky.”

  I just about spit out my beer.

  “I did no such thing,” Jackie said, throwing his bar towel. “I said he was going down to have dinner with that nice-looking FBI agent. That’s all I said.”

  “Five hours down,” Vinnie said. “Five hours back. Ten hours round-trip. If it was just for dinner, I hope it was the best meal of your life.”

  “All right,” I said to both of them. “Enough of that. If you must know, it was a nice dinner and that’s all it was. We both realized it’s a bad idea to start something when we live so far apart.”

  “I’m pretty sure you could have started and finished in one evening,” Jackie said. “I mean, I know you’re out of practice.”

  “I come back home and it’s like I’m in high school again,” I said. “Why did I bother?”

  “Give us a break,” Jackie said. “How often do we get to make fun of you?”

  “Apparently never,” I said, “because I’m leaving.”

  I got up and left my beer sitting there on the little table next to the overstuffed chairs. It was obvious they both thought I was bluffing. But then I opened the door.

  “Where are you going?” Jackie said.

  “Believe it or not,” I said, thinking this would be the worst thing I’ve ever said to the man, “I’m going to another bar.”

  *

  I’d been planning on going there anyway. Seeing the look on Jackie’s face as I walked out that door was just a bonus. I got in my truck and drove over to Sault Ste. Marie. I’d had more than enough time on the road the past couple of days, but I had to make this one last trip before I’d be able to sleep.

  I took the main road through the empty hayfields. I rolled down the windows to let in the warm air. It was a dark night with no moon.

  Sault Ste. Marie, Michigan, or “the Soo” as they usually call it around here, is the last stop on the road to Canada. The bridge was glowing in the night sky as I made my way along the St. Marys River to the Soo Locks. The lighted fountain in the park was on, and there were people walking up and down Portage Avenue. They were out enjoying the night, feeling it a little more than you would in most places for the simple reason that warm nights are a rare thing up here. So when they come, you make damned sure you make the most of them.

  I parked the car in the lot next to the Ojibway Hotel. Leon Prudell’s new place of employment was right across the street. The Soo Brewing Company. He was standing behind the counter when I walked in. A bear of a man with comb-resistant orange hair.

  Leon has always wanted to be a private investigator, going back to when he was a kid. The first time I met him, he tried to take me apart in the Glasgow Inn parking lot, when he thought I had taken his job away. Later, we were partners. That’s how I ended up with the Prudell-McKnight Investigations business card that I had given to Mrs. King. But that partnership didn’t last long, mostly because Leon’s wife didn’t like the idea of Leon mixing it up with dangerous characters. Much as she loved me, she still blamed me for almost getting him killed. Believe me, Eleanor Prudell is not a person you want to get on the wrong side of.

  Leon tried to go solo as a PI. He even had an office over on Ashmun. That didn’t last, either. There’s just not enough business for an investigator up here. Besides, most people up here remember Leon Prudell as the goofy fat kid who sat in the back row, from kindergarten through high school. They don’t know that he’s actually the smartest man in town, and as loyal a friend as you could ever have.

  He sold snowmobiles and outboard motors for a while. Then he worked in a movie theater taking tickets and selling popcorn to teenagers. I hated to see him there. Now he had this new gig at the microbrewery. He was learning to make beer, on top of all the other talents you’d never suspect he had. I hadn’t even known he was an accomplished guitar player, for instance, until the night he invited me to hear him record at the studio in Brimley. Typical Yooper, good at a dozen things but won’t brag about any of them.

  “Alex!” he said as soon as he saw me. “Get the hell in here!”

  He came out from behind the counter and gave me a big hug. That’s almost as dangerous as a hug from his wife.

  “What do you think of the place?” he said, gesturing at the shiny brewing tanks. In the front of the store, they had grabbed every old couch and chair and beat-up table they could find and tried to create the ultimate hangout spot. There were a dozen people sitting around, some reading, some looking at their laptops, some eating pizza. All of them had big glass mugs of beer.

  “We’ve got the pizza place down the street to deliver to us,” he said. “It works out great for everybody.”

  “This is impressive,” I said. “It sure as hell beats the theater.”

  “Oh God, tell me about it.”

  When he introduced me to the master brewer, the two of them exchanged a meaningful look, like yes, this is the man I was telling you about. The brewer drew a little pony glass from the tap and slid it over the counter.

  “Okay,” Leon said, “this is one of our staples. It’s a session ale, as they call it, but it really stands up. Are you ready to try it?”

  “Of course,” I said. “I’d be honored.”

  I tried the beer. It was pretty damned good. I gave them the thumbs-up.

  “I know your beer heart belongs to Canada,” Leon said, “but I’m glad you like it.”

  “Hey,” I said, now that everyone was happy, “can I borrow you for a couple of questions?”

  “Of course,” he said. “I can use some air.”

  We went outside. If there had been a freighter coming through the locks, we could have gone up to the observation deck and watched it, but I wasn’t here to look at big boats. I was here to get his unique take on this thing that had been bothering me.

  “Actually,” I said as we walked down Portage Av
enue, “before I tell you the details, let me just ask you something on an abstract level.”

  “This sounds interesting. Go ahead.”

  “Let’s say you were arrested for murder. During the questioning, you ended up confessing to the crime. But for some reason, I have this gut feeling that you didn’t do it.”

  “Okay…”

  “The biggest question I would have to answer is, why did you confess if you were innocent?”

  We walked a block while he thought about it. That was one of the good things about Leon. He wouldn’t give you his opinion until he worked out every angle.

  “There are a few possible reasons why I might confess to a crime I didn’t commit,” he finally said. “One, because somebody else has some leverage over me and they’re making me confess.”

  “What kind of leverage could they have? You’re talking about going away for murder. What else could they do to you?”

  “Prison is better than them killing me. Or, say, killing someone in my family. I’d confess to anything if it meant saving one of my kids from harm.”

  “Okay,” I said. “That makes sense.”

  “Or maybe it was my wife who committed the murder,” he said. “In that case, nobody’s actually threatening anybody, but I know what will happen to her if they find out she’s guilty. So if I’m a good husband, I might confess to the crime to save her.”

  I thought back to the stone-cold look on Darryl King’s face. The first scenario was possible, maybe, if somebody was threatening his family. He had a mother who loved him, a little sister, a little brother. As for the second scenario, taking the fall for someone else … I could rule out the mother and the sister. The little brother, from what I could recall, looked like he’d have trouble killing a mosquito.

  Would he take the fall for a close friend? Someone he grew up with? That was always possible. But I kept coming back to that face. The way he looked at me from the other side of that fence. Was that the face of a man who would give up his freedom to save someone else?