Die a Stranger: An Alex McKnight Novel Page 17

  He nodded at that, thinking about his son. Thinking about what kind of man he was, this man he hadn’t seen in thirty years.

  “So I’m still Buck and I’ve got this cousin down by the Saginaw rez,” I said. “He’s a vet, but I know he can patch me up. It’s three hours away, too. Just far enough for us to lie low for a couple of days.”

  “I drive you all the way down there.”

  “Three hours, like I said. That’s nothing. You drive me down there and the good doctor fixes me. By then I’m already starting to wonder what we should do next.”

  “I’m telling you we should go to the cops, tell them everything that happened.”

  “That’s probably what you’re saying, right. I’m a little more worried about it. I saw those men trying to hijack the operation. I saw the shootout. I was the only man to walk away from it. I’m thinking I’m in a world of trouble if the wrong people find out about that.”

  “But how would they? Everybody who was there is dead.”

  “They’d find out. It might take a while, but they would. Especially if I go talking to the cops about it. If I tell them I was there, put it down on the record, hell, I might as well go rent out a billboard.”

  “Okay,” he said, “so I leave a message with the Bay Mills police, just to let everybody know we’re okay. How come I don’t call anybody else?”

  “Because you don’t want to deal with the questions,” I said, starting to get worked up about it again. The man was helping Buck deal with a serious situation and he didn’t call me, I thought. I’m going to kick his ass all up and down this bar when I get him back here.

  “Then you make a call yourself,” he said. “To your friends the Kaisers. The people who got you in this mess in the first place. They’re the people who sent the two men to the airport. It was their idea for you to be there, too.”

  “Right. It’s all on them. I call them, and I tell them they have to help me. They say, don’t worry, everything’s gonna be cool. We’re gonna take care of everything.”

  “So that’s two days ago,” he said. “We spend one more night down there and then you make one more call to the Kaisers. That’s yesterday morning. Then we’re off.”

  “We’re off in a hurry.”

  He thought about that one. “We’re in a hurry because…”

  “Because the Kaisers aren’t stupid. They know they’re in as much danger as we are. Maybe even more.”

  “Okay, so we drive to their house, right?”

  “Yes.”

  We both stopped there.

  “Vinnie and Buck left in a hurry,” I said, abandoning the role-playing game, “and they drove to the Kaisers’ farmhouse in Cadillac.”

  “Meaning that the Kaisers must have been waiting there.”

  “So they could all leave together.”

  “Right.”

  “They’re convinced that they’ve got cold-blooded killers bearing down on them,” I said, “and yet they wait for Vinnie and Buck to get there before leaving?”

  “It doesn’t make sense,” he said. “They would have gotten the hell out of there in two seconds. Told them to meet them somewhere. Or something.”

  “It makes no sense at all.”

  “And yet they were in a hurry to leave,” he said. “Vinnie and Buck were, I mean. I don’t imagine it’s because they wanted to make teatime at the Kaisers’ house.”

  “Jackie, where’s the phone?” I said.

  He looked up from the other end of the bar, where he was cleaning some glasses.

  “I thought you told me to go away.”

  “Just give me the phone.”

  He came down the bar, grabbed the phone from underneath, and put it on the bar top.

  “You know where the phone is,” he said. “You could have gotten it yourself.”

  I dialed Information and asked for Dr. Carrick’s number in Mount Pleasant. When it connected, it was answered on the second ring by one of the assistants.

  “I need to speak to Dr. Carrick right away,” I said. “Tell him it’s Alex McKnight, the man he talked to yesterday.”

  “I’ll see if he’s free.”

  I waited a couple of minutes, tapping my fingers on the bar top. Lou got up and stretched, walking to the window and then back when he heard me start speaking again.

  “Dr. Carrick, I’m sorry to bother you,” I said when I finally got him on the line. “I just wanted to ask you one more question. Actually, before I do that, is there anything else in general you might have remembered about Vinnie and Buck being down there, anything else they might have said or done that you didn’t tell us yesterday.”

  “No, Mr. McKnight, I think I told you everything I could recall.”

  “Okay, then if you can just think back to yesterday morning. They’re about to leave and they say they’re in a hurry, right?”

  “Yes…”

  “Try to remember everything as it happened. They’re packing up the truck…”

  “Well, there was nothing to pack, remember. It’s not like they had luggage or anything. They just got in and left. They were still wearing the same clothes.”

  “Okay, good. These are all good details. They get in the truck, and you said you wanted them to stay and have lunch at least?”

  “Yeah, but they said they had to get there by a certain time.”

  “Wait,” I said. “See, this is new. There’s a difference between being in a hurry just because you want to get somewhere as fast as possible, or because you have to be at a specific place at a specific time.”

  “Oh, okay. Yeah. But I thought I told you that yesterday.”

  “No, but that’s okay. That’s why the police will interview somebody a couple times, because you’ll often remember something different every time you tell the story.”

  I flashed back to Detroit, and one particular witness who was trying to describe an armed robbery at a bar. There were two men, and one of them held a shotgun while the other one cleaned out the register. I kept asking the witness if the second man was armed and the witness kept saying no. It wasn’t adding up, because we found a second gun on the scene. A revolver which apparently didn’t belong to anybody. Finally, my partner asked him the same question and the witness said no, he wasn’t armed because “armed” means you’re carrying a gun and this man had the revolver tucked in his belt.

  We joked about that one for a few days, but it was a good lesson. My partner was in the ground now and I was years away from being a cop, but that same lesson was about to get learned, one more time.

  “They had to be there by a certain time,” the doctor said. “That’s all I remember. I didn’t ask about it, but I guess I was just assuming it was because they had to make a certain ferry. So they just got in the truck and—”

  “Wait, stop,” I said. “What ferry?”

  “The ferry that they had to take to get to the island. I thought I told you that yesterday.”

  “No, you didn’t. Which island?”

  “I don’t know. They didn’t say. I was assuming Mackinac.”

  Lou leaned in closer, hanging on every word now. At least my side of the conversation.

  “When they left your office,” I said, “they drove to Cadillac. That’s where we found Vinnie’s truck.”

  “Cadillac? Are you sure?”

  “Yeah, I said that when we were … Wait.”

  I closed my eyes and flashed back to one more interview, this one just the day before, in the doctor’s office. I tried to reconstruct the whole conversation, word for word. Something I’m usually pretty good at doing.

  He’s telling us about them leaving. I say they went to Cadillac …

  No, I was about to say it. That’s when Lou jumped in and asked the guy why he let them leave if he knew they were in some kind of trouble. We would have gotten there if Lou could have just kept his cool.

  “I think we got a little derailed yesterday,” I said, giving Lou the eye. “So I guess this part of the story is new to both
of us. You say they were going to an island, but they didn’t say which?”

  “Let me think … No. Like I said, I was assuming Mackinac, because, well, it’s summertime in Michigan. What other island do you go to?”

  “There’s Drummond Island,” I said. “Right down the road here.”

  “Ah, okay. So they could have been going there, but I’m pretty sure they didn’t say. They just said they were going to the island, and yeah, that’s what Buck said. He’s standing there by the truck. I can see him in my mind. They were going to the island and they had to make the ferry. I was assuming that these people they were going to meet, that they were going to meet them there.”

  “But they didn’t actually say that?”

  He thought about it. “No, they didn’t. I was just assuming. But you said Vinnie’s truck was in Cadillac.”

  “That’s right.”

  “So maybe they went there first. And then they went to the island.”

  “Which would explain everything,” I said. “It all adds up.”

  “I guess it does, yes.”

  “Doctor, I can’t thank you enough.”

  “It’s my pleasure to help, Mr. McKnight.”

  I hung up the phone and asked Jackie for the Michigan map. When he brought it over, I spread it out on the bar. I grabbed a pen and made a big star over Mount Pleasant. Jackie complained that I was ruining his map but I ignored him. I made a second star over Cadillac.

  “They were all on their way to an island,” I said. “They were in a hurry to catch a ferry.”

  “Maybe they’ve got a summer house on Mackinac,” Lou said, looking over the map. “We know they’ve got some money.”

  “Good point.”

  I put a question mark next to Mackinac Island.

  “It would be a hell of a place to hide out, too,” I said. “A million people in the summer. No cars. Just horses and bikes. If you were in one of those houses up on the hill, how’s anybody going to find you?”

  “So there or Drummond Island. Lots of summer places there.”

  “Right,” I said, marking Drummond Island with another question mark. “That’s one more island and one more ferry.”

  “How about Beaver Island? You ever been there?”

  “No, I don’t believe I ever have. It’s a lot less developed, right?”

  “Yeah, but there is a ferry, so…”

  “You’re right,” I said, sliding over to that side of the map and putting a third question mark next to the big island in Lake Michigan.

  “There’s a ferry at Sleeping Bear Dunes,” he said, moving down the Lake Michigan shoreline. “It goes out to the Manitou Islands.”

  “But those aren’t even inhabited. Unless they’re hiding out in a tent.”

  “Yeah, I think we’re talking about one of the big three,” he said. “Let’s just go to all of them. If we start now, maybe we’ll find them by Christmas.”

  “If we have to pick one,” I said, “it’s gotta be Mackinac, right? It’s got the most people by far. So just from a probability standpoint…”

  “I don’t mean to interrupt,” Jackie said, “but why would you have to hurry to catch a ferry to Mackinac Island?”

  We both just looked at him without saying a word.

  “The ferry leaves every half hour. If you miss one, no big deal.”

  “It’s the same story with Drummond Island,” Lou said. “It’s such a quick ferry ride, those guys are running it back and forth every few minutes.”

  “That leaves one island,” I said. I didn’t have to point. All six eyes were already drawn to it. Beaver Island, with the long ferry ride across Lake Michigan. Even in the height of the season, that ferry might go across two or three times a day. Maybe four times on a Saturday.

  “Yesterday was what,” I said, “Thursday?”

  “They’ve got two ferries on Thursday,” Jackie said. “Mondays and Thursdays, those are the slow days. I had a guy in here once asking about it.”

  “Do you remember what times?”

  “I think the last one went out at like three or something. Maybe two thirty, I don’t know. I remember thinking you better like being on Beaver Island because it sure sounds easy to get stuck there.”

  “That’s a ferry you’d really have to hurry to get to,” Lou said.

  He didn’t have to say anything else.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  We took Lou’s rental car again. The ultimate act of optimism, taking the vehicle with room for four people, in the hope that we’d need that many seats on our way home. Lou pulled out his cell phone and called ahead while I drove. He reached somebody at the ferry office and there was indeed a two-thirty ferry, so that’s the one we were shooting for. Because it was Friday, there was actually a later ferry, at five thirty, but we wanted to get out to the island as soon as possible.

  He called Information next and asked for any listing under Kaiser on Beaver Island. He came up empty, but then that would have been asking way too much out of the day.

  He put his cell phone away and picked up mine from the front-seat console between us. “I thought mine was old,” he said. “I’m surprised you don’t have to wind this one up.”

  I kept driving. He tapped his fingers on his lap like a drummer keeping time. Then he’d stop for a while. Then he’d start tapping again.

  “Do you think they know?” he finally said.

  “Know what?”

  “How much trouble they’re in. How serious this Corvo guy who’s supposedly looking for them is.”

  “I don’t know who’s worse at this point,” I said, shaking my head. “Corvo or the Kaisers. I mean, Corvo’s obviously a psychotic killer. We saw that ourselves.”

  “So how could the Kaisers be worse?”

  “At least you know that the psychotic killer is bad. The Kaisers you might actually mistake for friends. People on the same side as you, anyway.”

  “Do you think they’re telling Corvo the same lie they told Perry?”

  “If they have any kind of communication,” I said. “No doubt about it. I haven’t even met them yet, but I’m sure they’d sell out Vinnie and Buck in two seconds.”

  *

  We made good time through Petoskey, which is always a crapshoot in the summer, when half the remaining rich people in Detroit are in town. Little Traverse Bay was on our right, sparkling in the sunlight, and it was hard to blame all of those people for being there. Hard but not impossible. As much as Lou had on his mind, he couldn’t help but look out his window with obvious wonder as we passed through Bay Harbor, with the golf courses and the yacht club and the equestrian club high on the hill.

  “I know it’s been a long time since I’ve been here,” he said, “but damn.”

  “They call it Michigan’s Gold Coast now.”

  “You’re kidding, right?”

  “I am not kidding.”

  We kept following the shoreline until we got to Charlevoix. That’s where you can find the other half of the rich people from Detroit during the summertime. There’s a drawbridge that separates Lake Michigan from the little Round Lake, which leads into Lake Charlevoix, one of the biggest inland lakes in the state. On a day like this you could sit on the shore and watch so many powerboats and sailboats and jet skis you’d probably lose count. The ferry to Beaver Island comes in and out of Round Lake when the drawbridge is raised. I’d never been on the boat before, but I knew it was big enough for a good three hundred people and a couple dozen vehicles in the hold.

  “It’s gonna take you forever to park,” Lou said. “Just let me out here and I’ll get the tickets.”

  I let him out when I stopped at the light, then I kept crawling along with the other traffic. There’s one main street running through town, and it gets backed up all to hell even when the drawbridge isn’t up. If you live in the UP, like I do, all you have to do is drive a couple of hours down to Petoskey and Charlevoix and you’ll feel like you’re in the middle of Times Square.

  There�
��s a little ticket booth on the promenade overlooking Round Lake. A bandstand, a few dozen little boutiques up and down the street, a good hundred boats parked down in the marina. The sun beating down on everything, never too hot with the breeze coming off Lake Michigan. It’s one version of perfect, I grant you that. An overcrowded version, though, and definitely not for me.

  I circled the block and came back to find Lou waiting at the same traffic light. He got into the car and told me to keep going.

  “Wait,” I said, “aren’t we parking?”

  “No, we’re going to the airport.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “You know how long the ferry ride is?”

  “It’s like an hour, right?”

  “Try two hours,” he said. “If we go to the airport, we can catch a little plane and be over there in twenty minutes. The next flight leaves at two. We’ll just make it.”

  He didn’t have to do any more convincing. A two-o’clock flight would get us to the island before the ferry was even pushing off from the dock, and right now a two-hour head start sounded like twenty-four-karat gold.

  Assuming that they were actually out there on that island. I kept coming back to our plan and telling myself it was the craziest long shot of all time. But at this point we didn’t have anything else.

  The Charlevoix airport was on the south side of town, just past all of the midday summer madness. I parked in the lot and we went inside. The whole airport was a one-room affair, with separate checkin desks for the two airlines that flew to Beaver Island. We went to the desk that had the two-o’clock flight, and that’s when Lou stopped dead.

  “What’s the matter?” I said.

  “Metal detector,” he said, pointing to the door that led outside to the airstrip. “I wasn’t thinking they’d have one here.”

  I put my hand on the small of his back and felt the gun. How the hell he’d gotten it out of the glove compartment, I had no idea. No doubt it was loaded.

  “Go put it back,” I said. “Hurry up.”

  He hesitated. “What if we need it?”

  “Then we use a big stick instead. I’m pretty sure they have big sticks on the island.”

  “I’m serious. This is no time to be unarmed.”