A Stolen Season: An Alex McKnight Novel (An Alex Mcknight Novel Series) Page 19

  “It could have been somebody working for him.”

  “It could have been, yes. But how did this person know to find Natalie in your cabin? That’s the question I keep coming back to.”

  “I don’t know the answer. I really don’t.”

  “Why would Laraque have two police officers killed, anyway? If you look at it objectively, it’s probably the dumbest thing he could ever do.”

  “Why?” I said. “Because it would turn up the heat on him? If he knew he was getting set up, how much more heat could he feel? Maybe this was a message to you and to those guys in Toronto, and to every other law enforcement officer in the country.”

  “You’re assuming he considers himself untouchable then.”

  “If he does,” I said, “I’d like the chance to prove him wrong.”

  “Meaning what? If you knew for sure that it was him—”

  “What would I want to do to him? Once again, Sergeant, I think we’d be in total agreement.”

  “What I’d want to do is build a good case against him and put him away forever.”

  “You’re speaking like a police officer now,” I said. “But as a man…as a friend who loved her…I think you’d have a different idea.”

  “I understand what you’re saying. That’s why we follow the law instead of our own personal motives.”

  “I was a cop for eight years, Sergeant Moreland. I know all about what the law can do. And what it can’t do. There’s knowing something without any doubt, and there’s being able to prove it in a courtroom. It’s not always the same thing.”

  He put the pen down and sat back in his chair.

  “You see, this is where we run into a real problem, Mr. McKnight.” He looked over at Maven, who had been sitting there as still as a wax replica the whole time. “What do you think, Chief?”

  “I can understand what McKnight is saying,” Maven said. “I’d have the same thoughts myself. But ultimately…”

  “The phone,” I said.

  They both looked at me.

  “When they found Resnik, you said he still had his wallet, right?”

  “Yes.”

  “Did he have his cell phone?”

  “I honestly don’t know. Why do you ask?”

  “Natalie called him that day. First she called the Mounties’ office to check in. Then she called Resnik to see how he was doing.”

  “But if she used her cell phone…”

  “She didn’t. She used my phone. A regular landline.”

  “Why would she do that?”

  “Because she wasn’t getting a signal. Cell phones never work very well in Paradise.”

  “So if she called Resnik on your phone…,” Moreland said. “It wouldn’t be too hard to trace it back to you. The number’s right there on the phone, in the caller history. You have a listed number?”

  “Yes.”

  “They look it up in a reverse directory. Hell, they could have gone to the Internet, looked you up in three seconds. They’ve got your name, your address…”

  “Six hours later…,” I said. Suddenly, I was feeling sick to my stomach.

  Moreland picked up his pen again and started writing.

  “I can’t do any more of this right now,” he finally said. He sounded tired. He sounded like he’d be gone from this job in a matter of days. “I do have something to give you, though.”

  He stood up and left the room. When he came back, he had a folded-up blue flag in his arms. There was a small wooden box on top of the flag, and on top of the box was a hat. I recognized it immediately.

  “Her medals are in this box,” Moreland said, “along with her badge and her warrant card. Ordinarily, all of these items go to the nearest member of her immediate family. As you know, Natalie’s family is all pretty much gone. So I figured, in her mind anyway, you’d be as close to family as anyone else.”

  He put everything down on the table.

  “I’ll be honest, Mr. McKnight. I often thought that you were the worst thing that ever happened to her. Whenever there was trouble in her life, you seemed to be right there in the middle of it. But maybe I was wrong about that. I don’t know. Maybe you were her last chance at being happy.”

  He put his hand on the hat for a moment, lightly.

  “I know I’ve asked you before not to come back to Canada,” he said. “That was just me talking, you understand. Just looking out for Natalie. Well, now I have the chance to make it official. The people in Toronto have asked me to formally exclude you from entry into this country, for the foreseeable future.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “It means you go home today, and you stay there. Your name is on a list now. If you try to cross the border, anywhere along the border, you’ll be detained. Is that understood?”

  “No. It is not understood. Why are you doing this?”

  “I told you, this comes from Toronto,” he said. “Although I don’t necessarily disagree with it. We’re going to work with the Michigan State Police and the FBI to solve two murders. One in each country. Your particular talent for getting in the way of things is not going to be helpful.”

  “Sergeant Moreland—”

  “Good day, Mr. McKnight. Chief Maven. I’m glad you could be here. Have a safe trip home.”

  Those were his last words to us. He left the room. He was walking even more slowly now, like he didn’t have much left, like the day had taken just about everything from him.

  There was nothing else for us to do except leave. We went out to Maven’s car and started the long journey home.

  “That’s why you’re here,” I said. We weren’t even out of Sudbury yet. “To make sure I go right back to Michigan.”

  “If you think that’s the only reason,” he said, “then I don’t know what to say to you.”

  Three hours later, we hadn’t said another word to each other. I sat with the flag and box in my lap, Natalie’s hat in my hands. I kept turning the hat around and around while I thought about everything Sergeant Moreland had said. Especially about Antoine Laraque.

  Three hours to think about that while the trees rushed by, and then the flat, wide open fields as we got closer to the lake. Then the lake itself. We drove through Blind River again. As we got close to the bridge, I finally cleared my throat and said something.

  “About what I said back there…”

  “Forget it,” Maven said.

  “Seriously, I appreciate what you did today. I guess I’m not used to you giving me any kind of break.”

  “I said forget it.”

  “Okay.”

  We crossed the bridge. Maven drove to Paradise. The sun was going down now. Eight hours in the car, a couple of hours in Sudbury. It had been a hell of a day.

  “I’ll buy you a drink,” I said as we got close to the Glasgow.

  “I’m gonna get home to dinner.”

  “Okay, good enough.”

  “Moreland was right, by the way.”

  “About what?”

  “About everything,” he said. “First of all, when he said you were Natalie’s last chance to be happy. I saw the two of you together in that restaurant. She was a happy woman. I hope you’ll remember that.”

  I wasn’t sure what to make of that one. How much more could Maven do for me in one day?

  “He was also right about you staying the hell away from there,” Maven went on, suddenly sounding a lot more like the man I knew. “So help me God, if I find out you’re sticking your nose in this thing…”

  “Somebody took her life away from her,” I said, “and that person is walking around on this earth right now.”

  “I’ll make sure they tell me what’s going on,” he said. We had come to the second cabin now. He pulled over and put the car in park. “Every step of the way, until they nail this guy. I’ll call you every goddamned day if you want. Just don’t go and mess this up, McKnight. Do you hear me? Will you listen to me for once in your life? If you do something stupid, then your life w
ill be over, too. Do you think Natalie would have wanted that?”

  I didn’t have an answer for that one. I couldn’t tell him the truth, that I didn’t care what happened to me. That I truly, honestly did not care. I could only care about one thing.

  “Thank you again, Chief.” I got out of the car.

  “McKnight, God damn it.”

  “Thank you. I mean it.” I shut the door and walked away. I didn’t hear him leave until I was inside.

  I hadn’t eaten anything all day, and there sure as hell wasn’t any food here in the second cabin. I didn’t feel much like being sociable, even with Jackie, but I didn’t have much choice. I went down to the Glasgow, told Jackie about the service, had some of his beef stew. I had a cold Canadian, held the bottle in my hand for a long time, thinking about what Natalie had said. You think Canadian beer is better than American beer…For once you get something right.

  I couldn’t stay long. I said good night to Jackie, went back up to the cabin. It was dark now. As I pulled in, I saw Vinnie’s truck parked there. He must have spent at least part of the day fixing his battery cables. Now he was inside waiting for me.

  I went through the whole day again. With Vinnie, I went a little deeper into what Moreland had told me. Everything about Laraque, and how the killer probably tracked down Natalie to my cabin. Vinnie listened carefully to everything I said. When I was done, he told me he was taking me somewhere.

  “I really don’t feel like going anywhere else today,” I said.

  “Everything’s ready,” he said. “You have to come.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “Let’s go, Alex. It’s time.”

  Anyone else I might have kept arguing. I figured I owed Vinnie the benefit of the doubt. So I let him drive me over to the reservation, past the casino, to his cousin Buck’s house. He parked his truck and took me out behind the house. I had been here once before, and now it looked like I was back for the same reason.

  Buck had built a sweat lodge in his back yard, a half circle about ten feet in diameter. He had lashed some saplings together and then covered them with canvas and every old rug he could get his hands on. From the outside, it looked like something in the middle of a garbage dump. But on the inside, it was something pretty amazing.

  Buck was there with three other men from the Bay Mills tribe. They all nodded to me solemnly, without a word spoken. Wide faces with dark, careful eyes. Long hair down every back. They had a fire going, and they were heating rocks in the middle of it. As soon as he saw me, one man started to lift the rocks with a long shovel and take them into the sweat lodge.

  The other men started to undress. I knew the drill, so I did the same. Soon we were all standing there in our underwear. It was cold enough to start me shivering in three seconds, even though the calendar still claimed it was July.

  The men went into the sweat lodge. I followed them. The steam was already overpowering. Buck dipped a great iron ladle into a bucket of water and poured it on the hot rocks. Then he put a few sprigs of sage on the rocks. One of the four medicines. The last time I had been here, the medicine had been for Vinnie. His brother had been murdered. Today the medicine was for me.

  I sat there in the dark, and as I did I felt my muscles begin to relax. All the tension in my body, since that one horrible moment, me sitting on the floor, holding on to Natalie. It was slowly leaving me. Buck put more water on the rocks. I was sweating. The steam filled my lungs. It was inside me and all around me and now it felt like I was floating in it.

  It was dark. There was a faint glow from the rocks and nothing else. Vinnie had told me once that he saw things in the steam, that that was part of the experience, part of why the Ojibwa treasured this. I had believed him only as far as you can believe something you’ll never see with your own eyes. But on this night, as the steam grew so thick it seemed to be something you could hold in your hand, I looked into it and I saw Natalie. God help me, I saw her standing there right in front of me. She was in her uniform. Her hair was pinned up. She wasn’t wearing her hat. She smiled at me and reached out her hand like she would touch my chest. Then she was gone.

  If I was imagining it…If my mind was using the blank slate of the steam to create this picture…I don’t know. I don’t really care. I saw her and she was as real to me as anything else. When I came back out of the sweat lodge into the sudden shock of the cold air, I felt like I had been plugged into something powerful and been recharged. My heart didn’t hurt any less, but at least I had some life in me now. I felt like I was ready to face anything. Or anybody.

  “You look good,” Vinnie said to me. “You look much better.”

  “Thank you. How did you know I needed that?”

  “You’re my blood brother, remember?”

  “I might need your help,” I said. “I have some things to do now.”

  He looked at me. In the dim light from the house I could see the bruises on his face, the raccoon-like shiners around his eyes. “I won’t help you destroy yourself. This thing will devour you if you let it. You know that.”

  “Vinnie, do you remember when we went up to find your brother? Everything that happened by that lake?”

  “Yes, of course.”

  I grabbed his right hand. “You took these two fingers right here,” I said. “You took these two fingers and you dipped them in your own blood, and you painted two stripes on each side of my face. Do you remember that?”

  “Yes, Alex.”

  “You painted my face and you said it was time to go to war.”

  “Yes. I did that.”

  “Natalie was my family,” I said, letting go of his hand. “You know what she meant to me.”

  “Yes.”

  “So it’s my blood now,” I said. “And it’s my war.”

  Chapter Seventeen

  I woke up in a strange bed again, everything coming back to me at once like it probably would every morning for the rest of my life. I couldn’t imagine how it could ever feel normal. I didn’t want it to feel normal, because that would mean I had accepted things the way they were, had even gotten over it as well as I was going to and had moved on with the rest of my life.

  The thought was an obscenity to me. I promised myself that morning that I’d never let it slip away from me. As much as it hurt, I never wanted to stop feeling like her death had just happened.

  Vinnie was in the kitchen, making coffee. He had insisted on staying with me again. He said he’d keep doing it until he felt I was ready to be alone. He said it wasn’t up to me to decide that. I didn’t fight him too hard. Truth was, it was good to have him around.

  I got out of bed and sat at the table. Vinnie brought over a cup of coffee and put it down in front of me. He didn’t try to say good morning, or ask me how I slept or, God forbid, ask me how I was doing. He put his own cup down and sat across from me. His face was about halfway back to normal now, both eyes open, the swelling down, the darker bruises beginning to fade. But he still looked like a man who should give up fighting two men by himself.

  “Let’s just say,” I began, “that I needed a boat…”

  He took a sip of his coffee, didn’t say anything.

  “A good boat, say. Fast, with a long range.”

  Another sip.

  “A depth finder. And GPS, of course.”

  He didn’t look at me.

  “I’m just thinking out loud here,” I said. “If I were to ask you, do you think you could find one?”

  “That would depend.”

  “On what?”

  “On whether you’d be using it to get yourself killed.”

  “That can’t happen.”

  “Why do you say that?”

  “Because I’m already dead.”

  He put his cup down. “You’ve been to an Ojibwa funeral,” he said.

  “Yeah?”

  “How long did it last?”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “When we buried my brother, how long did th
e funeral last?”

  “I don’t remember exactly. A few days.”

  “Four days. And that was short. I’ve seen them go seven or eight.”

  “What does that have to do with me?”

  “This happened, what, three days ago? You’ve barely begun to deal with it.”

  “Vinnie…”

  “I’ll do anything you ask,” he said. “You know that. But you have to give yourself some time first. You don’t even know for sure that this man was responsible.”

  “Two cops were setting up a sting on this guy. They both end up dead, on the same day.”

  “If it’s that obvious to you, then it’ll be that obvious to everyone else. This guy will go down for it eventually.”

  “I don’t think I ever told you this story,” I said. “In fact, I’m sure I didn’t. I haven’t thought about it in years. There was this cop in Detroit named Jim Romano. He was a detective. An old-timer. He was just about ready to retire when I was a rookie. I think I only met the man one time. Anyway, he got it in his head that he was going to take down this big shot, Paulie Masalsky, who was the biggest bookmaker on the whole west side. He owned a bar on Michigan Avenue. He used to have runners going all over the place, bringing slips to a room he had upstairs. He had a buzzer behind the bar in case a cop ever came in. Just press the button and they’d burn the slips real quick. If they were on flash paper, it would only take one second and they’d be gone. Or else they’d flush them, whatever. Standard operating procedure for a bookie.”

  Vinnie picked up his cup again. He stared into it while I kept telling the story.

  “There was a rumor that Romano’s brother had gotten into some trouble with Masalsky,” I said. “You know, he ran up a big debt, and Romano was gonna see if he could get Masalsky to back off. Either that, or he really just wanted to run the guy out of business. Either way, he got it in his head that he was going to spend his last year on the force making Masalsky’s life miserable. He’d go in the bar all the time, and of course whoever was behind the bar, they’d have to hit that button and the guys upstairs would scramble around, burning up the slips or flushing them. Romano would come to the bar and have one drink, ask where Paulie was, tell the guy to give him his best regards, something like that. Three, four times a week. If he thought the bartender was getting lax on the buzzer, he’d actually tell him he was going to go up the stairs to see if Paulie was up there. Whatever it took to make sure those guys were dumping the slips. This goes on about three months. Everybody on the force knows about it. It’s almost a running joke. Then one morning Jimmy Romano’s found dead in the trunk of his car.”