Misery Bay: An Alex McKnight Novel Read online

  The black resolves into the shapes of trees. There is deep snow. The camera moves forward slowly. In the distance, finally, we see the lights from a house. The camera approaches the back door. The door is pushed open. There is a man sitting in a chair. He seems to be asleep. The camera comes close. A white PVC pipe is placed against his forehead. The man wakes up. One second later, the pipe is jolted. The man has been shot in the head. The chair is thrown backward. The man is spread eagle on the floor. The hand behind the camera comes out, adjusts one arm so that his position is perfectly symmetrical. The camera watches the man for a few moments, then it goes back to the door, quickly now, and out into the night.

  A sudden noise broke the spell. The film had looped all the way through and now it was spinning on the right-hand reel again, making that same sound I had first heard from upstairs. Scrape scrape scrape.

  We both stood there for a long time. I didn’t know what to say to him. I had absolutely no idea what combination of words would make any earthly sense at that moment.

  Connie finally closed his mouth. He swallowed hard and then he looked down at his father.

  “Did you really do this?” he said. “Did you?”

  He closed his eyes. He started to sway like he was going to collapse. I took one step toward him and he put up his hand to stop me.

  “Don’t touch me,” he said.

  “I’m going to go call somebody.”

  He put his hand down. I turned and left him there. I left him there with his dead father, his murderous evil dead corpse of a father, and I went up the stairs to pick up the phone and to try to find the words to describe what I had just seen.

  And we’re rolling …

  … Two miles through the snow. Uphill both ways, right? That’s the old joke.

  … Did I tell you the camera loves the snow? I believe I did. Even at night! All this hard work, it pays off. Keep going.

  … Door left open, right on cue. Well done.

  … Good to see you again, Sergeant Haggerty.

  … Or should I say, Lieutenant Haggerty?

  … Either way, time for your close-up.

  … How do you like this thing? Pretty realistic, eh? I made it myself.

  … Damn, that worked perfectly.

  And cut.

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  After I had answered all of their questions as well as I could, I sat in the waiting room of the Bad Axe post. Hours had gone by, a large part of the day, and as I finally sat there by myself, I went over it again in my head. I knew I’d be doing that for a long time to come.

  Connie was still in the building somewhere, still talking to somebody. He had proven himself to be a complete jackass to me, in every possible way—right up until that exact moment when I had found him in that basement. Now I just felt sorry for him. For his son Sean, as well. I didn’t know how they’d ever be able to deal with this.

  A trooper came by and gave me a cup of coffee. He asked me if I wouldn’t mind hanging around a little while longer. I told him I had no problem with that. I sat there with the coffee cup in both hands and watched the rest of the day go by.

  I knew it was four hours from Sault Ste. Marie to Bad Axe. Another hour or two to get the full story. Maybe even see the filmstrip if you were properly prepared for the experience. Another few minutes to catch your breath. Maybe six hours total, and that’s just about when Agent Long came through one of the inner doors and sat down beside me. I was glad to see her.

  She didn’t say anything for a while. Then she turned to me.

  “Why didn’t you tell us you were coming down here?” she said.

  “I probably should have.”

  “Yeah, maybe.”

  “What would you have told me if I had? You’d already eliminated him as a suspect.”

  “I would have listened, Alex.”

  “I don’t blame you guys for missing him. Not only was he seventy-two years old, he was a good enough actor to make people think he was on his last legs.”

  “So then it’s kind of ironic,” she said. “He may have fooled us into thinking he was too weak to do this, but then his heart gave out.”

  “Is that what happened? Cardiac arrest?”

  “Yes. Before he had the chance to finish his masterpiece.”

  I shook my head. “Did you see it yet?”

  “I just did, yes. You know, I’m not going to beat you up on this now, but what the hell were you thinking? You should have called somebody right away. What if you had accidentally erased the film or something?”

  “It wasn’t my idea,” I said. “But once it started…”

  “I get it. I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have said anything. I probably would have done the same thing.”

  “No, you’re right. It was a stupid thing to do, but that’s not unusual for me. Just ask Chief Maven.”

  She smiled at that. We sat there for a few more minutes. Then we got up and she walked me to my truck. The state police had brought it back down from Wiley’s lake house. It was parked on the street.

  “So what’s next?” I said. “Are you guys coming back up to the Soo?”

  “I’m not sure. We may be all done up there now. We checked out of the hotel.”

  “Already?”

  “That’s one thing they teach you, an agent needs to be ready to move out at a moment’s notice.”

  “That’s too bad,” I said. “I was going to buy you a drink at the Glasgow.”

  “I’ll take a rain check. Next time I’m in the UP.”

  “You’ve got my number.” I stood there for a moment, not quite sure what to do next. She put out her hand for me to shake. I took it in mine. Then I got in my truck.

  I was about to drive off, but she motioned for me to roll down my window.

  “How did you know?” she said.

  “About Wiley? Just a gut feeling.”

  She shook her head. “That’s a load of crap. There was something you saw that we didn’t.”

  “Come up to Paradise and have that drink with me. I’ll tell you all about it.”

  She smiled at me again. That slow, careful smile that was really starting to grow on me. I could only wonder if I’d ever see her again.

  “Take care of yourself,” I said. Then I rolled up my window. I watched her in the rearview mirror as I drove away.

  A drink at the Glasgow, I thought. That’s exactly what I need right now.

  I pointed the truck due north and gunned it.

  * * *

  They closed the book on the murders of Charles Razniewski and his son Charlie, Donald Steele and his son Brandon, along with Donna Krimer, and Dean Haggerty and his daughter Dina. When they tried to write the very last page of that book, they cited the connection between Steele and Haggerty and the arrest of Clyde C. Wiley, ten years ago. They failed to find any concrete link to Razniewski, apart from the notebook I had found on Wiley’s kitchen counter. They were beginning to suspect that no link would ever be found in the official records. However Wiley came to know Razniewski, it could have been nothing more than a chance encounter on a completely different day, either on the job during those few times when Razniewski was working on his own, or even off the job. A few harsh words spoken to a man who already had his own reasons to hate Michigan State Troopers, or who would soon come to have such a hatred … it might have been enough. They’d never know for sure because Wiley was probably the only man who could tell them.

  The fact that Roy Maven’s name did not appear in that notebook, along with the fact that Maven himself had no recollection of ever meeting Wiley—a meeting he would probably remember simply because of Wiley’s celebrity—made it look less and less likely that Maven had ever been a target to begin with. Apparently, Wiley had done all the killing he was going to do. He just died before he could finish his film.

  Maven’s wife and daughter flew home from Amsterdam. As soon as they touched the ground, Maven’s wife called him and told him that she would not sleep one single night in that house i
n Sault Ste. Marie. Not after what had happened on her kitchen floor. Maven put up a brief fight. He had ripped up the floor, cleaned everything in the house within an inch of its life, and so on. But I think even he knew it was a fight he’d never win. So he went outside with a sledgehammer and pounded a FOR SALE sign into the still-frozen ground.

  His daughter was home safe and his wife was staying with her in Lansing, and Chief Maven went off his administrative leave and reclaimed his job as chief of police. He moved back into his windowless concrete office in the City-County Building, with no pictures or any other distractions of any kind on the walls. His spot on the lower end of the totem pole in Sault Ste. Marie was once again secure.

  It was late April now. There was a false sense of spring while everything started to thaw for three days straight. Jackie was actually observed smiling. Then we got ten more inches of snow. I had drinks with Leon after his shift at the Cineplex one night and told him everything that had happened. When I finally dragged him home well after midnight, his wife was not happy. I don’t know which one of us got in more trouble that night. I didn’t regret it for a second, but Leon might have felt differently when he woke up the next morning.

  I thought about calling Agent Long a few times, but whenever I picked up the phone I thought about how many miles there were between us. I wanted to see her again, but I knew it wouldn’t be an easy arrangement for either of us.

  The sun came back. The thermometer actually hit fifty for one brief day. Vinnie helped me do some of the remaining exterior trim work on the last cabin. Then it snowed another eight inches.

  Things felt almost normal again, and I thought I might finally be ready to face that first cabin. Just go in, clean it out, reclaim it, banish all the bad memories of what had happened there. You do that and only the good memories will remain. At least that’s what I was telling myself. I set a date and I promised myself that was the day I was going to do it.

  It was time to get my life back.

  * * *

  Before that day could even begin, I got another one of those early-morning phone calls. The sky outside was still cold and dark and the sound of the phone ringing was like a jagged edge of a knife. I stumbled out of bed and answered it.

  It was Agent Long. Sometime during the night, Olivia Maven had apparently ingested a lethal dose of the tranquilizer Pentobarbital. She was in the hospital, and Chief Maven was on his way down to see her. She had eventually thrown up much of the Pentobarbital, after it had been in her system for some unknown period of time. There was a chance this might have saved her life. But as of that moment, things did not look good.

  I hung up the phone and closed my eyes.

  Either Clyde C. Wiley was back from the dead, I thought, or else it was never him to begin with. Whoever the killer was, he was back at it. Or rather, he had never really stopped. He had just been waiting.

  And we’re rolling …

  … Finally!

  … I thought we’d never get this thing off the ground again.

  … I still don’t know where my film is. It better show up soon or there’ll be hell to pay.

  … On top of that, no edit bay for the time being. I even had to make my own developing tank!

  … And Olivia was away for so long, I wasn’t sure if she’d ever come back home.

  … Just drink this and lie right back down. Act a little scared.

  … Perfect. You took your time showing up, but at least you nailed the performance.

  … It’s good to be back in motion again, even with all the problems. Like they say, the show must go on.

  And cut.

  PART THREE

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  I called Chief Maven’s cell phone. It rang a few times, just long enough for me to question whether this was the right thing to do. He had enough on his mind, God knows. But before I could hang up, I heard his voice on the other end.

  “What is it?”

  “Chief, is that you?”

  He didn’t say anything. I could hear his engine racing. He was in his car, of course, on his way down to Lansing.

  “Chief, are you driving? Please be careful.”

  “I can’t talk now. I can’t even—”

  He broke off, swearing at another driver.

  “Chief, it won’t do you any good if you get killed on the way down there.”

  “What do you want, McKnight?”

  “How is she? Do you have any other news yet?”

  “No, I don’t. I’ll see when I get there.”

  “Do you want me to come down?”

  More swearing on his end as he passed another vehicle. I don’t know if he had a squad car with lights, or if he was driving his regular unmarked car.

  “Chief, do you want me to come down there?”

  “Ingham Hospital. In Lansing. I gotta go.”

  The line went dead. I hurried up and got dressed. Then I headed out to my truck and gunned it.

  * * *

  I couldn’t go quite as fast as Chief Maven, and of course he already had a head start on me. I drove over the Mackinac Bridge again, into the Lower Peninsula. Straight south on I-75, just like my trip to Bad Axe, only this time I branched off at Grayling and headed straight for Lansing. I had left at about five in the morning, and I figured it would take me about four hours to get there. I stopped for gas and coffee and got right back on the road. When I got near Lansing I stopped again to ask for directions to the hospital. It was just after nine when I finally got there.

  I went to the main reception desk and had a few minutes of tense wrangling with the woman about where Olivia Maven was and whether I could go anywhere near her. In the end, I called the chief on his cell phone again and he told me to come up to the Critical Care unit.

  When I stepped out of the elevator, there was a nurse at the main station who didn’t want me to go any farther, as only immediate family members were allowed in the unit. That’s when Chief Maven came out of one of the rooms and flashed his badge at her. He didn’t technically have any authority to do that, but it seemed to work, at least for the moment. He gave me a quick nod and I followed him over to a small waiting area.

  “How’s she doing?” I said.

  “Better than a few hours ago.”

  His voice was tight. He wouldn’t look at me. He wouldn’t stand still.

  “Why did I let her come back?” he said. “Will you tell me that, please?”

  “The case was solved, Chief. It was over. How were you supposed to know this would happen?” I didn’t know what else to tell him. I knew that whatever I said, it wouldn’t help one little bit.

  “For as long as I live,” he said, “I will never forgive myself for being such an idiot. I don’t care what anybody else says. It was up to me to look after her and I completely, totally failed.”

  He grabbed a magazine off the little table and threw it at the window. The nurse looked up from her station and was about to say something. Wisely, she decided against it.

  “I understand what those other guys went through now,” he said. “This is what it’s like to see your child … just, I mean…”

  He picked up another magazine. I grabbed him by the shoulders and sat him down. “Chief, tell me what happened.”

  He pushed me away from him, but he stayed in the seat.

  “My wife was there, McKnight. She was in the guest room downstairs when he came in. He must have come in through the front door and walked right by her door. Gone upstairs, into Olivia’s bedroom.”

  He started rocking back and forth as he went on.

  “He went in there and … and I don’t even know what happened next. Somehow he woke her up and got her to drink a glass of water with all these pills in it. Pentobarbital. You know what that is, right?”

  “A tranquilizer.”

  “An old one. It’s been around forever. It’s what Marilyn Monroe took when she…” He stopped talking. He kept rocking back and forth in his chair.

  “Chief, your wife di
dn’t hear anything?”

  “No. No, she takes her hearing aid out, and she just didn’t…”

  “So what’s the prognosis right now, Chief? You said she’s doing better?”

  “Yeah, that’s what they’re saying. You want to know why? Because he made a mistake. It’s the oldest trick in the book, right? You wait for them to make a mistake.”

  “What do you mean? What kind of mistake?”

  “When you’re going to kill yourself by taking a lot of tranquilizers or sleeping pills or whatever else, you know what you usually have to do first? If you really want to make sure it works? You take an antiemetic.”

  “Antiemetic, so you mean you don’t—”

  “So you don’t throw it all back up, yes. That was his mistake, McKnight. He didn’t realize that my poor Olivia’s always had a nervous stomach. It probably didn’t stay down for more than a few minutes. By that time, he must have been gone.”

  “What are they saying now?”

  “They’re still saying she could have some liver damage. It’s too early to tell.”

  “Is she awake? Have you talked to her?”

  “No, not yet. They said she’ll be out for a while. Probably all day.”

  “But when you do … she should be able to tell us what happened, right?”

  “Yes. You would think so. She should be able to tell us. I don’t know.”

  He leaned all the way back in his chair, finally coming to rest for one second at least. He put two fingers from each hand on his temples and closed his eyes.