Beneath the Book Tower: An Alex McKnight Short Story Read online

  He stopped and wiped his eyes with the back of his hand. I waited for him to get to what was obviously a hard thing to say.

  “He hanged himself. From a tree. There was some alcohol in his system, I guess, but… I mean, he went out on his own and he drove down by the lake and he hanged himself.”

  “Did he leave a note?”

  “No note. There usually isn’t.”

  “I know, but…”

  But nothing, I thought. The man was right. Despite everything you see in the movies, no matter how somebody kills himself, they almost never leave a note.

  “I can’t imagine,” he said. “I mean, if it was my daughter Olivia…”

  He took another drag off his cigarette and looked away, shaking his head.

  “I don’t understand, Chief. I mean, this shouldn’t happen to anybody. Your old friend or anybody’s old friend. But what does this have to do with me?”

  “This whole thing has been eating Raz alive, okay? He can’t make any sense of it. If the kid was upset about something specific…about a girl or something. But no. He’s just…gone. Like that.”

  “I still don’t see how I can help here.”

  “He wants to know. That’s all. If there’s anything to know. He just wants to understand what was going through his kid’s head before he died. That’s all the man wants.”

  “How can anybody possibly know that?”

  “Maybe you can’t. Maybe this whole thing is just a waste of time. But he wants somebody to try. He’s already talked to the Houghton County Sheriff’s office, but they can’t do anything more for him. It’s not like they’re gonna spend much more time on this. So he’s thinking maybe if somebody talks to some of Charlie’s friends…”

  “Wait a minute, are you talking about me going out there and doing that?”

  “He can’t do it. There’s no way he can go out there again. Not yet. Even if he could, there’s not much chance they’d really be straight with him. There are some things you just can’t talk about with your dead friend’s father, you know?”

  “But hold on. Time out.”

  “I can’t do it. I’ve already talked to the sheriff out there. We didn’t exactly hit it off, but no matter what, I can’t go out there and start grilling people. I mean, I know how I can come across sometimes. I think any of these kids, they’d just feel like they were getting the third degree and there’s no way they’d open up to me. What Raz needs is an impartial third party, somebody who’s reasonably good at talking to people. And if he hires you on an official basis…”

  “No. Chief, please. Even if I was going to do this, there’s no way I’d take money for it.”

  “You’re not getting it.” He was starting to rock back and forth now, shivering from the cold and maybe something else. Some kind of raw energy he was trying to burn off. “Don’t you see? He needs to hire you. He needs to pay you some money to go talk to these kids. Find out what you can about his son’s state of mind. Talk to the sheriff’s office, find out if there’s anything else they can tell you. About any kind of trouble he might have been in. If he does that, then he’s doing something. See what I mean? Paying you makes it real to him. So even if you don’t find out anything, he can go home feeling like he did everything he could.”

  “Why me?”

  “Well, you’ve got the license.”

  “I don’t use it. You know that. Why don’t you hire Leon Prudell?”

  He was the only other game in town. My former sometimes-partner, a man who grew up in the UP and who never wanted to be anything else other than a private investigator. Problem was, he was the fat goofy kid who sat in the back of the classroom and to most people around here, he’d never be anything else.

  “Prudell’s a clown,” Maven said. “At least you look competent.”

  “Gee, thanks. But seriously, Prudell’s a lot better than anybody realizes. He’d do a fantastic job with this.”

  “Look, McKnight, all you have to do is drive out there, talk to a few people, then drive back. Tell Raz what you heard. If that happened to be, ‘You know what, your son wasn’t depressed at all, there was absolutely no reason he should have killed himself, so it was just a tragic fluke thing, one bad night in his life and I’m awfully sorry….’ Well, then, I mean if you said that, then everybody would be better off, I think.”

  “So now you’re even telling me what to say? Why bother even going out there? I can just say I did.”

  “Don’t be a wiseass. I’m just saying, if you don’t find out anything, that would be a good line to take. Is that too much to ask?”

  “Chief…”

  “And you make your three hundred bucks. Or whatever. I don’t see what the problem is.”

  “You’re something else,” I said. “You treat me like crap every time I see you, but now you think all you gotta do is wave some money in my face and I’ll help you.”

  He threw his cigarette down onto the gravel and reached out for me. He grabbed me by the coat and drew himself to within a few inches of my face. Here we go, I thought. We’re gonna have that fight in the parking lot after all.

  “I’m not asking for me,” he said, looking me dead in the eye. “I’m asking for my old friend, who’s spent the last three months living in hell. Okay? He’s going to be in my office tomorrow at ten o’clock. If it’s not too much trouble, I’d like you to stop by and at least talk to him. Can you do that?”

  “Just once, would it kill you to say please?”

  I could feel him tightening his grip on my coat.

  “Please, Alex. Okay? Please.”

  Then he pushed me away from him and turned to go.

  “Ten o’clock,” he said as he got into his car. “Don’t be late.”

  Also by Steve Hamilton

  Misery Bay

  The Lock Artist

  Night Work

  A Stolen Season

  Ice Run

  Blood Is the Sky

  North of Nowhere

  The Hunting Wind

  Winter of the Wolf Moon

  A Cold Day in Paradise