Blood Is the Sky: An Alex McKnight Mystery (Alex McKnight Mysteries) Read online

  “Don’t mince words,” he said. “Tell me straight. If it was your relative, and I did this to him, you’d be ready to shoot me.”

  “I would wonder what you were thinking.”

  “Yeah. You’d wonder.”

  I was tired. I didn’t feel like arguing. “We should stop on the way back,” I said. “Spend the night somewhere.”

  “I told you, I can’t go back home.”

  “Vinnie—”

  “I can’t face them.”

  That was enough for me. I slammed on the brakes, just about sending him through the windshield. “Listen,” I said, as he fell back into his seat. “I’ve had enough of this, all right? You want me to tell you it was a stupid thing to do? Okay, I’ll say it. It was stupid. It was damned stupid. It was the stupidest thing I’ve ever seen you do. And yeah, everybody in your family is gonna be pissed off at you. And yeah, I would be, too. Okay? Have we settled that now?”

  He rubbed the back of his neck. “Yes, we’ve settled that.”

  “Okay, then.”

  I put the truck back on the road and drove. Vinnie didn’t say anything for another hour, until we hit Hornepayne. There was no train this time, so the whole town flashed right by us like an idle thought. There was nothing but open road again, and the headlights against the trees. Finally, he cleared his throat. “Don’t you want to know why?”

  “Why what?”

  “Why I let Tom come up here?”

  “You told me,” I said. “You thought you were helping him. You thought he could use the money.”

  “No, that’s not why.”

  “So tell me.”

  He settled back in his seat, looked out into the night. “About a month ago,” he said, “I was coming home from the casino. It was like ten o’clock at night. I stopped by my mother’s house, but it didn’t look like anybody was home. I mean, the cars were all gone. The place was dark. So I figured, okay, they’re all over at the healing center in Garden River or something. I’m about to back out of the driveway, and I notice that the porch light isn’t on. Which is the first weird thing. The second weird thing is that there’s a light on in the house. Believe me, when my mother leaves the house, she turns every light off, except the one on the porch. And God help you if you mess that up.”

  “I believe it.”

  “I went inside to see what was going on. At the very least, I figured maybe somebody else had left the house after she had. I was thinking I’d be saving somebody a lot of abuse if I turned that light off in the house and turned the porch light on. But when I got inside, I thought I heard something from one of the back rooms. I called out, you know, ‘Hey, anybody home?’ Nobody answered. But then another noise. It was dark, and hell, it had been a long day, so maybe my imagination got the best of me. I was thinking maybe it was a burglar back there, so I grabbed a fireplace poker, just like in the movies. I go down the hallway real slow, holding that poker, listening for somebody. And then I see there’s a light on in the bathroom.”

  He stopped for a moment, took a deep breath.

  “So I called out again,” he went on. “‘Hey, who’s there?’ Nobody answered. So I went up to the door and I opened it.”

  He stopped again. There was nothing but the sound of the tires on the road, and the cold air whistling by.

  “Who was it?” I said.

  “It was Tom. He had stayed home, all by himself. You wanna know why?”

  I didn’t even try to answer.

  “He stayed home so he could hang himself with an extension cord in the shower.”

  I kept driving. I waited for him to start talking again.

  “His face was blue, Alex,” he finally said. “It was actually blue. A minute later and he would have been dead. I grabbed him and tried to lift him in the air. And he started fighting me, kicking me all over. It was just … I was so mad, Alex. It’s almost funny looking back on it. I wasn’t mad that he was trying to kill himself. I was mad that he was doing it in the bathroom. That was my first thought. This is the bathroom my uncles worked so hard on. Putting in all that new tile and the sink and the bathtub and the separate shower stall. And they’re all gonna come home in a little while and find your dead stinking body hanging there.”

  He rubbed one hand over his face and through his hair.

  “In the bathroom, Alex. God damn it. If you’re gonna kill yourself, you go up to the old graveyard on Mission Hill. You know what I mean? You say hello to your ancestors and then you jump off the cliff. Just walk right out into the sky. That’s how you kill yourself.”

  “So what happened?” I said.

  “Well, at that point I’m fighting him, trying to get him down, and the stupid shower rod breaks. We both go falling in the shower and I just about crack my head open. The extension cord was coming loose and he’s getting his breath back. He’s trying to yell at me, and trying to punch me. I could have killed him right there. I could have strangled him with my bare hands. Which was kinda weird, I guess, after I stopped him from killing himself. But finally he gives up fighting me and he’s just lying there, half in the shower and half out. He starts crying. I sat there with him for, what, maybe thirty minutes, just sitting there watching him cry. I finally asked him, ‘Why, Tom? Why were you gonna do that?’ And he says, ‘This is the only way out. It’s either go back to prison, or this.’”

  “Okay,” I said, after another long silence. “So how does that end up with you sending him up here?”

  “You’ve got to understand, the only jobs he’s ever had aside from leading hunts were either washing dishes or cleaning toilets. He can’t even work at the casino, now that he has a record. It’s just more of the same. Hell, I’d be going crazy, too.”

  “You wouldn’t try to kill yourself.”

  “Who knows, Alex? Who really knows? If I had to stay in that house, with everybody looking at me all the time like I was a criminal.”

  “So what then?”

  “I told him just to hold on, you know? Just give me some time to help him. And then when this thing came along. Three thousand dollars for a week of hunting. Only problem was, it was in Canada. There’s no way they would have let him leave the country.”

  “Vinnie, I know it’s good money, but—”

  “It’s more than that. Don’t you get it? You know why he loves doing hunts so much? Same reason I do. It sounds kinda stupid, but going out on a hunt makes you remember who you are. I mean, most of the time, you’re just hanging out with your own people, you know, doing regular stuff, sitting around or going to work, whatever. Then you go out in the woods with a bunch of white guys and all of a sudden they’re treating you like you’re fucking Geronimo. Like you’re this amazing, wild Indian shaman who can hear messages in the wind and talk to the animals and learn their secrets. At first, you think, okay, these white guys are totally into some kind of cartoon character they saw on television. But then you realize, shit, they’re right. I am different. My ancestors, they did know all this stuff. And I’m still a part of it. You know what I mean?”

  “Yeah, I get it. So you decided—”

  “He needed this, Alex. He really needed this. Otherwise—”

  I shook my head.

  “It was either that or let him kill himself,” Vinnie said. “That was my choice. If I hadn’t let him go, he’d be dead. No doubt about it.”

  I slowed down to let a string of deer run across the empty road. We watched five of them go by, white tails flashing in the headlights. I waited another few seconds. There’s always one more.

  Then it came. The sixth deer, smaller than the rest. It jumped into the brush, following the rest of its family.

  “What would you have done?” he said.

  “I’d have to think about it,” I said.

  “You of all people should understand.”

  “How do you mean?”

  “You’ve been there.”

  I looked over at him. “Excuse me?”

  “It’s like my mother said, you carry
around so much pain, and you won’t let anybody else help you carry it. She says you have such a lonely heart, it’s hard to even look at you.”

  “All right,” I said, “can we leave me and my lonely heart out of this? I think I’m doing a lot better now, anyway.”

  “She says you need a woman.”

  “Your mother sees all this in me? How about Tom? How come she didn’t see it in her own son?”

  I regretted it as soon as I said it, but Vinnie just laughed. “Your own family,” he said. “That’s different.”

  We both seemed to want to leave it alone for a while, so another hour passed as we made our way down to White River.

  “You know what we should be doing?” I finally said.

  “What’s that?”

  “You said you were at the duty-free shop when Tom left with those guys. But you didn’t see them.”

  “No. Just the van. Why, what are you thinking?”

  “I’m just wondering,” I said. “If they came this way on their way up, and then again on their way back down, somebody must have seen them.”

  “I suppose you’re right,” Vinnie said. “How many places could they stop?”

  “We’re about to hit one of them,” I said. “Here comes White River.”

  The road ended at Highway 17. That plus the railroad going through was excuse enough to put a town there. White River had three different places where you could get something to eat and drink. “If you were a rich guy passing through,” Vinnie said, “which one would you stop at?”

  “They all look about the same to me,” I said. I stopped at the first establishment, a little cinder block bar and restaurant called the T-Spot. It turned out to be a real momand-pop operation, with card tables spread out all over the place and a tiny bar that looked like it had once been in somebody’s basement. We ordered a couple of cheeseburgers from a lady who looked like she owned the place. Hell, she looked like she had built it herself. When we asked her why she called it the T-Spot, she looked at us like we were idiots and asked if we had noticed the two highways forming a T in the middle of town.

  “I’ve got another question for you,” I said. “Eleven days ago, six men came through here on their way to a hunting trip.”

  “Five men,” Vinnie said.

  “Yeah, maybe five. They would have come back through again four days ago.”

  “Well, let’s see. Men on their way to hunt. In October. Hey, Earl!” she called behind her. “Have we seen any men on hunting trips the past few days?”

  “I haven’t been counting them,” he said, without even looking up. “I’d guess around a thousand.”

  “These guys were a little different,” I said. “They were probably dressed a lot better than most of the hunters you get in here. And it sounds like they weren’t exactly behaving themselves. At least, all but one of them.”

  “What did the other one look like?” she said.

  “Like me,” Vinnie said. “He’s my brother.”

  The woman studied his face. “Five guys, you say? Rich white guys and one Indian?”

  “Yes.”

  “I remember them. They stopped in for breakfast. Bunch of slick old boys. Four whites and one Indian.”

  “Breakfast?” I said. “That must have been on their way up, eleven days ago?”

  “Yeah, that sounds about right. I remember they seemed like real pains in the ass, you know, sending the eggs back because they weren’t done right. Making a racket. But then they left me a twenty dollar tip on a thirty dollar bill. In American dollars. A twenty dollar tip I’ll remember.”

  “But you didn’t see them again when they were on their way back?”

  “Nope, just the one time.”

  “How about another two men?” I said. “One with a big nose. They might have come through here yesterday.”

  “We got a lot of big noses up here, hon.”

  “Okay, never mind.” I thanked the woman, we had our dinner, and then we left.

  “We’re about three hours away from the lodge,” I said. “So maybe they didn’t need to stop yet.”

  “Or maybe they saw that little bar in there and decided to go somewhere else.”

  We checked the other two bars in town. We didn’t get anything.

  “Okay, so on the way back, they just kept driving. Maybe they stopped in Wawa.”

  “Let’s see,” he said.

  So we did. Through the dark woods we drove another hour and a half. My eyes were getting tired. It was 10:30 when we hit Wawa again. The giant goose looked down at us once again, this time lit up by two spotlights.

  “We know what our favorite bar in Wawa is,” I said. “You figure these guys found the same place?”

  “Might as well start there,” he said. “Just promise me you won’t get into trouble again.”

  “That wasn’t trouble,” I said. “That was just a misunderstanding with the locals.”

  The parking lot actually had a few vehicles in it this time, and when we stepped into the place, it almost looked busy. Every bar stool was taken, and a few more men were sitting at the round tables. There were two guys playing pool, the chalk dust hanging in the air below the single fluorescent light. Thankfully, our friends weren’t trying to play the bowling game.

  The same big man was behind the bar. He was working a lot harder now, trying to keep everyone happy, with apparently nobody to help him. He was sweating like he’d just buried a dead horse. He did a double take when he saw us leaning on one end of the bar. “You guys again,” he said, his voice a hell of a lot less cordial than the first time we heard it. “Just what I need.”

  “We just want to ask you a couple of questions,” I said.

  “Can’t you see I’m busy here? You want something to drink or not?”

  “A Molson and a 7-Up,” I said. “Our usual.”

  He didn’t smile. He hit the draft handle, drew me a glass that was at least half foam, squirted some soda water out of his shooter into a glass and put it down next to the beer. “Five bucks,” he said.

  “Your prices went up,” I said.

  “It’s a tough business.”

  “Whatever your problem is—”

  “My problem is as soon as you guys left here today, Stan and Brian got in a big fight. Brian’s in the hospital.”

  I almost laughed. “Stan’s the guy who got his nose broken, right? And Brian’s the guy who didn’t stand up for him? What the hell does that have to do with us?”

  Vinnie leaned in front of me. “We’re just looking for somebody,” he said, raising his voice over the noises around him. “Do you think you could help us out?”

  “Who you looking for?”

  “My brother.”

  “Go check the parking lot. That’s about as far as an Indian gets before he passes out.”

  The look Vinnie gave him right about then should have scared him. But the bartender didn’t know Vinnie like I did. He didn’t know the kind of day we’d been having, or that Vinnie’s seven-mile-long fuse was about to burn all the way down.

  That’s when our friend Stan showed up. There was fresh white tape on his face, and his two black eyes looked even worse. “Lookee here,” he said. “It’s the Lone Ranger and Tonto again.”

  He was still wearing his Maple Leafs jersey. It took Vinnie about two seconds to hit him twice in the face and then pull that jersey right over his head. Somebody else jumped in, and then me. Usually I’m smart enough to cover myself in a bar fight, especially when I’m fighting over something stupid in a roomful of strangers. But somehow it all boiled over at that exact moment, all the driving and the dead ends, and everything Vinnie had told me about Tom. Having your brother go to prison and then finding him in the shower, trying to hang himself. Somehow I was plugged into the same anger now, for Tom and for the men he had come up here with, and for everyone else in this goddamned backwoods bar. Fortunately, nobody else in the place seemed too interested in fighting. Most of them just watched us for a minute or two until th
ey could step in and separate us.

  “Easy now,” a man said in my ear as he wrapped me from behind in a bear hug. “Just take it easy.” I struggled to break free, but he was strong enough to wait me out.

  Where all this anger had come from, I didn’t know. I was thinking about it thirty minutes later, as two officers from the Ontario Provincial Police station down the street had us sitting at a table in the corner. They weren’t happy about Vinnie not having a driver’s license, but they ran mine and stood around for a while, figuring out what to do with us. It wasn’t the first bar fight they’d seen that week—hell, maybe not even that night—so they let us go with the standard warning.

  I was still thinking about it at midnight as we checked in at the local motel. I sure didn’t feel like driving another four hours to make it home. Spending the night in Wawa wasn’t my idea of a vacation, but at least it wasn’t the local jail.

  I got Vinnie some ice for the scrape over his left eye, used the toothbrush the man at the front desk had given me, washed it down with tap water that tasted like pure iron. When the lights were out and I was staring up at the ceiling, I tried to let go of the anger. I tried to let go of it the way you let sand run between your fingers. When it was gone, there was nothing left but a question. And then another.

  “These guys didn’t just vanish into thin air,” I said. “Where in hell did they go?”

  Vinnie lay on the bed across from me. “I wish I knew, Alex.”

  “And these other two guys, the ones who are looking for them. Who are they?”

  He didn’t answer. He stared up at the same ceiling. We both listened to the night, a long way from home, and waited for the morning.

  Chapter Six

  The chirping woke me up. Some kind of bird was making a racket, and it was doing it about three hours too early. I opened one eye and saw a dim ray of light coming through the window—whose window I could not say. I had no idea where the hell I was.

  I sat up. There was a dull ache in my right hand. The bird started chirping again. What in goddamned hell, I thought. And then it came back to me.

  I was in a motel room—in Wawa, Ontario, of all places. Vinnie was face down on the other bed, still wearing his clothes from the night before. The ache in my hand told me that I had gotten at least one good shot in before the fight was broken up. And that damned chirping had to be—