A Cold Day in Paradise (Alex McKnight Mysteries)

by Steve Hamilton

  “Yes,” I said.

  “I understand he called you before he called the police.”

  “Yes.”

  “You were on the scene, in fact, before the police even got there.”

  “Yes.”

  “That strikes me as rather odd,” he said.

  “It was odd,” I said. “Edwin did an odd thing.”

  “A very odd thing,” he said. “Wouldn’t you call that odd, Chief Maven?”

  “It was odd at the time,” Maven said. “And it’s still odd now.”

  “The next man was, what was his name?”

  They both looked at me.

  “Dorney,” I said. “Vince Dorney. At least that’s what the chief told me.”

  “Yes, that’s right. Vince Dorney. Another local character, from what I’m told. In fact, I believe Mr. Dorney was known to engage in a little bookmaking himself, wasn’t he?”

  They both looked at me again.

  “I don’t know anything about the man,” I said.

  “It’s just another odd thing,” Allen said. “Here’s another bookmaker who ends up dead.”

  “Another odd thing,” Maven said.

  “Your Mr. Rose seems to have a specific dislike for bookmakers, Mr. McKnight. Funny, I didn’t see any mention of that in his notes.”

  I could feel a line of sweat starting down my back. Both of the men had their forearms on the table. As they shifted their weight it made the coffee splash out of the cup.

  “I don’t like where you’re taking this,” I said. “A homicidal maniac has been terrorizing me for the last week. Three men are dead, including the most harmless man I’ve ever known. But instead of trying to find this guy, all you’re doing is sitting here grilling me like I’m your lead suspect.”

  “We’re just having a conversation here,” Maven said. “Although we can give your man Uttley a call if you really want us to. If you think you need a lawyer, I mean.”

  “I don’t need a lawyer, Maven. What I need is for you to start doing your fucking job.”

  “Now, Mr. McKnight,” Allen said. “Is that kind of language necessary?”

  “You guys aren’t even doing it right,” I said. “It’s supposed to be good cop, bad cop, not asshole cop, dickhead cop.”

  “Keep going, McKnight,” Maven said. “Just keep digging that hole.”

  “If you don’t get out there and start looking for this guy, I swear to God, Maven—”

  “You swear what, McKnight? You swear you’ll try to choke me to death again?”

  I grabbed the cup and threw it. It hit the fishing map and exploded, leaving a great brown streak right across the whole county. Maven and Allen just watched me, not even blinking.

  “My, my,” Allen finally said. “Your man has a temper.”

  “He was a baseball player once,” Maven said. “Did I tell you that?”

  “No, you didn’t.”

  “I assume he had a better arm then.”

  “I would hope so. That was a weak throw.”

  “Never made the big leagues,” Maven said.

  “That’s a shame,” Allen said.

  “So he became a cop instead.”

  “So I gathered.”

  “He never made detective,” Maven said. “In fact, he had to leave the force after the Rose incident.”

  “Another failure to deal with,” Allen said. “It’s painful to think about.”

  “So here’s what I think happened, Detective Allen, if you’d care to hear it.”

  “By all means, Chief Maven. Please proceed.”

  “It’s no secret that Edwin Fulton had a gambling problem. More than once, in fact, he had to be escorted off the reservation. I’m thinking maybe he got into a little trouble with these bookmakers.”

  “But I thought Fulton was a wealthy man,” Allen said.

  “Very much so,” Maven said. “But you know how bad they can get once they get their hooks into you. Maybe they saw him as an easy mark.”

  “Good point.”

  “So Mr. Fulton asks his friend Mr. McKnight if perhaps he can help him with this problem. Perhaps Mr. McKnight even owed these men some money himself.”

  “Could be, could be.”

  “Mr. McKnight decides that there’s only one way to eliminate the problem, and that’s to eliminate the two bookmakers themselves.”

  “Seems pretty drastic to me,” Allen said.

  “Drastic, yes,” Maven said. “But we’ve both seen men killed over much smaller matters. And in this case, Mr. McKnight had the perfect plan. He would write these notes to himself to make it look like this man Rose had come back to haunt him.”

  “Very original. But all this just to knock off a couple bookies?”

  “There could be more to it,” Maven said. “Maybe this Rose thing helped to satisfy some sort of craving. Some sort of sickness. It must be hard to live with yourself all these years. Knowing that you froze when it really counted and your partner ended up getting killed.”

  “It must be a living hell,” Allen said.

  “It’s just a theory, of course. But it would certainly explain a lot. Like why the phone calls he claimed he was receiving suddenly stopped when we started tapping his phone.”

  “So what about Mr. Fulton, then? What happened to him?”

  “Ah, that’s the interesting part,” Maven said. “After Mr. McKnight has killed the two bookmakers, he has this idea. Maybe it just occurs to him then, or maybe he had been planning it all along.”

  “Are you suggesting that Mr. McKnight killed Mr. Fulton?”

  “He wasn’t in his cabin that night. He was out looking for him, remember. Or so he said. All those other nights, when we had an officer over there, nothing ever happened. The one night he goes out, Fulton is killed. And this time, he dumps the body in the lake. I’m guessing that they had already disposed of the gun. So he didn’t want the body to be found. That way, it wouldn’t seem out of place that he was killed by something else.”

  “The rose in the boat was a nice touch. And the blond hairs.”

  “Give him points for that one, yes.”

  “But why would he kill his own best friend?”

  “Ah, Detective Allen. I’m surprised you even have to ask that question. Why does anyone kill his best friend?”

  “Of course,” Allen said. “You kill your best friend so you can have your best friend’s wife.”

  I had heard enough. “If you guys are about done,” I said. “I think I’ll be leaving now. I mean, unless you have a good reason to keep me here.”

  “We can’t keep you here,” Maven said. “We can’t charge you yet.”

  “Then why are you telling me all this?” I said.

  “All those years on the force,” Maven said, “and you never saw a suspect get worked over?”

  “He never made detective,” Allen said. “He never learned this stuff.”

  “Good point,” Maven said. “He never got past parking tickets.”

  “Tell him how it works, Chief.”

  “Sometimes when you know a suspect is guilty,” Maven said, “but you don’t have enough evidence, you just bring the guy in and you lay it all out for him.”

  “You tell him that you know he did it,” Allen said, “and you know that’s he going to give himself away.”

  “You tell him that you’re going to be watching him.”

  “You tell him that it’s only a matter of time.”

  “But you only lean on him if you know he’s going to fold,” Maven said.

  “Otherwise,” Allen said, “you’re just wasting your time.”

  “I don’t think we’re wasting our time here, McKnight.”

  “I can see the fear in his eyes,” Allen said. They both leaned over to look at me. They were close enough for me to catch the scent of cigars and aftershave. “Can you see it, Chief Maven? Can you see the fear?”

  “I certainly can, Detective Allen. I can see it all over him.”

  “You know how
an owl does his hunting, Mr. McKnight?” Allen said.

  They both sat there for a long moment. I didn’t say anything.

  “He listens. He waits.”

  “As long as you don’t move,” Maven said, “you’re safe.”

  “But as soon as you move,” Allen said, “he hears you.”

  “You want to stay still, McKnight. But you can’t.”

  “You know the owl is there, waiting.”

  “You have to run, McKnight. You can’t help it.”

  “You’re too scared not to run.”

  “Then he swoops right down on you.” Maven shot his hand out and picked up an imaginary animal. “And he eats you.”

  “Eats you for dinner.”

  “Makes me hungry just thinking about it,” Maven said. I stood up.

  “Pleasure to meet you, Mr. McKnight,” the detective said. “We’ll be seeing you soon.”

  “Very soon,” Maven said. “I’ll bring the ketchup.”

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  WHEN MAVEN AND Allen had finished with me, I called Uttley. I didn’t answer any of his questions. I just told him to come and get me. I stood outside the station house waiting for him, looking out past the courthouse at the locks and beyond them the bridge to Canada. The storm had passed, but the remaining clouds filtered what sunlight there was into an otherwordly glow. Everything looked wrong and I felt sick to my stomach.

  That bridge marks the northern end of one of the longest highways in America, Interstate 75. You can take it dead south more than a thousand miles, right out of Michigan, through Ohio, Kentucky, Tennessee, Georgia, all the way to Florida. Forget what Maven had said about not leaving. I could just get on that road and go. Never come back.

  Would Rose follow me? How long would it take for him to find me again?

  Uttley finally showed up in my truck. “God, Alex,” he said when I opened the driver’s side door. “What happened to you?”

  “Just move over,” I said.

  I pulled out of the parking lot and headed across town. Uttley watched me for a while and then finally said, “Where are we going?”

  “To your office.”

  “I told Mrs. Fulton we’d come back,” he said. “And my car. It’s still at the casino.”

  “We’ll get it later,” I said.

  We came to a red light and sat there for a full minute. I closed my eyes and took a long breath. “How are they doing?” I said.

  “Mrs. Fulton is a mess,” he said. “I guess that’s understandable. Sylvia finally came inside, but she refused to change out of her wet clothes. When I left, she was just standing at the window, looking out at the lake.”

  I didn’t say anything.

  “Are you going to tell me what happened at the station?” he said.

  “They think I killed Edwin. And everybody else.”

  “What? Are you kidding me?”

  “I’m not kidding you.” I told him everything that had happened.

  He listened to the whole story, shaking his head. “So they didn’t charge you?” he said.

  “No. But they told me to stay in town.”

  “Goddamn it, I knew I should have gone with you.”

  “What good would that have done?”

  “You need a lawyer, Alex,” he said. “This is insane.”

  “Well, you’re right, I do need you to help me,” I said. “But I’m not going to worry about those two clowns right now.” I stopped the truck in front of his office.

  “What are we doing, Alex? Why are we here?”

  “We need to call the prison again,” I said. I got out and waited for him. He sat there rubbing his forehead for a long moment and then he finally got out of the truck.

  When we got into his office, he sat down behind his desk and looked at his watch. It wasn’t even noon yet. I winced as I sat down in the guest chair. Everything hurt. I felt a hundred years old.

  “Where was that guy’s number?” he said. He went through a pile of papers on his desk and finally found it. After he had dialed, he turned on the speaker phone and put the receiver down.

  A voice answered, “Corrections, Browning speaking.”

  “Mr. Browning,” Uttley said. “This is Lane Uttley in Sault Ste. Marie. We spoke a couple days ago.”

  “Yes, you were asking about an inmate.”

  “Maximilian Rose,” he said, looking up at me. “I have Mr. McKnight with me here in the office. We’re sorry to bother you again, but I’m afraid our situation has gotten much worse. I mean, we’ve had another, um—”

  I picked up the receiver. “This is McKnight,” I said. “I want you to listen to me very carefully. I have good reason to believe that Maximilian Rose is here in the area, and that he’s responsible for three murders.”

  “That’s impossible,” Browning said. “That man is here in prison. We’ve gone through this already.”

  “I don’t care what you’ve gone through,” I said. “You have to believe me. Something is not right down there. I don’t know how it happened, but I don’t think that man you have is Rose.”

  “Mr. McKnight, I told this to Mr. Uttley and now I’m going to tell it to you. I personally took the man’s mug shot and went and stood in front of the man’s cell. He has grown a pretty big beard since then, but—”

  “What? A beard? Nobody told me about a beard before.” I looked at Uttley. He just shrugged his shoulders.

  “Yes, the man has a beard now. But it’s the same man.”

  “How can you know for sure?” I said. “He must look totally different now. I mean, whoever that is. He must not look like the picture.”

  “Mr. McKnight.” I could tell he was fighting down his anger. He spoke as slowly to me as he would to a child. “If I stopped shaving, a month later, I would have a beard. A year later, I’d have a big beard. But I’d still be the same man.”

  “Why won’t he see me? Explain that to me.”

  “I don’t know why he won’t see you. It doesn’t matter why. We can’t force him.”

  “I want you to fax me his mug shot,” I said. “And then I want you to go take a Polaroid of the man in the cell and fax me that, too. I’ll give you Uttley’s fax number.”

  “If a law enforcement officer makes that request, then I’ll do it, sir.”

  “I don’t think that’s going to happen,” I said. “Why can’t you just do it for us?”

  “If there’s a murder investigation going on up there and you think somehow Rose is involved, why aren’t the police talking to me?” he said. “You have to admit, this looks mighty strange.”

  I didn’t know what to say. They aren’t calling you because they think I did it? How far would that answer get me?

  “I don’t have time to explain it,” I said. “Please, you have to believe me. Three people are dead.”

  “Have the police call me.”

  “I’m begging you,” I said.

  “I’m sorry.”

  “Then go to hell.” I slammed the phone down.

  I just sat there looking at the floor. Uttley didn’t say anything for a while. And then finally, “So now what?”

  “We take you back to your car,” I said. “So you can go back to the Fultons’ house.”

  “You’re not coming with me?”

  “No. I don’t think I should be there right now.”

  “So what are you going to do?”

  “I’m going to go try to find him.”

  “Where?” he said.

  “I don’t know. Everywhere.”

  “The police should be doing that.”

  “They aren’t.”

  “Are they going to keep the man outside your cabin, at least?”

  “No,” I said. “Why should they?”

  “Goddamn it,” he said. He picked up the phone. “I’m going to call that bastard right now.”

  “Don’t call him.”

  “What?”

  “I don’t want a man there anymore.”

  “Why not?”
>
  “In his note, Rose said that he knew the man was there. I don’t know how, but he knew.”

  “I don’t get it,” he said.

  “Don’t you see? It’s not safe for an officer to be there in his car if Rose knows he’s there.”

  “But what happens if he shows up now?”

  “Then I’ll be waiting for him,” I said.

  “Alex, you can’t do this. Not this way. Let me be there, at least.”

  “No,” I said. “This is between me and him.”

  “Look at you,” he said. “Why don’t you let me stay with you one night at least, so you can get some sleep?”

  “I don’t need sleep,” I said. “I’ll sleep when this is over with.”

  He argued some more, but he knew he wouldn’t win. Finally, I took him back to the casino to pick up his car. He wanted to come help me look for Rose, but I convinced him that Mrs. Fulton and Sylvia needed him more than I did that day. I don’t know if he believed that, but he left me there and went back to their house.

  I looked around the Bay Mills Casino for Vinnie. I figured he’d be the right man to start with. He had seen Edwin the night before. Maybe he had seen someone else there with him. Or at least he could point me to the men who actually threw Edwin out of the place. Maybe they had seen someone.

  Someone.

  How did he find me? How long had he been here? Has he been watching me? If it had ever occurred to me to check my rearview mirror before the last few days, would I have seen him in the car behind me? That little restaurant by Uttley’s office, the place I often had breakfast after stopping in to see him, was he ever there in a booth across the room, watching me eat? If I had put down the paper and looked up at him, would I have even recognized him?

  I couldn’t find Vinnie at any of the blackjack tables, so I just stood there for a few minutes watching the action. I told myself I was waiting for Vinnie to show up for work. But that was a lie. The only reason I kept standing there was because I had no idea what to do next.

  When I finally left the casino, I got in my truck and drove west along the shoreline to where the boat had been found. It was as good a place as any. Start at the end and move backward. As I drove, I tried to imagine how it happened. His car was found at the cottage, so Edwin must have come down this very road. Was he alone then? I couldn’t imagine why he would come this way. Was Rose in the car with him? Edwin driving, Rose sitting next to him with a gun in his ribs? Or maybe Rose was driving. Maybe Edwin was lying in the backseat, already dead. Although I didn’t remember seeing any blood when Uttley and I looked into the car.