A Cold Day in Paradise (Alex McKnight Mysteries)

by Steve Hamilton

  I crawled over to the front window and peered over the sill. The outdoor light lit up the clearing in front of the cabin, and the first row of pine trees. On the right side of the clearing, just off the road, I could see the front of his car. Sylvia was right. It wasn’t even hidden at all. Anyone could see it. Although I couldn’t tell if anyone was in the car. On the left side of the clearing I saw the woodpile, my truck, and Sylvia’s black Jaguar.

  Both hoods were up.

  I crawled back to Sylvia. “When you drove in, was the hood up on my truck?”

  “I don’t remember,” she said. “I don’t think so.”

  “You didn’t lock your car, did you?”

  “No, I didn’t. Alex, what are you talking about?”

  “He’s got both hoods up,” I said. “He must have taken out the distributor caps or something. He obviously doesn’t want us to go anywhere.”

  “So now what?”

  I thought about it. He was out there somewhere. He knew that Sylvia was here in the cabin with me. No phone. No vehicles. My other cabins were a quarter mile up the logging road. But there were no phones in those, anyway. Nearest phone was in Vinnie’s cabin. That was a good half mile away in the other direction, down by the main road. If I snuck out the back I might be able to make my way down there, but I didn’t want to leave Sylvia alone. And I didn’t want to take her out there, either. “I think we should just sit tight for a while,” I said. “See what he does.”

  “What if he tries to come in?”

  “Then I’ll shoot him,” I said.

  “I don’t like this,” she said.

  “I’m not too crazy about it, either.”

  She leaned her head back against the rough wall. A long minute passed, and then another, and then I lost track of the time altogether. It was just the two of us sitting on the floor behind my couch, listening to the silence.

  Finally, a sound. A car starting, a roar and a rattle. The car needed a new muffler. And then the sound of the car on the logging road. The noise grew smaller and smaller until it disappeared.

  “I think he’s gone,” I said. “He just drove away.”

  “Why would he do that?”

  “Who knows? The guy is nuts.”

  “But why would he just leave?”

  “Sylvia, he’s absolutely fucking crazy. There’s no reason for anything he does.”

  “Are you sure it was him?”

  “Had to be,” I said. “Who else would it be?”

  “So what do we do now?”

  “Stay here,” I said. I went to the window again and looked outside. Nothing. His car was gone. I turned off the outside light. We were in total darkness now.

  “Alex, why did you do that?”

  “I want to go see what he did to our cars. But I don’t want that light on. I’ll use the flashlight”

  “Don’t go out there!”

  “Sylvia, if I can get one of the cars started, I’ll pull up next to the door. As soon as I’m close, come out and get in. We’ll get out of here.”

  I opened the door a crack and looked outside. The cold air rushed into the cabin. I stepped outside and then made my way to the vehicles, the gun in one hand and the flashlight in the other. I didn’t want to turn the flashlight on unless I had to. There was just enough moonlight to see where I was going.

  When I got to the truck, I took a quick look inside the cab. The cellular phone was gone. I looked under the hood, snapping the flashlight on just long enough to see the engine. He hadn’t taken out the distributor cap after all, but all the spark plug wires were loose. I put the gun and the flashlight down and tried to reconnect them in the dark. Just relax, I told myself. Relax and think. How do these things go on? One through four on this side. One here, two, three, wait a minute. Is that right? Goddamn it. If I could just see what I was doing…. I turned the flashlight on for a second, looked it over, turned it off, and tried to keep the image burned in my mind. The fourth one was right here. I could feel a thin line of sweat running down the side of my face. Where’s that fucking wire? All right, five is where? Where the fuck is five? I turned the light back on for a second.

  A sound! I threw myself to the ground, fumbling with the flashlight. When I finally got it turned off, I just lay there on the ground, listening. My heart was pounding in my ears.

  It was just a bat, whistling by in the air above me. A motherfucking bat.

  I got up and tried to find my place among the spark plug wires. My hands were shaking.

  All right, five goes here. Six, seven. Is this right? Am I doing this right, goddamn it all to hell? Is this fucking truck going to start now? Eight is next. One more wire. Where is it? Where is eight? Where the fuck is eight? I turned the light back on for a moment. There it is. Connect it here. I’m all done. I hope.

  I eased the hood down, didn’t even bother to close it all the way. Just get it out of the way so you can drive. We’ll get out of here, go down to the main road, maybe go to the Glasgow if it’s still open, call the police. Have a drink or two or five. Let’s go let’s go let’s go.

  I opened the door, slid into the seat. The key! Where the fuck is the key? I put the flashlight and the gun down on the seat next to me, fished around in my pockets. Motherfucking keys! Here they are. I pulled them out, felt through all the keys on my ring for the car key. Why the fuck do I have so many fucking keys on here? The car key, the key to the cabin, that’s all I need. What are all these other fucking keys for?

  That’s when the window exploded. The sudden blast of the gunshot, the spray of glass, the scream that came out of my lungs all on its own, they all seemed to happen in the same instant. I threw the door open and dropped to the ground. Was I hit? Was I bleeding? I didn’t even know.

  No, you’re not hit, Alex. You’re still alive. For the moment. Get a grip on yourself. Try to breathe. I can’t breathe. Breathe, damn it! The gun. Where’s the gun? I picked my head up. There, on the car seat, covered with a million small shards of glass. The gun and the flashlight. I grabbed them. I could feel the glass cutting into my hands. All right, you have a gun. You have a flashlight. Now just breathe. Make yourself breathe.

  Where is he? He shot out the passenger’s side window, so he must be on the other side of the car. Is he over in the woods? What is that, twenty yards, maybe thirty? By the woodpile? Or is he standing right there next to the car, waiting for me to show myself?

  What do I do? Do I wait? Do I make a run for it?

  Speak. Say something to him. Make yourself talk.

  “Rose!” I yelled. “Rose, are you there?”

  There was no response.

  “Rose, is that you?”

  Nothing. I shook my head. The gunshot was still ringing in my ears.

  “Rose, goddamn it, say something!”

  I heard laughter. How far away? I think from the woods. I moved down toward the back of the truck and peeked over the edge. Too dark. I ducked back behind the truck, turned the flashlight on. I raised my hand, waiting for the next bullet.

  Silence.

  I peeked over the edge, keeping the flashlight as far away from my head as I could. If he’s going to shoot, let him shoot at the light. I couldn’t see him anywhere. I trained the light on the pine trees. No sign of him.

  “Rose, where are you?” He had to be there somewhere. In the trees. “Show yourself!”

  More laughter. Yes, from the trees. He was there.

  “Rose, I’ve called the police! They’ll be here any second! Come out and throw your gun down now!”

  “Nice try, Alex!” That voice. Is it him? It was so long ago. What did his voice sound like? On the phone, he spoke in a whisper. It was so hard to tell.

  “I know you cut the phone line, Rose! But I have a radio!” It was a bluff, but I figured it was worth a shot. “The police are on their way!”

  There was a long silence. “I don’t think so, Alex,” he finally said. “Just give it up.”

  “What do you want from me?” I said. How
can I reason with him? What do you say to a madman? “What do you want me to do, Rose?”

  “I want you to be scared, Alex. That’s all I want. Are you scared?”

  “Yes,” I said. I kept moving the flashlight across the tree line. Where was his voice coming from? Which tree is he hiding behind? “Yes, I’m scared.”

  “That’s good, Alex.”

  “So now you can leave, right?”

  He laughed. “I’m not even here now, Alex. I can’t be. I’m in prison, remember?”

  “All right, Rose,” I said. “I’ve had enough.” Anger. I need to feel anger. I need to stand up and do something for once in my fucking life. I’m not going to just sit here and wait for him to shoot me again. “I want you to put your gun down, Rose. Put the gun down and get your ass out here.”

  “What are you going to do, Alex?”

  “I’m going to come get you, Rose. I swear to God, I’m going to come in there and find you.”

  “You don’t have a gun, Alex.”

  Wait a minute. He doesn’t think I have a gun? What’s that all about? Do I go along with it? Try to surprise him? No, fuck it. “I have a gun, Rose. Now get out here.”

  “That’s not a real gun, Alex.” He laughed. “I know that’s not a real gun. Now what are you going to do?”

  God, now what? This doesn’t make any sense? Why he would think—

  Forget it. He’s crazy. Don’t try to get in his mind. Just move.

  I stood up. The flashlight in my left hand, the gun in my right. I put them together into a double-handed grip, just like they taught me at the academy a million years ago. The beam of light and the sight of the gun were one now. Anything I could see I could shoot. “I’m coming in there, Rose. Put the gun down.”

  More laughter. Which tree is it?

  “Put the gun down.” I moved closer to the tree line. I wanted him to laugh again. I was getting close enough.

  I heard something. A footfall. Leaves. A small branch snapping.

  “Put it down, Rose!”

  There. From behind that tree. There he is.

  “PUT THE GUN DOWN!”

  I saw the blond wig. I saw the gun in his hand. He raised it. I fired. Four times, chest chest head chest.

  I stood there for a long time. The noise from my gun dissolved into the night. But it kept reverberating in my head. My hands tingled from the shock of it. I could smell the burnt powder. I didn’t move.

  Finally, a car. I didn’t look up. The car pulled into the clearing, the tires scraping the grass. A door opened and closed. Footsteps.

  “Alex, what happened?”

  I looked up. It was Uttley.

  “I thought I heard shots,” he said. “I was on my way down from the Fulton house. I tried calling you, but I couldn’t get through. So I thought I should—” And then he saw the legs on the ground. The rest of the body was knocked back behind the tree.

  More footsteps. It was Sylvia. She came out of the cabin and stood next to me. She looked down.

  “Is it him?” Uttley asked. He didn’t even seem to notice that Sylvia was there. “Is it Rose?”

  I stepped forward and shone my flashlight on his face. The headshot had blown the wig away and taken out a small piece of his scalp.

  “No,” I said.

  “What?”

  “I don’t know who this is,” I said. “I’ve never seen him before.”

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  I WAS SITTING in the same interview room. The fishing map was still on the wall. Someone had made a halfhearted attempt to clean off the coffee, but there was still a pale brown streak from Lake Nicolet all the way down to Potagannissing Bay.

  Uttley had called the police on his cellular. Maven showed up not long after the first officers. He brought me down here himself, made me go over it a couple times. When Detective Allen got there, they made me go over it a couple more times. And then they made me go over it eight or nine times more, just for good measure. I imagined Uttley had been put in another room to give his statement, Sylvia in yet another room to give hers. I hoped they were both long gone by then, home in their beds. Or eating breakfast. I couldn’t guess how long I had been there. I didn’t even know if it was night or day. There was no clock in the room. I didn’t know where my watch had gone. I couldn’t even remember if I was wearing it the night before. I suppose I could have gotten up and opened the blinds, but I just sat there in the chair, my arms on the table, staring at the map.

  The last time through my story, a uniformed officer stuck his nose in the room, told Maven and Allen he had something important for them. As I watched them get up and leave the room, I noticed that they both had that stiff, middle-aged cop way of moving around. Put a couple of hats on them and they’d be Joe Friday and Bill Gannon. That’s the kind of thing you think about when you’re as tired and shell-shocked as I was.

  I didn’t think about what had happened. I didn’t think about what it meant, that I had killed the man, whoever he was. That I would have to deal with later, when I had the strength to face it.

  Finally, the door opened again. Maven and Allen walked in and sat down across from me. Allen took a long breath and looked me in the eyes. Maven just stared right past me at the wall. He had a look on his face like he was trying to pass a kidney stone.

  “Mr. McKnight,” Allen said, “does the name Raymond Julius mean anything to you?”

  “No,” I said.

  “That’s the man’s name.”

  “The man I shot?”

  “Yes. You’ve never met him before?”

  “No.”

  “You don’t know anything about him?”

  “No.”

  “Well,” Allen said, “apparently Raymond Julius knew a lot about you.” Maven kept staring at the wall. He wouldn’t look at me.

  “I don’t get it,” I said.

  “Apparently, Mr. Julius spent a great deal of time thinking about you. Following you, watching you. Writing about you.”

  “How do you know this?”

  “There were certain items found in his residence.”

  “I still don’t understand,” I said. “Did he write the notes? Did he kill Bing and Dorney? And Edwin?”

  “That seems fairly obvious,” Allen said. “From the physical evidence, I mean.” He snuck a sideways glance at Maven, who still hadn’t said a word. I was finally beginning to see what was going on here. Maven had convinced Allen that I was their man. Allen agreed to help double-team me. Now that he knew the real story, Allen was embarrassed. And not too happy about helping Maven in the first place.

  “What kind of physical evidence are we talking about?”

  Allen took out a pocket notebook and paged through it. “Traces of blood. We’ll run those, see who they match. A silencer for a nine-millimeter pistol, consistent with the weapon found on Mr. Julius. We’ll do ballistics on both, of course. See if they match the bullets removed from Bing and Dorney.”

  “He didn’t use the silencer last night,” I said.

  “No,” Allen said. “He left it in his gun case.”

  “Doesn’t make sense.”

  “Who knows. You live in the middle of the woods. He didn’t figure he’d need it.”

  I just shook my head.

  “There was a typewriter on the desk,” Allen went on. “We found several pages of text, describing his movements over the last few months. You know, like a journal. A diary. At first glance, the actual type on those pages seems to match the type on the notes.”

  “You were there? You saw all this?”

  “Yes,” Allen said. “That’s where we were while you were detained here for the last couple hours.” He snuck another look at Maven. Maven didn’t say anything.

  “What did the diary say?”

  “I can’t go into too much detail at this point. But I can tell you that Mr. Julius was a very disturbed individual. There were several news clippings on his desk, as well. Copies of stories that appeared in the Detroit News and the Detroit
Free Press, summer of 1984.”

  “Summer of 1984?” I said. “Were they about…”

  “About Rose, yes. About the shooting. There was one column, in particular. About your recovery.”

  “I think I remember,” I said. “The guy from the News got into the hospital.”

  “That one was pinned on his wall. Right next to his bed.”

  “Wait a minute,” I said. “This is just too weird.”

  “Like I said, Mr. McKnight, this was a very disturbed individual. He apparently thought you have some sort of special … power or something. He thought you were some sort of messiah.”

  “The chosen one,” I said. “He said that in the notes.”

  “Yes, exactly.”

  “But what about the other stuff in the notes?” I said. “How did he know about what Rose said to me? There’s no way he could have known that, unless …”

  “There appears to have been a connection,” Allen said. “In the diary, he referred to some sort of communication he might have had with Mr. Rose.”

  “While Rose was in prison? What kind of communication? Letters? Phone calls?”

  “That’s not clear at this point,” Allen said. “He wasn’t specific. He did write something about becoming Rose, about taking over his identity in some way.”

  “I have to see this stuff,” I said. “Do you have it here at the station?”

  “No, Mr. McKnight,” he said. “You know how this works. Right now, it’s all still at the residence. We need to go through it all very carefully.”

  “I thought you said it was obvious.”

  “It is,” he said. “But we have to follow our procedures.”

  “Can I go to his house?”

  “No, Mr. McKnight. Please, just let us work on this. I promise you we’ll let you see it when it’s all over.”

  “I still don’t get it,” I said. “I don’t even know this guy. How did he even know about Rose?”

  “He just picked you,” Allen said. “Who knows why? He just did. I’ve seen a couple cases like this before. There was one I remember very well. A man was out driving, and he cut somebody off at an intersection. Turns out the guy he cut off, he followed him to his house, found out who he was, started calling him, sending him notes. It escalated to the point where the man had to move out of the house. Even then, the guy found him again, finally tried to kill him. Fortunately, we caught him in time. I think that’s the type of individual we’re talking about here. It’s usually just a little thing that triggers it. He sees you. Something clicks in his head. Suddenly, he has to know everything about you. In your case, he finds out that you had been shot, he goes back and finds the old news clippings. He just makes up this whole little universe with you at the center of it.”