A Cold Day in Paradise

by Steve Hamilton

  “How long has this been going on?” I asked. “When did it all start?”

  “Judging from his diary, it looks like five or six months ago.”

  I shook my head. “Why me?”

  Maven cleared his throat. “Just because,” he said. Finally, he had opened his mouth. “Maybe it was your dynamic personality. Maybe your incredible personal charm. Maybe it’s the way the whole room lights up when you walk in.”

  Allen gave him a long icy look and then turned back to me. “Mr. McKnight,” he said. “Alex. Although you were never formally charged in this matter, I just want to say on a purely personal level that as painful as this ordeal must have been for you, the treatment you received in this office obviously made it even worse. For whatever part I played in that, I just want to apologize to you.”

  “Fair enough,” I said. I looked at Maven. “Is there anything you’d like to add to that, Chief?”

  He just sat there chewing on the inside of his mouth for moment. “Just one thing,” he finally said.

  “I’m all ears.”

  “This didn’t have to happen.”

  “You got that right,” I said.

  “No, I mean what happened to Mr. Fulton. He didn’t have to die. If you had just cooperated for one minute on this case, we might have had this Julius guy’s ass behind bars before that ever happened. Of course, then you couldn’t have had your little cowboy shoot-out last night. Mrs. Fulton wouldn’t have been there, scared out of her mind because her husband’s killer is at the front door. Although what she was doing at your cabin while they’re still out dragging the lake for his body is another story.”

  “Chief Maven,” Allen said, “is this really necessary?”

  “No, it’s not necessary,” Maven said. “If ex-policemen who get their partners killed don’t decide to retire here and make my life miserable, then none of this is necessary.”

  “You’re way out of line, Chief.”

  “Just get out of here,” Maven said. “Go back to your little state office. You’ve been a big help.”

  Allen stood up and shook my hand. “Alex, please let me know if I can be of any assistance in the future.” He looked down at Maven. “You’ll be hearing from me, Chief.”

  “I can’t wait,” Maven said.

  When Allen had left, we both just sat there at the table, looking at each other.

  “I assume I’m free to go?” I finally said.

  “You’re free to kiss my wrinkled white ass,” he said.

  I stood up. “I’m going to miss these little chats,” I said. “Maybe we can go fishing some time.”

  I WALKED OUT of the station into daylight. It was late morning already. The sun was actually trying to shine a little bit, but it wasn’t doing anything to warm things up.

  I stumbled around in the parking lot for a minute until I realized that my truck was still parked next to my cabin, minus one passenger-side window. If I had had the strength to laugh, I would have. I certainly didn’t feel like going back into the station and asking for a ride. So I just started walking. I wasn’t sure where I was going, but it felt good to be moving.

  I walked around the courthouse toward the river, then followed the sidewalk that ran along the water as far as I could go. When I got to the edge of the park, I turned around and came back to the locks. There was a large freighter going through. My ears were starting to hurt from the cold so I climbed the steps to the observation deck. It was empty.

  The ship was about seven hundred feet long. It was entering the southern-most lock, so close to the deck that it was like looking across the street at a slowly moving building. The flag was three horizontal stripes, red, white, and black, with some kind of golden bird in the middle. I guessed Egypt. There were a dozen dark-skinned men standing on the ship, wrapped up tight in their coats, looking back at me as they passed. They were so far from home. This must have seemed like a new and strange world to them. And now with a full load of iron ore, they were on their way back out to sea, down through the Great Lakes to the St. Lawrence Seaway and out to the Atlantic Ocean.

  I could jump on that ship, I thought. It’s close enough. They could take me back to Egypt with them.

  “Alex, I’ve been looking all over for you.” Uttley appeared next to me. “The officer at the station said you just walked off.”

  “Just watching the ship go through,” I said.

  He looked out at it. “Where’s it from? Whose flag is that?”

  “Egypt, I think.”

  He nodded. “Detective Allen called me. He told me everything.”

  I didn’t say anything.

  “You really don’t know who this Raymond Julius guy was?”

  “No,” I said.

  He let out a long slow breath. “That ship’s got a long way to go,” he said. “How many days you figure it takes to go to Egypt from here?”

  “Couldn’t say.”

  “You know they built the first lock here in 1797? It was destroyed in the War of 1812. They had to rebuild it.”

  I kept looking out at the ship. They had closed the lock and started to lower the water level. When the boat had come down twenty-one feet, they would open the other end and let the boat go on its way to Lake Huron.

  “In World War Two, this was the most heavily defended part of the country. If somebody was going to drop bombs on us, the government figured they’d start here. You know, mess up the iron supply, stop us from making tanks. That’s why they built two Air Force bases way up here in the middle of nowhere.”

  “Why are you telling me this?” I said.

  “Because I don’t know what else to say.”

  Neither of us spoke for a while. We watched the boat sink as the water left the lock.

  “It’s got to be a little easier to deal with now, isn’t it?” he said.

  “How do you mean?”

  “You thought it was Rose before. Even though everybody else was telling you he was still in prison. It must have been driving you crazy.”

  “So instead it’s just some guy off the street,” I said. “And for some reason he decides to spend his whole life just following me around, watching me, finding out about my past. Trying to become my past, for God’s sake. It doesn’t make any sense.”

  “Of course it doesn’t make any sense.”

  “They say he was in contact with Rose somehow. I guess that would mean mail, right? You can’t just call a guy in prison.”

  He thought about it. “Or he could have visited him.”

  “Right. But either way, they’d have a record of it, wouldn’t they? Don’t they screen your mail in prison?”

  “I’m sure they do,” he said. “I’m sure Detective Allen will look into that. Or Maven, if he ever gets his head out of his ass. Allen didn’t go into details, but it sounds like you and Maven haven’t kissed and made up yet.”

  “What would happen if I called that Browning guy again?”

  “The corrections officer? He’d stonewall you again and you’d get mad again. Why would you even want to call him? What are you going to find out? Alex, it’s over. The guy is dead.”

  “It doesn’t feel over.”

  “You’ve got to give yourself some time,” he said. “Take a vacation. Go someplace warm for a few days.”

  The freighter had moved through the other end of the lock. We could see the back of it now. There was some Arabic writing and next to that it read “Cairo.”

  “You were right,” he said. “That was the Egyptian flag. Come on, let’s get out of here.”

  He took me home in his BMW. I stared out the window at the pine trees. Pine trees and more pine trees. I was starting to get sick of pine trees. We rode in silence the whole way, and then we were at my cabin. It felt strange to be looking at it again after what had happened. It was the same place. A small cabin made in the woods. And yet everything was different now.

  “You want me to stick around for a while?” he said. “Help you clean up?”

  “No,
thanks,” I said. “I need to be here by myself for a while.”

  “I understand,” he said. “Give me a call if you need me.”

  “Okay.” I got out of the car.

  “Hey Alex?”

  I looked back in.

  “It’s over,” he said. “It’s really over.”

  “I know,” I said.

  I watched him leave and then I turned around to face it. My truck was sitting there, the hood still ajar, the seat still covered with glass. Where Sylvia’s car had been, there was just an impression in the grass.

  And where the body was. Over in the woods, past the woodpile. They had taken him away, of course, but I wasn’t ready to go look at where I had killed him.

  I went into the cabin, wondering if I’d ever feel at home there again. I remembered back when I was a police officer in Detroit. They told us if we ever had to kill somebody, no matter how justified it might be, there would eventually be a price to pay. At some point, an hour later, a day, a week, it would suddenly hit you, the fact that you killed another human being. I kept waiting for it to hit me. But I felt nothing.

  I picked up the phone. It was dead. I had forgotten, he had cut the line. I’d have to go down to the Glasgow to use the phone. But first I’d have to go out and clean all the glass out of the truck. Or else I’d have to walk all the way down there. I couldn’t imagine doing either. I needed to sleep. Let me just get a little sleep first. If I can. If it’s possible to sleep, ever again.

  I needed those pills. Just one more time. After all that had happened, who could blame me for needing them?

  Hell, maybe I can sleep without them. I’ll give it a try.

  I lay down on my bed. I put my head back on the pillow and looked up at the rough wooden ceiling. And then I was out.

  I WOKE UP a few hours later from a dreamless sleep. It felt like something beyond sleep, like a temporary total shutdown. It was late afternoon. I had never felt so hungry in my life.

  I went outside with the broom and tried to sweep most of the glass out of my truck, knocked out the few fragments of glass that were still stuck in the window frame. I tried starting it. Nothing.

  I threw the hood up and looked at the wiring. Just standing there, it all came back to me, the way I felt when I had tried to put the wires back, wondering how long I had to live. In my rush, I had gotten two of the wires crossed. I switched them and tried again. The truck started.

  I left the truck running while I took a quick look around the place for my cellular phone, hoping he had just thrown it into the woods. When I came to the spot where I shot him, I stopped and looked down at the ground where he had fallen. There were pine needles on the ground, a few pine cones. I could have gotten down on my knees and looked for blood, but I didn’t. I just stood there and replayed it in my mind. He didn’t think my gun was real. Did that give me an unfair advantage? Should I have fired a warning shot into the trees? But then what would have happened? Would he have thrown his own gun down? Am I going to have to wonder about that now for the rest of my life?

  There will be no trial, no chance to sit in a courtroom and hear an explanation for it all. FU never find out why he picked me.

  Five or six months ago, they said. That’s when this all started. What did I do to him? Why was he so obsessed with me?

  As I got back into the truck I felt a sharp sliver of glass slice through my finger. I pulled it out and looked at the thin line of blood. There is nothing so red as blood, nothing so simple. And I had seen quite enough of it for one lifetime.

  I ordered a steak at the Glasgow, the biggest damned steak Jackie could find, medium rare, with grilled onions and mushrooms and four ice-cold Canadian beers. Jackie slipped me a quick smile. I think he knew I was on my way back. If I wasn’t quite myself yet, he knew it would only be a matter of time. I borrowed his phone, started to dial the phone company, then I realized it was probably too late in the day. I’d call them tomorrow to have my phone line restored. And an auto glass place to have my window replaced.

  I sat there tapping my beer bottle for a few minutes and then I picked up the phone again. She answered on the third ring.

  “Sylvia,” I said, “I’m just calling to make sure you’re okay.”

  “Why wouldn’t I be okay?” she said. “I’m so okay I’m way past perfect.”

  Her voice wasn’t right. “Are you drunk?”

  “I’m way past drunk,” she said. “I’m just sitting here in this big old house on the edge of the world all by myself getting way past drunk.”

  “Do you want me to come out there?”

  “Why would I want you to come out here?”

  “Because you shouldn’t be alone.”

  “Why shouldn’t I be alone?”

  “Because you shouldn’t. Damn it, Sylvia, you came all the way out to my cabin last night. Why did you do that?”

  “You know, that’s a good question. I’m not sure why I came out there. But obviously it was such a wonderful thing to do. Another brilliant turning point in my life. I got to meet the man who killed my husband, after all. Well no, I didn’t get to meet him really. I did get to see him on the ground with half his head blown off.”

  “You didn’t want to be alone,” I said. “That’s why you came to my cabin, all right? It’s okay. After everything that’s happened, there’s nothing wrong with that.”

  “Yes there is, Alex. There’s something very wrong with that. I’m not sure what, but I’m sure if I think about it—Christ, where did that bottle go?”

  “I’m coming out there.”

  “So help me God,” she said. Suddenly, she sounded sober. “If you come here I will kill you. I will kill you or I will kill myself. Or I will kill both of us. And believe me, I can do that now. I’ve been watching the experts.”

  “All right, Sylvia,” I said. “All right. Take it easy.”

  “Don’t tell me to take it easy. Just leave me alone. You got that? Leave me the fuck alone.”

  I didn’t know what else to say. I closed my eyes and listened to the faint sound of her breathing.

  “What have we done, Alex?” she finally said, her voice drained of all emotion. “What have we done?”

  She hung up before I could answer. I just sat there with the phone in my hand. And then I had Jackie bring me another beer.

  A couple hours later, I was back at my cabin. It was dark. I walked around the outside of the cabin a couple times. I couldn’t bring myself to believe that nobody was watching me anymore, that nobody was waiting to kill me.

  My gun. I didn’t have my gun anymore. It was still at the police station. But that was okay. I didn’t need it anymore, right?

  I went inside and found the phone book. I tried to look up Raymond Julius. He had no listing.

  Five or six months ago. What happened five or six months ago?

  You’re not going to figure this out tonight, Alex. Just go to bed. You need to cut some wood tomorrow, clean up the place. Get some food in the house, for God’s sake. Become a human being again.

  I slept. Two hours, maybe three. And then I sat up in my bed and turned on the light. It was just past midnight.

  Five or six months ago.

  The phone book was still on the kitchen table. I paged through it until I found Leon Prudell. The address was in Kinross, a little town south of the Soo, down by the airport. I threw some clothes on and got in the truck. With the cold air whipping through the open window I raced toward Kinross. It was late, but Leon and I had something to talk about.

  It didn’t take long to find his house. Kinross is almost as small as Paradise, one main road and a few side streets. It was a little clapboard house, not much bigger than my cabin. There was a faint smell of dead fish in the air. A tire swing hung from a tree in the front yard.

  I knocked on the door, waited, knocked again. Finally the porch light came on and a woman looked around the door at me. “Who is it?” she said.

  “I need to speak to your husband,” I said.

>   “He’s not here. Who are you?”

  I thought for a second. “I want to hire him,” I said. “I understand he’s a private investigator.”

  “He was doing investigations,” she said, “but he don’t do that no more.”

  “I hear he’s good,” I said. “Are you sure he won’t take a case? I’ll pay five hundred dollars a day.”

  That got her to open the door all the way. I saw a lot of woman and a lot of red bathrobe. The way she was built, I was glad that Leon had come after me in the bar that night and not her. “He’s working up at the truck stop on I-75 tonight,” she said. “In the restaurant.”

  “The one by the Route 28 exit?”

  “Yeah, that’s the one.”

  “I appreciate it, ma’am.”

  “He works nights,” she said. “Ever since he lost the investigating job.”

  “I see.”

  “Do you know a guy named Alex McKnight?”

  “Can’t say that I do,” I said.

  “That’s the man who got him fired. You see him, you tell him he’s an asshole, okay?”

  “I’ll do that, ma’am. I’m sorry I had to disturb you at this hour.”

  “For five hundred dollars a day, you can disturb me anytime you want.”

  “Thank you, ma’am. Good night.”

  I got out of there and made my way back to the highway. The truck stop was a few miles north on 1-75, one of those places you see from the road, lit up all night long, a hundred trucks gassing up or just sitting there while the drivers have their apple pie and coffee.

  I found Prudell clearing off a table, a big white apron hanging over his gut. As soon as he saw me, he set his pile of plates down with a clatter.

  “Well, look who it is,” he said. “Don’t tell me, you came to take this job away from me too, right?”