Misery Bay

by Steve Hamilton

  Maven kept looking at the agent, but the chief was still doing his best imitation of a granite statue. He hadn’t even blinked yet.

  “I’m assuming you want it straight, Chief. And I’m sure you realize, it’s probably a very good thing that your wife wasn’t home today. If this was somebody who tracked him from downstate, I’m sure he wouldn’t have hesitated to kill two people instead of one.”

  “We have other agents working on this from the Detroit end,” Agent Long said. She was starting to look a little apprehensive, at least. Unlike her partner. “Maybe they’ll find someone who’ll be willing to point us in the right direction. That’s what we all want, right?”

  “In the meantime,” Agent Fleury said, “we’ll try to stay out of your way as much as possible. You do realize that anything directly relating to this case needs to come through us. We’re clear on that?”

  On top of everything else, I thought, Chief Maven just got pushed down one more notch on the totem pole. He’s so low now it’s a wonder he can still see above the dirt.

  Without even realizing what I was doing, I started to edge my chair back away from the impending blast zone.

  Then he spoke.

  “I’ll do whatever I can to cooperate with your investigation.” Maven’s voice was devoid of any anger, any sincerity, anything living at all.

  “Very good,” Agent Fleury said. He seemed only slightly put off by the robot who’d apparently taken over Chief Maven’s body. Agent Long looked at me for some kind of reassurance, but I was even more confused than she was.

  “Chief, are you okay?” she said.

  “His wife,” he said. “Has she been notified?”

  “His ex-wife,” Agent Fleury said. “Yes, she’s been notified.”

  “Who told her?”

  “Another marshal, I believe.”

  “Okay,” Maven said. “Then I think we’re done here. Go do your jobs and find out who did this.”

  “You can rest assured we’ll do exactly that,” Agent Fleury said. “I can’t tell you how much we appreciate your cooperation today.”

  “We’ll be staying at the Ojibway if you need us,” Agent Long said. “I’m sure we’ll be here in town for a couple of days, at the very least. Of course, we’ll be in touch as soon as we know anything.”

  She gave Chief Maven one more look of vague bewilderment, then a quick smile for me. Then they were both out the door.

  The chief made no move to get up. I kept sitting there next to him for a long while, waiting for him to say something to me.

  “If you send me the bill for your services,” he finally said, “I’ll make sure you get paid.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “You made that trip to Houghton on Raz’s behalf. He’s obviously not here to pay you, so I will.”

  “I don’t want any money.”

  He didn’t answer that. The room was silent again. He kept staring at the door. After another minute passed, he leaned forward, put both hands on the table, and pushed himself to his feet, as slowly as a ninety-year-old man.

  “Chief,” I said, as I got to my feet. “I’m sorry.”

  He took two steps and stopped. He didn’t look at me.

  “It’s time for you to go home,” he said. “I have work to do.”

  “What are you planning on doing now?”

  He turned and looked me in the eye for the first time since we’d come back to the station. Hell, for the first time since I’d found Raz on his kitchen floor.

  “Do you have to ask?”

  “You heard what they said, Chief. This isn’t your case.”

  “You’re probably right. But let me ask you a question. If it was your old friend, would you let anybody stop you?”

  “Chief, come on.”

  “Answer the question.”

  I looked at him for a long time. I didn’t say yes. I didn’t say no. I didn’t have to say anything at all, because we both knew the answer.

  And we’re rolling …

  … Here’s my neighbor, Mrs. P. Hello, Mrs. P. How are your roses growing?

  … Close-up on her face. She’s looking at the camera, looking at the camera, that’s it.

  … And then boom, she looks at something behind me.

  … Her face changes. Yes, that’s it. Nice job. You’re selling this. It’s all in the face.

  … Meanwhile. Uh-oh. This can’t be good, right?

  … Easy there, don’t overdo it, Mrs. P. Your eyes are as big as saucers.

  … The Monster is standing behind us. Let’s not even look. We’re too scared to even turn around!

  And cut.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  I drove home in the dark. The wind kicked up and covered the road with white sheets of snow for yards at a time, rocking my truck back and forth. When I finally got back to Paradise, the yellow light was flashing in the middle of town and the Glasgow Inn was still glowing in the darkness. Beyond that the whole town seemed deserted. Usually there’d be snowmobiles zipping all over the place, but when people downstate get the idea in their heads that we’re not getting enough snow, they just don’t come. A cruel irony as I put the plow down and pushed six inches of new snow off Jackie’s empty parking lot.

  When I was done, I sat there with the truck idling and asked myself if I really needed to go inside. I didn’t feel like talking about what had happened, but I felt even less like going back to any empty cabin. So I turned off the ignition. Jackie was cleaning up the place and barely looked up when I came in.

  “Where have you been?” he said. He poked at the fire with a long iron stick.

  “To hell and back,” I said. “Although I’m not sure about the ‘back’ part.” I went behind the bar and grabbed a Molson from the bottom row in the cooler. Then I sat down in my usual chair by the fire.

  There was a roar inside my head, louder than a jet engine. Louder than the wind howling away outside in the cold night. I closed my eyes and tried to quiet it but it only got louder until I couldn’t even imagine hearing anything else.

  * * *

  Three days went by. I could still see the blood on the floor every night when I closed my eyes, but the colors were fading and the scene was shifting and turning into something else entirely. A different floor, with different blood. Then another, until they all blended together. If there was anything like true justice in the universe, I’d be exempt from bloody floors for the rest of my life.

  I called Agent Long on the second day and she said they were still chasing leads, which might have meant they were getting absolutely nowhere. There was no way to tell. I called her back the next day and this time she asked me point blank to explain why Chief Maven was such a psychotic jackass. Her exact words for him. I was an unlikely person to defend him, but I asked her to remember what had happened to a man who had once been his partner.

  “I hear what you’re saying,” she said, “but he’s driving us absolutely crazy over here.”

  “How so?” As if I had to ask.

  “I thought he understood this was our case, but he’s been up and down the street, personally talking to every neighbor. Plus he’s got his men rounding up every surveillance camera in town.”

  “Didn’t you guys think of that?”

  There was a silence then, as she processed my little dig.

  “We’ve done this a few times before,” she finally said. “I think we’ve got it all covered, thank you very much.”

  “Do you have anything new since the last time I talked to you?”

  “It’s still ongoing,” she said. Making me wonder, once again, if they had anything at all.

  I thanked her all the same, and wished her the best of luck with Chief Maven. Then I called the Soo police station. I asked for the chief and the woman at the desk told me she’d leave a message for him. He didn’t call back.

  I shrugged it off for the time being and went back to working on the last cabin with Vinnie. It had finally started snowing hard again, like Bebo
ong, the Ojibwa winter spirit, was making up for lost time. I plowed my road. In the evenings I’d buy Vinnie dinner down at the Glasgow. Jackie was still in a bad mood, chasing away customers. Three days since the day I found Raz on Maven’s kitchen floor, and now everything was almost back to normal.

  So why couldn’t I shake the feeling that I was missing something important?

  * * *

  It was a Friday morning. As soon as I woke up, I knew there was only one way to get to the bottom of this thing. Only one person who could help me see things in a different way. I took a hot shower and got dressed and headed out. The wind had died down and the sun was trying to come out. It was almost a nice day, but I knew not to fall for it. You think spring is on the way up here and end up with a broken heart. I grabbed some breakfast at the Glasgow, got back in the truck, and then headed east.

  When I hit the Soo I drove over to the Custom Motor Shop on Three Mile Road. It was the last place Leon Prudell had worked and I was hoping he’d still be there. But the man at the desk told me Leon was no longer an employee. Judging by the empty parking lot, I could see why. It’s hard to keep a full staff in the winter when you’re not moving snowmobiles.

  I drove down to his house by the airport in Rosedale. I was hoping I wouldn’t have to, but I didn’t see much choice. The house looked quiet when I got there. The kids were off at school, no doubt, and maybe his wife was out shopping or something. That was my hope. I parked my truck and went to the front door. The old tire swing was still hanging from the tree in the front yard. Now it was covered with as much snow as could balance on its rounded surface. I looked at the rope tied to the thick branch above the tire swing and I couldn’t help picturing a young man hanging there. Something that would probably always come to me now, whenever I saw a rope and a tree.

  Eleanor answered the door. She was roughly the size of an NFL linebacker, and was probably just as strong. I had seen her lift Leon completely off the ground when he had two broken ankles, and Leon wasn’t exactly a ballerina himself.

  “Alex,” she said, and then I saw the cloud pass over her face. It was the same as ever and this is exactly why I didn’t want to be here. The woman loved me, I was sure of that. But she hated to see my face at her door.

  The lead story on Leon Prudell is that he grew up wanting to be a private eye. It’s the only thing he’s ever really wanted to do. We got tangled up, once upon a time, and then we sort of worked together and for a while there he even referred to me as his partner. He even had business cards made up. After that, when I made it clear that I wanted no part in the private investigator business, he opened up his own office in Sault Ste. Marie. That office is closed now, and Leon has held a number of jobs since then. Still, he’s never given up on that original dream.

  Any time he sees me, that dream is rekindled—which wouldn’t be a problem if that dream wasn’t completely impractical and occasionally dangerous. In fact, if Eleanor really knew how close I had come to getting Leon killed, well … the woman is strong enough to kill me with her bare hands.

  “I’m just stopping by to see Leon,” I said. “I haven’t seen him around in a while.”

  “He’s not here. What do you really need him for?” She looked at me the way I used to look at drug buyers when they tried to explain why they just happened to be driving down a certain street.

  “I just want to talk to him. I’m not dragging him into anything, I swear.”

  She opened the door and held out her arms.

  “Come here,” she said.

  I took a breath and waded in for the hug. I saw stars as she squeezed me.

  “It’s good to see you,” she said, “but you know I hate it when you get him into trouble. I end up worrying about both of you.”

  “I told you, I’m not here for that. How’s the rest of the family, anyway? You look good.”

  “Don’t try to butter me up, Alex. It won’t work.” But she was smiling as she said it.

  “Seriously, Eleanor. Where’s he working these days?”

  “He’s up at the movies. He works there a few days a week.”

  “The movies? You mean, like an usher?”

  “They don’t have ushers anymore, Alex. What do you think this is, 1948?”

  “Well, okay, so he’s like a ticket-taker or something?”

  “Something like that. Whatever they need him to do. It’s just a temporary thing. He’s got a few other jobs lined up. Real full-time stuff.”

  “Good to hear. Okay. Well, maybe I’ll wander up there. See how he’s doing?”

  She gave me the look again.

  “Just to say hello,” I said. “I promise.”

  She let me leave without another bear hug. So I was back in my truck with all of my ribs intact, heading back up to the Soo. I was feeling a little guilty. I mean, I hadn’t lied to her. I was only going to talk to Leon. Yet the reason I was going to talk to him was because once again I had hit a dead end, and he was the only person I could think of who’d be crazy enough to listen to me. And smart enough to maybe even help me see the answer.

  * * *

  I know most towns in America have a grand old theater that’s probably shut down or already turned into something else entirely. If you’re lucky, the theater in your town is being reclaimed and cleaned up and turned back into what it was a hundred years ago. In Sault Ste. Marie, that would be the Soo Theater, and yes, it is being restored to its former glory. In the meantime, if you want to see a movie you have to go to the one cineplex out on the main business loop, down the road from the Walmart. It’s got the big parking lot and the eight separate screens, and on a lonely weekday in April you can go sit and watch an afternoon matinee on one of the eight screens and be the only person watching.

  Leon was standing at the snack bar when I walked in. A big man with untamable orange hair, you’d never miss him, even if he wasn’t wearing his trademark flannel. Today, he had an official-looking blue Cineplex shirt on that didn’t quite fit him, and he had his name printed on a gold badge. He was staring off into the middle distance when I walked up to the snack bar, so it took a moment for him to notice me.

  “Alex! What the hell?”

  “Good to see you, Leon.”

  “What are you doing here? Are you seeing a movie? Can I get you some popcorn or something?”

  “No thanks,” I said. “I actually just wanted to talk to you for a minute.”

  “I don’t know. As you can see, I’m pretty swamped here.”

  “Yeah, it’s a madhouse,” I said, looking around at the movie posters and the ugly carpeting and the velvet ropes. “But maybe you can break free for a minute.”

  He came out from behind the counter and sat down at one of the little tables they had scattered around the place. He made a sound when he sat down, like an old man on his last legs. He rubbed his eyes and smiled when he caught me looking at him.

  “It’s been a tough month,” he said. “I’m not selling sleds anymore.”

  “I know. I went by there first. Then I went to your house.”

  “My wife let you live, I see.”

  “She did.”

  “She loves you, you know.”

  “As long as I’m not asking to borrow one of your guns.”

  “I was hoping that’s why you were here today.”

  “Nothing that exciting,” I said. “I just want to run something by you and get your opinion.”

  “Okay, shoot.”

  “You read about the murder at the chief’s house?”

  “I sure did. Wait a minute, didn’t the paper say ‘an unidentified local man’ found the body? Don’t tell me.”

  “You’re looking at the unidentified local man,” I said. “The victim was a U.S. marshal named Charles Razniewski Sr. He and Maven used to ride together for the Michigan State Police.”

  “Okay, and?”

  “His son committed suicide in January. And Raz—that’s his nickname—Raz hired me to go out to Houghton to find out everything I cou
ld about his state of mind that night.”

  “Are you kidding me? That sounds impossible.”

  “I told him to hire you, Leon. I really did.”

  He waved it away. “Come on, like Ellie would let me go do something like that.”

  “It wasn’t dangerous. It was just talking to people.”

  “It still would have been me trying to be a PI again,” he said, looking away. “That would have been enough. But anyway, what’s the problem?”

  “You mean besides coming back and finding the client dead on Chief Maven’s kitchen floor?”

  “Besides that, yes. I assume there’s more.”

  “That’s just it,” I said. “I don’t know what it is. It’s just a feeling I’ve had that I’ve somehow missed something.”

  “Do you think there’s a connection between the suicide and the murder?”

  “I don’t know. The FBI doesn’t think so. They think Raz was murdered because of some high-profile cases he’s been working on down in Detroit. He’s been a marshal down there for the past ten years.”

  “I read that part in the paper, yes.”

  I smiled and shook my head. “Do you normally memorize everything you read in the paper?”

  “When it’s about a local murder, yes. But go on. You say the FBI doesn’t see a link?”

  “Not that they’d talk about. They haven’t really said much to me at all.”

  “When you went out there to look into the suicide,” he said, “did you find anything suspicious?”

  “You mean to indicate it wasn’t a suicide at all? No, I didn’t. Not really.”

  “Not really?”

  “Well, I mean, I just got this feeling that something wasn’t quite right about it. I didn’t find anything concrete.”

  “But your instincts told you something was wrong,” he said. “You should definitely listen to that.”