Misery Bay

by Steve Hamilton

  “So you weren’t around when she killed herself.”

  “No.”

  I was about to ask him why the hell he didn’t try to help her, at least. Do something for his own sister or half-sister or whatever he wanted to call her. But I figured I wouldn’t get very far with that.

  I kept driving. It was another typical long, straight Michigan road. There was no snow on the pavement, so we were making good time. We saw the lake a few minutes later. The road ended in the small town of Port Austin, right at the very tip of the Lower Peninsula’s thumb, extending out into Lake Huron. I saw a lot less ice than I’d seen on Lake Superior, but I still wasn’t about to go swimming.

  He had me make the right turn and head east, past driveway after driveway, each leading down to a small house near the water. Most of them were sealed up tight for the winter, I was sure. There wasn’t much reason to be here in the middle of April.

  “Why would he come up here?” I said.

  “Various reasons. If he’s not asleep, he’ll probably be smoking. Just so you know.”

  “Smoking, as in…”

  “What do you think?”

  “I thought he was clean now.”

  “It’s just pot,” Connie said. “You want him coked up and getting in a fight with the police? Or hanging out watching old movies and smoking a joint?”

  “I don’t care what he does. I just want to talk to him. But you’re telling me this is the designated smoking house?”

  “It’s the hangout house, yeah. Plus he keeps all his old stuff up here.”

  “What kind of old stuff?”

  “He collects vintage film equipment. Spring-wound Bolex cameras, sixteen millimeter film. He even has an old Steenbeck up there.”

  “What’s that?”

  “It’s an edit bay. From back when they had to splice actual strips of film together. It’s like ancient history.”

  “So that’s his other hobby, aside from the smoking?”

  “It’s his whole life,” Connie said, an even harder edge to his voice now. “I know you wouldn’t understand. Everything’s digital now, but he still loves real film so much. He even develops the film himself sometimes. You know how hard that is to do?”

  “No, I don’t.”

  “Trust me. There aren’t many people left who can do it.”

  We went down the road maybe a mile and a half, then he pointed to a driveway. It was unmarked and completely unremarkable. You’d definitely have to know where you were going to find this place. I could see a faint indentation where the last tracks had been made.

  I stopped in front of the house. The weather had beat the hell out of the place. The siding was so split and worn, it was starting to fall right off the exterior walls. There was a big black vintage Cadillac parked haphazardly by the front door. A vintage car to go with his vintage film gear.

  “He’s here,” Connie said. I could tell he was at least a little relieved. “Come on.”

  We got out of the truck and went to the door.

  “I know it don’t look like much from the outside,” he said. “That’s the way he likes it. Beat up all to hell, just like himself.”

  “Okay, whatever you say.” Personally, I couldn’t have slept one night in the place without going outside and working on that siding.

  Connie tried the front door. It was locked.

  “Since when do you lock the door?” he muttered to himself. He reached down under the little wooden front porch and grabbed a key off a hook. Not the most secure place in the world, obviously. As he unlocked the door and pushed it open, he called out to his father. There was no answer.

  When I came in behind him, I could see he’d been right about the place. It looked like crap from the outside, but the inside was immaculate. There was a leather sofa in the front room facing a big hi-def television. Above the sofa was a framed poster for Road Hogs, with the young Clyde C. Wiley himself posed on the back of a Harley, looking ready to kick some serious butt.

  I stood there for a moment, looking at the movie star with the tattoos and the arms rippling with muscles. He might be seventy-two years old now, I thought, but he’s not ninety-two. I bet he could still put a hurt on you if he really wanted to.

  As I turned around, I didn’t see Connie anywhere. Might as well make myself at home, I thought. I took a quick look into the kitchen. It was small but well-appointed with high-end appliances. There was a small eating area with a glass table, and more framed movie posters. I was definitely picking up the faint, sweet odor of marijuana now. If anybody ever bought this place, they’d have to air it out for a month.

  I went down the short hallway, past the bathroom, to the only bedroom in the place. There was a desk over by the big window, which looked out over the lake. There was a pile of manila folders on the desk, each of them stuffed with papers. I took a quick look down the hallway, but still didn’t see Connie. So I started thumbing through the folders. I couldn’t help myself. I had come this far and I had to see if my gut feeling about this guy could be validated.

  The first two folders were a collection of court documents. They portrayed a lifetime of trouble with the law, and right there on top was the most recent record of all, an arrest record dated ten years ago. Clyde C. Wiley detained on a certain mile post of I-75, just north of Indian River. Arresting officers, Sergeant Dean Haggerty and Trooper Donald Steele, both of Michigan State Police Post 83, St. Ignace. I paged through the report, which listed the initial assault on a man named Darryl Bergman. Along with menacing and unlawful detention. There was an attempt to intercept Wiley at the Mackinac Bridge, then as I kept reading there were details of the pursuit itself, from the bridge down to Indian River, then a description of the extreme physical resistance offered by the arrestee once the vehicle had been stopped. There was some question about whether the resistance itself constituted lethal force, which would of course have upped the ante considerably. Then finally the list of items found in the car, the firearm, the cocaine residue, the three bottles of prescription painkillers. Stacked onto the probation violation from California, it was no wonder he got a stiff prison sentence for this little joyride. As a repeat offender, it was actually kind of amazing he didn’t do a lot more time. He must have had a hell of a lawyer.

  I didn’t see any mention of Razniewski or Maven in the arrest report. We’d already been told that by the FBI agents, yet here it was in living color and I had to read through every word to make sure nothing was missed. There were no other officers assisting on the arrest. No other officers mentioned in any way.

  I looked through the other folders, but they were all from earlier arrests and mishaps, and none of them had even taken place in the state of Michigan. It was all California and Oregon and Texas. This man certainly got around, I thought. And he seemed to make quite an impression wherever he went.

  I put down the last folder and left the bedroom. “Hey, where did you go?” I said.

  There was no answer.

  I went back into the kitchen and stood there, trying to figure out where the hell Connie could be. That’s when I noticed the leather portfolio sitting on the counter, right under the phone. I opened it and there on the right side was a pad of yellow legal paper. On the very top sheet there were three names written.

  Steele.

  Haggerty.

  Razniewski.

  That was it. Nothing else. No other information. Just three last names of three men who buried children and then who died themselves in the most violent ways imaginable.

  Right there in the man’s kitchen. Those three names.

  I picked up the phone. I was about to start dialing. That’s when I heard the sound. It was like a repetitive scraping. Over and over. It was coming from somewhere … below me? I looked over and saw the door to what had to be the basement. It was ajar. I hung up the phone.

  The sound got louder as I opened the door. There were rough wooden stairs leading down to a concrete floor, and just enough light to see where I was going. I
picked up the musty basement smell as I started to go down, along with something else—a faint chemical smell. When I finally reached the bottom of the stairs, there was almost too much to see at once. A single bulb burning in the center of the ceiling. Another light of some sort just around the corner ahead. A long table on my left, with cameras and tripods and a big glass cabinet with a million small parts. Cans of film, some the size of dinner plates. Others smaller. On the other wall a cork board almost completely covered with film strips. They were all tacked to the top of the board and many of them had slips of paper attached to them, with a jumble of letters and numbers.

  I caught the chemical smell again and as I stepped down onto the concrete I saw that there was a small room built underneath the stairs. Through the open door I saw jerrycans and a high metal tub and even though I knew nothing about this I would have guessed this is where Clyde C. Wiley did his own developing, just as his son had boasted.

  “Connie,” I said, “are you down here?”

  Still no answer, and now it was starting to get to me. The scraping sound was louder now. It got louder still with each step as I approached the other side of the L. As I turned the corner I saw the light coming from a single desk lamp. This was the old edit bay that Connie was talking about. There was a small monitor in the middle of the console. There was an empty film reel mounted horizontally on the left side. On the right side a full reel was still spinning, the end of the film licking at the metal guide post with each revolution. Scrape scrape scrape.

  There was a chair. A man was sitting in it, facing away from me. Long hair hanging down the back. Connie was standing next to the man, looking down at him. Connie’s mouth was open. No sound was coming out.

  I stepped closer. The man in the chair … it had to be Clyde C. Wiley. After everything I had been through that day, I had finally come face-to-face with him. He was staring straight ahead at nothing. I pressed two fingers against his neck. His skin was cold. He had been dead for hours. But not days.

  Connie didn’t move. He was paralyzed.

  “He’s gone,” I said to him. “Let’s go upstairs and call somebody.”

  Connie let out a puff of air. He kept staring at his father’s dead face. You never know how somebody’s going to react in a situation like this. I’d seen every possible emotion back when I was on the night shift in Detroit. All those dead bodies on the hot pavement, and then whoever was left alive, usually a mother but sometimes a son or a daughter … they’d cry or they’d scream or they’d let out a high whooping noise that you might even mistake for laughter. Or else they’d shut down completely. Stand there like Connie was doing now, like they’d never be able to move again.

  “Come on,” I said. “Let’s go.”

  “What was he doing down here?”

  “Connie…”

  “We were supposed to be working today. Why is he here?”

  Before I could say another word, Connie found the switch inside himself and flipped it back on. He reached for the console, taking the full reel right off its post.

  “You shouldn’t touch that,” I said, but he wasn’t listening to me. He pulled out the end of the film and stretched it back to the empty reel. The film looked yellow and brittle.

  “No,” I said. “Leave that alone.”

  I tried to turn him toward the stairs, but he pushed me away. He pressed a button and the reels started turning fast. He was rewinding the film.

  The hell with it, I thought. He’s a zombie right now. I’m gonna go call the police.

  Yet something made me hesitate. It didn’t take long for the film to rewind, or for Connie to rethread it through the console. He hit another button and the monitor came to life.

  I stood there and watched it with him.

  There was a neighborhood, the camera panning down the street, one house after the next. Pausing on one house, then finally moving. An ordinary scene, but strange at the same time. There was no sound, for one thing. That would come later. Or at least that’s what I assumed. Music and narration and whatever else, to complete the story. But for now as the film looped through the machine it was nothing more than a string of images, one after the other, rough and jittery and washed-out like something that had been filmed a hundred years ago.

  I had to keep watching. I couldn’t help it. I couldn’t move.

  From the neighborhood, to a woman standing in her garden. She looks up at the camera with mild annoyance. Then her face widens into alarm. Into genuine fright. She is looking past the camera now. The camera doesn’t respond. We don’t get to see what she’s looking at.

  The light shifting, the next scene indoors. The camera panning across a table. There’s a man’s belt. Then a large metal spoon. A broom handle. Then finally what looks like an old razor strop. The camera is shaking now. The focus is fading in and out. The scene goes black.

  Then a flash of light. Sunlight. A bridge. The Mackinac Bridge? Yes, it is. There’s no other bridge like it. It’s a perfect summer day and we’re looking at the bridge, like we’ve suddenly stumbled into somebody’s normal home movie, taken by a normal person on a normal family vacation. It’s so out of place here.

  From the normal back to the strange. A long, almost loving shot of a knife. The camera slowly moves up the edge, barely staying in focus.

  Then what’s this? It’s hard to even tell what’s going on now. There’s a thin shaft of light. It grows wider. We’re looking through a door. A man is sitting in a chair. We can only see the back of his head. He tips his head back to drink something. A line of smoke curls above his head. He is jarred by something. He gets up. The camera doesn’t go up to see the man’s face. It stays at ground level. All we see are his pant legs and his feet. He comes closer and then everything goes black.

  Then fire trucks. People running down the street. The camerawork seems a lot steadier now. It pans back and forth, zooming in on every detail. Flames coming out of a window. The firemen wrestling with the hoses. The camera follows the smoke, up and up, into the night sky.

  I looked over at Connie. He was staring at the screen, his mouth half open. Between us the dead man. His father. Clyde C. Wiley. So close to me I could touch his neck again if I wanted to. His lifeless eyes still looking off at nothing.

  This isn’t happening, I said to myself. I’m not here in the basement of this man’s house, watching these strips of film that have been pasted together into this bizarre sequence.

  Then it got worse.

  Misery Bay. Right there on the screen. Charlie Razniewski, the young man I never saw alive, is leaning against the back of his car. There’s a light shining on him. Otherwise everything around him is dark. He seems drunk or half-asleep. The rope is around his neck. From somewhere off camera, the slack is taken up and the rope tightens. Charlie snaps awake and he’s clutching at the rope. It gets tighter and tighter until finally Charlie’s feet leave the ground. He’s in the air now, kicking and struggling in vain against the rope. It’s all silent still, and somehow it makes this all the more unreal. Charlie fights for a full minute until he finally starts to go limp. He hangs there for a long time. The camera finally moves. It comes closer. It circles him. It zooms in on his face.

  I want to say something. I can’t speak.

  From the nighttime scene at Misery Bay, to daytime. Still winter, with a pale sunlight that makes everything seem to glow. The camera is in motion against the rough wall of a barn. It turns the corner and there’s young Brandon Steele. His back is to us. He has a pistol extended in his right hand. From the recoil we can see he’s shooting. There’s a pair of acoustic earmuffs on his head. He’s not aware of the camera approaching. Closer and closer. Slowly. Pan to the other weapon on the windowsill. A semiautomatic. A gloved hand reaches for it. The gun is pointed at the young man’s head. The barrel is three inches away. Then the side of Brandon’s head explodes. He goes down, pumping blood into the snow. The camera lingers on his body, recording every nuance. Then it cuts abruptly, as if the camera has just
run out of film.

  Immediately, we are indoors. It is dark. A sliver of light comes through a window and we can finally make out the features of a bedroom. There’s a woman in the bed. She is sleeping peacefully. Haggerty’s daughter. What’s her first name again?

  “No,” I say, finally finding my voice. “Please.” As if I have the power to warn her. As if I can stop this from happening.

  A helium tank. A hose. A plastic bag with a cord around the opening. The bag is carefully slipped over the woman’s head. Dina is her name. It comes to me. Dina Haggerty. She stirs and turns a little but does not wake up. The cord is tightened. The valve on the helium tank is turned. The camera waits for a long time. The woman seems to be sleeping still. There’s no discernable difference at all. Finally, the woman’s arm is lifted by the cameraman. It falls back to the bed, lifeless. The helium tank is tucked into the bed beside her. The woman’s arm is draped around the tank.

  I’m standing there watching this. I feel like I could throw up at any moment.

  Then Maven’s kitchen. Charles Razniewski Sr. has already been attacked. His throat is already cut, the blood is already pooling on the floor. The camera can only play catch-up now. It zooms in on his dead face, and on the last gallon of blood as it leaves his body and spreads slowly across the floor.

  Then a house. A door is pushed open. I’ve seen this house before. I’ve pushed open this very door myself. The camera goes inside. It seems to search, like it has no idea where it’s going. It’s disorienting to watch. Finally, a gun on the table. The gun is picked up. Another door is pushed open. An interior door this time. We see a man’s back. We see the red flower blossom on his back. He goes down. Only now do we see the woman in front of him. She looks at the camera with confusion, growing into abject horror. She falls backward. The camera comes in close. The gun is aimed at her forehead. It fires. She lies there bleeding. The camera sees everything, then finally a hand reaches out. The same black glove. It takes the woman’s arm and pulls it so that the woman’s body is turned over. She is facing the floor now. The arm is hiding her face. The camera retreats. We see it all getting smaller and smaller, until we’re back outside again. Cut to black.