North of Nowhere: An Alex McKnight Novel (An Alex Mcknight Mystery)

by Steve Hamilton

  “No, I believe that’s Gill LaMarche’s car,” he said.

  “Okay, that makes sense. He got there after we did. But if that’s not their car, where is it?”

  He hit the pause button again and set the whole thing in motion. What I was about to see would make my head spin.

  At a distance of thirty or forty yards, with less than ideal lighting, it was hard to make out exactly what was happening. But not so hard that you couldn’t get the general idea. Three men leaving the house—maybe they still had the masks on, maybe they didn’t. It didn’t matter, because you wouldn’t see their faces anyway. All three of them got into the Ford Explorer, the lights came on, the vehicle backed out of the driveway, and took off down the street.

  “That’s O’Dell’s car,” I said. “What are they doing?”

  “They’re driving away, Alex. Of course, I didn’t know at the time that it was O’Dell’s car. I was just glad that my car wasn’t parked right behind them anymore.”

  “This doesn’t make any sense. Did they steal it?”

  “Did he happen to mention that his car was stolen?”

  “No, he didn’t. And like I said, he had it yesterday, when he drove me over to the marina.”

  On the videotape, Leon’s car was in motion now. O’Dell’s Explorer was about a hundred yards ahead. You could see the arc of the headlights, the glowing red taillights, the lighted rear license plate.

  “Wait a minute,” I said, watching the screen. “Who says that’s O’Dell’s car, anyway? You know what? Come to think of it, I don’t even remember seeing his car in the driveway when we got there.” I thought about it. I put myself back in Jackie’s car, pulling into the driveway, wondering why I was coming to this stranger’s house to play poker. I open the passenger’s side door and step out…

  “No, I’m almost positive,” I said. “O’Dell was already there when we got there. But I don’t think his car was there. That’s not his car they’re driving, Leon.”

  “Keep watching,” he said.

  The image on the screen moved from one pool of light to the next. As the car ahead passed under each street lamp, it confirmed that Leon was following the same car, and doing a good job of it.

  “Where are they going?” I said.

  “You’ll see,” he said. “Soon.”

  I looked over at him. He was sitting very still, watching the tape with no expression on his face.

  “Here it is,” he finally said, as the brake lights on the Explorer glowed bright red. The vehicle was pulling into a parking lot.

  “Where is this?”

  “Look closely,” he said. “Do you recognize it?”

  I looked. It was a two-story building. There were beer signs glowing in the windows. “That’s O’Dell’s place.”

  “Yes it is. And here’s where I had to make another decision. Watch what happens.”

  Two men got out, opening up both passenger’s side doors. I still couldn’t see their faces, although it looked like they had taken the masks off. The two men got into a car parked right next to the Explorer. Before they could even start it, the white reverse lights on the Explorer came on, and it started to back up.

  “Our men are separating here,” Leon said. “So who do I follow?”

  “The Explorer,” I said.

  “That’s what I figured. It’s still the ‘object’ vehicle. I did make sure to get the plate number on the other car, though.”

  “You gave that to the police, too.”

  “Yes,” he said. “It was an Ontario plate, by the way.”

  “I thought one of the men might be Canadian. So I’m not surprised. Did they trace the number yet?”

  “I’m sure they have,” he said. “Why don’t you ask Maven about it?”

  “I’ll do that. I’ll bring it up the next time we go out drinking together.”

  “In any case, we lose both those men here. They probably just went over the bridge. I continue following the original driver. And here’s where I’ll start fast-forwarding a little bit. It’s just more of me following him.” He pushed the button and everything started flying past.

  “You taped every second of you following him?”

  “I didn’t want a break in the tape,” he said. “It’s a stronger document that way, in case it becomes evidence.”

  I gave him a look. I had become absorbed in watching the tape, and had forgotten about the implications. Hearing the word ‘evidence’ brought it all back.

  “Okay, here’s stop number two,” he said. “Recognize where we are?”

  A huge building came into view, with a lot of lights and the distinctive triangular design on the roofline. “That’s the Kewadin Casino,” I said.

  “Yes. We’re going to go to a private residence here, just a couple of blocks away.”

  There was a street lined with houses, the Explorer turning into a driveway.

  “I’m gonna pull up a few houses down, like I’m parking on the street. As you can see, the driver’s getting out to do something, but it won’t take long.”

  It happened just as Leon said. The door opened, the driver got out, went to the side of the house, then returned to the vehicle and backed it out the driveway.

  “You never got a good look at his face?” I said.

  “Never did.”

  “I don’t suppose I have to ask you whose house that was.”

  “Gill LaMarche,” he said.

  “I’ve got a bad feeling about what’s going to happen next.”

  “I’ll fast-forward again,” he said. “This is a long haul, all the way out of town.”

  “Just tell me, Leon. His next stop is Jackie’s?”

  “That’s where he went next, yes. Do you want to see it?”

  “Yes,” I said. “Keep going.”

  We watched the whole trip in fast motion, out M-28 to M-123, all the way up to Paradise. He put it back to normal speed just as the Explorer hit town.

  “What time was it at this point?” I said.

  “Maybe midnight, or a little after.”

  “So we’re still at Vargas’s house, talking to the police.”

  The Explorer came to a stop in Jackie’s parking lot, over by the side where Jackie parks his own car. As the driver got out, he paused for a moment and looked around the place.

  “You can almost see his face here,” I said. “Damn it, if there was only more light.”

  “I think he’s getting a little spooked at this point,” Leon said. “It’s not easy to follow somebody all over Chippewa County.”

  The man disappeared from view for a short time, maybe fifteen seconds. Then he was back in the vehicle and on his way.

  “What did he just do there?” I said.

  “It looks like he’s just dropping something off,” Leon said. “But that’s just what we’re assuming. We don’t actually see it happen.”

  “If he did drop something off, he must have just left it on Jackie’s doorstep. He didn’t have time to go into the house.” Which didn’t seem to help Jackie too much, not if whatever was dropped off was found underneath his bed.

  “I’m trying to be careful here,” he said, as both vehicles left Paradise and went back on the lonely stretch of road. “I don’t want to give myself away, so I’m staying back a little bit.”

  “Where does Santa Claus go next?” I said.

  “Well, a couple of things happen here. First of all, the tape runs out. Those little compact VHS tapes only hold so much. So we’re not going to see much of anything else here. In fact, right about now…”

  The screen went blank.

  “But you kept following him?”

  “Yes, I did. But like I said, I gave him some more distance this time. A couple of other cars got between us. I lost him for a while, so I figured I’d go right back to O’Dell’s. When I got there, the Explorer was parked in the lot. But there was no sign of the driver.”

  “The place was still open?”

  “Yeah, I think it was around on
e-thirty.”

  “Did you go inside and look around?”

  “I did, yes. There might have been, I don’t know, ten or twelve men in there. But I had no idea who I was looking for.”

  “Who was behind the bar? O’Dell’s wife? His son?”

  “Both of them were. I knew it wasn’t either of them driving the car. It was definitely a man, for one thing. And O’Dell’s son is what, six foot six?”

  “Thereabouts.”

  “It wasn’t him.”

  “So you gave this tape to Vargas when? Two days ago?”

  “Yes. I told you—”

  “It’s all right, Leon. You don’t have to give me the speech again. I understand, you did what you thought you had to do. You gave Vargas the tape, and I understand he asked you some questions about me.”

  “You were on the list, Alex. You were there that night.”

  “He thinks I was in on this,” I said. “He thinks I was the inside man. Did you know that?”

  “That’s news to me,” he said. “I’ll have to persuade him otherwise.”

  “While you’re persuading him, why don’t you persuade him that this whole thing was a setup? I’ll have to talk to Bennett about his vehicle, but I’m sure something’s not adding up there. And as for Jackie and Gill, hell, that guy could have just been planting evidence. Even if Jackie did take it into his house, so what? It’s an honest mistake. I still don’t even know what it was they found. That’ll be the first thing I ask him when I see him.”

  “Who’d want to set them up like that?”

  “Off the top of my head, how about Swanson? He knew about the safe, he knew Vargas would be there all night—hell, he’s already got his wife in a hotel room, why not make the evening complete? And because he’s not a complete fool, he makes it look like Bennett, Jackie, and Gill were behind it.”

  “That seems a little far-fetched.”

  “It’s less far-fetched than those three guys really doing it. What do you say we go talk to Swanson, and see how he reacts when we lay that on him? If he passes the test, we can try Kenny.”

  “How are ‘we’ going to be doing anything, Alex?”

  “I thought you might want to be my partner again,” I said. “Help me find out what really happened.”

  “You mean, help undo the mess I’ve already made for your friends?”

  I looked at him. “This isn’t about you, Leon. This is about Vargas. And about the police having the wrong guys in that jail.”

  “Vargas is still my client, Alex.”

  “Your client is probably a little pissed off that the police didn’t pick me up, too. I’m fighting back, Leon. Whose side are you gonna be on?”

  “I want to get to the bottom of this, too,” he said. “I’m not on anybody’s side.”

  “Meaning I’m on my own.”

  “Hey, I showed you the tape, didn’t I?”

  “Do one more thing,” I said. “Write down all the information you’ve got on Swanson and Kenny, will you? For God’s sake, what’s Kenny’s last name, anyway?”

  “It’s Heiden.”

  “I’m sure you’ve got their phone numbers. They’re on the master list of suspects, after all. Right under McKnight.”

  “If you really want to talk to them, I can’t stop you.”

  “And when you see your client today, give him a message for me, okay?”

  “What’s that?”

  “Tell him that whoever really ripped him off is laughing at all of us.”

  Chapter Eleven

  From Leon’s house, it was a twenty minute trip back to the City-County building in the Soo. I thought about him the whole way, what he had said, and not said. I had cost him his job once. Now that he had finally set himself up as a private investigator again, here I was asking him to dump his only paying customer. I suppose I couldn’t blame him for refusing to throw away his lifelong dream, even though I did feel like wringing his neck.

  When I got back to the police station, I saw Bennett and his son coming out the door. Bennett was blinking in the sunlight, like he had been working in a coal mine all morning.

  I caught up to them before they got into Ham’s car. “Bennett, are you all right? Where’s Jackie?”

  “Jackie and Gill already left,” he said. “I think I got the extra-special treatment today.”

  “They made bail already?”

  “The judge was already here,” he said. He looked at the residue of fingerprint ink on his fingers, and then wiped his hands on his pants. “He arraigned them and set ten-thousand-dollar bonds. Mine was twenty.”

  “Did you have a lawyer here?”

  “Why would I need a lawyer?”

  “Because you got arrested, Bennett. That’s why you need a lawyer.”

  He kept looking at his hands and then wiping them on his pants again. It wasn’t doing much good. “I don’t need a lawyer to tell them they’re full of shit. I can do that all by myself. Alex, I could really use a beer about now. How about you?”

  “Let me just ask you a couple of questions,” I said.

  Bennett looked over at his son. “More questions,” he said. “Just what I need.”

  “It’s important,” I said. “I’m just trying to help out here.”

  “I know, Alex. Go ahead.”

  “What did the police ask you about?”

  “I seem to recall my Explorer coming up in conversation,” he said. “Like about seven hundred times.”

  “Did they tell you why they were so interested in it?”

  “They gave me the general idea. It sounds like my car had just as much fun as I had that night. It’s impounded, by the way.”

  “What about your house? Did they find anything there?”

  “No,” he said. “They just took the car.”

  “When Jackie and I got to the game, your car wasn’t there. Am I right?”

  “That’s right.”

  “How did you get there?”

  “Usually, Gill comes and picks me up. But that night, he called me and told me he might be a little late. So I said, no problem, I’ll have my wife drop me off, she was coming over this way anyway. Gill was still planning on giving me a ride home afterwards.”

  “You never drive to poker games yourself?”

  “No, Alex, not if I can help it. My night vision isn’t so hot these days. And if I happen to have a drink or two while I’m playing, well…Let’s just say as a bar owner I’ve seen enough people with no business getting behind the wheel.”

  “All right, that makes sense,” I said. “It explains a lot. Now, is it possible that somebody else was driving your car that night?”

  He looked at his son again. “Yeah, this is what I tried to get across to those guys in there,” he said. “I’m not sure if they bought it or not. You see, my wife and I have this bad habit of leaving the keys underneath the driver’s seat. We used to have two sets of keys, but we lost one of them. Which was a pain because we’d both be busy doing stuff around the bar, and one of us would have to run out and get something, you know, so we just started leaving the keys in the car.”

  “You go to the hardware store,” Ham said. “They make you a copy. It takes ten minutes.”

  “Thank you, Mr. Smart Guy,” he said. “I didn’t know that. They can actually copy keys, huh?”

  “I’m just saying.”

  “I know I should have gotten a new key, okay? I just never got around to it.”

  “All right, all right,” I said. “Did anybody else know that you and your wife were doing this?”

  “Hell, I don’t know. I suppose I’ve mentioned it to people before, you know, friends in the bar.”

  “How about the poker gang?”

  He thought about that one. “Yes,” he said. “As a matter of fact, I did. I remember, because somebody told me that was a great way to get the car stolen, and I said something like, fine with me, I wouldn’t have to make the payments anymore.”

  “Okay,” I said. “That could be
important.”

  “Are you thinking…” he said. “Wait a minute, are you thinking that somebody else from the poker gang used my car that night? Or else they got somebody else to use my car that night? ’Cause obviously they couldn’t have used it themselves, not if they were there. Except for Swanson, I mean.”

  “What about Swanson?” I said.

  “Swanson? Are you kidding?”

  “I’m just asking. You tell me. Could he have done this?”

  Bennett put his hands on the hood of Ham’s car, staring at his reflection in the finish. “Swanson?”

  “Watch the car,” Ham said. “You’re gonna get that ink all over it.”

  Bennett took one look at his son and then tuned him out. “Swanson set us up?” he said.

  “Somebody set you up, Bennett. You and Jackie and Gill. I’d like to find out who did it.”

  He looked up at me. “How are you gonna do that?”

  “I have no idea,” I said. “But that never stopped me before.”

  “I really need that beer, Alex. Come on over to my place, we’ll talk about this.”

  “I’m gonna take a pass right now,” I said. “I’ll catch up with you later.”

  “Okay, Alex, you do that. But make sure you stop by later, you hear me?”

  “I will, Bennett. You guys go on home.”

  He looked up at the building. “You heard the man,” he said to his son. “Let’s get away from this place.”

  I sat in the truck and watched them leave. I stayed there a while, thinking everything through. It seemed like a high-risk move to add to the whole equation, “borrowing” Bennett’s car for the getaway.

  Or was it? They knew Bennett would be at the poker game. They knew his wife would be covering at the bar. They knew that the keys would be in the car, or at least they knew it was a good bet. With Bennett’s car, not only do they maximize the setup, there’s nothing to trace back to them, no danger of their own car getting stranded at the scene if something goes wrong. Hell, Leon had almost done that himself. Imagine coming out and seeing your getaway car blocked in the driveway?

  But damn, the whole thing still sounds so professional, like somebody who really knows what he’s doing, covering all the bases.