“No, man.” He was starting to get a little rattled.
“You’ve never met either one of them?”
“I think you should leave now,” he said.
“I’m not going anywhere,” Leon said. “If you don’t know either of these men, why are you willing to go to jail for them?”
“You’re crazy.”
“Chris I can understand,” Leon said. He got even closer to the kid. “Chris is their nephew. He has to do something stupid to try to protect them.”
“But you don’t,” I said. I figured it was about my turn. I stayed on the couch and kept my voice even. I smiled at the kid. “Why would you mess up your whole life for two guys you’ve never even met?”
“I’m not,” he said. “I’ve got nothing to do with this. I told you.”
“You know where he is,” Leon said. “I can tell you’re lying. If I can tell, imagine what’s gonna happen when the police take you in?”
The kid looked at Leon for one second, then back at me. Perfect. I’m your man, Russ. Talk to me.
“Why would the police take me in?” he said.
“I’m surprised they haven’t already,” Leon said. “You’re the roommate, for God’s sake. They always bring the roommate in.”
Easy, I thought. Don’t overdo it.
“He’s right,” I said. “The police will know in a second. I’m telling you, Russ…”
Say his name. Make eye contact.
“You gotta let us help,” I said. “Come on, Russ. Be smart. Tell us where Chris is so we can help both of you.”
“Oh man,” he said. He closed his eyes and rubbed his forehead.
Leon took a step back. A little positive reinforcement.
“He told me his uncles were in trouble,” Russ said. “Marty disappeared and Michael went looking for him. Then I guess Michael freaked out and shot somebody. That happened yesterday. Now Marty and Michael are both missing.”
“Yes,” I said. “Go on.”
“Chris was all upset. He was thinking maybe they were hiding out, you know, like they were afraid to come home.”
“Yes?”
“He said he wanted to find them, so he could help them. Whatever that meant.”
“Yes?”
“He even took my car, in case somebody was watching him.”
“Where did he go, Russ?”
The question hung in the air for a long moment. Russ closed his eyes again.
“He didn’t say where he was going.”
Leon took a step forward again. “But you know where.”
“Mackinac Island,” he said. “Okay? I think he went to Mackinac Island. His family has a place there.”
“You’ve got to be kidding me,” I said. “Mackinac Island? In February?”
“It’s a good hiding place,” Leon said. “Who’d think of looking there in the dead of winter?”
“You know where this house is on the island?” I said.
“I was there once,” Russ said. “Last summer. I don’t know the address or anything.”
“Just give us the general idea.”
He described going up the long hill toward the Grand Hotel, passing the hotel and then going farther up, beyond the string of million-dollar homes overlooking the water. There in the woods were a few older, smaller houses. As best as he could remember, the Grants’ place was just past the fork in the road, the third or fourth house on the right.
“We appreciate it,” I said. “I promise you, if Chris is there, we’ll bring him back.”
Russ thanked me, looking a little like a wrung-out dishrag. Then we left.
“The old good cop, bad cop routine,” I said as he got back in his car. “Guess it still works.”
“It works on smart-ass college kids who don’t know any better,” Leon said. “You hear that crack about the Civil War?”
I shook my head. “Mackinac Island, huh? What do you think?”
He put the car in gear and pulled away.
“Only one way to find out.”
Chapter Seventeen
Mackinac Island. That’s where we were headed. If it wasn’t February, we’d be taking one of the ferries leaving from St. Ignace, and we’d be two people out of the thousands that make the crossing every day. We’d be going there because it’s a great place to be on a warm summer day, this island with no cars whatsoever, just bicycles and horse-drawn carriages, with the Victorian houses and Grand Hotel, with the main section of Huron Street where you can buy the world famous fudge in every other store. This was the place my father took me to when I was eight years old, the place I could have dreamed of taking Natalie to for a long weekend, back when I thought we’d still be together past Memorial Day. But in February, Mackinac Island was the last place I’d think of, for the simple reason that the place doesn’t really exist at that time of year at all.
“Is anybody gonna be there?” I asked him. “Isn’t it deserted now?”
“I think there’s a couple hundred people who live there year-round,” he said. “They keep a few of the horses around, just watch over things until the season starts again.”
“I know they’ve got some sort of Christmas festival over there, but after that…”
“It’s pretty dead, yeah. By now, the ferries can’t even run anymore.”
It was fifty miles to St. Ignace, straight down I-75, an easy trip for a change, with no snow falling. The sun was even trying to come out. When we got down there, we drove over to the little airport and saw a plane leaving just as we pulled in.
“Son of a bitch,” I said. “Was that our plane?”
“Might have been. We’ll have to ask.”
There was only one small building, so it wasn’t hard to find the ticket counter. The woman told us they were sending out two more planes today, the first in about an hour.
“With all the snow we’ve been having,” she said, “we’ve had to cancel a lot of flights this week. We only had one flight yesterday. And there’s more snow coming tonight. So we thought we’d better move some people while we can.”
We bought our tickets for twenty-five bucks apiece and sat down in the little waiting area. There was a big window where we could watch the runway, and a kiosk full of pamphlets for all the local attractions. I picked up one and looked at it. Something about the Antique Wooden Boat Show. I put it back. Just for the hell of it, I went over to the pay phone and tried Natalie’s number again. The phone rang and rang until I hung up.
“I wish I knew where she was,” I said to Leon. “She’s a cop, for God’s sake. It’s not like she doesn’t know how to get help if she needs it.”
“We’re doing what we can,” he said. “If we find either of the Grants out there, maybe he’ll have some answers.”
“God, I hope so. I swear, Leon, I can’t help imagining the worst.”
“Don’t think that way,” he said. “You’ll use up your energy. Just stay in the moment.”
Stay in the moment, another Leon-ism. But as usual he was right. The hour passed like slow death, but finally the other plane was ready to leave. A few other people had arrived by then, and we all piled into the little twelve-seater Cessna. The last time I had been in a small plane like that, it had been up in Canada when everything was getting turned inside out. I tried not to think about it. Meeting Natalie had been the only good thing that had come of that whole nightmare.
The little plane took off and banked hard into a stiff wind off the lake. “Another storm coming!” the pilot yelled to us. “Just what we need, right?”
The other passengers looked at each other with good-natured Michigan smiles. I stared out the window and saw a line of trees leading right out onto the lake. I nudged Leon and asked him what they were.
“Those are old Christmas trees,” he said. “They use them for trail markers.”
“What trail?”
“It’s a trail for snowmobiles to get out to the island. I hear guys at the shop talking about it. It’s about a five-mile run. Some ri
ders get really nervous being out on the ice that long.”
Everyone else in the plane was looking out the windows on the other side now, as a ray of sunlight had broken through the clouds. Below us, the great Mackinac Bridge was glowing in shades of green and gold. On another day, it would have been a breathtaking sight and I actually would have enjoyed it.
Within a matter of minutes, we were descending. The pilot put the plane down on a runway that looked no longer than a quarter mile, pulling up next to a building even smaller than the one at St. Ignace. A sign read welcome to mackinac island international airport.
I took a peek inside the building. There were more people trying to get off the island today than trying to get on. It looked like some of them would have to wait until the next plane. I scanned every face in the room. With my luck, Marty would be flying off the island on the same damned plane.
“It’s been a long time since I’ve been here,” I said to Leon. “And I don’t think I’ve ever been up here on the airstrip. How far away are we from Huron Street?”
“We’ll take a taxi,” he said. In this case, a taxi was one of the handful of horse-drawn carriages that kept working through the winter. There were two of them waiting by the airport building, and they were both going down to Huron Street. So we hopped aboard one of them with some other passengers and rode into town.
“Where are you gentlemen staying?” the driver asked us. He didn’t have to do much. The horses seemed to know exactly where they were going.
“We’re just poking around, sir,” Leon said.
He looked at us like we weren’t quite sane. “The last flight’s going back in a couple of hours,” he said. “You flew all the way out here, but you’re not spending the night?”
“If we end up staying, are there some rooms available anywhere?”
He looked back and forth between us again. “Yeah, I’m sure there are. A few places stay open during the winter. None of them are very big, but things are pretty quiet right now. Just a few snowmobilers around.”
“Oh good,” I said. “I love snowmobiles.”
“But you don’t have sleds on the island, do you?”
“Never mind. Just drop us off by the Grand Hotel.”
“It’s closed, sir.”
“I know that. We’re just looking for a house up that way.”
“Those houses are all closed, too.”
“I know,” I said. I wanted to take the crop out of his hand and hit him in the head with it. “Just drop us off by the Grand. We’ll be fine.”
He shook his head and turned around. The two horses kept going, moving slowly down the long hill. The trees on either side of the road were thick with snow, like we were riding down through a long white tunnel. The air was cold and wet, with a fine mist of snow sifting down from the branches. The trip ended up taking longer than the plane ride. When we were finally down on Huron Street, the carriage stopped to let out the other passengers at one of the hotels that stayed open in the winter.
“We’ll get off here, too,” I said.
“I thought you wanted the Grand Hotel,” the driver said.
“We want to look around a little bit first,” I said. “Here is fine.”
I paid the man. He drove off, still shaking his head.
The street was quiet. It was like some kind of polar ghost town, with virtually every storefront closed up and sealed over with plastic. Some of them still had Christmas decorations out. It looked like the entire town had been abandoned on December 26. We saw another horse-drawn carriage down the street, this one with a single horse and one rider. Then the whole quiet scene was torn apart by the sudden roar of a motor. Two snowmobiles came around the corner and raced down the empty street.
“What’s with that?” I said. “They can bring those right down the street? I thought this was the island with no motorized vehicles.”
“All bets are off in wintertime,” Leon said.
“Great.”
“You’re thinking they might be down here somewhere? Instead of up at the house?”
“It was just a thought. They’ve gotta come down here to eat once in a while, right?”
We took a look in the one grocery store on the eastern end of the street, then walked down past all the closed fudge shops and ice cream parlors, past another small hotel that was open, another that was closed. Finally, at the end of the street we saw a restaurant with the lights on. It looked warm and inviting. It even had a fireplace like Jackie’s. I took a good look inside.
“Are you ready to go find the house?” Leon said.
“I’m ready.”
We left the restaurant and started up the hill. As long as there weren’t any snowmobiles buzzing around, there was an eerie calm as we walked between the great trees and the unlit streetlamps. The Grand Hotel itself, the granddaddy of all hotels, was a huge white and green monolith at the top of the hill. The walk was tougher than it looked. I had to stop at the top to catch my breath, leaning over with my hands on my knees. Up close the hotel was even more imposing. The world’s largest front porch, which held hundreds of rocking chairs during the summer, was now completely empty except for a thin layer of snow.
We walked its length in silence. From our vantage point we could see all the way out onto the frozen surface of Lake Huron and the Mackinac Bridge in the far distance. A cold wind kicked up and spurred us on. Beyond the hotel there were a string of big Victorian houses, sharing the same magnificent view. But each one of them looked closed up for the season and utterly deserted. The snowmobile tracks on the road were the only sign that anyone had been here since the seasons changed.
We followed the upper road, passing one million-dollar house after another until the road went into the trees. From one house to the next, the view of the lake became obstructed, the property value going down by about three quarters. These were the older, smaller houses that hadn’t been bought up by the people with money to spend on remodeling. The road forked.
“We go right?” I said. “Is that what he told us?”
“Third or fourth house.”
The houses were close to the road, but set back behind trees so thick with snow it felt like we were walking into an ice cave. We couldn’t hear the wind anymore. We walked by the first house, then the second, then the third. All three were locked up tight with plastic sheets on the windows. More important, we couldn’t see any footprints leading up to them in the snow.
“We’re protected from the wind here,” I said. “You’d think we’d see some tracks.”
“You’re right,” Leon said. “Look.”
As we came to the fourth house, we could see the line of churned-up snow leading to the front door.
“You think that’s Chris in there?” Leon said.
“Let’s go find out.”
“You gonna just walk up and knock on the front door?”
“No, first I’ll look in the window. Then I’ll knock. Any chance of you giving me that gun now?”
“Here,” he said. He took out his Ruger from his coat pocket. It was the same gun he had loaned me once before, after I had thrown my service revolver into the lake. “When this is all done, we’re gonna replace your old one. You shouldn’t have to use a loaner every time.”
“I keep hoping I’ll never need one again.”
“I’ll go around back,” he said. He pulled out his gun, too.
“Your wife is really going to kill me,” I said. “I promised her I wouldn’t get you in trouble again.”
“This isn’t trouble. This is just a little social call.”
I slapped him on the back, then walked through the trees to the house, stepping through the deep snow. When I got to the door, I looked through the little window. I saw furniture covered in white sheets. I tried the doorknob. It was locked.
What the hell, I thought. I knocked on the door. Nothing. I knocked again. I waited. I was beginning to wonder if we’d have to break into the place. Then I remembered Leon’s lockpicking skills. Kno
wing him, he’d have his tools with him. I was about to go around to the back when I heard something from inside. It sounded like the pounding of feet on a wooden floor.
Before I could look in the window again, the front door flew open. Chris Woolsey came running out, just in time for me to stick my foot out. He fell face-first into the snow.
“Help!” he screamed into the cold air. “Somebody help me!”
“Go ahead and yell,” I said, grabbing him by the collar. “They might hear you on the bridge.”
“Let go of me! Somebody help!”
I put the gun away and gave him a good smack across the face. That seemed to settle him down a little bit. Leon came out the door, sliding in the snow.
“Anyone else in there?” I asked him.
“No,” Leon said. “Not as far as I can tell.”
“What’s the deal?” I asked Chris. “Are you alone?”
“Go fuck yourself.”
I smacked him again. “I’m starting to enjoy this, Chris. You better talk to me.”
“I’m alone,” he said. “There’s nobody else here.”
“Okay,” I said. “Let’s go inside and talk.”
I pushed him back through the door and onto one of the covered chairs. “First question,” I said, leaning over him. “Do you know where Natalie is?”
“Natalie who?”
I had to try hard not to hit him again. “Natalie Reynaud. The woman who was at the hotel with me.”
“I haven’t seen her since that night. I swear.”
“Okay, next question. Your uncle Marty-”
“He’s not here.”
“I can see that,” I said. “Is that why you came out here? Were you looking for him?”
He didn’t say anything. He looked out the door like he wanted to make a break for it again.
“We know this is your family’s house,” I said. “That’s why you came here, right?”
“How do you know this is our house?”
“Your roommate told us.”
“Oh, man. That piece of shit.”
“He was trying to help you out,” I said. “Both of your uncles are in serious trouble. You thought if either of them were gonna hide out somewhere, this would be the place. Am I right?”
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