Winter of the Wolf Moon am-2

by Steve Hamilton

  I kept looking at him.

  “Maybe in the war,” he said. “Maybe I saved a whole town from the Germans. It’s gotta be something big like that, I think. This is just too good.”

  I didn’t even blink.

  “My cup runneth over, McKnight. I can barely contain myself.”

  “Are you done?” I said.

  “Seriously,” he said. “I gotta ask you a real question. Because I thought I had you pegged. You were a failure as a baseball player. You were a failure as a cop. You’re a broken-down, lonely, miserable man. So you compensate for that by acting like a bigshot and shooting your mouth off at everybody. That much I got. But this business with the drugs. I don’t get that. I mean, I knew you weren’t even half as smart as you think you are. But I never dreamed that you were this fucking stupid.”

  “The drugs are not mine,” I said.

  “Of course not,” he said. “Neither is the gun.”

  “The gun is mine,” I said.

  “The gun you admit to,” he said. “Of course you don’t have a hell of a lot of choice there. It’s got a registration number on it. The drugs, on the other hand…”

  “Are not mine.”

  “Right. We covered that.”

  “What will the charge be?” I said. “And when do I get out of here?”

  The chair scraped against the floor as he leaned back in it. “What do you think the charge will be?” he said. “The only question is whether it’s a felony. They’re measuring it right now, I’m sure. Although to tell the truth, it didn’t look like there was a full gram in that bag. Maybe I didn’t save a whole town after all, eh? Maybe it was just three people and a dog.”

  “I want a lawyer,” I said. “And I want out of here.”

  “You can have a lawyer if you want,” he said. “And we’ll get you out of here just as soon as the judge shows up to arraign you.”

  “What will the bail be?”

  “The judge sets the bail. You know that. Your boyfriend Prudell is in the lobby waiting to pay it, whatever it is.”

  “Tell him to go home,” I said. “Tell him I’ll call him.”

  “That’s very thoughtful of you,” he said. “I’ll go tell him. In the meantime, as long as we’re waiting for the judge, I think there are a couple of gentlemen who’d like to speak with you.”

  “Who?”

  “You’ll see,” he said. “I’ll be back in a little while.”

  “What’s going on?” I said.

  “Patience,” he said. “Just relax.” He got up from the chair and replaced it against the wall. “Make yourself at home.” He walked back to the door, opened it, and stepped out. The door shut behind him with a metallic clang that went right through me.

  I tried to lie down on the wooden bench, but the blood pounded in my head. When I sat back up, my ribs started to ache again. I got up and paced around the cell for a while, then I felt like I needed to throw up again. I went to the corner and leaned over the toilet, one hand against the cement wall. Nothing came up.

  I tried to sit down. I hugged myself as I leaned over and hung my head over my knees. This might work, I thought. I’m almost comfortable this way. I started to doze off. Then the door opened again.

  Maven came down the hallway. Two men followed him.

  It was the men who had been following me. One had his red hunting cap still on his head. The other held his blue hunting cap in his hands.

  “Alex McKnight,” Maven said, “I’d like you to meet Agents Champagne and Urbanic. They’re from the DEA.”

  The men looked at me. I looked back at them. “You’re not Molinov’s men,” I said. “You’re not Pearl and Roman.”

  “What the hell are you talking about?” Maven said. “They’re not Laurel and Hardy, either. Agent Champagne-” He gestured to the man holding the blue cap, as if introducing me at a party. “And Urbanic.” The man wearing the red cap.

  “We need to have a little chat, Mr. McKnight,” Champagne said. “Perhaps we can use one of your interview rooms, Chief?”

  “We have one interview room,” Maven said. “I’ll show you the way.”

  Maven pulled out a set of keys and opened the cell door. “What do you think, McKnight?” he said. “Can we do this without the handcuffs?”

  “What do you think I’m going to do?” I said. “Try to run away?”

  “Ordinarily I’d say no,” he said. “But drugs make a man do strange things.”

  “For God’s sake,” I said. But before I could say anything else I was led out of the cell and down the hallway. As we passed through the doorway, I looked out the windows. The sun was just starting to come up. A light snow was falling.

  Maven led us to the interview room. I had been in the room before. Since my last visit somebody had taken down the fishing map and repainted the walls a light green. I sat in a chair on one side of a long table. Champagne and Urbanic sat directly across from me, with Maven on the end. Urbanic had finally taken his hunting cap off.

  “We’d like to ask you some questions, Mr. McKnight,” Champagne said. I remembered his dark eyes from our little meeting on the road.

  “Go ahead,” I said.

  “First of all, we’d like you to tell us the whereabouts of Dorothy Parrish.”

  “I don’t know where she is,” I said.

  “She spent Friday night in your cabin.”

  “In the cabin next to mine,” I said. “The next morning, she was gone.”

  “She just disappeared?”

  “Yes.”

  “And you have no idea what happened to her.”

  “No,” I said. “I thought Bruckman might have taken her. Bruckman is her… boyfriend, I guess.”

  “Yes, Lonnie Bruckman,” Champagne said. “We’re familiar with the man.”

  “I went to see him last night,” I said. “To ask him questions.”

  “To ask him questions.”

  “Yes.”

  “You were in the hospital recently,” he said.

  “Yes,” I said. “I saw you there. Your partner, anyway.”

  Champagne slipped a quick look sideways at his partner. Urbanic shrugged. “Why were you in the hospital?” Champagne said.

  “I got beat up and then dragged behind a snowmobile.”

  “Sounds like somebody doesn’t like you very much.”

  “Your instincts are uncanny, Agent Champagne.”

  His eyes narrowed just slightly. “What did you do to deserve this kind of treatment?” he said.

  “They wanted to know where Dorothy was,” I said. “They thought I had her.”

  “But you didn’t.”

  “I didn’t.”

  “And the fact that they thought you had her made you realize that they obviously didn’t have her.”

  “Right again,” I said. “Keep going while you’re hot.”

  He didn’t even bother to react this time. “So if you knew that they didn’t have her,” he said, “then why did you go over to Canada last night to ‘ask him questions’?”

  I hesitated. “Because I didn’t know what else to do,” I said. “I thought he might have some information, even if he didn’t know where she was.”

  “You were trying very hard to find her,” he said.

  “I was concerned about her,” I said. “She was scared that night.”

  “It must have been very upsetting to you,” he said. “Tell me, Mr. McKnight, how did you know where to find Mr. Bruckman last night?”

  “We found him,” I said. “My…” I thought about it for a moment. “My partner and I.”

  “Your partner.”

  “Leon Prudell,” I said. “He’s my partner. When I was in the hospital, he spent some time over in Canada, looking for him.”

  “How did he know to look in Canada?”

  “Bruckman said something about going back over the river. We assumed that meant he was hiding in Canada.”

  “Chief Maven,” Champagne said, “do you know this Prudell fellow?” />
  Maven cleared his throat. “I believe he’s currently a snowmobile salesman.”

  “A snowmobile salesman,” Champagne said, nodding his head. “No doubt a valuable asset to any team.”

  “He’s also a bondsman,” I said. “And a licensed private investigator.”

  “I understand,” Champagne said. “He doesn’t need the other job. He just does it because women can’t resist snowmobile salesmen.”

  “Any chance of me getting some coffee?” I said.

  “When you start giving us some answers,” Champagne said, “then you’ll get your coffee. Hell, we’ll wheel the whole breakfast cart in here. So far, you haven’t given us anything.”

  “If there was something to give you, believe me, I’d give it to you.”

  “We’ve borrowed some of the county deputies. They’re going through all of your cabins right now. You have six of them, right?”

  “What do you mean, they’re going through the cabins?”

  “Turning them upside down would be a better way to put it. You getting stopped with drugs in your truck was more than enough probable cause for a search warrant. What do you think we’re going to find in your cabins?”

  “At this hour of the morning? Probably a lot of unhappy snowmobilers.”

  “Sorry about that. I don’t suppose this is going to help your rental business.”

  “All right,” I said. “Listen, Agents Champagne and Urbanic, was it?”

  Urbanic nodded.

  “Champagne and Urbanic,” I said. “It’s got a nice ring to it. Didn’t you guys win a gold medal in ice dancing?”

  “That’s funny,” Champagne said. “Personally, I wouldn’t be making jokes if I were sitting on drugs and weapons charges, but that’s just me.”

  “Let me just get this straight,” I said. “You guys have been following me around for the past, what, six days? First you’re driving around in a Taurus, which gets stuck in the snow so I have to pull you out.” I looked down at Maven. “You ever hear of such a thing, Chief? I helped them out of the snow so they could keep following me.”

  Maven looked at them without saying a word.

  “And then when I tell the sheriff I’m being followed…” I stopped. A couple thoughts hit me at once. I didn’t like either of them. “He stalls me,” I went on. “Because you must have told him to. Which means that you kept following me even though you knew I was on to you.”

  Champagne rubbed his hands together. Urbanic just sat there. Maven kept looking at them with a face of stone.

  “You didn’t come to me and tell me who you were,” I said. “You just kept following me. In a new car. A four-wheel drive this time. But with the same brilliant disguises. Those Elmer Fudd hats really look good on you, too.”

  “Mr. McKnight…”

  “All because you thought I had something to do with Dorothy’s disappearance. And let me guess, that white bag she had with her.”

  That perked them right up. “What do you know about the white bag?” the man named Urbanic said. It was the first time he had spoken.

  “Bruckman was looking for it,” I said. “That’s all I know.”

  “When did you see the white bag?” Champagne said.

  “I told you. Dorothy had it with her Friday night. The next morning she was gone, and so was her bag.”

  “Just like that,” Champagne said. “Just… poof! She was gone.”

  “Yes, she was gone,” I said. “Somebody took her. I thought it was Bruckman, but it wasn’t.”

  “So now you don’t know who took her.”

  “No.”

  “Or the bag.”

  “No.”

  “We’re not getting much here, are we?” He looked at his partner and then down the table at Maven.

  Maven sat totally still, watching us.

  “If you had come to me before last night,” I said, “then I wouldn’t have gone over to see Bruckman by myself. You would have him right now, and you could be asking him these questions.”

  “I thought you said you met him in Canada.”

  “I didn’t meet him,” I said. “I found him. I mean, Leon found him. But you could have had the Canadian Mounties there. I’m sure you’ve worked with them before.”

  “What makes you think we’re not working with them now?” he said.

  I thought about that one for a moment. “Wait a minute,” I said. “When you followed me to the bridge last night, did you have the Mounties pick up the tail on the other side?”

  “What do you think?”

  “I think you probably did,” I said. “Which means they followed us to the bar. Which means…” I replayed what had happened. Bruckman and me in the bathroom. His guys by the pool table. The fight starts. I go out, see what’s going on, make my way across the room, we go out the front door and meet one of his guys coming in. From outside! “He planted the drugs in my car,” I said. “When the fighting started, he went outside and put the bag in my car. Just to fuck me over. And then, let me guess, they called the bridge?”

  Nobody said anything.

  “That’s what happened, right? They got an anonymous tip? They must have. They were waiting for me.”

  Champagne kept staring at me. Urbanic frowned and looked away. And Maven…

  I knew that face. Maven was looking at the agents with that same face he used whenever he talked to me. He was squinting his eyes, the left a little more than the right. His mouth was set hard like he was biting the head off a nail. It was the worst tough cop face I had ever seen, but right now it was a welcome sight. It gave me a glimmer of hope.

  “If you had Mounties watching the bar,” I said, “then they must have seen the plant. Am I right?”

  Champagne let out a long breath. “There were Mounties on the scene, yes. And yes, they did see an individual come out of the bar and open up the door to your truck. But that doesn’t have to mean that he was planting drugs.”

  Maven slapped his hand on the table. “What the hell do you think he was doing? Leaving a mint on his car seat?”

  “Chief Maven,” Champagne said. He raised his hands as if to calm a child. “Please.”

  “Please my ass,” Maven said. “When were you going to tell me you had the Mounties involved in this?”

  “Can we discuss this outside?” Champagne said.

  “We’ll discuss it right here,” Maven said. “You come all the way up here looking for this guy Bruckman and a bag of drugs he’s got with him. You’re walking around here like you own the place, ordering my men around, talking on the phone about the ‘football.’ ” He held an imaginary phone up to his face. “Yes, sir, we’re closing in on the football, sir. We’ll have Bruckman and the football any minute now.”

  “The football?” I said. “You guys really call it that?”

  “Shut up, McKnight,” Maven said, “or I’ll throw you back in that cell.”

  “Sorry,” I said. “Go on.”

  “God knows how many times you could have taken him,” Maven said. “But no, you gotta wait until you’re absolutely sure you got the right guy and you’re absolutely sure he has the drugs with him. “ ‘Can’t tackle the man without the football in his hands.’ Right? How many times did you say that? So then of course this Parrish girl takes the bag out of the place and goes to see McKnight with it. And you two are running around like idiots, splitting up, one of you trying to follow Bruckman, the other guy trying to follow the girl. And then you still won’t move in, because now your man doesn’t have the football anymore. Now the next morning she’s long gone, God knows where, run off or kidnapped by God knows who. McKnight’s running around like an idiot now, trying to find out where she is. And what do you guys do? You start following him! ” He pointed at me. “Like this jackass is going to take you right back to your football!”

  I nodded my thanks but didn’t dare say anything.

  “How many days did you follow him around?” Maven said. “Six days? The dumbest man on the planet and it takes him wha
t, not even a day to figure out he’s being tailed?” Maven paused for effect and then drew out his next line like a torturer who enjoys his work a little too much. “McKnight even pulls you out of the snow when you get stuck trying to follow him?”

  “You’re out of line, Chief Maven,” Champagne said.

  “But now I’m still supposed to play along with you guys even though you didn’t tell me anything about the Mounties, or them seeing the plant, or any of this horseshit?”

  He stopped for a breath. Champagne looked like he wanted to kill me or Maven or both. Urbanic just looked sick.

  “Did they get Bruckman, at least?” Maven said. “As long as McKnight is doing all your legwork for you, did they at least pick up Bruckman in Canada?”

  “No,” Champagne said.

  “No?” Maven said.

  “No,” Champagne said. “There were two undercover officers on the scene. The local police arrived to break up the fight. The undercover officers attempted to apprehend Bruckman, but he had, um… he had escaped through the bathroom window.”

  I raised my hand. “I think I sort of put that idea in his head,” I said. “Sorry about that.”

  “There was a lot of blood on the floor,” Champagne said.

  “His nose was broken,” I said. “Me again.”

  “We did apprehend two of his friends,” Champagne said.

  “So go talk to them,” Maven said. “Why are you wasting everybody’s time over here?”

  “Chief Maven,” Champagne said, “I think I’ve been showing a great deal of patience and restraint here. This man was stopped on an international boundary with drugs and a loaded handgun in his vehicle. If you’re not going to cooperate in our investigation, then we’ll proceed without you.”

  Maven looked at Champagne for a long, terrible moment. If I wasn’t so tired and sore and scared, I would have pitied the poor agent. The DEA has a district office in Detroit, so I had met a couple of them when I was a police officer there. They were good. But they knew they were good. They knew it maybe a little too well. So they may have come off as a little arrogant when they dealt with the local police. And that was in a major city. God knows how much they would look down on the police in a little town in the middle of nowhere, with a force so small it shared the same building as the county deputies.