Blood Is the Sky

by Steve Hamilton

  My cell phone rang again. Where the hell was it? I picked up my pants, then my coat, but I couldn’t find it. Finally, I stood still and listened. The ring was muffled, and it seemed to come from Vinnie himself, like maybe he had swallowed the damned thing. I rolled him over and picked it up off the bed.

  “Hello,” I said. I looked at the clock. It was 6:32.

  “Mr. McKnight?” It was a woman’s voice.

  “Yes.”

  “This is Constable Natalie Reynaud of the Ontario Provincial Police.”

  I thought of two things at once. One was the sick feeling that the previous night was coming back to haunt us. Somebody must have filed charges—probably Stan, the guy Vinnie did a number on. The other thing going through my mind was just how little this woman sounded like a police officer. It was too early in the morning to be politically correct about it. Hell, most of the women officers I had known had voices like drill sergeants.

  “Constable—” I said. That’s all I got out.

  “You left a message on Mr. Red Albright’s cell phone,” she said. “That’s how we got this number.”

  I ran my hand through my hair. “Albright’s phone? That was actually my friend calling.”

  “Mr. Albright’s wife called the Michigan State Police yesterday. I assume they’ve been in contact with you already?”

  “The police?” I needed to wake up, and fast.

  “In Michigan, yes.”

  I stood up and gave Vinnie a nudge. “No,” I said. “We haven’t made it back to Michigan yet. We’re in Wawa.”

  “You were up at the lodge yesterday,” she said. “On Lake Peetwaniquot.”

  I nudged Vinnie again. He slapped me away. “Yes, we were,” I said. “We were looking for Albright and the men who were with him.”

  “We just spoke to Mr. Gannon and Ms. St. Jean. They told us you were up there.”

  “Yes, we drove up to see if we could find out anything. The men were due back a few days ago. Are you telling me that Albright never got home, either?”

  “None of the men did. Mrs. Albright and the other wives apparently decided to give them one more night, and then call the police. It’s been five days at this point. It doesn’t take that long to get back down to Detroit.”

  “Even less to Sault Ste. Marie.”

  “Now, that’s where we’re getting a little mixed up. You see, I’ve got four names here, Mr. McKnight. These were the names called in from Detroit. I don’t see anybody from Sault Ste. Marie.”

  “They picked up another man on the way,” I said. “That’s the man we were worried about.”

  “Okay, it’s starting to make sense now. That’s what Mrs. St. Jean seemed to be saying. There were five men on the hunt.”

  “Yes, exactly.”

  “Can I get this man’s name, please?”

  “LeBlanc.”

  “LeBlanc,” she said. I could tell she was writing it down. “What’s the first name?”

  I looked over at Vinnie. He was out.

  “Mr. McKnight? I need that first name.”

  “I know, I know.” It was way too early to try to keep the story straight. And now that the police were officially involved, I figured it was time to end it. “You see,” I said, “it’s kind of a long story.”

  “If you’re telling me I’ve got a fifth man missing who the families in Detroit didn’t even know about, I’m going to need that name right now.”

  “Where are you calling from, Constable?”

  “We’re at the Hearst Detachment. It’s about fifty miles east of the lodge.”

  “You think we could come back up there and talk to you in person?”

  She hesitated. “Mr. McKnight, if you want to come up here, you can do that. But first I want that name.”

  “Thomas LeBlanc,” I said.

  “That was the fifth man on the hunting trip.”

  “Yes. I’m here with his brother, Vincent LeBlanc.”

  “Okay,” she said. “See, that wasn’t so hard.”

  I let that one go. As soon as she ran the name, she’d find out just how hard it really was.

  “Listen,” she said, “we’re on our way over to the lodge right now. As long as you’re still in Wawa, why don’t you come back up and talk to us?”

  “I think that would be a good idea.”

  “Okay, Mr. McKnight. We’ll see you at the lodge. Drive carefully.”

  “You, too,” I said. “Watch out for moose.”

  I switched the phone off. Vinnie slept in perfect peace, oblivious to what I’d just done. Like I had any choice.

  “Wake up,” I said.

  He made a noise.

  “That was the police.”

  He lifted his head. His left eye was still swollen. “What?”

  “Albright never got home. His wife called the police down in Detroit.”

  He pulled himself up until he was sitting on the edge of the bed. “Man,” he said. “My head hurts.”

  “That was the OPP,” I said. “They’re going to the lodge. I told them we’d meet them there.”

  “Okay.”

  “They wanted Tom’s name. I figured it was time to come clean.”

  He looked at me. “You figured that, huh?”

  “We’re going up to see the police, Vinnie. These men are officially missing now.”

  He let out a long breath. Then he pushed himself up and for one second I thought he was going to jump on me. But instead he stumbled toward the bathroom. “I need to take a shower,” he said. “I can’t go see the police looking like a vagrant. It’s gonna be bad enough.”

  An hour later we were both as cleaned up as we were going to get. We stopped in at a little coffee shop down the street, then at the gas station, and then we were on our way. The giant goose looked down on us one more time as we left town. It felt strange to be going north again.

  The rest of the morning we spent retracing our route from the day before, through White River and Hornepayne, through miles and miles of lakes and trees. The air felt even colder. Vinnie sat on the passenger’s side and looked out the window.

  “I didn’t have any choice,” I finally said.

  “I know.”

  “At this point, it’s got to come out.”

  “You’re right,” he said without looking at me. “I’m not saying you did the wrong thing.”

  “Okay,” I said, and then I settled in for two more hours on the road without one more word from him. I suppose if I had a brother and I knew he was probably on his way back to prison, I’d be just as talkative.

  It was eleven o’clock when we hit the Trans-Canada Highway again. I knew to take the left, and to look for the unmarked road on the right. I kept the truck out of the mud this time. We didn’t see our friend the moose.

  When we came around the last bend in the road, we saw the police car parked behind the other vehicles. It was white and clean, with the blue OPP seal on the door. We stopped and got out of the truck.

  “They must be inside,” I said. The place looked just as deserted as the first time we had seen it. There was a wet wind coming in off the lake again. The air felt heavy.

  We walked down to the main cabin. As we passed the butcher’s shed, I expected to see the man come out with the blood all over his gloves again. I couldn’t remember the man’s name, although I knew Helen had told us.

  “The plane’s gone,” Vinnie said. I looked out at the dock. There was just the two aluminum boats, bobbing up and down in the waves.

  We went up the creaky old steps and into the main cabin. The big moose head looked down at us. “Hello!” I said.

  Nothing.

  “That’s what I love about this place,” I said. “They always know how to make you feel welcome.”

  We went back to the little office, but it was empty. A radio was on. A faraway station was barely audible through the thick buzz of static. It sounded like French.

  “Where is everybody?” Vinnie said.

  “Think they all we
nt someplace in the plane?”

  “They told us to meet them here, didn’t they?”

  “They did,” I said.

  We went back through the main room to the front door. It opened just as we got there. Helen St. Jean took one look at us and screamed.

  “Oh, my goodness,” she said when she could breathe again. “You scared the life out of me.”

  “I’m sorry,” I said. “The police told us to meet them here.”

  “The police,” she said. “Yes. Hank flew them out to the cabin.”

  “The cabin where the men were staying?”

  “On Lake Agawaatese, yes. They wanted to see if the men left anything there.”

  “Like what?”

  “I don’t know,” she said, looking out the window at the sky. “Some kind of clue. Something that might tell the police where they were going when they left here. I can’t imagine what that would be.”

  “How long have they been out there?”

  “They flew out around eight. I’m surprised they’re not back already.”

  “Albright’s wife called the police,” I said. “And the other wives. Those men never did get back to Detroit.”

  “I know,” she said. “That’s what the constables said.”

  We all stood there for a moment. I wasn’t sure what else to say. The door creaked open just then, and the man from the butcher’s shed came in. He stopped when he saw us.

  “They’re still out there,” Helen said.

  The man nodded.

  “Ronnie, this is Alex and Tom,” she said. “They were here yesterday.”

  Vinnie looked down at the floor and shook his head.

  “Yes, we met,” I said. “You were butchering the moose.”

  He glanced upward, past my shoulder. I turned and looked up at the moose head with him.

  “Sorry,” I said. “Maybe we should change the subject.”

  The man didn’t smile. He didn’t say a word. He gave Helen a little nod and then he went back out the door.

  “You’ll have to excuse him,” Helen said. “He doesn’t say a lot, especially to strangers. Millie’s kinda the same way.”

  “It’s a good place to live then,” I said. “How many strangers do you even see up here?”

  She smiled. “Less and less every season. I don’t imagine we’ll be coming back next year.”

  “That’s what Mr. Gannon told us yesterday. I got the impression it was a done deal.”

  “I suppose it is,” she said. “It’s hard to believe we’ll be packing up for good this time.”

  “Where do you go when you’re not up here?”

  “We all live in Sudbury,” she said. “For the last fifteen years, we’ve been coming up here for the summer and fall. Business was good the first few years, then it started to taper off. This year was the worst, and now, with this—” She looked out the window again.

  “I’m sorry to hear that, ma’am,” Vinnie said. “This isn’t good for anybody.”

  She looked at him for a long moment. “You fellas want some coffee?”

  “That would be nice,” Vinnie said.

  As she left the room, Vinnie went to the window and stared out. “I wish we were out there,” he said.

  “What do you think we’d find?” I said. “The men have been gone for five days now.”

  “People leave things behind,” he said. “There’s always something.”

  Helen came back out with a pot of coffee and three empty mugs. She poured it black and didn’t ask if we wanted cream or sugar. Which was fine with me. We all stood there looking out the window for a few minutes, until finally we heard the distant whine of the motor.

  “That’ll be them,” she said. “I’d know that sound anywhere.”

  We followed her outside. She went down to the dock and stood there watching the northern sky. A speck appeared above the trees. It got larger as the sound of the motor grew louder. The plane seemed to bob up and down in the wind as it cleared the tree line. Then it hit the water, touching down as smoothly as a loon returning to its nest. The plane cruised in across the length of the lake, slowing down as it approached the dock. I could see Hank Gannon’s face through the windshield.

  He cut the motor. The sound kept ringing in my ears. Helen stepped up and caught the plane with one hand, then looped two ropes around the cleats on the float, front and back. The door popped open, a small ladder came out, and Hank climbed down to the dock.

  “Isn’t this cozy?” he said, looking right at me. I was still holding my mug. “Did you bake them a cake, too?”

  “The police told them to come back up,” she said.

  “Yeah, no kidding. It sounds like they’ve got some real good questions to ask them.”

  A woman stepped out next. This had to be Constable Natalie Reynaud, wearing the distinctive blue uniform of the Ontario Provincial Police. She had dark hair pinned up under her hat, and I would have put her age around thirty-five if I had to guess. She hopped off the last step of the ladder like it was nothing.

  The man who followed her took a lot longer to get down that ladder, and he sure as hell didn’t jump off the last step. He was wearing the same uniform, but aside from that he was everything his partner wasn’t. He looked like he was in decent shape for a man in his sixties, but I knew that was old for a man on active duty.

  “That was a bumpy ride,” he said. “Feels good to be on the ground again.”

  “Did you find anything?” Helen said.

  “Just a big mess,” the old cop said. “Those boys don’t know how to clean up after themselves.”

  “I tried to clean it up a little bit,” Hank said. “Sorry we took so long.” He looked at me again, and then at Vinnie. “We shouldn’t have left you here, Helen.”

  “One of the windows was knocked in,” the older constable said. “Looks like a black bear did it. Probably smelled the garbage.”

  Constable Reynaud came up to me and looked me in the eye. “You must be Mr. McKnight,” she said. “And this must be Mr. LeBlanc.” She had a nice face, and green eyes. But you could tell in a second she was all business. “This is my partner, Senior Constable Claude DeMers.”

  He shook out the kinks as he came over to us, and he shook my hand. “Thanks for coming up,” he said. “I hope you don’t mind if we ask you a few questions.” All of a sudden, he didn’t look so old anymore.

  “Yeah,” Gannon said from behind them, “start by asking them why they didn’t give us their real names.”

  DeMers turned and gave him a look. “Hank, I told you. Let us handle this. I’m sure there’s a good explanation.”

  Gannon just turned away and gave him a wave of his hand. He climbed back into his plane, grabbed a big trash bag from inside, and threw it down onto the dock. It landed with a heavy thud.

  “Helen,” the cop said, “is there someplace we can have a chat with these gentlemen?”

  “Use the office,” she said.

  “You should send Hank back out to fix that window,” he said. “You don’t want any more bears in that cabin.”

  “Doesn’t matter much now,” she said. “They can move in for all I care.”

  DeMers shook his head at that. “Hell of a thing,” he said. “I hope we find those boys soon so we can put an end to this.”

  “Where are you looking?” Vinnie said. “They’ve been missing for five days. Are you covering all the roads back to Detroit?”

  DeMers looked at him. For one long moment the only sounds were the wind and the waves. “My partner tells me your name is Vinnie,” he finally said.

  “Yes.”

  “Not Tom.”

  “No, Tom is my brother.”

  “Well, Vinnie, like we said, we need to ask a few questions. What do you say we start with you? I mean, now that we’ve established your real name—”

  “Vinnie,” I said, “you don’t have to say anything right now. I think maybe we should talk to a lawyer first.”

  “I’ll tell them what th
ey need to know,” Vinnie said. “I’ll tell them the truth.”

  The whole thing went downhill from there. They took Vinnie into Helen’s office for questioning. I sat by myself in the main room, trying not to look up at the moose head.

  An hour passed. It felt like a day. I got up and went to the window, watched Gannon cleaning out his plane. The other man appeared on the dock, the silent one. What was his name? Ron, that was it. He took the big bag of garbage away, then he came back with a broom and swept the dock. The man’s wife appeared. Millie. She went to the end of the dock and looked out at the lake. Ron stopped sweeping and went out to stand next to her. He put his arm around her. She put her head on his shoulder.

  I heard a noise behind me. The door to the office was closed. I heard the noise again—it sounded like … like a low wailing. Like somebody moaning. I stood still, holding my breath, listening.

  There’s nobody here, I told myself. Nobody but—

  The moose, for God’s sake. It sounds like it’s coming from the moose. That would make this day complete. A haunted moose head.

  I went over and stood below it. The sound came again, this time a lot louder. But not from above me. I bent down and looked in the fireplace. The moaning sound was the wind passing over the chimney. The updraft was so strong I could feel the air rushing past me.

  Helen came in through the front door. “Are they still in there talking to your friend?”

  “Yes,” I said. “I’m next.”

  She stood by the door, looking uncertain. “I wanted to start packing up the office. I was hoping we could get out of here by tomorrow morning.”

  “This is quite a fireplace you’ve got here,” I said.

  “Oh, that. Yeah, we don’t use it anymore. Hank says it doesn’t draw well.”

  “Are you kidding? It’s practically sucking me up the chimney.”

  “I think there was a nest up there,” she said. “Raccoons or something. Maybe they’re gone now. God, what a horrible thought. All those animals crawling around up there.” She wrapped her arms around herself. “I’m sorry. Listen to me. Now that I know we’re leaving for good, I just can’t stand being here another minute. I hate it like a sickness. I think we all feel that way now, all four of us.”

  “You said you’re all gonna move back to Sudbury?”