Misery Bay: An Alex McKnight Novel

by Steve Hamilton

  He had switched to forestry at the beginning of his junior year, after getting together with Rebecca. Before that, he’d been a criminal justice major, as I already knew, hoping to follow in his father’s footsteps. But when Rebecca told him she was a forestry major, well, the whole idea sounded a lot more rewarding to him. More time outside, less time behind a desk. It was just the kind of thing he always secretly knew he wanted to do. At least that’s what he told Rebecca.

  They were together for their junior year at Tech. But in the summer Rebecca had the chance to do an internship with the U.S. Forest Service, along with Charlie’s good friend Wayne. Charlie was still playing catch-up with his new major, so he said good-bye to Rebecca for the summer and they both promised to pick up where they left off come September.

  As I was hearing the tale, I already knew what was coming next. By the time they saw each other again, Rebecca had spent the whole summer with Wayne, and Charlie had apparently sort of met somebody else, too. That part was a little fuzzy. Bottom line, there was a big fight and an official breakup and then an okay-let’s-be-good-friends a few weeks later. By the time winter break rolled around, everybody was reasonably happy. Or so it seemed.

  “I don’t think Charlie’s father knew anything about the breakup,” I said.

  “I just feel so bad,” she said. “I can’t help thinking I had something to do with what happened.”

  “No, come on,” Wayne said. “That’s not true at all. You know better.”

  Wayne sat there rubbing her back for a while as she fought off the tears. That’s when a few more of Charlie’s friends and classmates showed up. It became a jumble of names and young faces at that point, with lots more stories of how great a guy Charlie was and how nobody ever would have thought he’d be the kind of man to hang himself. There were apparently enough people over twenty-one now, so the beers started getting passed around and everything got a little louder. There was even a little bit of dark humor centered around the fact that Charlie was a forestry major and he decided to hang himself from a tree. That’s about when I decided it was time to leave.

  Wayne had introduced me to Charlie’s two other apartment-mates—Bradley, whose name I already had on my list, and another kid named RJ. They invited me to come back to the apartment to see where Charlie had lived, so a few minutes later we were all outside. The wind had picked up, so we were all trying to shield our faces from the driving snow as we walked up the hill, away from the water. It was Bradley and RJ and me, with Wayne and Rebecca tagging along behind us.

  It was a squat little apartment building on the very top of the hill, assaulted by the wind and the snow. I wasn’t even sure how it was still standing. They opened up the door and we all went inside and slammed the door behind us, flakes of snow still flying around us in the living room as we took off our coats.

  It was everything I expected from a college apartment, with odds and ends and cast-off furniture. Posters for rock bands I’d never heard of on three walls, but on the fourth, in place of the crappy little television and the CD player with the cheap speakers, was a forty-eight-inch hi-def LCD television surrounded by a sleek black sound system. I guess that’s the minimum these days, even for four half-starving college kids.

  Or rather, make that three. They showed me to the room Charlie shared with Wayne—his half of the room was pretty much empty now.

  “The police asked us to box up all his stuff,” Bradley said. He was a big kid, maybe fifty or sixty pounds overweight. A late bloomer with bad skin. I didn’t imagine he had much of a social life. Not up here where the men outnumber the women by a good seven to one.

  “It was just clothes and books and a few CDs,” RJ said. He was tall and thin and had dark hair and heavy eyebrows. There was something intense about him, and I’m sure most of the college girls would call him attractive. Unlike Bradley, I was sure he had no trouble finding someone to be with on a lonely Saturday night. “They said they were going to mail it all back to his father.”

  That makes sense, I thought, and it also means he’s already seen it all and gone through it. If there was anything to learn from it, he’d already had that chance.

  “It’s so weird not having him here,” Bradley said. “I mean, it’s not like we’d even want somebody else in here. Not that you’d find somebody in the middle of the school year. Heck, I don’t even know what I’m talking about.”

  I sat down on the bare mattress. Then I stood up and on a whim I lifted up the mattress to see if there was anything hidden underneath. There was nothing. No secret journal into which he poured out his thoughts every night. No answers at all.

  When we went back to the living room, the private stash of beer had been tapped into, everybody holding a bottle now and obviously not worrying about the legal drinking age anymore. It had been years since I’d been a cop, of course, and even if I was wearing the uniform that night I wouldn’t have said a word to them. They all sat around drinking in total silence and staring at the floor.

  “I want to ask you something,” Rebecca finally said. “Do you think I can talk to Charlie’s father sometime? Just to say how sorry I am?”

  “I don’t see why not. He’s in Sault Ste. Marie tonight, staying with a friend. I can give you his phone number.”

  “Maybe I should just wait until he goes back home. I don’t want to disturb him right now.”

  I nodded my head and let it go. She didn’t really want to talk to the man. At least not for a while. Maybe a year from now, she’ll actually call him.

  “I really miss him,” Wayne said. “This is the kind of night he loved. The worse the weather was, the happier he got.”

  Everybody smiled at that, and I was sure they were each bringing up their favorite Charlie memories again. Rebecca started to cry about then, and Wayne told her he’d walk her home. They both shook my hand and thanked me for coming all the way out there to talk to them.

  “Tell his father I feel so bad,” Wayne said.

  “Me, too,” Rebecca said, and that was about all she was able to say before they finally wished me a good night and headed out into the wind and the snow.

  I put my beer bottle down on the kitchen table and was expecting to head out myself, but then Bradley started talking again.

  “It wasn’t about her,” he said. “I hope you don’t think that.”

  “How do you mean?”

  “It wasn’t because Charlie and Rebecca broke up. He wasn’t really upset about that at all. In fact, he was kind of relieved when she got involved with Wayne.”

  “Come on, Bradley,” RJ said.

  “Come on, nothing.”

  “I swear to God. Don’t even go there.”

  “It’s all right,” I said. “Go on.”

  “He knew they weren’t gonna work out,” Bradley said. “So I’m just saying. It’s not like he was all broken up about it or anything.”

  RJ just looked at the ceiling and shook his head.

  “You know why he was so upset,” Bradley said to him. “You were here. He talked to you more than anyone else.”

  RJ raised his hands in surrender. “I’m not saying anything.”

  “His father wanted Charlie to be a cop, just like him. When he switched to forestry, his father wasn’t happy. Like at all. Like he’d say, Charlie was giving up a real career doing something important to be a lumberjack or something. He had absolutely no idea what a forestry degree really means.”

  I thought back to what Raz had said about the program. Trees, studying trees, he said. Doing things with trees.

  “It really got to Charlie, is all I’m saying. He knew his father was totally disappointed with him. They had a really big fight about it.”

  “I wouldn’t go that far,” RJ said.

  “There’s no use sugarcoating it,” Bradley said. “That doesn’t do anybody any good now. We might as well tell the truth.”

  “Don’t you understand?” RJ said. “Sometimes you don’t have to say anything at all. You need to lea
rn that.”

  “It’s the truth and you know it. Charlie was miserable because he thought he was letting his father down.”

  RJ closed his eyes and put one hand against his forehead.

  “I’m not saying he should have thought that,” Bradley said, running out of steam. “I’m not saying it was right. I’m just saying…”

  Then he stopped. He had wheeled out the great weight and put it there in front of us. It was invisible yet heavy as cast iron and it would crush any man who would try to carry it.

  Yet that’s what I had to do now. I had to strap that weight to my back and walk out into the cold night.

  I shook the hands of each of those two young men and left them there. I knew it would be quiet there in the apartment for a long time to come. When I was outside I turned my collar up against the wind and I went back down the hill toward my hotel. The lights on the bridge were glowing. I didn’t feel like sitting in my hotel room yet so I found the loneliest bar on the street, the darkest place to sit and drink with as few people around as possible. No music, no laughter coming from young college kids with their whole lives ahead of them.

  I sat at the rail and had my drink. I looked at the dark mirror behind the bottles and I asked that man on the other side of the glass what the hell he was going to do next.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  When I woke up the next morning, I saw actual sunlight coming through the window. The snow had stopped sometime during the night. Maybe six or seven inches had come down. The bright light bouncing off all that new snow made my head hurt even more, so I took four aspirin and a hot shower.

  I grabbed a quick breakfast downstairs, then checked out and hit the road. As I drove down through the Keweenaw Peninsula, I started working it over in my mind. What exactly was I going to tell Raz about his son? The whole idea had been to make him feel better somehow. To give him some kind of closure so he could move on with his life. That it may have been largely his fault, his absolute worst fear come true, was probably not the kind of closure he had in mind.

  I was taking the southwestern route out of Copper Country, so whether it was a completely conscious decision or not, I was making a slight detour through Toivola. When I got there, I took a right down that same lonely road to Misery Bay. I just had to see the place one more time. I wasn’t even exactly sure why.

  Maybe it was because I felt as though I knew the kid so much better now. Like now it would hit me that much harder to see where he breathed his last breath. The new snow hadn’t been plowed, so I fishtailed my way down those sixteen miles until I got to the end. I parked in the same spot, got out, and walked over to the same tree with the red ribbon still tied around it. The whole place looked different now with the sun shining. Yet somehow I still had that same raw feeling of uneasiness just being there.

  I stood under the same spot and looked up at the branch where he had looped his rope. It was sturdy enough to hold his weight. I could see that much. I had an urge to climb the tree, to work my way out on that branch so I could see the exact spot where the rope came in contact with the bark.

  I didn’t end up climbing the tree. One fatality here was more than enough. Instead, I went back to the truck, reached in, and opened up the toolbox that was on the passenger’s side floor. I found the pair of scissors I used to cut the plastic sheets for the cabin windows. I got out and went back to the tree. There were a few inches of loose red ribbon on either side of the bow. I cut about two inches from one side and looked at it closely. The color was already beginning to fade.

  This is all I’ll bring back to him, I thought. Just two inches from a red ribbon tied around the tree. I won’t bring back the great weight I’ve been given. I won’t bring back the truth about what was really bothering this kid that night. I’ll leave it right here forever. Right here on the shores of Misery Bay.

  * * *

  I hit Marquette about two hours later. I stopped to gas up and while I had an actual signal on my cell phone I figured I’d call ahead to Raz. I dialed his cell phone number, listened to it ring a few times. It went through to voice mail.

  “This is Alex,” I said. “I’m on my way back. I should be in the Soo between two and three o’clock. I’ll give you another call when I get closer.”

  There were a few seconds of dead air while I decided what to say next.

  “I hope you’re doing okay today,” I finally said. “I’ll talk to you soon.”

  I hung up the phone and hit the road again. The sun was still out, but on the open stretches the wind was whipping the snow back and forth across the road. I kept driving, back through all of the little towns I had passed on my way out the day before.

  I drove straight through on M-28, all the way into Sault Ste. Marie. If I was going to lie to Raz’s face, I wanted to get it done with as soon as possible. I picked up the cell phone and called him again. Once again it went through to voice mail. I hung up and dialed the police department. I asked for Chief Maven. I had to wait a few minutes, but he finally came onto the line.

  “McKnight! Where are you? What’s going on?”

  “I’m just looking for Raz,” I said. “I’m almost back to the Soo.”

  “Did you call him?”

  “Yes, I did.” I resisted saying anything else. Like why the hell would I not do that first?

  “He’s not answering?”

  “No,” I said. Count to three in your head. “He’s not answering.”

  “Well, he’s at my house. Give him a call there. Maybe his cell phone’s dead.” He gave me the number.

  “Okay, I’ll try him there.”

  “How did it go out there, anyway?”

  “I found out a few things about his son. He had a lot of great friends.”

  “Is Raz going to be okay with what you tell him?”

  “Yes,” I said. “I think he will be.”

  “McKnight, so help me God, if you add one more ounce of pain to that man’s soul…”

  “Hey, you’re the one who asked me to help, remember? So save the attitude.”

  “All right, relax. I’m just saying…”

  “It was just like you were thinking, Chief. A total fluke thing. One bad day in his life.”

  “Are you just saying what you think you’re supposed to say?”

  You’re making this hard, I thought. There’s nobody else on this earth who can make things hard like you can.

  “It’s the truth,” I said. “I’ll tell that to Raz.”

  “Okay, then. Give him a call. Tell him I’ll be home in a few hours.”

  “I will, Chief.”

  I hung up before he could say another word, then dialed his home number. It rang a few times. Then the answering machine came on. It was Roy Maven’s wife, telling me they weren’t home just then but that they’d like me to leave a number so they could call me back. I’d met the woman exactly one time that I could remember. She seemed quite human and perfectly nice, and at the time I couldn’t help wondering how she had ever come to marry outside of her species. Maybe someday I’d get to sit down and ask her, but right now I had other matters to deal with.

  For the hell of it, I tried calling Raz’s cell phone again. No luck there, so I called Maven again and told him there’d been no answer at his house.

  “My wife helps out at the hospital,” he said, “so she might be there. But Raz should be at the house. I don’t know where else he’d go.”

  “Where’s your house? I’ll stop by and see if I can find him.”

  “McKnight, you’re giving me a bad feeling here. How come whenever you’re involved in anything, I end up getting an ulcer?”

  “Just relax, Chief. Give me your address.”

  He gave me a number on Summit Street.

  “I’ll call you right back,” I said. As I hung up, I tried to shake off the same uneasy feeling. He’s out taking a walk, I told myself. Or he’s asleep. Or maybe he and Mrs. Maven are out having a late lunch somewhere. There were a hundred different possibilities.
/>   I swung up I-75 and then got off by the college. Down Easterday, past the students outside taking advantage of what passes for a nice day in April around here. I’d seen so many young faces in just the past two days. I made the turn at Summit and went halfway up the block until I found the number I was looking for. I pulled into the driveway.

  It was a nicely kept raised ranch. Nothing too extravagant, but then I wouldn’t have expected anything approaching extravagance from a man like Roy Maven. The walkway was clear. The shovel was leaned against the house, right next to the front door. I went up the steps and rang the doorbell. There was no answer.

  I rang the bell again. Nothing.

  I tried the knob. The door was unlocked. I pushed the door open and took one step inside. Under the circumstances, I didn’t think Maven would mind.

  Okay, maybe he would have, but I did it anyway.

  “Hello? Anybody here? Raz?”

  The house was silent. I stood there for a while, thinking about what to do next.

  That’s when the odor came to me. Something I’d smelled before. Organic and metallic at the same time. A basic, instinctive foulness. It was the smell of death.

  The whole scene flashed before me in a fraction of a second. I imagined Raz hanging from a rope he had somehow tied to the ceiling. Taking the same way out. Following his own son into the abyss.

  Or no. He’s a cop. Marshal, ex-trooper, whatever the hell. He’s a cop and he’d do it the cop way, by eating his own gun.

  I went through the living room to the kitchen. As soon as I turned the corner, I saw Raz’s body laid out on the hard tile floor. There was blood all around him. His throat was cut open. He was lying facedown but his body was twisted as if he were still trying to get away. His eyes were still open. He stared right at me as if to accuse me of thinking even for a moment that he’d actually take his own life.