Winter of the Wolf Moon: A Mystery

by Steve Hamilton

  I laughed. How I could laugh after what I had just been through, I don’t know. “What kind of car is this, anyway?” I said.

  “A Plymouth Horizon,” he said. “It’s a piece of crap, I know.”

  “How do you drive in the snow in this thing?”

  “I’ve got good tires and I know how to drive in the snow,” he said. “Now are we gonna go see those guys or not?”

  “Yeah, we’d better,” I said. “Tomorrow I’m not going to be able to move.”

  “You sure you’re up for this?”

  “Quarterbacks play with broken ribs all the time,” I said. “They just put some pads on and hope they don’t get hit too hard.”

  “Yeah, quarterbacks,” he said. “Young quarterbacks. No offense, Alex …”

  “Let’s go,” I said. “I’ll meet you at the motel.”

  I got back in my truck and followed him over the bridge. The clock on my dashboard read 2:40. There was only one customs lane open at this time of night. I watched Leon stop at the window to answer all of the usual questions. Then it was my turn.

  When I pulled up, the man looked at me, then down at the truck, then back at me again. I didn’t recognize him. “Good evening, sir,” he finally said.

  “Good evening,” I said. I waited for the questions.

  They never came.

  “I’m gonna ask you to pull over into the holding area, sir,” he said.

  “Excuse me?”

  “Right over there, sir. Just pull in right there.”

  The rest of it was like something from a bad dream. It played itself out in slow motion, under a bank of naked fluorescent bulbs that gave the whole scene a surreal glow.

  The customs agents looking through my truck. A small bag pulled from under the front seat. White powder in the bag, held up for all to see. My hands against the wall, my legs spread. The gun taken from my coat pocket.

  The bite of steel around my left wrist, then my right.

  Then a voice from behind me. “You have the right to remain silent …”

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  It was the same cell. Saturday afternoon I visited Vinnie in this cell. This was, what, Friday morning? Six days. But now it was me on the wrong side of the bars.

  There weren’t as many men in the cells this time. Two in the first, one in the second, two in the third. I had the fourth all to myself. The same fluorescent bulbs hummed and flickered above us.

  It was after three in the morning. Whatever strength I had had that day was long gone. I had used it all up dragging myself out of bed, making myself go out into the night, bitterly cold and dark beyond hope. I had ridden a wave of adrenaline and anger all the way across the river to where Leon had found Bruckman. Now I was sitting on a hard wooden bench in the fourth downstairs holding cell in the Chippewa County Jail. I leaned back against the cement wall, feeling the ache in my ribs and in my head. There was no way to get comfortable. I just sat there listening to the lights humming and trying not to throw up.

  Just when I thought it couldn’t get any worse, the door opened and Chief Maven walked in.

  He came down the line of holding cells, casting a quick eye in every cell until he came to mine. He stood there looking at me through the bars. “Evening, McKnight,” he finally said.

  “Chief,” I said.

  “You’ve been read your rights?”

  “Yes.”

  “That’s good,” he said. “That’s good.” He pulled a chair over from the far wall. It might have been the same chair I sat in myself when I came here to see Vinnie. He pulled out a pack of cigarettes and a silver lighter. “Cigarette?”

  “No, thanks,” I said.

  He lit the cigarette in his mouth, snapped the lighter shut and blew a thin stream of smoke through the bars. “It’s starting to snow again,” he said.

  I looked down at the floor.

  “Just thought you might want to know,” he said.

  I didn’t look at him. “Thanks for the weather report,” I said.

  “If I ask you a question,” he said, “you know you don’t have to answer it.”

  I didn’t say anything. Maven’s smoke hung in the air.

  “I was in bed, you know that? When they called me and told me you got stopped on the bridge, I got up and got dressed and came all the way down here in the cold to ask you one question. Are you ready for it?”

  I kept looking at the floor.

  “Here’s my question, McKnight. Do you believe in reincarnation?”

  I finally looked up at him.

  “Like if you do something bad in a past life,” he said. “You might pay for it in this life? Or on the other hand, if you do something good in a past life … You know what I mean?”

  I kept looking at him. I didn’t say a word.

  “You may not have thought about it too much,” he said. “I admit, I never thought about it either.” He took a long drag on his cigarette. “Until tonight.”

  He blew the smoke out. The lights kept humming.

  “You see,” he said, “I think I’ve led a pretty good life. Helped out some people along the way. I’ve been a good father and a good husband. I’m sure I have some points stored up. But damn it, McKnight, to be sitting here looking at you in this cell. It’s just too much, I swear.”

  He took another drag from his cigarette and squinted at me through the smoke.

  “What do you think, McKnight? I’m thinking maybe in my last life, I saved a schoolbus full of children from going over a cliff. Something like that.”

  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 o
n?” 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 t
ogether. 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?”