When I thought it was Bruckman, at least I had a shot at him. I had reason to believe he was still around. I had a way to find him. Or Leon did, anyway. But Molinov. Pearl and Roman. The names were absurd even, like something out of a James Bond movie. What could I do with names like that? These men were ghosts to me. They were invisible monsters in the night.
“You can’t find them,” I told myself again. I was in the Soo now, driving north on 1-75 toward the International Bridge.
I seem to be driving to Canada, I thought. Why am I doing this? What am I going to do in Canada? Try to find Bruckman again? What will that get me?
I want to get back at him.
No, it’s not worth it.
Yes, I want to hit him again, with my hands this time. I want to feel the point of his chin against my right fist. None of this would have happened if he hadn’t brought her here.
It doesn’t matter. I won’t be able to find him, anyway. He won’t be at that bar. And besides, I don’t think I should go over that bridge again for a while. Not after what happened the last time.
I pulled off the freeway, just before the bridge. I took Easterday Avenue into the center of town, past the college. There was a hockey game going on at the arena. Alaska-Fairbanks was in town to face the hometown Lakers. What a long way to come to play hockey, in a place that’s just as cold as the one you left.
Hockey. Bruckman’s teammate. What was his name?
I kept driving. A right on Spruce, another right on Shunk Road. I was going south now, toward the other arena. The Big Bear, where we played our game. The first time I saw Bruckman.
What was his teammate’s name?
When we were in that bar, in the bathroom. Bruckman talking finally, with a gun pointed at his head. A teammate who lived in town, the one who was at the bar when Dorothy asked about me. He called Bruckman, left a message. Bruckman came home, saw the police cars, took off to Canada. Never got the message. He called the teammate back a couple days later, asked what the hell had happened. What did that guy say? He told Bruckman about Dorothy then, two days after she was kidnapped. So Bruckman couldn’t have taken her. But what else? “He was freaking out.” I heard Bruckman say the words again in my head. “Said he was getting fucking paranoid, like they were coming to get him.”
They. He said they were coming to get him. When Bruckman had told me that, I thought it was just something this guy would say because he was coming down off a high, with no more speed to take him back up. But maybe there was more to it. Maybe this guy knew where this stuff came from, and who was looking for it.
Gobi. His name is Gobi. Like the desert.
What the hell, I thought. I pulled into the parking lot. It looked like the Big Bear was having a busy league night. I went into the arena, stood against the glass and watched the game for a while. It was another “slow puck” league game, but this one seemed to have a real referee. Then I went back into the locker room. A dozen players were getting dressed for the next game. They were making a racket, so I had to shout. “Hey! Anybody here know a guy named Gobi?” The shouting made my ribs hurt.
The players stopped what they were doing and looked at me. There was one man who was sitting on the bench, lacing up his skates. “Don’t tell me Gobi did that to you,” he said.
“Did what?” I said.
“Destroyed your face. Gobi’s that little shit who plays with Bruckman, ain’t he?”
“He didn’t do this to me,” I said. If there’s one good thing about having bruises on your face and a bandage above your eye, it’s that you have no trouble passing for a hockey player. “I’m just looking for him.”
“I haven’t seen him since last week,” he said. “I think Bruckman’s team is out of the league.”
“Ain’t that a shame,” somebody else said.
“Do you know where he lives?” I said.
“Nah, no idea,” he said.
“Anybody else?” I said. Nobody did.
I went back out to the rink and sat in the stands, waiting for the game to end. When it did, the Zamboni came out and cleared the ice, then the teams I had just talked to came skating out. About ten minutes later, I figured more players would be in the locker room, suiting up for the next game. I was right. There were a dozen new faces in the room when I walked in.
“Anybody here know a player named Gobi?” I shouted again. I was already getting tired of this game. I couldn’t imagine how Leon had done this for hours on end.
“Who wants to know?” said one player.
“I do,” I said. “Why do you think I’m asking?”
“I might know him,” he said.
“Either you do or you don’t,” I said. “When you make up your mind, let me know. Anybody else know him?”
He stepped up to me. He was young, not more than twenty years old. There was a shine in his eyes like maybe he wasn’t always on the same planet as the rest of us. “I might know him,” he said, “if the price is right.”
“I just need to find Gobi,” I said. “It’s important. Can you help me or not?”
“For a hundred bucks I can.”
“What? Are you crazy?”
“There was a guy in here a few nights ago looking for somebody. He paid me a hundred bucks for the information.”.
“I’ll give you twenty,” I said.
“No way, man. The way I see it, this guy sort of set the market value at a hundred, you know what I mean?”
“Fifty bucks,” I said.
“He had hundred-dollar bills, man. He was flashing them around like they were nothing. It was my pleasure to help the man.”
“Thanks, Leon,” I said as I reached into my coat pocket. I took a hundred-dollar bill out of the envelope the renters had left me and handed it to him. “Where does he live?” I said.
“I don’t know,” he said. “But Eddie does. Hey Eddie!”
A teammate came hopping over, one foot in a skate.
“Eddie’s gonna need a hundred, too, man. He’s the one actually knows where Gobi lives.”
“Then why am I paying you?” I said.
“Finder’s fee,” he said.
“Finder’s fee,” I said. “This is great. How about the two of you just share that hundred?”
“I guess you don’t want to find Gobi too bad,” he said.
I pulled out another hundred and gave it to Eddie. “All right, that’s it. Now where does he live?”
“Whoa, who’s this dude?” Eddie said, peering at the bill.
“That’s Benjamin Franklin,” the first player said. “Don’t you know your presidents?”
“Where does he live?” I said.
“He lives in a little cabin,” Eddie said. “Just south of town. He had a party one time, invited like fifty people. You couldn’t get more than twenty people in that place. We were all outside standing around in the cold.”
“Where was I?” the first player said. “I didn’t get invited.”
“You were there, man,” Eddie said. “You were just too stoned to remember. That was the night Mike pissed on you.”
“Give me the address,” I said.
“Mike pissed on me? I’m gonna kill him. I’m gonna fucking kill him.”
“The address,” I said.
“Shit, I wasn’t supposed to tell you that,” Eddie said.
“Eddie,” I said, trying very hard to control myself. “Will you please give me the address now?”
He gave me an address on Mackinac County Road.
“Thank you,” I said. “Have a nice game, boys.”
“Do you know what it’s like to wake up and have human urine all over you?”
I didn’t stick around to find out. I went back out to the truck, fired it up and took the business loop through the south end of town. The bank sign flashed the time, 9:28, and the temperature, an even zero. When I looked again in the rearview mirror it had gone down to one below.
I got off the loop near the state police barracks and went south down Mackinac
Trail. I passed a small subdivision of houses and then it was just pine trees and the occasional driveway leading off into darkness. I watched the numbers on the mailboxes, counting them down until I found the one I was looking for. When I pulled into the driveway, I hit snow. There had to be at least two feet of it. I could see the driveway snaking through the trees, beyond the reach of my headlights. There were no tracks, no footprints. No sign of life.
I sat there and thought about it. The wind came and rocked the trees, sending down a fine white mist from the branches. He might use a snowmobile in the wintertime, I thought, instead of trying to keep this driveway clear. I knew of a few people who did the same thing in Paradise.
I backed up onto the road for a running start and then put the plow down. What the hell, I thought. I’ll do him a favor. I gunned it down the driveway and started pushing the snow off. It was heavy work on a narrow track. I had to be careful to keep the truck away from the trees. More than once I had to back my way up all the way to the road and take another run at it. A good fifteen minutes later, I broke through into the clearing and saw his house. It was dark.
I pushed the snow all the way up to the back of his car. I got out, leaving the truck running with the headlights on. As I walked past his car I saw that it was buried in snow so deep you could barely tell what color it was. I made my way through the snow to his cabin and knocked on the front door. As I stood there waiting for an answer, I gave the cabin a close look. Even in this light I could see that it was a cheap job. It would have made my old man sick to his stomach to see all the chinking somebody had packed in between the logs to keep the wind out.
I knocked again. No answer.
I stepped back and looked around the place. There were two windows on either side of the door, but they were small and set high off the ground. I walked all the way around the cabin, working hard to get through the snow. It was a simple rectangle, with two more high windows in the back and a big skylight.
“Now what?” I said to myself. “How bad do you want to know what’s inside this place?” I knew the answer right away. Bad enough to break in, but not bad enough to try to crawl through one of those windows.
I went back to the front door and leaned against it. It seemed solid. It’s hard to build a good cabin, I thought, but it’s easy to buy a good door. I had a set of lock picks, but they were back in my cabin. Plus I had no idea how to use them.
Leon. He could do it.
I went back to the truck, took off my gloves, picked up the cellular phone, and called him. “Leon,” I said, “I’m outside somebody’s cabin. He was a teammate of Bruckman. I think he might have had some connection to Molinov and his men. From what Bruckman told me, he might have at least known about them.”
“Sounds promising,” Leon said. “What’s your plan?”
“My plan is for you to come out here and pick the lock,” I said. “We might be able to find something useful. Phone numbers, addresses, who knows what.”
“That would be breaking and entering,” he said. “Unlawful trespassing.”
“Are you coming out here or not?” I said.
“I’m on my way,” he said. “Give me the address.”
I gave him the address. “Just look for the freshly plowed driveway,”. I said.
I put my gloves back on and held my hands down by the heater until they stopped hurting. Then I sat back and waited. I figured it would be a twenty-minute drive from Leon’s house in Rosedale. He was there in eighteen.
He pulled up in his little red car and jumped out. “You rang, partner?”
“Right this way,” I said. I led him to the front door.
“Nobody can see us,” he said, looking around the place. There was nothing but trees. “This is good.”
“Can you get in?”
“Let’s see,” he said. He went down on one knee and gave the doorknob a rattle. “Hold this flashlight.”
I took the flashlight from him and aimed the beam at the doorknob.
“The trick to picking any lock is applying the right degree of tension,” he said. “You do this by first choosing the correct size tension bar.”
“Leon, save the lesson for a warm day, okay? Just get the door open.”
“Such gratitude,” he said. He put a tension bar into the lock with one hand, and then with a pick in the other hand he started to work at the tumblers. “It’s kinda tricky. It’s hard to get a good feel for it in this cold.” He blew on his hands and tried again. “Damn, I’m losing the feeling in my hands.”
“Are you gonna be able to do this?” I said.
“Have no fear,” he said. “I just have to warm my hands up. Let’s go sit in your truck for a minute.”
We went back to the truck. He held his hands down by the heater, rubbing them together. “That’s good,” he said. “That’s very good. Let’s go give it another shot.”
We went back out into the cold, back to the door. He went down on one knee again and set the tension bar, working more quickly this time. “I’m losing the back tumbler,” he said. “It won’t stay put by the time I get up to the front.” He worked at it for a few more minutes. In the faint light I could see him gritting his teeth. “Goddamn it all,” he said. “I’m losing my hands again. I almost had it! Let’s go back to the truck.”
We went back to the truck again. He warmed up his hands again. Then we got out of the truck and went back to the door.
“All right, this time I’m going to get it,” he said. He worked at the lock. I could hear the faint ticking of metal against metal until the sound was swallowed by a gust of wind. “Almost there,” he said. “I’m almost there.”
“Leon, this isn’t going to work,” I said. “Come back to the truck.”
“Wait,” he said. “Wait …” He worked at it. “Wait …” The pick fell from his hand. “Damn it! All right. Let me warm up my hands one more time.”
We went back to the truck. “Let’s go through the window,” I said.
“I can do this, Alex. Give me one more shot.”
I put the truck in gear. “I’ve got a better idea,” I said.
“What are you doing?” he said.
“I’m gonna pull the truck up to the front of the house,” I said. “We can climb up on the plow and go right in.” I pulled off the driveway and started plowing a path to one of the front windows. When I had pushed my way to within five feet of the cabin, my wheels started slipping. I slammed it in reverse and backed up to the driveway again.
“Alex,” he said, “be careful.”
“Don’t worry,” I said. I put the truck back in drive and started down the path to the window. I gave it a little extra this time, just enough to punch my way through the last few feet of snow.
I gave it too much. When I tried to hit the brake, my boot with all the snow on it slipped right off the pedal. I tried again and hit the gas pedal instead.
“Alex, look put!”
I slammed all twelve hundred pounds of snowplow into the side of the cabin. The wall caved in. The window frame hung from a corner for a second and then fell on top of the plow. Then the roof buckled, sending a full load of snow onto my windshield. We couldn’t see a thing.
Neither of us said anything for a long moment.
“Well, this is one other way of getting in,” I said.
“Alex,” Leon finally said. “Have you lost your mind?”
“I knew this was a cheap cabin,” I said.
He choked out a few words, unable to put a sentence together.
“Come on,” I said. “As long as we’re in.” I opened my door.
“As long as we’re … I cannot believe this.”
I stepped around the snowplow and into the cabin.
I stopped.
Leon came up behind me. “Do you have any idea what’s going to happen to us if …”
He stopped.
There was a body in the center of the room. On the floor.
Another body in a chair.
Blood.
Blood everywhere.
Old blood. Dried hard and black. The body on the floor spread out, face up. A man. What was left of the face. A man.
The body in the chair slumped over. Long hair. A woman.
Blood everywhere.
I couldn’t see the woman’s face. The hair hanging down to the floor like a final curtain.
Blood everywhere.
Leon swallowed hard next to me. “Sweet Jesus,” he said. “Let’s get out of here, Alex.”
I couldn’t move.
“Come on, Alex. Let’s go.” I felt his hands on my arm. “I said let’s go.”
I turned around and went back to the truck. I opened the door and got in. Leon was still outside the truck, wiping the snow off the windshield. When he finished and got in the truck, I turned the key in the ignition. There was a sudden grinding sound that went right through me.
“The truck is already running, Alex. Put it in reverse.”
I put it in reverse. As I pulled backwards, part of the wall came with it. In the beam of the headlights, we could both see into the cabin. The light hit the blood and somehow made it come alive again, a brilliant shimmering red.
“Nice and easy,” he said. He sounded calm. “Look where you’re going. Right back to the driveway.”
“I got it.”
“Keep going,” he said. “Straight back.”
“Okay, I got it.”
I moved back slowly, all the way back to his car. “Oh God,” he said when I had stopped. His calm was gone. He started to rock back and forth in the seat. “Holy God in heaven.”
“Take it easy,” I said. “Are you going to be all right?”
“God, did you see all that blood?”
“Yes,” I said. I was fighting it. I couldn’t let the blood overwhelm me.
“It looks like they’ve been dead for a couple of days,” he said. “At least a couple of days.”
“I wonder why nobody came looking for them?”
“We have to call the police,” he said.
“Hold on,” I said. “Think about it for a minute.”
“Think about what?” he said. “What’s there to think about?”
Winter of the Wolf Moon: A Mystery Page 19
