A Stolen Season: An Alex McKnight Novel (An Alex Mcknight Novel Series)

by Steve Hamilton

  Until I finally lay down in my bed, and turned out the lights. Then they were all there, the doubts and the worries and the mortal fear, having their way with me until I finally fell asleep.

  And then on this night, the dream. Me back on the shore, standing in the fog. Thicker in the dream, so thick I can’t even see my feet. The sound of something on the water, something I can’t see. Just like when the boat was coming, although somehow I know this thing is bigger and moving twice as fast. I can’t move. I don’t know which way to run, even if I could. I’m just waiting for it, as it gets closer and closer. The thing, whatever it is. Coming right at me, out of the fog.

  Chapter Two

  Two months earlier, a fine day in May, the snow finally gone and spring officially in the air. You could feel it. That was her last day in Blind River, as we packed up the old house forever.

  There weren’t a lot of happy memories there, but it was the only home she ever knew. It was the very same house I had found my way to on a cold and snowless New Year’s Eve, five months before, driving up across the International Bridge and following the shore of the North Channel until I finally arrived in this little town. An old logging town with a statue of two men hooking logs in the water. I came that night with a lump in my throat and no clear idea of what I was doing, or if this woman would have any interest in seeing me on her doorstep.

  Natalie was her name. Natalie Reynaud.

  She was a police officer, a member of the Ontario Provincial Police Force. I had met her when I had come up to northern Ontario with Vinnie, to look for his brother. The results of that search were tragic for everyone involved, Natalie included. She did the one thing that no cop is ever supposed to do. She walked away from a case while they buried her partner.

  It doesn’t matter what the circumstances might be. Who’s at fault. What you could or couldn’t have done. Your partner’s life is your greatest responsibility as a cop. If he ends up dead, you failed. Simple as that.

  I knew this myself. I knew it all too well. On a different police force in a different country, in a different time. Back in 1984, in Detroit, just before crack cocaine made its big debut, when the auto industry was still in a severe slump, the local economy in ruins, when the summer days were too hot and the nights gave no relief. My partner Franklin and I, responding to a simple nuisance call, an emotionally disturbed man who was bothering everyone at the hospital, hiding behind the plants in the emergency room. We found his apartment on Woodward Avenue, sat down with him at his kitchen table, tried to talk to him man to man. The aluminum foil all over the walls, that was our first clue he had precious little connection to the planet Earth.

  He had the gun taped to the underside of the table. An Uzi automatic with a .22-caliber conversion kit, retrieved from the Dumpster in his alley. A minute, maybe two, an eternity as we tried to talk some sense into him. Rehearsing my draw in my head, over and over, waiting for the right moment to shoot him in the chest.

  He shot Franklin first. Then me. The purr of the automatic weapon, no louder than a sewing machine. Both of us on the floor, looking up at the ceiling. No aluminum foil on the ceiling. I remember that.

  Franklin dying next to me, the light going out in his eyes. The hospital, the recovery. Three bullets in my body, the shoulder, the top of the lung, the cavity behind the heart.

  The bullet behind my heart still there. It was too dangerous to try to take it out. Whenever I think about it now, it’s a constant reminder of my failure that night. Franklin is in the ground, a wife and a daughter left behind. I walked away from the force and right into a liquor bottle. It’s not a terribly original story, and certainly not something I’m proud of. On top of that, I developed a preoccupation with painkillers. To this day I’ll still get little cravings for that codeine buzz. The warm embrace that makes you feel like nothing can ever hurt you.

  It took a long time for me to be myself again. Or at least something resembling a real human being. I came up here to Paradise to sell off my father’s cabins, this lonely place at the mercy of a cold inland sea. The desolation, it somehow felt like home to me. I’ve been here ever since.

  The years passed, each one much like the last. I rented out the cabins to people from downstate. Tourists in the summer, hunters in the fall, snowmobilers in the winter. I chopped wood and kept the cabins clean. That plus the disability checks from the Detroit Police Force, it was enough to live on. I spent my evenings at the Glasgow Inn.

  That all changed when I got talked into being a private investigator. Trying it on for size, anyway. As an ex-cop, I was qualified in the state of Michigan. I tried it, it blew up in my face, and it’s been one trouble after the next ever since.

  Until Natalie.

  The first time I saw her, she was jumping out of a moving float-plane as it came in to dock. One simple movement and I could see that this woman was an athlete. It turned out she was a hockey player back in college. A hockey player who led her team in penalty minutes—that summed her up pretty well right there.

  She has green eyes. She has a little scar on her chin. What hockey player doesn’t have scars? She has brown hair, and she usually has it tied up. When she reaches up to unpin it and it falls down to her shoulders…Well, let’s just say the image stays with me for a while.

  She was a good cop until her partner was killed. Then she took a leave of absence. At the time, I felt like maybe I was the only person in the world who could understand exactly what she was going through. Which is why I showed up at her house on New Year’s Eve with a bottle of champagne in my hand.

  It was cold outside. Neither of us wanted to be alone. We ended up on the floor of her guest bedroom. That was the beginning.

  Things happened after that. Her own past caught up to her, much as mine had. When we finally got through it, it was like we had more in common than ever. I was starting to imagine what it would be like to spend the rest of my life with her. A miracle in itself, that I’d even think that. But then it came time for her to make a choice.

  It was time for her to decide if she was ever going to go back to being a cop.

  Her commanding officer was a man named Henry Moreland. He was a staff sergeant in the Ontario Provincial Police, stationed up in Hearst. He was the one who sent her out on leave, and now he was the one who was asking her to come back. He believed very strongly that if she didn’t do it soon, it would never happen. That if she waited too long, she’d never again be the kind of person who could wear that badge.

  Staff Sergeant Moreland and I had had our differences: he seemed to think I was at least partly responsible for all the trouble Natalie had been through. But this was one thing we could agree on. I knew he was right in this case. Even more, I knew the cost of not going back. I didn’t want it to happen to Natalie. I didn’t want her to lose that part of her life forever, and to always wonder if she should have tried to be a cop again.

  I wanted her to go back. I hated the thought of her going away, of not knowing how long I’d have to wait to see her again. I hated it, but God help me, I told her to go. I told her to go.

  So one more trip out to Blind River, to help her finally close up the house for good. The place was sold. A few last boxes to load up, then she’d say goodbye to it forever.

  We went back upstairs one more time, to the room where we first spent the night together. The room was empty now, a sad, late afternoon light streaming through the window. We lay on the floor, just like the first time. But the air wasn’t cold now. We weren’t feeling desperate and lost, and unsure of what we were doing.

  It was slow this time. A couple of hours later, we went outside and looked around the place one more time. We didn’t go into the barn. There weren’t any good memories there for either of us. No need to relive them.

  When it was finally time to go, neither of us knew what to say. Toronto was a long haul. That’s where Moreland was assigning her—about as far away as she could go and still be in Ontario. I couldn’t help wondering if it was intention
al. Hell, if she were a Mountie, he’d probably be sending her to British Columbia, or the Yukon Territory.

  I didn’t know if this would work. I didn’t know if I could still be a part of her life if she was five hundred miles away. All I did know was that, while being alone was something I had grown accustomed to, now it would feel different. Every day, I’d wonder how she was doing. How the job was going. How she was dealing with the city.

  We’d talk on the phone every night. That was the promise. I said goodbye to her and told her to take care of herself. I told her not to drive like an off-duty cop all the way to Toronto. “You always drive too fast,” I told her.

  “Yeah,” she said, “look who’s talking.”

  I kissed her and told her to get on the road.

  I watched her get in her Jeep and start it. She looked at me for a long time. I thought she was going to roll down her window, but then she seemed to change her mind. She pulled down the driveway and turned onto the main road.

  I got in my truck and followed her. I never caught up to her. She was driving too fast.

  It was a beautiful day in May. It was beautiful enough to make you believe that summer was right around the corner. That was the promise.

  That was the hope.

  She called me that night, as soon as she hit Toronto. She was lonely already, she said. She had no idea what she was doing there. She called me again the next night, after reporting in to the station. Things were a lot different. Toronto’s a real city, after all. There’s traffic, and noise, and tall buildings. Like any other city, there are good parts and bad, the streets with good food and music and everything you could want, and the streets you don’t walk down alone after dark. Coming from Blind River, it must have felt like a different world.

  She wanted me to come out to see her. I said I would. Eventually. My gut told me I should wait a little while, let her get settled, let her find her own place before I came and made things more complicated.

  But God I wanted to see her.

  I talked to her every single night for a month straight. She was working the day shift in the center of the city, right next to Chinatown. The precinct was right on Queen Street. She was doing foot patrol, getting to know the place.

  Then June 21, the first official night of summer. The sun hadn’t shone in Paradise yet. The temperature hadn’t even cracked sixty yet. But it was early still. There was plenty of time for summer to arrive. At least that’s how it felt then.

  No, it wasn’t the weather that got to me that night. It was the fact that she didn’t call, for the first time since moving to Toronto.

  I called her number. The phone rang a few times. I hung up and went to bed.

  The next day, I was surprised by how bad I felt. I didn’t want to admit that the phone calls were so important to me. I didn’t want to feel like I was depending on them. That they were the only part of the day that really mattered to me. I was starting to think, maybe it’s time to go pay her a visit.

  She called that night.

  “Alex.”

  “Natalie, what happened? Are you okay?” The words coming out too strong, before I could stop them.

  “I’m fine, I’m fine. I’m sorry about last night. A bunch of us, we went out for drinks, and it got kinda late.”

  “I understand,” I said. “It’s no big deal.” I was starting to feel a little off balance. I held on to the phone tight, listening to her quiet voice from five hundred miles away.

  “We got talking about what kind of work we’d all done before. I had a couple of beers in me, you’ve got to understand.”

  “Yeah?”

  “Normally I don’t make a big deal about it, but I started telling everyone about the undercover work I did up in Hearst.”

  “You never told me you did undercover work.”

  “It was just the one time. This was years ago, when I could still pass for young.”

  “Oh, come on, Natalie.”

  “I’m serious. On this assignment, I had to be a biker chick.”

  “You’re kidding me.”

  “No, I’m not. There was a gang I tried to get close to.”

  “A Canadian biker gang?”

  “Yeah, why not?”

  “I’m picturing a really polite version of the Hell’s Angels.”

  “Alex—”

  “With mufflers on their bikes so they don’t make too much noise.”

  “How about making crystal meth in a bathtub and selling it to teenagers? Is that polite enough for you? How about beating the hell out of people with metal pipes?”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “You guys in the States,” she said. At least she was starting to sound a little more like herself again.

  “Go on with your story.”

  “There was this woman, she was riding with the leader of the gang. They called him rabbit or weasel or something. Some kind of rodent. Anyway, the idea was that if I could get close to her…I mean, it was so hard to keep track of these guys. They were always on the move. But if I could help pin them all down on a buy, you know, a definite place and time. We’d nail them.”

  “So what happened?”

  “Nothing. The guy died on his motorcycle, just about tore his head right off his body. The woman lived for a few days before she finally died, too.”

  “So no bust. They never suspected you were a cop?”

  “I don’t think they ever did, no. I guess I was pretty good at it.”

  That was the night, the first night I heard about Natalie’s talent for undercover work. I had no idea, although it shouldn’t have surprised me. If there’s anybody I’ve ever known who could pass as a biker chick…

  Yeah, I would have paid to see that one.

  I could tell she was tired, so I let her go. She told me she missed me. I said the same. She told me she was going to work crowd control at some big summer festival the next day. The most boring assignment you can draw, moving crowds of people around like cattle, except cattle have better manners. It’s even worse than writing parking tickets.

  Little did she know, the next day she’d hit the cop jackpot.

  In Paradise, it was the second day of a summer that hadn’t arrived yet. In Toronto, it was the biggest day of Natalie’s professional life. I thought about her all day, as I finished the roof on the cabin. I sat in the Glasgow and watched the clock, and I said to myself, this is not a good thing. You sitting here and waiting for it to get dark so you can go home and wait by the phone. This is not the right state of mind.

  I couldn’t help it.

  She called at ten o’clock that night. I could tell something was up. There was a certain energy in her voice. Something I hadn’t heard since she moved out there.

  “I told you, I was just going to do crowd control today,” she said. “I was ready for the longest day of my life.”

  “I remember.”

  “I get to work, and my CO says I need you to go up to the Mounties’ office on Yonge Street. I’m thinking, what the hell is this? What did I do wrong now?”

  “The Mounties…I thought they only worked in provinces without their own police.”

  “No, they have a regional office here. For anything national. Or international.”

  “What did they want with you?”

  “That’s what I’m getting to. I go up there, and they take me to the operations room. There’s about thirty people in the room, all sitting in chairs. There’s a podium up front, a big projector screen. The whole works. They’re obviously right in the middle of something. They’re showing pictures of people on the screen. But as soon as I go in, everything stops and they’re all looking at me.”

  She paused for a moment. I didn’t say anything. I listened to the faint hum on the line, the sound of the distance between us, until she spoke again.

  “The man up front, his name was Keller. He’s some kind of special operations commander for the Royal Mounted. He introduced himself, and then he says to everybody in the room, he says, this i
s Natalie Reynaud of the OPP. She has a certain talent I think you’ll all be interested to hear about. I’m thinking, what the hell is going on here? I felt like I’d been called down to the principal’s office.”

  “I imagine.”

  “He says to me, tell us about your previous undercover experience.”

  “The stuff you were talking about last night.”

  “Yes. He says tell us all about it, so I gave him the whole story. How I had hooked up with these bikers in Hearst. First through the woman and then the leader and everyone else…How it never amounted to anything.”

  “Because they ended up dead.”

  “Exactly. But somebody I was drinking with last night, they must have tipped off Keller, because he got on the phone to the Mountie who had run that operation up in Hearst, way back when. That guy must have given me quite a recommendation, because all of a sudden I’m a natural-born undercover agent.”

  “I’m not surprised, Natalie. I’m sure you were great at it.”

  “I don’t know about that. But next thing I know, they turn on the projector and there’s this woman’s face on the screen. She’s really attractive. Just killer. They say her name is Rhapsody. Which is such a perfect name, isn’t it? Doesn’t that make her sound like somebody who should be answering the phone at a beauty salon?”

  “Sounds more like a stripper to me.”

  “Yeah, maybe you’re right. Appearing in the lounge tonight, ‘Rhapsody in Blue.’”

  “I take it that’s not what she did for a living?”

  “Apparently not. According to Keller, she’s hooked up with a man named Antoine Laraque. And Laraque is the reason why everybody’s in that room.”

  “Drugs again? Like the biker guy?”

  “No, not drugs. Guns.”

  “In Canada?”

  “I’m telling you, Alex. You wouldn’t believe it here. This whole city is going crazy with guns right now. All these gang members, especially in Rexdale, Scarborough…It’s like they’re catching up with the American cities all of a sudden. It’s like they picked up Detroit and dropped it in Ontario.”