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

by Steve Hamilton

  What are you looking for, Alex? What do you think you’re going to find?

  The map was still laid out on the kitchen table. All the major waterways, all around the Les Cheneaux Islands, Lake Huron, around Drummond Island. I bent down to the map, examining it closely, trying to see if someone had made a mark somewhere. A little X to mark the spot. If they had, I couldn’t see it.

  Imports and exports. Guns for drugs. I stood up straight, looking around the rest of the kitchen. The last time I was here…There were some pill bottles there on the counter. Beer bottles, trash. What else? I had seen something else before I was interrupted, before they came back in and I had to hide.

  Before they came back in.

  All three of them. Cap, Brucie, Harry. I had assumed that morning that they had gone into town, that they were out eating breakfast or something. That they had just come back while I was standing there. Like the three bears returning home…

  But there were three vehicles outside that day. The two that were still out there now, plus Cap’s Escalade. Three people, three cars. If they had been in town, how did they get there?

  Unless they hadn’t been in town. Unless they hadn’t driven anywhere at all. Which would explain why I hadn’t heard a vehicle when they came back. All of a sudden, there they were at the front door.

  They couldn’t have been in the boat. The boat was wrecked. The dock was empty.

  Boat keys. There was another set of boat keys sitting here on the counter. I had assumed they were just duplicates for the wooden boat. Although if you had a duplicate set, why would you leave them lying around on the counter?

  I looked on the counter. I opened the drawers. There were no keys here now. Did Brucie have them? Would I have to go back upstairs and search his clothes? That was the last thing in the world I wanted to do.

  You’re getting ahead of yourself, I thought. First go see if there’s another boat out there. Then worry about the keys.

  I went out the back door, stood on the porch for a moment, sucking in the cold, fresh air until I was dizzy. Then I went down to the edge of the water. There was a heavy mist forming on the surface now, the relative heat of the day giving way to the cool evening. I went out on the dock, looked down the shoreline in both directions. There was a big willow tree, its long leaves touching the water on one side. Some tall weeds standing in the shallows. But no boats.

  I looked across the channel. I could barely see another dock on the far side. It was just as empty as the one I was standing on. All these summer homes here on the channels, most of them empty at the moment, with no summer, no reason for anyone to come all the way up here.

  An idea. All these other houses…Most of them empty.

  I went back through the yard, looking for some kind of path, some break in the trees and the high tangles of sumac, wild raspberry, poison ivy, whatever the hell else. I found a path of sorts, followed it, the brambles cutting into my arms. From the next yard, I looked down at the water. There was a canoe overturned on the shore, nothing tied to the dock. So much for this one.

  I worked my way back through the brush, fought through the opposite side of the yard until I was standing on yet another shoreline. Another empty house. Another empty dock.

  Now what?

  Now you use your head for once. They had come in through the front door, not the back. Instead of fighting my way back to the yard, I went up the driveway. I walked down the street until I was at the front of Gray’s property. I hadn’t seen a driveway on the other side of the street yet. Until…Over there. Down a hundred yards more.

  I went to the driveway, walked all the way down to the house. It looked like one of the older houses on the peninsula. It might have been one of the first, built way back when, before Les Cheneaux turned into a hot property. A one-story cottage, everything you’d need in a summerhouse without any of the fancy architecture. No strange angles on the roof, no soaring windows.

  The house looked dark inside. There were no cars parked outside. Nothing going on here at all. Then I walked around to the backyard and saw something interesting.

  Down by the shore, there was a boathouse, the kind they used to build right on the water, after dredging a channel underneath. You don’t see a lot of them anymore. Maybe they’re too hard to maintain. Or maybe if you have a big enough boat, you dry-dock at a marina. No matter the reason, here was one of the originals, and even though the paint was peeling and the whole thing was starting to lean to the right, it was at least forty feet long and another twenty feet high. It could obviously hold a lot of boat.

  I walked down and looked through the little window in the door. I could see a big cabin cruiser inside. It had to be at least a thirty-footer.

  I tried the door. It was locked. The only other way in was the big overhead door leading out to the water. The door probably came down right to the surface, maybe with a couple of inches to spare. If I really wanted to, I thought, I could dive into the channel, swim underwater, and come up inside the boathouse. Yeah, sure, I could do that.

  I took a quick look around, picked up a rock the size of a softball and broke the window. I reached inside and fumbled around with the doorknob. The door swung open.

  The boat had been parked nose out. The lettering on the back read Ruth’s Revenge. I walked around the gangplanks on all three sides, looking her over. The boat was wrapped up tight, like it hadn’t been taken out in weeks. But of course that may have been a deliberate ruse. One other thing I did notice—either this boat was built to ride low in the water, or else it was holding a very heavy load.

  As I unsnapped the cover on the starboard gunwale, I remembered another boat, about this size, owned by a man who was now very much dead. He had used it to smuggle high-end kitchen appliances into Canada without paying the tariffs. At the time, it had seemed like some major-league criminal activity to me. But if this boat here was holding what I thought it was, it would make the appliance scheme look like kid’s stuff.

  When I had unsnapped enough buttons, I stepped down inside the boat. There was a little table on the rear deck with four chairs around it. There was an ashtray still overflowing with butts. A cooler filled with empty beer bottles. A short ladder led up to the top deck, but I wasn’t interested in going up there. Instead, I opened the door to the cabin and looked inside.

  When my eyes adjusted to the darkness, I saw the crates. They were stacked in the cabin, as many crates as you could possibly fit in there. I grabbed one and pulled it down, slid it back to the rear deck so I’d have a little more light. It was made of rough wood, about four feet long, two feet wide, two feet deep. Like a miniature coffin. I didn’t think I even had to open it, but I did anyway, just to confirm what I already knew.

  I pulled off the top of the box, moved the loose packing material, and saw the dull gray metal inside.

  One web, one spider. That’s the way it works. Or so I thought.

  I thought I was caught in one web myself, the spider a man named Gray. I thought Natalie was in another web entirely, the spider a man named Laraque. Kneeling beside this crate, in this boat, inside this boathouse, on this peninsula fifty miles south of Paradise, I came to know, finally, that there was only one web after all. One web with two spiders on opposite ends.

  All those Mounties and OPP’s and American ATF agents helping out on the task force…I wondered if any of them had any idea this was going on. That this was at least one major source for Laraque’s guns. A key piece to their puzzle was sitting right here in this lonely boathouse, in a pleasure boat seemingly abandoned for the summer.

  Not that they could use it. I was sure Gray knew exactly what he was doing here. A boat that belonged to someone else, sitting in a boathouse across the street from his summerhouse. Purely a coincidence, he’d say. Without a hard link, they couldn’t lay a glove on him. Like Laraque, Gray had enough money and power to make himself untouchable.

  In any case, I still didn’t believe Gray had anything to do with Natalie’s death. Not directly
. She was no threat to his end of the web. No, everything was pointing in the other direction. More and more each day.

  But now, instead of having to go find Laraque…I had a new idea.

  I climbed out of the boat, left the shore and came back up to the house. I peered in one of the back windows, saw no signs of life whatsoever. I tried the back door. It was locked. Once again, a delicate lock-picking operation was called for, so I found another rock and broke the window on the door, reached in, and opened it. I went to the kitchen and started looking in the drawers. I knew there had to be another key here, somewhere.

  It felt strange to be in this house, but it was better than the alternative. The last thing I wanted to do was to go back across the street, have that smell hit me again, maybe even have to go upstairs looking for the key. I went through every drawer, was about to try the next room, when I saw the hooks on the wall. They were right above a poster showing every species of fish in the Great Lakes. On one ring there were two keys attached to a float. I grabbed them and left.

  I went back down to the boathouse, found the switch for the overhead door, and hit it. It was a like a big garage door opening, except instead of a driveway there was water. It was late afternoon now, and the low sunlight came streaming in as the door opened.

  I untied the boat, took the cover off, got in and climbed up to the top deck. I put the key in and started it, remembering a second later that you’re supposed to let a boat air out for a while if it’s been in such a confined space. But what the hell. The engine came to life and nothing exploded. I inched the throttle forward and the boat started to move.

  I kept it straight as it cleared the boathouse, then I turned the boat to the right, toward the open water. I knew how treacherous the channels were around here. With all the little islands, all the sudden shallow areas where you could so easily grind the propeller into the rocks…I was going to need some help.

  I turned on the GPS. The screen looked blank at first, then I saw a line start to form, drawn from the top of the screen toward the center. At the bottom there were several sets of numbers. One pair had to be my latitude and longitude. The other number, it was getting smaller…twenty then fifteen then eight…

  It’s the depth, you idiot! I looked out at the water, and even in the fog I could see the large rock jutting up past the surface. I swung the boat hard to the left. When I looked back at the screen, the line had taken a turn, as well. The depth crept back up over twenty feet.

  It’s drawing my route, I thought, every inch of the way. But how’s that going to help me? Then I saw a thick band appear on the edge of the screen. It got closer and closer to the central line. As I looked closer, I could see that the band was actually a thick accumulation of many thin lines, woven together like a rope. It was a history of every route this boat had taken. As long as I stayed in the band, I’d be retracing a safe passage.

  I let out a long breath. This definitely made my life easier, at least for a while. I watched the depth hover in the twenties as I passed one small island after another, the rocks and trees floating by in a fog that was getting thicker by the minute. How anyone could have ever found his way through this maze without help, I couldn’t even imagine.

  At first, I was thinking I’d need to find a hiding place for the boat, a dead-end channel maybe. But that idea didn’t last long. I could hardly see where I was going, for one thing. Even if I found a spot I could get to, I’d have no idea if the boat was really hidden. Not to mention the fact that I’d have to find my way back to Vinnie’s truck.

  The next idea was to find a secluded island, somehow get the crates off the boat, one by one, like a pirate hiding his treasure. Then take the boat back empty.

  Another totally stupid idea, I thought. You’ll never get close enough to the shore. What are you going to do, swim back and forth with the crates on your back?

  I kept going. It took me about thirty minutes to clear the last island. The depth started dropping quickly, until a few minutes later it was over a hundred feet to the bottom of Lake Huron. Nothing like Superior, which can go down over a thousand feet, but more than enough for what I was about to do. The final idea, the one I had in the back of my mind the whole time.

  I cut the engine and let the boat drift. Then I started grabbing the crates from the cabin. One by one, I dragged them out to the rear deck. I wasn’t sure why I felt I needed to open them, whether it was some kind of morbid fascination, or maybe just a confirmation of exactly what I was sending to the bottom of the lake. The first few crates all contained handguns. In the faint glow of the boat’s running lights, it was hard to say exactly what kind of guns these were, but I was pretty sure I was seeing some Colt automatics, some Brownings, some Smith & Wessons. Good solid, concealable handguns, with the ammo packed right inside each box—from .22 through .380, .45, nine-millimeter. Everything you needed to start your own little war.

  Each gun hit the water with a muffled splash and disappeared in an instant. It was hard work throwing the guns overboard, dragging out the next crate, opening it. Eventually I got into the more exotic weapons, the machine pistols and the mini-assault rifles, all with several magazines apiece. Some of them looked like toys they were so compact, and I knew from experience they’d sound no louder than a sewing machine.

  I had taken three slugs from a gun just like this one, I thought as I threw it over the side. I put a little something extra on the throw, heard it splash somewhere out of sight. A hell of a world this is, that men would make these machines, and with such loving care. Little pieces of metal sent flying faster than the eye can see—perfect, smooth little projectiles that part the skin and destroy everything beneath it.

  What a goddamned world, I thought. What a hopeless goddamned world.

  When I dragged out the next box, I opened it and pulled out a small .22 caliber pistol. The front sight had been removed, and threads cut into the muzzle end of the barrel. I reached in and pulled out the suppressor. It was a cylinder, about eight inches long, much thicker than the barrel of the gun. I screwed it on tight, held the thing in my hand and looked it at for a long time.

  I had never heard the gunshots, I thought. I was just down the road. When I came back, she was already gone. Whoever did it, he had a gun like this. Small caliber, low velocity. A good enough suppressor to damp down the sound to almost nothing.

  Yes. He had a gun that looked just like this one.

  I threw it as far as I could, felt the sudden stab of pain in my right shoulder. I picked up the rest of the crate and heaved the whole thing at once. I went back to the cabin, grabbed the next crate, my back straining with the effort, my shoulder throbbing with a dull ache now. I threw that crate into the water without opening it. Then the next crate and the next. I didn’t want to see any more guns. I didn’t want to feel the light coating of gun oil on my fingers. I wanted every last one of these crates on the bottom of the lake as quickly as possible, every last gun sunk a hundred feet in black water, every last round gone forever.

  I had no idea how many guns I threw overboard, how much ammo. There had to be a good seven hundred cubic feet of storage space on the boat. If I had sat down, I could have figured it out. How many hundreds of guns, enough to outfit a small army. How many hundreds of thousands of dollars in street value. All I knew was that none of these guns would ever make it to Toronto, would never kill a human being, would never do to somebody else what had been done to me.

  If nothing else, this was one good thing I could do on this one day of what was left of my life.

  When I thought I was done, I went down on one knee, breathing hard and rubbing my shoulder. I went back into the cabin to double-check, saw one more crate in the dark corner. When I dragged it out, I noticed it felt a little lighter than the others. Instead of throwing it right overboard, I opened it.

  Something a little different, I thought. Just for variety. I reached in and pulled out a small .380 stainless steel pistol, with a barrel that couldn’t have been more than two and
a half inches long. Something for a lady to put in her purse, maybe. But no, what’s this?

  I pulled out an ankle holster. The gun fit right into it. This could come in handy, I thought. I grabbed a box of .380 shells, put everything in the pocket of my jacket.

  I looked to see what else was in the crate, pulled out a black plastic box. I opened it. It took me a moment to realize what I was looking at. It was a Taser, the kind with the two electrodes that shoot out under air power and deliver a fifty-thousand-volt shock to whoever’s unlucky enough to be standing in front of you. They were just starting to talk about these when I left the police force. I never got the chance to use one myself. Now maybe I would.

  I still had Leon’s gun tucked in my waistband. Add to that a backup gun hidden in an ankle holster and a Taser. It may have been a complete illusion, but I felt like my chances had just gotten a little better.

  I threw the rest of the last box into the water and watched it go down. I looked out at the fog. It had erased everything, like nothing else in the world had ever existed at all. Just me and an empty boat, drifting to nowhere. That’s all there was.

  I wanted to stay out there. I wanted the fog to erase the memory, too, to make me believe it had never happened.

  No such luck, Alex. You’ve played this card, now you’ve got to see the next.

  I went back to the wheel, looked at the GPS and saw absolutely nothing. There was just me on the tip of a pencil-thin line, with no other history, like maybe the fog had erased everything else. Then I figured I had probably been drifting south, and if I was turned to the east now…

  I started the motor and swung her around to the northwest. In a few minutes, I saw the old routes reappear at the top of the screen. I followed the band back through the maze of islands and peninsulas, another half hour on the water with the rocks and the trees slipping in and out of sight. It was getting darker now.

  As I got closer to the boathouse, I had just enough light to center the nose in the open doorway. I felt the whole boat rock as I bumped into the back gangplanks a little harder than I wanted. It occurred to me that I had found the boat parked nose out, and now it was nose in. To whoever found it, this would be a clue that someone else had been here. This plus the broken window in the door and the fact that every last one of the guns had disappeared.