North of Nowhere: An Alex McKnight Novel

by Steve Hamilton

  “You wouldn’t want that.”

  “There was another reason, too,” he said. “You see, Win was hiring some other designers. They all worked for me, but if I didn’t play, and one of those guys did…Hell, they’d kill for my job. A little after-hours time with the owner, getting to be pals, you know how it is.”

  “You were protecting your territory.” I said.

  “Something like that. Interior design is a pretty cutthroat business.”

  “I’ve heard that,” I said. “Worse than the Mafia.”

  He looked at me, maybe deciding how offended he was supposed to be. Then he laughed.

  “Sorry,” I said.

  “Don’t worry about it.” Then his smile drifted away. “I didn’t steal his money, Alex. You know why?”

  “Why?”

  “I’ve already sold my soul,” he said. In an instant, his voice had changed. “I’ve already made all the money I’ll ever need. Why would I steal more?”

  “All right, Kenny. I get the picture.”

  “Please,” he said. “Call me Kendrick. That’s my real name. I wish Win would call me that.”

  “Kendrick,” I said. “Okay. I like that better, anyway. I think we got off on the wrong foot the other night…”

  “Yeah, I wasn’t exactly charming. I guess it’s a defense mechanism. Win’s friends tend to be the dumb jock type. It’s like high school all over again.”

  “Believe me, I’m not one of his friends.”

  As I drove away a few minutes later, I knew he had no part in the robbery. At least, that’s what my gut told me.

  I gave the man in the gatehouse a little wave on the way out. He had the gate up so fast I didn’t even have to slow down. When I was out on the open road, I picked up the cell phone. I had left Kenny’s house, make that Kendrick’s house, actually liking the man, and feeling a little sorry for him, if getting rich meant he had to put up with Vargas. Now it was eleven o’clock and I hadn’t even ruined anybody’s morning yet. So I called Swanson’s secretary.

  “Good morning, ma’am,” I said when she answered. “I’m wondering if Mr. Swanson is there today.”

  “He most certainly is not,” she said. I didn’t have to wonder if she had recognized my voice. “He will not be in the office at all today.”

  “Is he in court? That’s right next to the City-County building, right? Maybe I can catch him there.”

  “He’s not in court today, either.”

  “Ma’am, why do I get the impression he doesn’t want to talk to me? All I want to do is ask him a couple of questions.”

  “I’ll give him the message that you called again, sir. Now if you’ll excuse me…”

  “That’s all right,” I said. “I’ll just catch him later.”

  “As I said, he will not be in the office at all today.”

  “Yeah, I got that one. Don’t worry, I’ll find him. Have a good day.”

  I hung up before she could say another word. I put the phone on the passenger’s seat, right on top of the piece of paper Leon had given me. It just so happened to have Swanson’s home address, right there in black ink. It was about time to make a house call.

  I drove for a while, then picked up the phone again. After that call to Swanson’s secretary, I needed to talk to somebody who would truly appreciate the sound of my voice. I dialed the Soo police station and asked for Chief Maven. I got bounced around, put on hold, had to ask for him again, put on hold again, and then finally the man himself came on the line. I was going to ask him about the Canadian license plate. Then I was going to ask him if he had any revelations yet—like maybe realizing that somebody was leading him in the wrong direction, and he was falling for it.

  I didn’t get the chance.

  “McKnight, where the hell are you? I’ve been calling you all morning!”

  “I’m downstate,” I said. “What’s going on?”

  “Downstate? Where?”

  “Just outside of Petoskey,” I said. “Are you gonna tell me what’s going on or not?”

  “How soon can you be here?”

  “A couple of hours,” I said. “About one o’clock.”

  “Make it twelve-forty-five, McKnight. I’ll be waiting for you at War Memorial.”

  It took a few seconds for that to sink in. “Chief, what the hell happened?” I said. “Why do you need me at the hospital?”

  “Go downstairs to the coroner’s office,” he said. “You’re the only man who got a good look at those guys…. We want to see if you recognize this one.”

  “One of the gunmen? He’s dead?”

  “No, McKnight, we just thought he’d be more comfortable waiting down here in the morgue.”

  “Take it easy, Chief. I’ll be there as soon as I can.”

  I hung up and punched the accelerator. Whoever was behind this, it looked like the stakes had just gotten a lot higher.

  Chapter Fourteen

  War Memorial Hospital is right in the middle of the Soo’s business district, a few blocks south of the river, a few blocks west of Leon’s office. I got there a few minutes before one o’clock, and walked into the outpatient waiting room. Maven was sitting there, looking at a magazine. Aside from him, the chairs were empty. He didn’t smile when he saw me.

  “The hell took you so long?” he said, standing up. He threw the magazine back on the pile.

  “I was going seventy,” I said. “I don’t have a siren I can flip on like you do.”

  “Let’s go,” he said. I followed him to the elevator.

  “Were you waiting here the whole time?”

  “Of course not. You think I have time to sit in a waiting room for two hours? I went to the office. I just got back here five minutes ago.”

  “Then why are you reaming me out for taking so long?”

  “Who’s reaming you out, McKnight?” he said. He pushed the down button. “You’ve always been way too sensitive.”

  I just shook my head, got in the elevator with him, and rode down to the basement.

  “When’s the last time you were in a morgue?” he said.

  “Nineteen eighty-four.”

  “The last year you were a cop?”

  “Yes,” I said.

  “Long time ago.”

  “I don’t imagine they’ve changed much.”

  The elevator stopped. The door opened. Maven led me down a long hallway. When he opened the door to the morgue, I smelled the antiseptic, felt the touch of cold air on my skin. Maven was right—it had been a long time. But it was all coming back to me.

  The coroner was sitting at his desk when we came in. He stood up to shake my hand. He was a round little man, and his white lab coat somehow made him look more like a pastry chef than a coroner. “Mr. McKnight,” he said. “I’m Dr. Pietrowski, the Chippewa County coroner. We appreciate you coming in.”

  I looked at Maven. “My pleasure,” I said.

  “He’s in this room,” the coroner said, showing me to the far door. “Are you prepared to look at him?”

  “I’ll give it my best shot.”

  “Are you uncomfortable with this?”

  “No, I’m just not sure that I’ll be able to recognize him.”

  He nodded. “Let’s see what happens.”

  I followed him through the door, Maven behind me. There was a steel table in the center of the room. The body on top of the table was completely covered by a white sheet. The fluorescent lights hummed above us.

  The coroner pulled on latex gloves, then drew back the sheet, folding it neatly across the dead man’s shoulders. The face was so white it was almost blue. The eyes were half open. The mouth was half open. I took a step closer.

  “Is this one of them?” Maven said.

  I tried to replay the night in my head, looking down at the lifeless face, trying to make some kind of connection. It was impossible.

  “I only really saw the two men who stayed downstairs with us,” I said. “One was very fair-skinned, with blond hair and blond eyebrows
. That’s the one who sounded Canadian to me. This man obviously isn’t him. The other man was heavier…How much did this man weigh?”

  The coroner picked up a clipboard. “Two hundred twenty-five pounds,” he said. “That’s minus a few liters of blood.”

  I nodded. It sounded about right. “How tall is he?”

  “Five eleven.”

  “He was wearing a mask,” I said. “A surgical mask, and a cap, too.”

  The coroner went to his work table. “Like these?” he said, holding up a green mask and cap.

  “Yes.”

  He looked at Maven for a moment, then stepped over behind the dead man’s head. He slipped the cap over the man’s dark hair, then draped the mask over his mouth. “Does this help?”

  I looked down at him. I took a deep breath, tried to put myself back on the floor at Vargas’s house. The men were walking around. The dog was barking. “He does look familiar now,” I said. “I think this may be the other man who was downstairs. I can’t be a hundred percent certain.”

  “There was something in the report about the shoes,” Maven said behind me. “Would you recognize the shoes?”

  “If he was wearing the same shoes, yes, I might.”

  The coroner went back to his work table, opened up a black plastic bag and pulled out a pair of old athletic shoes. He brought them over to me. “Take a good look,” he said. “But please don’t touch them.”

  They were old, beat-up shoes, once white, now a dingy gray. Two blue stripes ran diagonally on each side. “These look like the shoes he was wearing,” I said.

  The coroner went back to put the shoes away. I looked down at the dead man, still wearing the cap and mask. “What happened to him?” I said.

  “He was shot in the back,” the coroner said. “Two slugs from a forty-five. One passed through the upper abdomen, the other was stopped by the sternum.”

  “How long has he been dead?”

  “Approximately four days.”

  “Four days. That would be…” I thought about it. “That would be the night of the robbery, after they drove away. Where did you find him?”

  The coroner just looked at me while he pulled off his gloves. “You’ll have to ask the chief about that.”

  “Let’s go,” Maven said. “We’re done here.”

  “I did my part,” I said. “Tell me what happened.”

  “I’m going upstairs,” Maven said. “You can stay down here if you want.”

  The coroner just shrugged when I looked at him. I followed Maven back through the office, down the hall to the elevator. We stood there waiting for it.

  “Where did you find him?” I said.

  “Right on top of the blood.”

  “What’s his name?”

  “You don’t need to know that.”

  “It’s public information,” I said. “It’ll be in the paper tomorrow.”

  “Not necessarily. We might withhold it for a few days.”

  “What’s the big secret?”

  “If I were to bring Mr. Connery down here, or Mr. O’Dell or Mr. LaMarche, do you think any of them would recognize him?”

  “I doubt it,” I said. “I don’t think anybody else got a good look at him.”

  “That’s assuming they didn’t know who he was already.”

  “Yeah, that’s assuming.”

  “If his name happened to be Danny Cox, would that mean anything to you?”

  “Is that his name?”

  “I’m just asking, if it was…”

  “I’ve never heard that name before,” I said.

  “That’s your answer? Just like that? You didn’t even take a minute to think about it.”

  “I don’t have to think about it. I don’t know the name.”

  “Most guys, they’d say, ‘Hmm…Let me think. Danny Cox…Danny Cox…Nope, never heard of him.’”

  “I’ll think some more if it’ll make you feel better.”

  “Never mind.” He looked up at the numbers above the elevator. Without looking at me, he said, “What were you doing downstate, anyway?”

  “I had an appointment.”

  “I probably don’t even want to know, do I…”

  The elevator opened. We got in.

  “I know two of the thieves drove away in a car with a Canadian license plate,” I said. “Have you traced it yet? I don’t think American private investigators can call Canada for that information.”

  “First of all, how did you come to know anything about a Canadian license plate?” he said. “Second of all, you’re not a PI anymore, remember?”

  “I came out of retirement,” I said. “You obviously need a little help, Chief. You’re letting your personal bias get in the way here. You should be out looking for the person who’s really behind all this.”

  “Let me guess,” he said. “The appointment you had this morning…”

  “Kendrick Heiden,” I said. “I don’t think he was involved, if you want my opinion.”

  “You know how much I value your opinion, McKnight. Who’s next on your list?”

  “Douglas Swanson.”

  “He wasn’t there that night.”

  “Yeah, I know.”

  Maven rubbed his eyes. “I’m getting a headache.”

  “Tell me who owns that car,” I said. “I’m going to find out anyway.”

  “Go right ahead. Knock yourself out.”

  “If it was a real lead, you wouldn’t say that. It must have been a stolen car. Or a stolen plate, at least. Am I right?”

  The door opened on the ground floor. Maven stepped out and walked quickly to the front door. In the sunshine I felt like I was a million miles away from the cold light of the morgue. “I got things to do,” he said.

  “So do I,” I said.

  He stopped and turned to face me. “You know what? You think you’re helping out your friends? Let me tell you something. The district attorney had a deal on the table. The first one of those guys who flipped was gonna have the conspiracy charge dropped. It was gonna be a class A receiving stolen goods, probation and no jail time. But now we’ve got a dead body on the ground. He was shot in the back, McKnight, and left in the woods so a couple of little kids could find him this morning. You think I’m in any kind of mood to hear you tell me I need help on this case? And that you’re the one who’s gonna help me?”

  “Maven, it’s real simple. You’re dead wrong. You’re looking at the wrong men.”

  “Because you just know in your heart that they’re innocent.”

  “Something like that.”

  “I’m the one with the personal bias,” he said. “Think about it.” Then he walked away.

  Chapter Fifteen

  I drove back over to August Street to check out Swanson’s office again. I hadn’t asked Leon what kind of car Swanson drove, so I didn’t know what to look for. It didn’t matter. There was only one car in his lot, so I figured it had to be his secretary’s. It was a Toyota Camry, which sure didn’t seem like a lawyer’s car to me.

  I put the truck in the public lot by the Locks Park, and thought about taking a peek in the courthouse. It occurred to me that I wasn’t even sure if I’d remember what Swanson looked like. Trying to ask around in the courthouse didn’t seem like the right way to go about it. So I grabbed some lunch in the Ojibway Hotel dining room, sitting right by the windows so I could watch a couple of freighters pass through the locks. It was another beautiful July day. There were lots of people out there enjoying themselves in the sun, people on vacation from their jobs and all of their troubles. Or so it seemed. Me, I was fresh out of the morgue, and I had enough troubles now to last me until Labor Day. I could have dropped every single one of them. They weren’t my troubles to begin with. I could have forgotten the whole thing and gone back to being a hermit.

  Somehow I didn’t think I would be doing that.

  I caught up with the news while I was waiting for my lunch. The Soo Evening News crime writer was having the time of his life foll
owing the “Masked Gunmen” story. He spent half of page one describing the morning arrests of two Soo residents and a tavern owner in Paradise. Somewhere around the second column he finally mentioned that the three men arrested were apparently not the masked gunmen themselves, but merely suspected accomplices. Chief Maven of the Soo police was still hoping that anyone with information on the case would contact him immediately.

  As much fun as the writer was having with this story, I couldn’t imagine what he’d do when he found out one of the gunmen was found shot in the back. I folded the paper in half, put it on the table next to mine, and didn’t look at it again.

  I drove back down to Swanson’s office. There were no new cars in the lot. I pulled up to a meter, a half block down the street, and thought about what to do next. If I were a real PI like Leon, I thought, I’d wait here until he showed up. He had to stop in at the office some time today. I looked at my watch again. It was just past two. “Goddamn it all,” I said out loud. “I do not feel like sitting here for the next three hours.” But I didn’t know what else to do. Swanson was my main man at that point, and everything that had happened that day had made me even more determined to talk to him. Hell, who else was there?

  I got out of the truck, went down the street to the little book store, and bought every magazine that looked half interesting. There were about a half-dozen true-crime paperbacks for sale—I was ashamed to admit I had already read every single one of them. I settled on an international spy thriller, and another book about a storm at sea. With a few candy bars and a bottle of water in the bag, I was ready for the rest of the afternoon.

  I sat there in the truck for two hours, going out once to the bathroom because I would be damned if I’d piss in a plastic bottle. Cars came and went down the street, none of them turning into Swanson’s lot. The sun moved across the sky until a long shadow from the buildings finally covered me. This is what a real private investigator does, I thought to myself more than once. I really, really hate it.