Let It Burn

by Steve Hamilton

  “He never came back?”

  She shook her head. A fresh tear ran down her cheek.

  “So what happened today? The police came?”

  “They rushed right in and started looking for him. Going up the stairs. I told them they had no right to do that, but they said on account of Darryl being on parole, they can do whatever they want. Go in anywhere and just drag him out.”

  “I’m afraid that’s true,” I said. “You give up certain rights if you’re on parole.”

  “Yeah, well, I never gave up my rights. They had no cause to do that.”

  I looked around the room. “It doesn’t look bad right now. Did you have to clean things up?”

  She dismissed that with one wave of her hand. “I don’t care about mud in the house. Not with Darryl in trouble again. If I cleaned today, it was just to keep my mind busy. I didn’t know what to do, Mr. McKnight. If I didn’t have your number to call, I don’t know who I would have turned to.”

  “Mrs. King…”

  “Thank you, by the way. Did I say thank you yet?”

  “Yes, you did. It’s okay. But tell me exactly what the police said to you.”

  She shook her head, like she didn’t even want to think about it. “Just nonsense, they were saying. They wanted to know where he was. They kept telling me I must know and that I’d better tell them or I’d get in trouble.”

  “But you didn’t know? You had no idea?”

  “Of course not,” she said, giving me a sharp look. “Do you think I’d be sitting here if I had any idea where he’s at right now?”

  “Mrs. King,” I said, knowing this next part would be tough. “Did they say anything to you about what they thought Darryl had done?”

  “Yes.” Her voice was dead calm. “They said some foolishness about an old retired detective being killed. Way up north. Like a three-hour drive. I told them Darryl couldn’t have had anything to do with that.”

  “Did they mention that that old retired detective was the man who arrested your son?”

  She looked away from me, shaking her head. She can’t handle this, I thought. She can’t let herself even think about what this might mean.

  “He didn’t do it,” she said, looking back at me. “Whoever got killed, wherever it was, up north or just down the street, I don’t care. Darryl’s spent half his life in prison and he’s not about to throw away whatever time he has left. It’s that simple.”

  “Okay, I understand.” What could I even say?

  “You have to help me, Mr. McKnight. I know I have no right to ask, but I don’t know who else to turn to. Will you please go find my son and bring him back to me so we can get this whole mess straightened out?”

  “Mrs. King…”

  I may not have to look for him, I thought. He might end up finding me first.

  “Please, Mr. McKnight. Alex. I’m begging you.”

  On the other hand … Given the choice between waiting for him to show up on my doorstep and actually doing something …

  I didn’t get the chance to say anything else, because at that moment I glanced out the front window and saw the Detroit police car pulling up behind my truck. There were two officers in the car. One was looking at my license plate and talking on the radio. The other was opening his door to get out. He looked both confused and unhappy, never a good combination in a cop.

  “This is going to sound a little strange,” I said to Mrs. King, “but do you have a dollar?”

  “I do, yes…”

  “Can you give it to me?”

  “Right now?”

  “Yes, please.”

  She reached into the waist pocket of her dress and pulled out a dollar bill. She gave it to me.

  “You just hired me as a private investigator,” I said. “I now have the right to be here, no matter what the police say. And anything we say to each other is protected by client privilege. Do you understand?”

  “I think so.”

  “Good, it’s nice to be working for you. Stay right here a minute, okay?”

  I left her there in the house and walked out the front door to meet the officer.

  “Stop right there,” he said. “I’m going to need some ID.”

  “You just ran my plate,” I said. “You already know who I am.”

  “Some ID, please. Right now.”

  I took out my driver’s license and handed it to him.

  “What precinct are you guys from?” I said. “Oh no, wait, you don’t even have precincts anymore, right? It’s all districts now?”

  “Can I ask what you’re doing here?”

  “Look, I’m a former Detroit cop myself. So can we start over?”

  He gave me back my license. “I just need to know why you’re here. I also need to know if you have any connection to Darryl King.”

  “No, I don’t. I’ll be honest and tell you that I’m looking for him, too.”

  “Mr. King is the subject of a murder investigation, Mr. McKnight. Not to mention the fact that he’s already violated his parole. We’re going to need to know any information you might have in regards to his current whereabouts.”

  I dug around in my wallet, thankful that I hadn’t cleaned it out in a while, and found another of my old PI cards. “I’m currently a licensed private investigator. I’ve been hired by Mrs. King.”

  “You’re supposed to let the police know if you’re working in our jurisdiction,” he said, looking at the card with a frown. “You know that.”

  “I do know that. I was just hired thirty seconds ago. So consider this your heads-up.”

  The other officer, done with whatever he was doing on the radio, got out of his car and joined us.

  “Mr. McKnight,” he said, “I just talked to a Detective Gruley from the Michigan State Police. Is it true you’re the one who found Detective Bateman’s body this morning?”

  “Yes,” I said, looking back at the house. “It’s been a hell of a day.”

  “The detective has a message for you,” the cop said. “He wants to know, with all due respect, if you’ve lost your mind.”

  “I wouldn’t bet against it,” I said. “But let me ask you guys something.”

  “What’s that?”

  “Don’t take this the wrong way, but who’s coordinating your surveillance these days?”

  The two officers looked at each other. They clearly had no idea what I was talking about.

  “You can’t pull up in a squad car,” I said, “and announce to the world that you’re here, while at the same time you’ve got your other man down the street…”

  “What man is that, Mr. McKnight?”

  I pushed past them and went to the sidewalk. I looked down to the parking lot, to where I had seen the man with the binoculars, in the green minivan.

  He was gone.

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  When the two police officers drove off, I walked down to the end of the block. The street had fed into the parking lot behind the apartment complex, once upon a time, but someone had decided there needed to be a gate here to secure the lot. It had obviously been decided long ago, because I remembered this gate being here back in the day, when I was sitting in that panel truck watching the house. The weeds had grown up on both sides of the gate now. I would have bet anything it hadn’t been touched since the last time I was this close to it.

  I looked over the gate, into the parking lot. I didn’t see the green minivan.

  “If you’re not the police,” I said to the spot where the minivan had been parked, “then who the hell are you?”

  When I went back to the house, once again I saw something inside that made me go right in. This time it was Mrs. King standing in the middle of her living room, holding her cell phone to her ear, her free hand against her chest. A fresh batch of tears was running down her face.

  “Darryl, honey, please!” she said into the phone. “You have to come home! We’ll get this all straightened out, I promise you!”

  I gestured for her to give me
the phone. Not a polite move on my part—in fact, it was downright rude—but I wanted to talk to him.

  She started to hand me the phone, then hesitated. I took it from her and put it to my ear, just in time to hear the faraway voice of Darryl King.

  “It’s no good, Mama. It’s no good. Whatever they think I did this time…”

  “Darryl,” I said. “Is that you?”

  “Who is this?”

  “My name’s Alex. I need to talk to you.”

  “Where’s my mother? Put her back on the phone right now.”

  “She’s okay, Darryl. She wants me to talk to you.”

  I stepped closer to her, wrapped my arm around her, and held the phone between us so we could both talk into it.

  “Tell him it’s okay to talk to me,” I said to her. “Please. Tell him it’s okay.”

  “It’s okay, Darryl!” she said. “He’s a good man. You can talk to him.”

  “See, it’s all good,” I said. “So tell me where you are.”

  “I’m not telling you nothing. Who are you, really?”

  “I told you. My name is Alex. You probably even remember me.”

  “From where?”

  “I was once a police officer,” I said, looking at Mrs. King. This was officially the strangest phone conversation I’d ever been part of. “I was one of the officers who was here the day you were arrested.”

  He didn’t say anything.

  “I was the one who chased you at the train station. You remember me now?”

  “What’s your name again?”

  “Alex. Alex McKnight.”

  “I don’t remember you.”

  I stood there in Mrs. King’s living room, looking down at her wet face. I was talking to her son, the convicted murderer, and now I was trying to decide just how good a liar he could be.

  “Are you seriously trying to tell me that you don’t remember me at all?”

  “You’re white, right?”

  “Yes.”

  “That’s all I remember. A white cop chased me. Another white cop arrested me.”

  “That was Detective Arnie Bateman.”

  “Yeah, that name sounds right. I remember him. What’s the point, man?”

  “He was killed sometime last night.”

  He took a moment before responding. That said something important, if you believe the guy who wrote the book on interrogating suspects. If he denies it right away, that means he already knows it, and he’s got his story ready. If he takes a while to think about it, then it might be news to him, and he won’t respond until he’s had some time to think it over.

  Of course, a really good liar has probably read the same book, and he knows how to beat that game.

  “Are you telling me,” Darryl finally said, “that all of those cop cars were on my street because…” He trailed off into a mumbled string of every obscenity ever invented.

  “Darryl, where did you go last night?”

  “I went out.”

  “Where did you go?”

  “Where do you think I went, man? I was in prison for a long time.”

  “Okay, so you were with somebody?”

  He hesitated. “No, I wasn’t. I drove around looking to pick up someone. But I just couldn’t go that way. I guess I really am getting old or something.”

  “So you didn’t go to Houghton Lake?”

  “What lake? What the hell are you talking about?”

  “That’s where the detective lives.”

  “Well, I sure as hell didn’t go there. And I sure as hell didn’t kill nobody. That’s the craziest thing I ever heard.”

  “It’s not so crazy if you were looking for revenge.”

  I heard him let out a long breath. “Look, man. I just got out of the joint, okay? You really think I want to go right back in? So I what, went and killed some old detective who was doing his job? Do you really think I’m that kind of man, Mr. McWho, whatever your name was?”

  “If you didn’t do it,” I said, “and I guess I’m at least prepared to believe that you didn’t, then you need to turn yourself in. Your mother and I will both go with you.”

  “Okay, first of all, my mother and you are not going to do anything, because you’re going to leave that house right now, do you hear me? And second of all, I’m not turning my black ass in to nobody, because I know how that will go. I’ve been down that road before, believe me.”

  “The last time, you confessed,” I said, looking at his mother again, wishing that I could just talk to this man for one minute without her watching. “Which is the reason I came down here in the first place. I was hoping you could tell me why.”

  “I was convicted of that crime and I served my sentence. That’s all I have to say. You got no business asking me anything else.”

  “You didn’t do it,” I said. “You confessed to a crime you didn’t commit.”

  “I was convicted of that crime,” he said, slowly this time, “and I served my sentence. Now give my mother back her phone.”

  “Not until you tell me, Darryl. I want to know why you confessed.”

  “Give her a message,” he said. “Tell her I’ve gotta go try to make things right first, while I still have a chance. Then I’ll come home.”

  “Darryl—”

  “And tell her she shouldn’t be inviting white cops into the house.”

  He ended the call before I could say another word.

  Mrs. King looked up at me, like she expected me to tell her everything was all right. Darryl was on his way home, and everything would be good again.

  “He said he was calling on a pay phone,” she said. “He wanted to know why all the cops were here. When he saw them, he just panicked and drove off.”

  “He said to give you a message. He has to make things right while he still can. Then he’ll come home.”

  “He’s going to go back to prison,” she said, looking away from me. “I only had him home for a couple of hours.”

  I wasn’t sure what to say to her. I certainly had nothing that would contradict her prediction. So when all else fails … you go do something. Even if it’s stupid.

  “Mrs. King,” I said, “do you know where he might have been calling from? I’d like to go look for him.”

  She looked back up at me. A small glimpse of hope there, in the face of this woman who should have given up hope long ago.

  “He said he was calling from a pay phone. I didn’t think they even had those anymore.”

  “You make a good point,” I said. “That might make it easier to find him. Just find the one working pay phone left in the entire city.”

  I knew it wouldn’t be that easy, but I figured it was worth a shot. I had no idea whether Darryl King was telling me the truth or not, but either way I wanted to find him.

  Mrs. King gave me a photograph of a grown-up Darryl. It was a few years old, she told me, and it wasn’t a great photograph at all, but it gave me a fair idea of what he would look like if I were to run into him. The high cheekbones were still there, but his face was much fuller now. He was probably seventy pounds heavier, and it didn’t look like prison muscle. He had a little gut on him now, and his hairline was receding. He was photographed sitting in the visiting room at either Jackson or Harrison, and he was wearing a thin smile that he probably didn’t get to use much in prison.

  I put that photograph in my back pocket, along with the description of Mrs. King’s sister’s car, and I went out into the fading light. Another strange twist on an already strange journey, that now I was driving down these same streets, looking for the same person. Only now I knew his name, and I had a photograph to show people.

  But I wasn’t wearing a badge.

  *

  I tried to think where I would go if I were in Darryl King’s shoes and I’d just seen a swarm of police cars around my house. He was driving his aunt’s car, and if he had a brain in his head he’d have to assume they’d found out and broadcast the description and plate number. So every minute on the r
oad would be dangerous. He’d want to get away from the house, but off the road as soon as possible.

  This was all assuming, of course, that I believed him and that he didn’t drive up to Houghton Lake. Which would mean he was set up, and that raised a whole new set of questions.

  But one thing at a time.

  I started out at the end of the street. It was long and straight, so you’d be able to see the police cars from a few blocks away. Arguably a misplay by my alma mater officers, but I wasn’t about to fault them for it. He was right here at this corner, I thought, starting down on Wabash. He’s about to turn, he sees the cops, he panics, he keeps driving.

  Why did he panic, by the way? If he’s just coming back from a night driving around looking for company, why not just come home and face the music?

  Because he’s been out of the joint for less than twenty-four hours. He knows he’s not supposed to be out unaccounted for, well after dark, and on top of that driving without a license. He sees himself sitting in front of the parole officer’s desk, sees himself getting taken right back to prison. True or not, it’s an understandable reaction on the spur of the moment.

  Okay, so assume he’s coming north, coming from downtown and everything that downtown has to offer. He bails out, he keeps going north to MLK. Does he turn? No, not if he has any sense. He stays off the main road, works over to where, Rosa Parks? Grand River?

  This is hopeless, I thought. If you gave me one city in the country to hide out in, this would be the one. Too much area, not enough cops. A thousand streets. So many abandoned buildings.

  “The pay phone,” I said out loud to myself. “Look for the pay phone, then go from there.”

  I thought back to the conversation with Darryl King, tried to remember if I had heard any kind of specific noise in the background. It would have been much more considerate of the man to call from a bowling alley, say, because then I would have heard the rattling of the pins and I’d be heading over to the old Garden Bowl on Woodward. But no, I couldn’t remember anything that distinctive, so every bar, restaurant, liquor store, or anywhere that might still have an old pay phone hanging on the wall was fair game.

  I started with the first bar I could find, up by Adams Field, where all of the sports teams from Wayne State came up to play. There was a pay phone by the front door, so I went to the bartender and pulled out the photograph. Here’s where that old badge of mine would have come in real handy, because a random white guy off the street is not automatically going to get every ounce of cooperation. I’d find that out as I left the bar empty-handed, then went down Warren Avenue and hit the pizza place and the next bar and then the next restaurant, and so on. If I found a pay phone, I asked whoever was working there if they had seen a man looking like the man in the photograph. I’d get a little resistance, or a lot of resistance. Or occasionally I’d be stonewalled completely. “If you’re not a cop, then why do I have to say anything to you?” I was asked some variation of that question a few times, and I never had a good answer. Because I’m looking for him. Because I’m a human being and you’re a human being and we don’t have to play this game.