Let It Burn

by Steve Hamilton

  In the end, it didn’t matter. With or without cooperation, I didn’t find anyone who had seen Darryl King that night.

  After a few hours of this, I called Mrs. King to let her know I had come up empty. I promised her I’d try again the next day.

  “You must have been thinking about this,” I said. “Is there anywhere in this city where you think he might have gone? Somewhere he’d know he was safe?”

  “He hasn’t lived in this city for a long time,” she said. “Everything he once knew is gone now.”

  “Oh, one more thing,” I said. “I almost forgot. There was a green minivan parked at the end of the street today. Do you know who that might have been?”

  “No, I don’t know nobody with a green minivan.”

  “Just keep an eye out. Let me know if you see it around.”

  “Okay, if you say so…”

  One more thing for her to worry about. I was sorry I brought it up.

  “Good night,” I said. “Try to get some sleep.”

  Then I drove over to my favorite little cheap motel on Michigan Avenue.

  *

  “Hold on to something, Leon, because this is going to be the craziest thing you’ve ever heard.”

  That was my first line when Leon picked up the phone. I was sitting in that same motel room, not just the same motel across from the Tiger Stadium site, but the very same room I had stayed in the last time I spent the night in Detroit. The night air was cooler now, but it didn’t feel like fall yet. Not like back home in Paradise.

  When I told him who had hired me that day, and why, he took a moment to process it.

  “Okay, so you’re following your gut,” Leon finally said. “Like you always do. I wish I was down there to help you.”

  “Yeah, well, consider us both hired. Remind me to give you your half of the retainer.”

  “She actually hired you to find her son.”

  “Her son who, on paper, wants to kill me, yes.”

  “But then you talked to him, you said. Did you believe what he told you?”

  “If I’m really following my gut, like you say, then yes. I believed him.”

  “For what it’s worth, I talked to Vinnie and Jackie today. Neither of them have seen a stranger around.”

  “See, that’s the part that never added up,” I said. “If he was going to take his revenge on both of us, he should have come right up to my place after he killed the detective. It’s only three more hours.”

  “Maybe you just missed him. Or maybe he was only going after the detective who put him away. It would have been easy to find him, you realize that. With the Internet, you can find anybody. And he had years to do it.”

  “Maybe,” I said. “Or maybe the detective was killed for another reason entirely. Maybe having Darryl King around for a likely scapegoat was just a happy accident.”

  “If it was someone else, you mean.”

  “Someone who had reason to believe that Arnie Bateman might be on his trail now.”

  “You’ve got to be careful, Alex. Whether it’s Darryl or somebody else … He’s obviously capable of anything at this point.”

  “I always wondered if following my gut would get me killed one day.”

  He took a moment to think that one over.

  “Tell me again why you’re doing this, Alex. Instead of just coming home.”

  “Because I was there at the beginning,” I said. “I helped put all of this in motion. I just want to understand what really happened. Besides, I really, really like Mrs. King.”

  He gave me a little laugh on that one. I thanked him and ended the call. I knew I should try to sleep a few hours. I’d been running on reserve power for way too long.

  As I lay there, listening to the traffic rumbling by on Michigan Avenue, I took out the photograph of Darryl King and looked at it one more time.

  “I still have no idea what’s going on here,” I said to that face, “but I do know one thing. Wherever you are, no matter what you really did or didn’t do … I’m going to find you.”

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  Detective Gruley called me the next morning. He wanted to follow up with me on just what I might have been doing at the home of Darryl King, a fugitive currently unaccounted for, and also the lead suspect in the murder of Arnie Bateman.

  “I’m sorry,” I told him. “My services have been retained by Mrs. King, so by law I am not allowed to divulge any information.”

  He expressed a colorful opinion or two on that subject. I promised him I’d call him back as soon as I was in a position to talk more freely.

  After another colorful opinion, I ended the call and drove to my client’s house. I didn’t think I’d want to do much more driving around the city, looking for her son. In the light of day that seemed like a waste of time. But I was wondering if he’d contacted her again. Getting him back on the phone, trying to break through and get some answers … That seemed like my best shot.

  I pulled up in front of the house. I sat there in my truck for a moment, looking down Ash Street. There was no green minivan parked on the other side of the gate. In its place was another vehicle altogether, a cream-colored SUV of some sort. I wasn’t that interested in the exact make and model. I was more interested in the lens flash I was once again picking up through the windshield. Somebody obviously didn’t realize that you can pick up a pair of binoculars from several blocks way, especially in bright sunlight. But now the question was, what was I going to do about it?

  I knew that rusted old gate was locked, and that I’d never be able to get through it before he got clean away. I also knew that if I tried to circle around to MLK Boulevard and the entrance to the apartment complex, he’d still have plenty of time to escape.

  I could disguise the fact that I was trying to catch him, but I couldn’t do that if I pulled away right now. I just got here. Cranking the truck around in a U-turn would spook him, and he’d be taking off himself in two seconds.

  If I waited, I’d have a better chance. But then I’d have to wait—and hope that he was still parked there when I came back out.

  Which left one option.

  I got out of the truck. I didn’t look down the street. I went right to the front door of the house and knocked. Mrs. King opened the door, and I went inside.

  “Good morning,” she said, looking tired and despondent. I was already moving past her.

  “Pardon me,” I said. “I need to use your back door.”

  “What’s going on, Alex?”

  “Just me doing something stupid. As always.”

  I went through the kitchen and out the back door. There were two steps down to the backyard, which ran through the weeds to the far edge of the property. I looked to my left and didn’t see a line of sight to the parked car. So he probably didn’t see me coming out the back. So far so good.

  Where the yard had once been neatly mowed, now it was just an unbroken expanse of knee-high weeds, going back to the property line and into the empty lots behind it. I made my way through and eventually hooked a left, fighting my way over some fencing that had fallen down and now was almost completely grown over.

  There were six or seven more lots to get through. In one I could see the old foundation of a house that had once stood a couple of doors down from Mrs. King. I saw the remains of a pile of charred wood, now almost completely reclaimed by the earth. The weeds grew taller and thicker as I got closer to the fence that marked the end of the street and the beginning of the parking lot. I had already scraped myself against the thorns of a dozen plants, but now I was faced with the final challenge—how to get through the last thick barrier of foliage on this side of the fence, without going down toward the street, where I’d surely be seen.

  I walked a few yards deeper into the field, thinking it might be slightly easier to get to the fence if I got closer to the apartment building. There were abandoned tires and cinder blocks that I wouldn’t see until I was just about to break my ankles on them, but I kept making my slow p
rogress until finally I could see the fence.

  I put my head down and pushed myself through the thicket. I felt a hundred pinpricks from the wild raspberry plants. I tried to keep them off of my face, at the very least, but I knew I was destined to donate a pint of blood or two. I thrashed my way to the fence and grabbed it and finally hauled myself over.

  When I got to my feet, I was pulling thorns out of my arms and looking down the fence line to where the SUV was still standing. Thank God, because to go through that and see that it was all for nothing would have been too much to bear.

  Of course, now I had an even bigger problem. I was about to go roust someone I knew nothing about. Someone who could be armed. Someone who could quite possibly be the same person who killed Detective Bateman in cold blood. Someone who could quite possibly be the serial killer who killed all of those women. And here I was, unarmed and scratched all to hell. My only defense would be bleeding on him.

  Something I could have thought about before that moment, of course, but what else was new? I made my way to the SUV, trying to stay low and out of sight. There were a few other vehicles to hide behind on this far side of the lot, so I made my way from one to the other. I was trying to see through the side windows of the SUV, but from this angle I was getting too much glare off the glass.

  There was only one thing left to do at that point. I had to commit.

  I stepped out from the last vehicle in the line and walked right to the driver’s side door. No hesitation, but no rush either. I went right to the door and grabbed the handle. I pulled. It was unlocked. The door swung open.

  I was already reaching inside for the driver’s neck. My surprise was that there were actually two men in the front seat of the car. Their surprise was even bigger, as the man in the passenger’s seat dropped the binoculars and they both looked up at me with wide eyes.

  “Out,” I said, pulling the driver from the vehicle. He was a big man, and I was already getting ready for a fight. But when I finally got a good look at his face, I stopped myself.

  He looked familiar.

  “Who are you?” I said, holding on tight to the front of his shirt. My right hand was ready to hit him if I had to. If they had guns, I was already dead, of course. The second man could have dropped me at any moment.

  “Who are you?” the man said, trying to get free. “Let go of me.”

  That’s when I finally recognized him. His hair was streaked with gray now. He wore glasses, and he had put on the inevitable few extra pounds. Otherwise he had aged well.

  “Mr. Paige? Tanner Paige?”

  “How do you know who I am?”

  “I’m Alex McKnight,” I said, letting go of him. “I was one of the officers who worked on your wife’s case.”

  “I’ll be damned,” he said. “It is you. What are you doing here?”

  “I was going to ask you the same thing.”

  The other man opened his door and got out. When he came around the vehicle, I had to take an extra beat to figure out who he was. He hadn’t aged nearly as well. His face had filled in more, and he was sporting the signature red nose of a man who’s spent a few too many hours on a bar stool. But then it came to me.

  “Mr. Grayson,” I said. “Ryan Grayson.”

  “I remember you,” he said, then he looked down at my arms. “You’re all scratched to hell.”

  I tried to wipe away some of the blood but only succeeded in smearing it through the hairs on my forearms.

  “Not a bright move on my part,” I said. “I just wanted to see who was watching the house.”

  “Here,” Paige said, reaching into the car and bringing out a wad of fast-food napkins. I took them and started dabbing at the worst of my cuts.

  “I assume you guys were here yesterday?” I said. “In the green minivan?”

  “That was mine,” Grayson said. “We figured it would be a good idea to switch vehicles today. Obviously, that didn’t work so well.”

  “It’s not exactly something we’re in the habit of doing,” Paige said. “Either of us.”

  “Are you guys going to tell me why you’re here,” I said, “watching that house?”

  “We know who lives there,” Grayson said. “We know it’s only a matter of time until he shows up.”

  “And then what?” I said.

  The two men looked at each other.

  “Listen,” Paige said. “Can we go somewhere and talk about this?”

  “Sure,” I said, “but I should tell you one thing right now. You remember Detective Bateman?”

  “Of course,” Grayson said. “We both just talked to him this week.”

  “He was murdered yesterday morning,” I said. “The cops are looking for Darryl King.”

  I waited for them to absorb that.

  “That would explain all the squad cars yesterday,” Paige said.

  “We figured he did something,” Grayson said. “But we had no idea…”

  “I’ll tell you something else,” I said. Then I stopped myself. “Actually, is there someplace we can go and sit down? This is going to take a little explanation.”

  *

  They put me in the backseat of the SUV and drove me to a little corner bar on Grand River. There was an abandoned industrial building next door to the bar, and vacant lots on the other three corners. Ryan Grayson’s green minivan was parked in the lot. There were only three other cars there. Tanner Paige suggested that we go inside for a drink, and I could see Ryan Grayson looking around at the neighborhood and getting ready to object. In the end we went inside and sat down at a table. There were the usual accoutrements for a bar in Detroit, with the Tigers schedule on the wall and all of the other posters for the Red Wings, Pistons, and Lions. As well as both the Michigan Wolverines and Michigan State Spartans, just to be fair to both sides. I excused myself for a minute and went into the bathroom to wash off my arms. When I came back to the table, I didn’t look so much like a human pincushion anymore. Someone had ordered three beers.

  “I was sorry to hear about your parents,” I said to Ryan Grayson. “The detective told me they both passed on a while back.”

  “They never really recovered from that day,” he said. “Either of them.”

  “I also have to say I’m a little surprised seeing the two of you working together,” I said. “I didn’t think you guys got along all that well.”

  “The blame for that is all on me,” Grayson said. “I had a lot of anger, and I didn’t know where to direct it. I always regret not being a better brother-in-law.”

  “It’s all good now,” Paige said, waving it away. “We were all hurting.”

  “So all these years later,” I said, “what in God’s name are you two doing watching that house? Surely you weren’t thinking of doing something that would get you both thrown in prison yourselves.”

  They both looked at each other.

  “You have to understand something,” Grayson said. “It’s not like we’ve both been sitting around every day, thinking about some lowlife who killed my sister. You have to move on. Obviously. Or you’ll go insane. But when we got the call … When we found out that he would be getting out of prison…”

  He looked down at his beer.

  “It’s amazing how it can all come back. All at once. One minute you’re not thinking about it, and then bam! Guess what, the man who did this thing will be out walking around by the end of the week.”

  “So what were you going to do?” I said. “You weren’t spending all that time watching for him just so you could see him in your binoculars, a block away.”

  They looked at each other again.

  “Honestly,” Paige said, “I don’t think we really—”

  “We were going to follow him,” Grayson said. “At least that was my idea. Follow him and wait for him to go into a bar or something. Someplace like this…”

  He looked over at the empty corner of the bar, like he was imagining Darryl King sitting there at that very moment.

  “Then, when
he got up to go use the bathroom, I just had this little fantasy, I guess you’d call it. That we’d follow him in there. Lock the door. Wait for him to realize who we were. Then we’d just start beating the hell out of him. Just grab him by the hair and…”

  He held his hand up to demonstrate, making a claw where he was clutching the hair on the back of the imaginary Darryl King’s head.

  “And just start beating his face against the edge of the sink. Over and over again. Just…”

  He stopped abruptly and wiped at his eyes.

  “I’m sorry,” he said. “I know I sound a little crazy.”

  “It’s okay,” Paige said, grabbing his arm. “I get the same thoughts, all the time.”

  “Mr. McKnight,” Grayson said, looking up at me, “I was her brother. Older than me or not, it doesn’t matter. She was my sister and I was supposed to protect her. You understand what I’m saying?”

  “Yes,” I said. “I understand, but there’s no way you could have—”

  “That was my job. To protect her. If my father were still alive, you could ask him, because he’s the one who told me. Until you get married and have a family of your own, being a good brother is the most important job in the world.”

  “It was my job, too,” Paige said. “Being a good husband, I mean.”