Tunnel of Night (2 page)

I ran my hand down his back, from his neck to the base of his tail. “Pity your jungle friends, Max. They’re capable of many things, but they can’t purr. Has to do with the arrangement of cartilage in the throat. Of course, they can roar, and you can’t. Maybe it all evens out.”

He opened one eye, yawned, then went back to sleep.

Because I had been somewhat out of touch, Lane assumed that I had shut myself away, struggling with a
bout of depression akin to what had nailed me just before I sold my practice and headed for the Michigan woods several years ago. She was just being a dear, over-protective worrywart, although I must admit to a twinge of guilt—this time I had not been struggling with anything but road maps. Janet, my friend from across the lake, and I had sneaked away to Vancouver, British Columbia, where Blues Traveler was playing in concert. Actually, I should amend that. We did not sneak, we simply did not tell anyone, including my daughter, what we were doing.

In truth, I had not lingered on the Wolf matter. After my six weeks of emotional recuperation, I pronounced myself sane, then promptly continued with the important things in life: fishing, good music, a new book by Harry Crews.

Most detectives go through an entire career without encountering a serial murderer. Lane had already dealt with one—John Wolf, who had killed dozens in a career spanning two decades—and more than a hundred had haunted me. I certainly could listen to my daughter, but I did not know how much help I could offer her.

I walked toward my bedroom at the back of the house. Lane was usually prompt, so I had perhaps an hour to get out of my fishy jeans, grab a quick shower and some clean jeans, and just generally make myself more presentable. I nipped a final time at the ale, then hit the switch on the perimeter security system. Chuck Logan was due to deliver two cords of firewood, and I didn’t want him or Lane to pull up the drive and be greeted by screaming sirens.

I had installed the alarm system as soon as I moved to the lake. Back then, I was still feeling vulnerable to
the outside world, surrounded by the ghosts and other incarnations of the monsters that I had wrestled over the years. I wanted,
needed,
an absolutely secure retreat.

I had also stocked the log house with a small arsenal of rifles, revolvers, and semiautomatic pistols. But security had never been a problem. I doubted that I needed any of the hardware anymore.

Everything seemed to be under control when I hit the shower. A bit blurry perhaps, but under control, with the promise of a pleasant visit ahead.

As the water splashed onto my face, my head began to clear. Muscle aches that I had been nursing since the day before responded to the warm spray. I had begun splitting my winter’s firewood—a task that tests my ability to tolerate ambivalence. I always have to force myself to go out to the stump in the wood lot, but once I start wielding the twelve-pound splitting hammer, I hit a rhythm, develop a momentum, feel as if I’m thirty again. It’s when I have to break out the Ben-Gay the next day that I know I am not.

I toweled off, then pulled on my jeans. I was rubbing the towel through my hair as I walked toward the sliding-glass door and stepped out onto the patio. The surface of the lake was dead calm. No boats. Not even a fish rising. Typical for an autumn day.

A sliver of light off to the right caught my eye. When I saw the source of that light, recognized it, I froze—the towel still in my hand, my arm still extended upward. I watched as a man standing a hundred yards away in my field casually lowered a rifle into firing position, then aimed in my direction.

I twisted back to my left, catching a glimpse of the muzzle flash as I threw myself to the ground. The sonofabitch was shooting at me.

A burning pain told me that the slug had slapped the right side of my head. I heard the report of the first shot as the second bullet sliced across my side.

This was no hunter mistaking me for his quarry. He was trying to kill me.

I slammed against the ground as a third shot carved a crease in the gray slate patio.

I pushed against the ground, believing that I could get up, run into the house, grab a weapon, and return fire. But I couldn’t move.

My world faded rapidly. I shivered with cold. Blood pooled everywhere, but even that was fading, as if the color red were disappearing.

I could make no sense of the crazy thoughts cascading through my head.

Max came out to watch the gouge in the slate fill with blood. I remember that I wondered how long death would take.

Then everything went black.

THE TRIP FROM NEW YORK CITY TO LAKE ALBERT
, Michigan, can be made in less than a day if you drive straight through. But I didn’t want to pull up at Pop’s place looking or feeling like a zombie, so I decided to drive only as far as Toledo on Friday. Toledo is an hour from Detroit; Lake Albert is two hours north of there. I figured that if I was behind the wheel by nine, I would be right on time for lunch. And lunch would be a piece of work, since Pop fancies himself the Galloping Gourmet.

In Toledo I stayed at the Mansion View on Collingwood Boulevard—a Victorian bed and breakfast just off the interstate, on the edge of the city’s business district. It reminded me of the house in Boston where I lived when I was a little girl, back when my mom, Savvy, was still around. Lots of woodwork, sunlight filtering through antique curtains, fireplaces. Maybe a ghost or two.

I remember an autumn afternoon when someone rang the bell at that house on Beacon Hill, and Savvy went to open the door. I padded along behind her, eager
to see who had come to visit. It wasn’t anybody we knew—just a guy selling something. He looked at Savvy, then at me, and asked if the lady of the house was in. He had assumed that Savvy was the maid or the baby-sitter.

I didn’t know then about black and white. I may have noticed that my father’s skin was light, and that my mother’s was more like the darkest chocolate, but I had not yet translated that information into anything racial. The first time I heard the word “biracial” applied to me, it was at school, not at home, and I wasn’t sure what it meant. I did not think of myself as white or black—just closer in color to my father than to my mother. I didn’t figure out until much later that apparently it mattered what color a person was.

That day when the salesman came to our door asking for the lady of the house, I didn’t realize that he had insulted my mother—so it made no sense to me when she slammed the door in his face. I felt embarrassed by her behavior, and I wondered why she seemed so angry afterward. Pop never acted that way, so I decided that he must be a nicer person than Savvy was.

We were living in that house when I discovered that life with Pop was dictated by his moods, which zigzagged like the needle on a polygraph machine. I never knew from one day to the next which end of the spectrum he would be on. Most days when I came home from school, I would charge into Pop’s office. He stopped whatever he was doing and wanted to hear all about my day. Usually, we drifted out to the kitchen and he fixed snacks.

Whenever Ray Bolton—a Boston homicide detective, Pop’s best friend, and my godfather—was around,
the two men might be deep in conversation about a murder, but I knew that I could walk in on them anyway. Ray and Pop would sweep away any crime-scene photos, close their file folders, and the three of us might talk, play Parcheesi, or, as a special treat in the summer, head for the bleachers at Fenway Park to catch a Red Sox game.

There were other times, though, when Pop stormed into the house, said nothing, and locked himself in his office. Within seconds, he had music playing loud enough to shake the pictures on the walls, and I would usually not see him again until dinner (which was always the same on those occasions: grilled cheese sandwiches and split pea soup—obviously a dire sign). If he spoke at all, he might say something like, “Lanie, I really don’t care for people.”

Pop never explained, but sometimes Ray did. “Your dad was in court. Judges do moronic things sometimes. Wearing a black robe doesn’t make you God, but some judges can’t seem to keep that straight. Your dad is an idealist. He can’t tolerate stupidity in anyone ever. I think he’d be much happier living in the woods and talking to chipmunks.”

Sounded good to me.

When I went into police work, I thought that Pop and I would grow closer—that he would be more open, more accessible. I assumed that the same thing driving me was what had driven him all those years: a need to see killers arrested and brought to trial. Get them off the street and plug them into the system.

I quickly learned how different my father’s view of the world is. Pop does not feel bound by any rules, and his definition of justice does not involve the criminal justice system. The brilliance that allowed him to
look into the minds of killers with such terrifying clarity also shaped the man and his view of the world. Indeed, such unprotected intimacy with the depths of violence that can lurk in men fostered an attitude free of self-quibbling. You create your own justice. Simple. But since Pop retreated into the great north woods to camp with the chipmunks and the fish and the birds and the trees, but no killers, he has mellowed out. I think.

All these things were on my mind that Saturday morning as I drove toward Lake Albert. Getting out of New York had gotten to be more than just a good idea; it was mandatory. I’ve never handled stress well, and I could feel it building to record levels. I had to get away, and I had to see my father. I felt that he had been avoiding me ever since Vermont, and I knew it would just get worse if we didn’t talk about it.

I was about a half hour past Detroit when I saw the red strobe light in my rearview mirror. Since I wasn’t speeding, I decided that they were not after me. Then the Michigan State Police vehicle pulled alongside mine and the trooper motioned for me to pull over.

I pulled off on the shoulder of the road and rolled down my window. The trooper walking toward me looked to be in his early twenties, with a face full of freckles.

“What’s the problem, Officer?” I asked.

“Is your name Lane Frank?”

Something was wrong. Nobody except Pop and my boss, Captain Hanson, knew that I would be traveling that stretch of road that day. My cop-mode immediately kicked into high gear.

I flashed my shield, climbed out of my car, and stared down at the cop’s sunglasses. “Trooper, I’m a homicide detective. Who notified you? What’s happened?”

“We were asked to intercept you,” he said, appearing unnerved by my height—a shade over six feet tall.

He pulled a paper from his pocket and read it before continuing. “Chief Semple wants you to come to City Hall, not to the house, when you arrive in Lake Albert.”

Buck Semple was the chief of police in Lake Albert. He and Pop had been friends for years.

“Buck? How’d he…”

“There’s been an accident.”

Oh, no. I’d been a cop long enough to know that “accident” can mean exactly that: a collision, or maybe a pratfall on broken pavement. But it’s just as likely to be a euphemism for death.

“Where’s my father?”

“I’m sorry. You’ll have to talk to Chief Semple about that.”

Oh, my God. I slipped back into my car, hit the accelerator, and merged back onto the road. I don’t know why I was in such a hurry to hear the bad news that I was sure was waiting for me, but I pushed the speedometer up to eighty-five and kept it there.

Why would Buck Semple send out an intercept order? It had to be bad. A heart attack? No. Pop’s heart was fine. Besides, the cop said “accident.” What could Pop do to himself splitting wood or fishing?

A drowning? No. Pop was a great swimmer, and he knew every inch of that lake.

I remembered a summer on the Cape when he taught me to swim. He was so patient—holding me in the water while I practiced the strokes he described, then letting me go, gradually, with me swallowing a little water, but exulting in the idea that I was doing it on my own.

Whatever had happened, I knew that I had to get to Lake Albert fast.

AS I PULLED INTO THE MUNICIPAL PARKING LOT
in front of the converted church that served as Lake Albert’s City Hall, Buck Semple stood at the curb waiting for me.

“He’s gonna be okay,” he said, his hands up, palms out, as if he expected me to come roaring out of the car at him.

“What happened?” I asked, surprised by how composed I sounded.

“He took a couple of superficial wounds from a hunting rifle. One creased his side, the other grazed his head. Local guy delivering cordwood found him. There was a lot of blood, but Doc Grissom says it looked worse than it was.”

“A shooting? What? Who shot him?”

“We don’t know that yet. That’s why I didn’t want you going out to the house. The shooter could still be prowling around out there.”

“Where’s Pop?”

“The county hospital.”

“How do I get there?” I was already turning back toward my car.

“I’ll drive,” Buck said. “It’ll probably take both of us to keep him from walking outta there. They’ve got him doped up, so he’s been drifting in and out of consciousness. He says he wants to go home.”