A Stolen Season (17 page)

“In your case, you lost her in a second. Like that.”

He snapped his fingers.

“For me,” he said, “it was nineteen months of watching my wife die. If I could, I wonder if I’d trade places with you.”

He picked up the remote again. He weighed it in his hand.

“Thank you for helping my son,” he said. “Please go now and do not come back here again. Mr. Stone will show you out.”

He hit a button and the soccer players came back to life. The ball was advancing to the other side of the field now. I didn’t get the chance to see if they scored. Mr. Stone ushered me back to the front door. He followed me outside to my truck. When I was about to get in, he took my gun out of his pocket and gave it to me. He held it dangling between two fingers, like you’d hold a dead rat.

I took it from him. He turned around and went back to the house without saying a word to me. I started the truck, turned around, and went back out the driveway. When I got back to the main intersection, I stopped. My hands were shaking.

Easy, Alex. Easy.

Okay, I can go left here. Or I can go right. Left or right. Which way do I go?

I wasn’t lost. I knew exactly how to get back to I-75, how to go back to the Upper Peninsula and everything that was waiting for me up there. But in that moment, sitting there in my truck in St. Clair Shores, waiting for my hands to stop shaking, I wasn’t sure if I wanted to go home.

I didn’t see the car pulling up behind me. When he honked his horn, I just about leaped out of my skin. I looked in the rearview mirror—it was a BMW convertible, some guy in sunglasses with both hands raised like I was the most helpless human being he ever had to wait behind. I was about to open the door and go after him, had my hand on the door handle in fact. I thought better of that idea, took the left turn, and headed down toward Detroit. I wasn’t sure what I would do there. I just couldn’t think of anywhere else to go.

I drove through the Grosse Pointes. It was funny how Jefferson Avenue meant one thing here, then all of a sudden you hit the Detroit city limit and the same street became something else entirely. It took me downtown, past Woodward Avenue, where I had been shot, where Franklin had died. How many years had that been the black hole in my life? I was free of it now. It was ancient history, utterly surpassed by this new thing.

I was so tired now. But I had to keep moving. I could feel the thing right behind me, waiting for me to slow down.

No. Not yet. Keep moving.

I drove by the old precinct house. I could walk in there now and not a soul would know me. The way I looked right now, they’d think I was a crazy person. An EDP, as they still probably call it. Emotionally disturbed person. Sure, you used to work here, they’d say to me. Sure, you were once a cop.

I almost stopped at a bar. From somewhere inside me a little voice told me that would be the worst possible thing to do right now. The exact opposite of “keep moving.” Besides, they wouldn’t have Canadian beer.

I could go to Windsor to get some. It was right across the river, just a few minutes away.

No, not that either. Not Canada.

I drove by Comerica Park, where the Tigers played now. Next to it was Ford Field, the new park for the Lions. For old time’s sake, I drove by the old Tiger Stadium. The great gray battleship. What next? My old high school? The house in Redford? From out of nowhere I remembered a day in my life, a million years ago when I was a sixteen-year-old sophomore playing on the varsity baseball team. My first game in the uniform. First at-bat, I walked. Second at-bat I nailed one over the center-field wall. It was a 3–0 count. I even remember that. I didn’t take the pitch. I always hated to take a pitch. I swung and I crushed it.

Why do I remember that right now? Why does it come back to me like it just happened? Everything about that day.

It was an away game. In Dearborn. I had to go see that ball field. Before I faced anything else, I had to go see where that day happened.

Dearborn is right next to Detroit. Home of the Ford Motor Company, where my father had put in so many years. I took Michigan Avenue to Telegraph. Took that north, over the Rouge River. Where was that ball field again? I needed to find it. I was afraid to stop and ask somebody. I was afraid they’d have no idea what I was talking about, or if it was an old-timer, that they’d tell me the field had been turned into something else a long, long time ago. No more center-field fence, just a parking lot or a row of houses or whatever the hell else.

When I got to Warren Avenue, I started to wonder if I’d gone too far. There had been a hardware store here when I was a kid. Tela-Warren Hardware, that was its name. All this stuff coming back to me today. Where was it coming from?

I was starting to see double. I almost sideswiped somebody and pulled over while two or three cars honked at me. There was a big salt dump here now, where the hardware store had been. A big building full of salt and sand for the trucks to spread on the road during the winter. It was a lonely place now, a place out of season. I stopped the truck in front of it. I’ll be no bother to anybody here, unless I’m still here in a few months when the snow starts falling.

I put my head back. I closed my eyes. After being in motion all day long, it felt strange to be still now. Who’d have thought this is where I’d end up? Next to a big pile of salt in Dearborn, Michigan.

I don’t want to sleep now. I just want to rest my eyes.

Just rest my eyes. Yes. That’s all…

The banging woke me up. I had no idea how long I’d been out, but it was dark outside now. How the hell did that happen? And who the hell—

Somebody was banging on my side window. A beam of light came stabbing into the truck, blinding me. A flashlight. I rolled down the window.

“Excuse me, Mr. McKnight?”

“What? How do you know my name?”

“I called in your plate, sir. They told me the Michigan State Police are looking for you.”

That didn’t sound good. Next he’ll say they need to speak to me, that I need to come with him, the whole routine. Not that I cared anymore.

“They’re very worried about you,” he said. “I understand you lost your, um…”

I finally looked up at his face. It was a local Dearborn cop. He looked like he was about fourteen years old.

“That you lost your companion, sir. I’m sorry to hear of your loss.”

Companion. An odd word. An odd thing to say to me. And yet it sounded about right. That’s what Natalie was. After a life of being lonely, she was my companion.

“Thank you,” I said. “I appreciate it.”

“If you’d like, I can find a place for you to stay tonight.”

“No, thanks. I should head home. What time is it?”

“It’s about nine thirty. Would you like me to call the state guys? Get you a ride back up there?”

“No. I’ll be all right.”

“Okay, then. Please drive carefully.”

“I will,” I said. “I will. Thank you.”

When he was gone, I pulled out onto Telegraph, heading north. The sleep had given me a little energy boost. I felt like I could make it all the way if I really wanted to.

I stopped for gas again. A million insects buzzed in the bright lights above my head as I filled up the tank. I got a big mug of coffee and hit the road.

I spent the next four hours driving. Straight up I-75. I had the vent open so the fresh air would hit me in the face. The air getting colder and colder as I drove.

By the time I hit the Mackinac Bridge, it felt like November again. Just a few hours on the road and I was back in the land with no summer. It was a stolen season.

My right headlight started to flicker. Finally, it went out. It must have been damaged when I ran Cap off the road. Hard to believe it was just this morning. Hard to believe, as it hit midnight, that the world had made one complete revolution since the thing happened.

The thing.

Another hour on the road until I hit Paradise. The last town on the edge of the earth, it felt like. Lights on in the Glasgow Inn. I kept going, turned onto my road. Drove up past Vinnie’s place. His truck there, the lights out. Past my cabin. Where the thing happened.

The thing. The thing.

I went to the second cabin, my new base of operations. My new home, if I had to have one. I went inside, turned the lights on. I put some wood in the stove. Then I finally took off my jacket, heard the rattle in my pocket. I put my hand in, pulled out the bottle of pills.

It took me a moment to remember how I’d gotten them. It was the day I went to the house in Hessel, back when I was stupid enough to think I could point a gun at those guys and scare them away. There had been two empty pill bottles on the kitchen counter, and this one, half full. The prescription was for a woman named Roseanne Felise. I was figuring Vinnie could take these, show them to Ms. Felise, and ask her why she sold them. That’s what I was thinking when I took them. But now…

I sat down at the table with the bottle in my hand. I opened it. I turned it over and watched the pills scatter out onto the table. I counted them. Twenty-three pills. Twenty-three perfect little Vicodins.

I thought back to what Mr. Gray had told me. About painkillers, about how some people need them and can’t get them. How much he was really motivated by that, I couldn’t say, but I did know one thing. When you really need them, these pills do the job. I knew that all too well.

A couple of these and I could close my eyes tonight. I could keep the thing away from me, not have to deal with it until the next day.

Unless I took a couple more of these tomorrow morning.

Or hell, if I took them all right now…I’d never have to deal with the thing at all.

I sat there for a long time, looking at the pills, making up my mind.

That’s when Vinnie came in the door. He didn’t knock. He came in and saw me sitting there looking at the pills on the table.

“What are those?” he said. One eye still swollen now, the other almost normal.

“Vinnie…”

“Alex, what are those pills?”

“Vinnie, she’s dead.”

He came over and tried to sweep the pills off the table. I grabbed his arm.

“Let me have them,” he said. He tried to hold me with one hand, going for the pills with the other. We were in a wrestling match now. I pulled at his shirt, got hold of his ponytail and tried to throw him to the ground. He put his shoulder into me and the whole table got turned over, the pills rolling off along the floor in every direction.

The thing was breaking through now. I couldn’t hold it off any longer.

“She’s dead, Vinnie. She’s dead. Do you hear me?”

“Yes,” he said, still holding on to me. “Yes.”

I had him by the collar now. I could have wrapped my hands around his neck and strangled him.

“Natalie is dead,” I said, my face just a few inches from his. “Somebody killed her.”

“I know, Alex. I know.”

I grabbed Vinnie’s shoulders. He put his hand behind my neck.

“Somebody killed her,” I said. The thing was all over me now, pouring through the broken ramparts. The rout was on.

“She’s dead, Vinnie. She’s dead.”

I slept. From complete and total physical exhaustion I fell into a deep sleep, with no dreams. Thank God for a night with no dreams, but the cold fact of what had happened was waiting for me when I woke up. I had to face it. I opened my eyes and saw that I was in a strange bed. The second cabin. Yes. Vinnie there on the couch, still asleep.

Through the window I could see the gray sky and the long needles of a white pine. I could hear Vinnie breathing, a light wind outside, a bird calling to another. I could hear the last piece of wood burning down in the stove.

Then a loud knock on the door. It startled me, and woke up Vinnie. He looked around, disoriented for a moment, then saw me. The bag of ice he had pressed to his face the night before was now a bag of water. There was another knock on the door.

I got out of bed, still in my clothes from the day before. I opened the door. I was expecting Jackie. Maybe Leon. Maybe the state police detective catching up with me again. Instead I saw the last person I ever would have expected at my door.

It was Chief Roy Maven.

“Chief,” I said. “What the hell.”

“Can I come in?”

I stood aside and let him in. He took off his hat.

“What are you doing here?” I said.

“Did the state police reach you yesterday?”

“No, I was gone most of the day. I got back late.”

“You know they were looking for you?”

“I’m sure they’ll find me sometime today. Why do you ask?”

“You didn’t hear the news, then. The Mounties found Natalie’s partner yesterday. He’d been dead for at least twenty-four hours.”

“What? Her partner’s dead, too? Don something.”

“Don Resnik. They believe he was killed a few hours before Natalie.”

I stood there holding on to the door.

“Umm,” Maven started to say. “I guess I don’t know what to say. I’m sorry about what happened.”

“Thank you. But how was Resnik killed? Was he shot?”

“Yes. Twice.”

“Do they think it was the same gun?”

“They don’t know that yet for sure. Maybe later today they will.”

“I don’t understand,” I said. Everything was starting to look different now. “I thought this was about me. I thought it was someone here in Michigan…Not from Canada.”

“They don’t know anything for sure yet.”

“Why did you come all the way out here? The state guys could have told me about Resnik.”

“I’m doing this as a personal favor to Staff Sergeant Moreland.”

“Moreland? Isn’t that Natalie’s commanding officer?”

“Yes. That’s him.”

“I don’t get it. Why would he want you to tell me about Natalie’s partner?”

“That’s not why I came here.”

“Then why?”

“I came here to take you to Canada. Please go get cleaned up.”

“
You’re
taking me to Canada?”

“Yes,” Maven said. “That’s what Moreland asked me to do. So come on, go take a shower, shave, put yourself together. It’s a long way to Sudbury.”

“Why are we going to Sudbury?”

“Because, McKnight—” He was about to lay into me, like I’d seen him do at least a dozen times in the past. Force of habit, I guess. But he stopped himself just in time. “Alex…we’re going to Sudbury because they’re going to have a service for Natalie there. Okay? Moreland asked me to bring you there.”

A service for Natalie. I had to let that one sink in for a while.

“Why Sudbury?” I finally said.

“There’ll be officers there from her old Hearst detachment. Some of the officers from Toronto. Some of the Mounties. Sudbury’s sort of right in the middle.”

“Can Vinnie come, too?”

“No, I don’t think so,” he said. He gave Vinnie a look, then did a double take when he saw the state of Vinnie’s face. “Did you get in another fight or something?”

“Who, me?” Vinnie said. “Why do you say that?”

“I probably don’t want to know. Anyway, I’m sorry, I think he just wants you there for the service…Then he wants to speak to you for a while afterward.”

“It’s okay,” Vinnie said. “You go for both of us.”

“My suit,” I said. “It’s in my cabin.” It was the last place I wanted to be, even for a second.

“I’ll get it,” Vinnie said. “You go get cleaned up. You haven’t shaved in two days.”

Thirty minutes later, I was wearing my only suit, my neck scraped raw by a dull razor. I was sitting in the passenger’s seat of Chief Roy Maven’s unmarked squad car. He was barreling down M-28 at a speed that would have made even me look like the minister’s mother on her way to the euchre club. He hadn’t said another word to me since we left Paradise.

“What, is it about two hundred miles to Sudbury?” I said.

“Not quite that.”

“When did Moreland call you?”

“Yesterday.”

I knew that Maven and Moreland had talked to each other in the past. They had already bonded over the one thing they had in common—a certain man from Paradise who kept showing up in the general vicinity of trouble. I wasn’t sure that Moreland had ever stopped blaming me for at least some of it. With Maven, I didn’t have to wonder.

“What else did he say?” I asked.

“He didn’t say much else to me. I think he’s saving that for you.”

Maven came up behind a camper, pulled into the left lane, and left it in the dust. He hit I-75, took that north to the International Bridge. When we got to Canadian customs, things got a little interesting. The woman in the booth wasn’t accustomed to police officers from the States telling her why she could save her questions. Eventually, Maven had to step out of the car, go into the little shack to speak to someone else in charge. When he got back behind the wheel, he was ready to tear someone’s head off.

“Moreland left specific goddamned instructions to let us through without delay,” he said as he gunned it back to full speed. “How the hell that could be so hard to understand is beyond me.”

He looked at his watch as he hit the traffic in Soo, Ontario. He swore at a few drivers before he finally turned his flashers on. It’s funny how an unmarked car suddenly makes you pay attention when the headlights and all the hidden auxiliary lights start dancing back and forth.

“Technically not kosher for me to do this in Canada,” he said, “but I’d like to see them try to stop me.”

I would have felt sorry for anyone who did. Soon we were out of the city and on the King’s Highway, heading due east. We passed through the Garden River First Nation. I had come to a healing ceremony here with Vinnie, once upon a time. We drove through Bruce Mines and Thessalon, and as we got closer to Blind River I could feel the lump in my throat. This was the way to Natalie’s house, the way I had driven so many times, back and forth. When the relationship was young and we were both feeling our way through it. God damn, all the hours on this very road, looking forward to seeing her again. Coming home happy. Or coming home wondering if this thing would ever work out.

We passed the turnoff for McKnight Road. It had always felt like a lucky charm to me, seeing that sign. If Maven noticed the name, he didn’t say anything.

Through Iron Bridge, over the Mississagi River. This was getting harder for me. I wanted to close my eyes and not see these places again.

Finally, we drove through Blind River. The house was a mile east of town.

“You all right?” he said. It must have been pretty obvious.

“This was her town.”

“I’m sorry. There’s no other way to get there.”

“I know. It’s all right.”

I couldn’t help watching for her driveway, looking through the trees, just to see the house one more time. When we were past it, I looked out the window in the opposite direction. I watched the North Channel rolling by us, the green water under the dull gray sky.

Algoma Mills, Serpent River, Cutler, Sheddon Township, Walford, Victoria. A string of small Canadian towns, with miles and miles of empty road between them. The trees got heavier as we left the water and headed toward Sudbury. We’d been on the road almost four hours now, with Maven driving like a speed demon. Finally, we could see the Superstack rising high above the horizon, which could only mean that Sudbury was just ahead.

We started to see the nickel mines, the desolate piles of white ore that made the place look like something on the face of the moon. As we got closer, the Superstack loomed over a thousand feet above us, this giant chimney that fed the sulfur gases to the winds. There was supposedly a lot of environmental reclamation going on around here, a lot of great places to live now, especially around Lake Ramsey, but I was in no mood to forgive the place today. It just seemed like the strangest place in the world to say goodbye to Natalie.

“You realize she’s not going to be here,” Maven said, as if he were reading my mind. “I mean to say…with the investigation still underway…”

“Her body, you mean.”

“Yes.”

“Then why are they doing this today?”

“Well, they’re not exactly sure when they’ll be able to put her to rest. With an open case like this, not to mention having two different countries involved…it could take weeks. So they decided to go ahead and have the service.”

“I understand.”

“They’re going to take her back to Hearst, eventually. They’ll bury her there.”

“Okay.”

“Like I said, though…Sudbury’s the one place everybody can get to today.”

“Why are you doing this?” I said.

“I told you. Moreland asked me.”

“No matter what he said, you could have said no. I could have come up here by myself.”

“He seemed to think that would be a bad idea. He wanted me with you.”

It still wasn’t adding up for me, but I let it go. I kept my mouth shut while Maven drove through town, looking for wherever we were supposed to be. He was about ready to blow a gasket for the second time that day when we finally found it. It was a funeral chapel on the east side of town, just past the rail yards.

A funeral chapel. Where they had funerals, although this one would be with no coffin. Yet one more thing to hit me between the eyes, just when I felt like I might be on top of things. From one second to the next, I wasn’t sure I could do this. I wasn’t sure that I could even get out of the car and walk into this place.

There were dozens of police vehicles parked outside, from both the Ontario Provincial Police and the Royal Canadian Mounted. Maven parked the car. We got out.

“Are you ready?” Maven said to me.

“No.”

“Would you like to stay out here for a moment, get some air?”

“Yes, one minute.”

I turned away. I walked to the far side of the lot, stood there looking out past a row of houses at the trains in the yard. Nothing was moving.

Okay, I told myself. Go do this. Do it for Natalie.

I went back to Maven, gave him a nod. Nothing else. He went to the front door and opened it for me.

When we stepped inside, I saw fifty, maybe sixty uniforms. Mostly men, a few women. They were all in full dress, the OPP in their blues, the Mounties in their reds. Shoes shined bright, white gloves. Some of them were wearing their Stetsons, others held them in their hands. I couldn’t see one other person who wasn’t wearing a uniform. Me in my black suit that should have taken a trip to the dry cleaner’s before I put it on…I wouldn’t have felt more out of place if I had been wearing a pink tutu.

Somewhere you’re sharing in the joke, Natalie. Somewhere you’re laughing. That’s the thought I held on to, the only thing that got me through that first five minutes.

I saw Staff Sergeant Moreland across the room. He was a tall man with a full head of white hair. He could pass for a kindly old grandfather until he decided he was unhappy with you. I knew that all too well.

He gave me a long look, then a nod. He saved the grim smile for Maven.

We had to stand around like that for a few more minutes. I could feel the mood of the room changing, as everybody became aware of my presence. Things got quieter. Finally, people started to sit down in the pews. Maven and I sat alone in the last row.

That’s when I saw her picture. It was sitting on a table, with a blue flag folded up next to it. Next to that was her hat, and next to that was a black velvet pillow with what looked like medals resting on top of it.

There were roses, lilies, a big bouquet of what looked like wildflowers. Either somebody knew that she loved wildflowers, or it was just a lucky guess.

A clergyman stepped up to the podium. Finally, another man in a dark suit. He said some words about Natalie Reynaud. About duty and honor and serving her country. It was obvious he had never met her. The words could have been about anyone.

Then Sergeant Moreland went up to the podium, walking as slowly as any man could. He started out talking about Natalie growing up in Blind River, how she came to his detachment when she was only twenty-three years old. He had to stop then. He closed his eyes and breathed out hard. He swayed so far that three of the men in the front row got to their feet, as if they’d need to catch him. Moreland fought through it, told everyone what a great officer Natalie was, what a great person. How she was like the daughter he never had. That seemed to shut him down again. I was sitting there in the last row, feeling the burning in my stomach.

“We have a man here named Alex McKnight,” he said, regaining some of his composure. “He’s the man in the suit. In the back row. He was closer to Natalie than anybody else, so I hope you’ll take a moment to give him your best wishes. Thank you.”

The clergyman got back up and asked if anyone else would like to say anything. None of the other officers stood up. They probably didn’t want to follow Moreland. Or maybe, in the end, none of them had really gotten to know her well enough. The only partner she had for more than a few months was a Senior Constable named Claude DeMers. And he was dead.

I asked myself if I wanted to stand up, if there was anything I could tell these people. I decided that I couldn’t. Whether that made me a weak person, or a wise person, I’ll never know for sure.

When the service was over, everyone stood up and filed slowly past the table. Maven and I waited until the room was almost empty, then we stood up for our turn. I took a long look at the picture. Natalie in her blue uniform, hair pinned up, wearing her Stetson. Her expression all business. I couldn’t help but smile at it. The one smile I would manage all day.