Misery Bay (17 page)

“I don’t have any kids, but if I did … that would be the worst thing you could do to me.”

“Maybe.” He cocked his head back like he was thinking of what could be worse.

“It would be right up there,” I said. “Believing your own flesh and blood doesn’t want to live anymore.”

“Okay,” Agent Fleury said, “so if I buy that, and if Chief Maven is somewhere on that same list…”

He turned his attention back to the chief. I had a bad feeling about what might come next.

“What do you say, Chief? Do you have any kids?”

“I have one daughter,” he said, his voice going robot-flat again, drained of all color and emotion as it had been in the interview room.

“One daughter,” Fleury said. “Okay, then. So you better give her a call, huh? Tell her to stay away from open windows.”

It was several days in the brewing, but that finally did it. Maven came out of his chair, faster than I’d ever seen him move. Faster probably than anything he’d done in twenty years. He was already around the table by the time I could get to my feet. He grabbed Agent Fleury by the collar and pulled him close. With his face one inch away he said something that I couldn’t hear. I caught up to him and pulled him away, and as I did I could see the fear written clear on Fleury’s face.

“You’re out of control, Maven!” The fear was gone as quickly as it came. He was upset now. Upset and embarrassed and I knew this was something that wouldn’t go away quietly. “It was just a stupid joke, you idiot. I could throw you right in jail, you know that?”

“I’d like to see you try,” Maven said.

“What the hell is wrong with you people up here?”

“Hey,” I said. “Just knock it off, all right?”

“I just make one stupid little crack and you turn into a maniac?”

One stupid little crack, I thought. Pretty standard cop humor, actually. I’d heard a lot worse, but Fleury picked the wrong man on the wrong day.

“Everybody cool down,” I said. “Okay? Can we all just relax?”

Maven shook free from me and straightened his shirt. “If you ever say another word about my daughter, I swear to God…”

“You swear to God what? What will you do?”

“Knock it off,” Agent Long said. She stood in front of him and pushed him backward. She was strong, I had to give her that much.

Fleury was about to say something, but thought better of it and turned away.

“Who did you guys talk to at the state police post?” Agent Long said.

“A sergeant,” I said. “An old friend of the chief.”

“Yeah, you already told me that. Give me a name.”

“Sergeant Coleman.”

“Okay. So we’ll go over there right now and get up to speed. We’re all over this, and you don’t have to worry about it. Is that understood?”

I didn’t say anything. Maven sure as hell wasn’t going to say anything, either.

“I asked you if it was understood.”

“Yes,” I said. “We got it. Although I think we’ve already heard this line once before.”

“You have my word,” she said. “We’ll give it our full attention. Right now.”

“Okay,” I said, putting my hands up. “In that case, it’s all yours.”

“Take the chief and get out of here before these guys start throwing chairs, all right?”

I put one hand on the chief’s back and he pushed it away. He gave Agent Fleury one more hard look, then turned and walked out of the room. Agent Long gave me a grim smile and a roll of her eyes as I followed behind him. By the time I caught up, he was already through the lobby and out the front door.

“Chief, wait!”

He got into his car, put the key in the ignition, and gunned it. His tires spun a few times on the frozen road. When they finally gained some purchase he veered out into traffic, horns honking all around him.

Then he was gone.

*   *   *

I went home. I didn’t hear a word from the chief for the rest of that day. I kept thinking about the retired lieutenant up in Marquette, wondering if he had any idea what kind of mortal danger he might be in. Even as I went down to the Glasgow Inn that night, I kept looking at the phone sitting on the bar. Call information, I thought, get his number, give him a call, tell him to keep his head down or to get the hell out of town, or something. Anything.

Just relax, I told myself. There’s nothing you can do right now. The agents are on top of this. Better late than never, but still. They went to the state police post, they got all the information they needed. Surely they’ve been in contact with the lieutenant by now. Agent Long promised you personally that they’d give this their full attention.

I’d tell myself all of that and it would hold me over for approximately one minute. Then I’d go back to staring at the phone.

There was still no word from the chief when I went home to bed that night. In the morning I broke down and called the Soo post. I asked for Sergeant Coleman, but they told me he was unavailable and would probably remain so for the rest of the day. I asked if he was meeting with the FBI, but whoever was on the phone would not go down that road with me. In the end, I hung up, went outside, and got in the truck.

When I hit the Soo, I tried Maven’s house first. He wasn’t home. His car was gone. I wrote out a note asking him to call me and wedged it in his front door.

I tried the City-County Building. Nobody had seen Chief Maven that day.

“You know, the chief is on administrative leave,” the receptionist reminded me. “He’s not supposed to be here at all.”

“Like that would stop him.” I thanked her and left.

I drove aimlessly around town for the next hour or so. Eventually, I stopped at the state police post and looked for his car in the lot. It wasn’t there. I stepped inside, knowing it was probably useless. Sergeant Coleman was not in the building and had not left any word on how to contact him.

As I drove back to Paradise, it was all I could do to not keep going west. Two hours and I’d be in Marquette. At least I’d be doing
something
then, no matter how ill-advised. But I made myself take that last turn north toward home.

There were no messages on my machine. I plowed my road and then went down to the Glasgow to see if I could drive Jackie half as crazy as I was, but that didn’t seem to help at all. The sun went down. The wind picked up and started howling and I knew the wind chill would be something like thirty below. Another beautiful April night in Paradise. Then the door opened, just like it had that first night. The night Chief Maven walked in and got me into all of this.

This time, on an even colder night, Maven knew exactly where to find me. He came over to my chair by the fire. He stood looking down at me. After searching for him all day, now that he was here I had no idea what I wanted to say to him.

“I had to get out of here for a while,” he said. “It was either that or kill somebody.”

“Let me guess,” I said. “You went chasing down more leads without me.”

“I had to see it.”

“See what?”

“Misery Bay,” he said. “I had to go there.”

“What? Are you serious? You went all the way out there?”

“I was there today. I just got back a little while ago.”

“But wait a minute—”

“Why didn’t you tell me, McKnight?”

“What are you talking about?”

“That place is even worse than I imagined. If that kid was really hanging there, facing the lake like that. I mean everybody else is dead, I know, but
that place.
My God, McKnight. All of this started right there?”

He stared into the fire. He was still standing.

“Sit down,” I said. “Take your coat off.”

“I can’t. We have to go.”

“Excuse me?”

“We have to go talk to Lieutenant Haggerty. Right now.”

“Chief, come on.”

“As soon as I got home, I had a message from Sergeant Coleman. The agents were at Haggerty’s house today, asking him questions. It wasn’t a good scene for anybody, I guess. Haggerty was in no shape to hear their crazy ideas.”

“But they weren’t their ideas…”

“I know. That’s the thing. He called Coleman and told him he wants to talk to us. You and me. As soon as possible. I just called Haggerty himself to confirm.”

“Tonight?”

“We can be there in two hours,” Maven said. “Let’s go. While he’s still alive.”

And we’re rolling …

… Open up that closet door, just a few inches. Just like that.

… We want the shot as if we’re looking out from the closet, watching the Monster.

… That’s right. Drink that beer. Cigarette. More beer. That’s it.

… Oh, what’s this? A sound behind you?

… Camera down. No face here. It’s so much better when you don’t see the Monster’s face. You use your imagination, and the Monster is worse than anything you could ever see in real life. Solid filmmaking right there.

… Come around toward the camera. Stagger just a little bit. Good, good.

… Just the legs. Don’t tilt up. No face. Come closer. Close the door. Just like—

Hey, watch the camera!

CHAPTER ELEVEN

I could see that Maven was dead on his feet, so I made him get in the truck. We left his car there in Jackie’s lot and headed west. It was just after nine o’clock. In the UP, in April, that means it’s already been dark for hours and it feels like the middle of the night.

“Haggerty’s got a place in Au Train,” Maven said as we left town. That was a good thirty miles this side of Marquette.

“Is he really expecting us?”

“He is, yes. But I don’t know much else. What kind of state of mind he’s in. He sounded pretty out of it.”

“He’s probably going crazy right now.”

“His daughter just—”

He stopped short. He couldn’t even say it. If the little fracas he had gotten into with Agent Fleury hadn’t removed any doubt, I wouldn’t want to be the man who ever threatened a hair on Olivia Maven’s head.

Maven put his head back and closed his eyes. If he really went all the way out to Misery Bay and then back again that same day … well, it was a hell of a day under any circumstances. Now it looked like it was going to go even longer, and this last part would probably be the worst of all.

“So what’s the plan?” I said. “What are we going to say to him?”

“I don’t know,” he said, his eyes still closed. “I guess we’ll figure that out when we get there.”

*   *   *

It was the same long, straight road stretching across the middle of nowhere, except now in the utter darkness with the wind blowing and all of the death on our minds it was anything but boring. I would have paid big money for boring at that point in my life.

By the time we reached the water again, it felt like dawn should be right around the corner, but it wasn’t even 10:30 yet. We had been on the road just over an hour. We drove through Munising, where every sane, normal person was locked up tight in a warm house. Then more empty road until we passed through the town of Christmas. The casino appeared on our left, all lit up in the snow, looking out of place and frankly ridiculous. There were enough cars in the lot to justify being open on a night like this. I could only shake my head in amazement as we drove by. The sudden light woke Maven and he sat up straight, shielding his eyes.

“Where are we?”

“Christmas. I assume you don’t want to stop and play some blackjack.”

“The day you find me gambling you can go ahead and shoot me.”

“I wasn’t actually suggesting—”

“Just don’t get me started on that,” he said. “Au Train’s what, just a couple miles ahead, right? Coleman said you gotta take a left at the main intersection and go south for a while.”

We hit the center of town and took the left at the blinking light. Maven told me to go down past the falls and then to look for one of those double-decker mailboxes. One at normal height, the other about eight feet in the air—when you see them downstate, the sign on the top mailbox usually says
AIRMAIL
. Up here it’s more likely to say
WINTER DELIVERY
. Either version stops being funny around the second or third time you see it, but in this case it was a welcome sign of life and humor and I don’t know, after driving in the dark it reminded me that there was a real human being who put up those mailboxes and probably thought they were hilarious at the time. Before his whole life got turned inside out.

As I turned down the driveway, I put my plow down. There was half a foot of snow on the ground and you could see some recent tire tracks.