“You seem to have a pretty complete file on me,” I said.
“This is just your private investigator application. It’s part of the public record. Anybody can see it.” He went back to reading. “Held a number of interesting jobs for a couple years. House painter. Bartender. Went to Dearborn Community College for a couple years, studied criminal justice. Joined the Detroit police force in 1975. Served eight years. Two commendations for meritorious service. Not bad. Wounded on the job in 1984. Took a disability retirement soon after. Three-quarter pay for the rest of your life ain’t half bad, is it? Of course, that’s more than fair when a man is disabled.” He looked at me over his reading glasses. “And in your case, that disability would be…?”
I looked at him for a long moment. “I was shot three times,” I said.
He shook his head. “Hell of a thing to happen.” He looked at me for a long moment, waiting for me to tell him the story. I didn’t, so he looked back down at the papers. “Moved up here in, where did it say that? Ah, here it is, moved into the area in 1985. Been here ever since. Funny, most people with a disability, they’d move to Florida or Arizona, somewhere nice and warm. But here you are.”
I didn’t say anything.
“Your choice,” he said. “Anyway, let’s see, you filed your form in July, got your license in August. Looks like somebody kicked that one through pretty quickly. You must have friends in high places.”
I just sat there and watched him. It brought back memories. That good old cop swagger, I had seen so much of it. I had slipped into it myself now and then. It was so easy. Problem was, it got harder and harder to slip back out of it when the day was done. It’s not the kind of thing you want to take home. Just ask my ex-wife.
“Now, Mr. McKnight,” he said, taking off his glasses, “seeing as how you’re pretty new at this private investigator business, I’m going to let you in on a couple little tricks of the trade. Do you mind if I do that?”
“Go ahead,” I said.
“Very well. First of all, when a private investigator is operating in a police jurisdiction, it is a common courtesy to check in at the police station to let them know who you are and what you are doing. Not that I care about such formalities, of course. No, sir. But somewhere down the road, you’re going to run into a police chief who really doesn’t like the fact that you’re working in his town and he hasn’t even been introduced.”
“Fair enough.”
“Second, and even more importantly, I would suggest that the next time Edwin Fulton calls you up in the middle of the night and asks you to come down to a major crime scene, I would just take a moment to double-check with him, just to make sure that he has in fact called the police first. Actually, I would say, just go ahead and assume that he hasn’t called the police. That doesn’t seem to be his strong suit, after all. But you, of course, being a former policeman yourself, and understanding how important it is for an officer to arrive on the scene before the friends and neighbors do, you should go ahead and phone it in yourself. In fact, I’ll give you my home number, so the next time Mr. Fulton wants you to come look at a murder, you can call me directly, day or night.”
We both just sat there looking at each other.
“I’d hate to bother you at home,” I finally said. “Next time, I’ll just call it in to the station.”
“That would work just fine,” he said. He picked up a copy of the Sault Star, the daily Soo Canada paper, from his desk. “Have you seen this yet? We made the front page over in Canada.”
“I haven’t read it yet.”
“‘Local Man Slaughtered In Soo Michigan Motel Room.’ Now that’s a headline for you. Notice how they make sure to say it happened on this side of the river. Did you know that it took two of my men five hours to clean that room up? Have you ever cleaned that much blood up before?”
“Can’t say as I have.”
“By the time we had gone over the room and then finally gotten the body out of there, most of the blood had hardened. Of course, as soon as you put water on it, it sort of comes back to life and starts spreading again. You try to wipe it up, it’s like paint. You’re painting the whole room red. One of my officers, he’s been out sick ever since. I think he’s reevaluating his career plans.”
I fought down the lump in my stomach.
“Anyway, here’s the deal. I’ve already talked to Mr. Fulton. So I’m just wondering if you might have any other information for me. Did you know the deceased?”
“No,” I said.
“You never met him? You never placed bets with him?”
“I don’t gamble.”
“Have you ever heard Mr. Fulton speak of him prior to that night?”
“I knew that he was probably putting bets down somewhere,” I said, “but he never mentioned anyone by name.”
“When did you last see him before he called you Saturday night?”
“I saw him briefly at the Glasgow Inn. He stopped in with his wife. Then later, he stopped in on his own.”
“How did he seem that evening? Did he say anything unusual?”
“I didn’t talk to him,” I said.
“You didn’t talk to him? He says you two are best buddies.”
“I was playing poker.”
“I thought you said you don’t gamble.”
“It’s not gambling,” I said. “It’s nickels and dimes.”
He nodded. “All right,” he said. He closed my folder and put it in a drawer. “That’ll do for now.”
I thought about leaving right then. The hell with this guy, I didn’t feel like telling him about the phone call. But I knew that if I didn’t tell him, it would be just the kind of thing that could come back and haunt me.
“Actually, Chief Maven, I’ve been enjoying our time here so much, I just don’t think I can leave yet.”
For one split second, he lost that little hard-ass smirk.
“I’ll take a cup of coffee with one sugar,” I said. “And then I’ll tell you about a little conversation I had last night with the murderer.”
It was worth telling him the story, just to see him choke on his tough-guy routine, if only for a minute. I told him all about the phone call while he wrote down every word. But I never did get that coffee.
I grabbed a quick lunch at the Glasgow, and finally had a good look at that newspaper. There was a picture of the motel on page one. You could see the police barricades set up around the place, and a few officers carrying out what looked like a big sack of laundry. I’m sure Mr. Bing was quite a load, even with all thirteen or fourteen pints of blood drained from his body.
There were a couple paragraphs about Edwin, “heir to the Fulton fortune,” being the first man on the scene. I was not mentioned.
When I had finished reading about it, I drove up to the Fulton place. It was not far from Paradise, just straight up Sheephead Road, past the Shipwreck Museum, all the way up to the old lighthouse on Whitefish Point. I turned off on the road leading west along the shore, coming onto the Fulton property that took up a full three-hundred-acre corner of Chippewa County.
About a mile from the house, I saw someone walking on the road. When I saw who it was, I considered turning around and leaving. Instead, I pulled up next to her and rolled down my window. “Nice day for a walk,” I said.
Sylvia kept walking without looking at me. “If you like cold and gray,” she said.
“I’m on my way to see your mother-in-law.”
“Good for you.”
“Is Edwin around today?”
“He’s at the office.”
“What does he do at the office?” I asked. “Why does he even need an office?”
“He counts his money,” she said. “He calls it up on the phone and talks to it.”
“Can’t he do that from home?”
She finally looked at me for the first time. Those green eyes went right through me. “He prefers to have his time away from the house,” she said.