“For God’s sake, Lane,” I said. “Will you go out and get her?”
“Why don’t we both go get her?” he said.
“Just go,” I said. “I need to go to the station.”
He looked at both Maven and Allen. They had already started toward the door. “Alex, something’s not right here.”
“We’re just going to talk about Rose,” I said. “Don’t worry about me.”
He shook his head. “Call me when you’re done, Alex.”
I went outside with the two men. “I’ll follow you in my truck,” I said.
They looked at each other. That look, it should have tipped me off. “Why don’t you ride with us?” Allen said.
“Then I’ll be there and my truck will be here,” I said. “Go on, I’ll be right behind you.”
“Mr. Uttley can take care of that, can’t he?” Maven said. “His car is back at the casino, anyway, isn’t it? He can bring your truck into town and then you can go get his car.”
I didn’t feel like arguing about it, so I just threw my keys on the front seat of my truck and got in the back of Maven’s car.
It had been a long time since I had seen the back of a police car. When we were on our way I sat up and laced my fingers through the wire cage and looked at them. “All right, so what’s going on with Rose?” I said.
Maven just sniffed and kept driving.
“Come on, tell me what’s going on,” I said.
“We’ll talk at the station,” he said. It finally sank into my thick head. They were taking me in.
“Maven, what the fuck do you think you’re doing?” I said.
“Please, Mr. McKnight,” Allen said, turning his head. “Just relax. We’ll all be more comfortable at the police station.”
I sat back in the seat. After all that had happened in the last twenty-four hours, I couldn’t make any sense of it. Surely they don’t think I had anything to do with what happened to Edwin, I thought. They didn’t arrest me. They didn’t read me my rights.
I looked out the window at the pine trees. Edwin is dead. I poked my finger through a hole in the seat. Somebody was smoking back here and they burned a hole.
When we got to the station I tried to open the back door. It didn’t open, of course. I had forgotten, the back doors don’t open from the inside on a police car. I waited for Maven to open it for me. “Come on in, Alex,” he said. “Right this way.”
“I know the way,” I said. But instead of taking me to his office, he led me into an interview room. There was a table in the middle of the room, with four chairs. Another table stood against the wall with a coffee pot and a small refrigerator. A map on the wall showed the different types of fish in the inland lakes.
“We’ll have more room in here,” he said. “Have a seat.”
“Is somebody going to tell me what’s going on here?”
“Of course, Alex,” Allen said. “Please sit down.” He pulled a chair out for me.
“Now how did you say you like your coffee?” Maven said. “One sugar, no cream?”
I sat down. “Yes,” I said. “That’s right.” The man is finally going to make me some coffee. This is getting worse by the minute.
He poured the coffee in a mug and put it down in front of me. Then he sat down across from me, next to Allen. I looked from one face to the other while a curl of steam rose from the coffee.
“Mr. McKnight,” Detective Allen said, “tell me about this man Rose.”
“I thought you said Maven told you all about him,” I said.
“I want you to tell me,” he said. “Chief Maven might have left something out.”
I went over the whole story, starting at the hospital in Detroit, Rose’s apartment, the gun, the shooting. I told him how Rose went away for life, how I never figured on hearing from him again, until the phone calls and the notes started coming.
“These notes,” Allen said. “They all seem to have been typed on the same typewriter.”
“Makes sense,” I said.
“Why do you say that?”
“Because the same man wrote them.”
“Yes,” he said. “Of course.”
“What are you getting at?”
“Just thinking out loud,” Allen said. “Let’s talk about the dead men. The first two, I mean.” Maven just sat there, watching me.
“I didn’t know them.”
“Tony Bing, a local bookmaker,” Allen said. “Your friend Edwin found him in his motel room.”
“Yes,” I said.
“I understand he called you before he called the police.”
“Yes.”
“You were on the scene, in fact, before the police even got there.”
“Yes.”
“That strikes me as rather odd,” he said.
“It was odd,” I said. “Edwin did an odd thing.”
“A very odd thing,” he said. “Wouldn’t you call that odd, Chief Maven?”
“It was odd at the time,” Maven said. “And it’s still odd now.”
“The next man was, what was his name?”
They both looked at me.
“Dorney,” I said. “Vince Dorney. At least that’s what the chief told me.”
“Yes, that’s right. Vince Dorney. Another local character, from what I’m told. In fact, I believe Mr. Dorney was known to engage in a little bookmaking himself, wasn’t he?”
They both looked at me again.
“I don’t know anything about the man,” I said.
“It’s just another odd thing,” Allen said. “Here’s another bookmaker who ends up dead.”
“Another odd thing,” Maven said.
“Your Mr. Rose seems to have a specific dislike for bookmakers, Mr. McKnight. Funny, I didn’t see any mention of that in his notes.”
I could feel a line of sweat starting down my back. Both of the men had their forearms on the table. As they shifted their weight it made the coffee splash out of the cup.
“I don’t like where you’re taking this,” I said. “A homicidal maniac has been terrorizing me for the last week. Three men are dead, including the most harmless man I’ve ever known. But instead of trying to find this guy, all you’re doing is sitting here grilling me like I’m your lead suspect.”
“We’re just having a conversation here,” Maven said. “Although we can give your man Uttley a call if you really want us to. If you think you need a lawyer, I mean.”
“I don’t need a lawyer, Maven. What I need is for you to start doing your fucking job.”
“Now, Mr. McKnight,” Allen said. “Is that kind of language necessary?”
“You guys aren’t even doing it right,” I said. “It’s supposed to be good cop, bad cop, not asshole cop, dickhead cop.”
“Keep going, McKnight,” Maven said. “Just keep digging that hole.”
“If you don’t get out there and start looking for this guy, I swear to God, Maven-”
“You swear what, McKnight? You swear you’ll try to choke me to death again?”
I grabbed the cup and threw it. It hit the fishing map and exploded, leaving a great brown streak right across the whole county. Maven and Allen just watched me, not even blinking.
“My, my,” Allen finally said. “Your man has a temper.”
“He was a baseball player once,” Maven said. “Did I tell you that?”
“No, you didn’t.”
“I assume he had a better arm then.”
“I would hope so. That was a weak throw.”
“Never made the big leagues,” Maven said.
“That’s a shame,” Allen said.
“So he became a cop instead.”
“So I gathered.”
“He never made detective,” Maven said. “In fact, he had to leave the force after the Rose incident.”
“Another failure to deal with,” Allen said. “It’s painful to think about.”
“So here’s what I think happened, Detective Allen, if you’d care to hear it.”
“By all means, Chief Maven. Please proceed.”
“It’s no secret that Edwin Fulton had a gambling problem. More than once, in fact, he had to be escorted off the reservation. I’m thinking maybe he got into a little trouble with these bookmakers.”