“The chosen one,” I said. “He said that in the notes.”
“Yes, exactly.”
“But what about the other stuff in the notes?” I said. “How did he know about what Rose said to me? There’s no way he could have known that, unless…”
“There appears to have been a connection,” Allen said. “In the diary, he referred to some sort of communication he might have had with Mr. Rose.”
“While Rose was in prison? What kind of communication? Letters? Phone calls?”
“That’s not clear at this point,” Allen said. “He wasn’t specific. He did write something about becoming Rose, about taking over his identity in some way.”
“I have to see this stuff,” I said. “Do you have it here at the station?”
“No, Mr. McKnight,” he said. “You know how this works. Right now, it’s all still at the residence. We need to go through it all very carefully.”
“I thought you said it was obvious.”
“It is,” he said. “But we have to follow our procedures.”
“Can I go to his house?”
“No, Mr. McKnight. Please, just let us work on this. I promise you we’ll let you see it when it’s all over.”
“I still don’t get it,” I said. “I don’t even know this guy. How did he even know about Rose?”
“He just picked you,” Allen said. “Who knows why? He just did. I’ve seen a couple cases like this before. There was one I remember very well. A man was out driving, and he cut somebody off at an intersection. Turns out the guy he cut off, he followed him to his house, found out who he was, started calling him, sending him notes. It escalated to the point where the man had to move out of the house. Even then, the guy found him again, finally tried to kill him. Fortunately, we caught him in time. I think that’s the type of individual we’re talking about here. It’s usually just a little thing that triggers it. He sees you. Something clicks in his head. Suddenly, he has to know everything about you. In your case, he finds out that you had been shot, he goes back and finds the old news clippings. He just makes up this whole little universe with you at the center of it.”
“How long has this been going on?” I asked. “When did it all start?”
“Judging from his diary, it looks like five or six months ago.”
I shook my head. “Why me?”
Maven cleared his throat. “Just because,” he said. Finally, he had opened his mouth. “Maybe it was your dynamic personality. Maybe your incredible personal charm. Maybe it’s the way the whole room lights up when you walk in.”
Allen gave him a long icy look and then turned back to me. “Mr. McKnight,” he said. “Alex. Although you were never formally charged in this matter, I just want to say on a purely personal level that as painful as this ordeal must have been for you, the treatment you received in this office obviously made it even worse. For whatever part I played in that, I just want to apologize to you.”
“Fair enough,” I said. I looked at Maven. “Is there anything you’d like to add to that, Chief?”
He just sat there chewing on the inside of his mouth for moment. “Just one thing,” he finally said.
“I’m all ears.”
“This didn’t have to happen.”
“You got that right,” I said.
“No, I mean what happened to Mr. Fulton. He didn’t have to die. If you had just cooperated for one minute on this case, we might have had this Julius guy’s ass behind bars before that ever happened. Of course, then you couldn’t have had your little cowboy shoot-out last night. Mrs. Fulton wouldn’t have been there, scared out of her mind because her husband’s killer is at the front door. Although what she was doing at your cabin while they’re still out dragging the lake for his body is another story.”
“Chief Maven,” Allen said, “is this really necessary?”
“No, it’s not necessary,” Maven said. “If ex-policemen who get their partners killed don’t decide to retire here and make my life miserable, then none of this is necessary.”
“You’re way out of line, Chief.”
“Just get out of here,” Maven said. “Go back to your little state office. You’ve been a big help.”
Allen stood up and shook my hand. “Alex, please let me know if I can be of any assistance in the future.” He looked down at Maven. “You’ll be hearing from me, Chief.”
“I can’t wait,” Maven said.
When Allen had left, we both just sat there at the table, looking at each other.
“I assume I’m free to go?” I finally said.
“You’re free to kiss my wrinkled white ass,” he said.
I stood up. “I’m going to miss these little chats,” I said. “Maybe we can go fishing some time.”
I WALKED OUT of the station into daylight. It was late morning already. The sun was actually trying to shine a little bit, but it wasn’t doing anything to warm things up.
I stumbled around in the parking lot for a minute until I realized that my truck was still parked next to my cabin, minus one passenger-side window. If I had had the strength to laugh, I would have. I certainly didn’t feel like going back into the station and asking for a ride. So I just started walking. I wasn’t sure where I was going, but it felt good to be moving.
I walked around the courthouse toward the river, then followed the sidewalk that ran along the water as far as I could go. When I got to the edge of the park, I turned around and came back to the locks. There was a large freighter going through. My ears were starting to hurt from the cold so I climbed the steps to the observation deck. It was empty.
The ship was about seven hundred feet long. It was entering the southern-most lock, so close to the deck that it was like looking across the street at a slowly moving building. The flag was three horizontal stripes, red, white, and black, with some kind of golden bird in the middle. I guessed Egypt. There were a dozen dark-skinned men standing on the ship, wrapped up tight in their coats, looking back at me as they passed. They were so far from home. This must have seemed like a new and strange world to them. And now with a full load of iron ore, they were on their way back out to sea, down through the Great Lakes to the St. Lawrence Seaway and out to the Atlantic Ocean.
I could jump on that ship, I thought. It’s close enough. They could take me back to Egypt with them.
“Alex, I’ve been looking all over for you.” Uttley appeared next to me. “The officer at the station said you just walked off.”
“Just watching the ship go through,” I said.
He looked out at it. “Where’s it from? Whose flag is that?”
“Egypt, I think.”
He nodded. “Detective Allen called me. He told me everything.”
I didn’t say anything.
“You really don’t know who this Raymond Julius guy was?”
“No,” I said.
He let out a long slow breath. “That ship’s got a long way to go,” he said. “How many days you figure it takes to go to Egypt from here?”
“Couldn’t say.”
“You know they built the first lock here in 1797? It was destroyed in the War of 1812. They had to rebuild it.”
I kept looking out at the ship. They had closed the lock and started to lower the water level. When the boat had come down twenty-one feet, they would open the other end and let the boat go on its way to Lake Huron.
“In World War Two, this was the most heavily defended part of the country. If somebody was going to drop bombs on us, the government figured they’d start here. You know, mess up the iron supply, stop us from making tanks. That’s why they built two Air Force bases way up here in the middle of nowhere.”
“Why are you telling me this?” I said.
“Because I don’t know what else to say.”
Neither of us spoke for a while. We watched the boat sink as the water left the lock.
“It’s got to be a little easier to deal with now, isn’t it?” he said.
“How do you mean?”
“You thought it was Rose before. Even though everybody else was telling you he was still in prison. It must have been driving you crazy.”
“So instead it’s just some guy off the street,” I said. “And for some reason he decides to spend his whole life just following me around, watching me, finding out about my past. Trying to become my past, for God’s sake. It doesn’t make any sense.”