“Let me just have his number,” I said. “I might try him.”
Uttley gave out a long tired sigh and went through some papers. He wrote the number down on a card and gave it to me. “You’re wasting your time,” he said.
“You’re probably right,” I said. “What’s with the box? Are you going somewhere?”
“I need a vacation. I think you need one, too.”
“Where are you going?”
“I don’t even know yet,” he said. “Someplace very far away. Someplace warm. An island somewhere.”
“Sounds like a good idea.”
“You know, all those nights I spent on the Fultons’ couch, I started to think about things. I’m not sure I want to be a lawyer anymore. Not this kind of lawyer, not up here, anyway. I think I might try something nice and quiet for a while, you know, like real estate. Just sit on my butt at a closing and collect my big check.”
“You’re not coming back, are you.”
“I don’t think so, Alex. Too much has happened here. I’m surprised you’re not thinking the same way.”
“Maybe I am.”
“So anyway, I guess I probably won’t be needing you as a private investigator anymore.”
“That’s all right,” I said. “I’m not sure I ever really wanted to be one.”
He nodded and swallowed hard.
“Need help carrying anything out?” I said.
“No, this is all I need,” he said. He slapped the box. “Alex, I’m not sure what else to say. You’ve had to go through so much the last couple weeks. I just hope I was able to help you through it in some small way.”
“Of course you did.”
He came around from behind his desk and shook my hand. And then he hugged me. He wrapped both of his arms around me and gave me a good squeeze. “Take care of yourself, Alex.”
“Good-bye, Lane.”
As I closed the door, I looked back at him. He gave me one last thumbs-up and then I was gone.
I went into town and tried to find an auto glass place. The first one didn’t have my window in stock. Neither did the second or third. The last man said I could either go over the bridge and try the Canadian side, or he could put it on order and tape up the truck with clear plastic to hold me over. I went with the tape job.
At a pay phone, I called the phone company to see about fixing my cut line. The lady told me they’d try to get out there some time that day, but she couldn’t say when. I told her I wasn’t going to hold my breath. After I hung up I took out the card with Browning’s number on it. I looked at it for a long time and then I put it back in my pocket without dialing.
By the time I headed back to Paradise, the snow had stopped. But it was still a cold, raw day. The sky was as gray as gunmetal. I probably wouldn’t see the sun for five months. Maybe Uttley is right, I thought. Maybe I just should go away somewhere, never come back. Maybe even take Sylvia, if I could convince her.
God, listen to yourself, Alex. Just listen to yourself.
I stopped in at the Glasgow for a late breakfast. Jackie made me one of his omelets, with onions, peppers, cheese, the works. It was too early for a beer, but not too early for one of his famous Bloody Marys. Or two or three of them.
I took the card out of my pocket and looked at it again. If I call him, I thought, he’s going to hang up on me. I put the card back in my pocket.
When I got back to the cabin, the man from the phone company was up on his ladder. I owed the phone company an apology for doubting them. “What the hell happened to your phone line?” he said. “It looks like somebody cut right through it with a knife.”
“Long story,” I said. I went into the cabin before he could ask me to tell it.
When he was done, he gave a quick knock on my door. “She’s all done,” he said. “It’ll be on your next bill.”
I thanked the man, and then I picked up the phone to make sure I had a dial tone. Without even thinking about it, I dialed Browning’s number. I didn’t even have to look at the card. I had the number memorized from all the time I’d spent looking at it.
The phone rang. What the hell, I thought. If nothing else, I can at least apologize to the man for yelling at him.
“Corrections, Browning speaking.”
“Mr. Browning,” I said. “This is Alex McKnight.”
“Ah yes, Mr. McKnight.”
“Listen, before anything else, I just want to say I’m sorry about the last time we talked on the phone. I was under a lot of stress, and I shouldn’t have taken it out on you. I know you were just following the rules.”
“That’s quite all right.”
“Everything’s pretty much over up here,” I said. “It wasn’t Rose, of course.”
“Of course,” he said. “He’s been right here the whole time.”
“Of course,” I said. “Although it turns out that there was a man up here who had been in contact with Rose. So I was just curious about how that might have happened. I’m sure you keep records on visits and letters. You probably even have to read the mail, right?”
“We do.”
“Listen, Mr. Browning, I know I don’t have any official reason to ask you this. But just for my own sanity, please, is there any way you can tell me if Rose has been contacted by a man named Raymond Julius?”
“Why don’t you ask him that yourself?” he said.
“Excuse me?”
“I called your Mr. Uttley this morning,” he said. “He wasn’t in his office, so I left a message.”
“He’s gone,” I said. “He left for vacation. Why did you call him?”
“I called him to tell him that Maximilian Rose has agreed to see you.”
I stood there with the phone in my hand.
“Mr. McKnight? Are you there?”
“Yes,” I said. “When can I see him?”
“At your convenience. Believe me, he’s not going anywhere.”
“I’ll come today,” I said.
“I thought you were in the Upper Peninsula,” he said. “That’s got to be, what, six or seven hours away?”
“I’ll leave right now,” I said.
“Our visitation stops at three o’clock,” he said. “You’ll never make it.”
“Mr. Browning, please,” I said. I couldn’t bear the thought of waiting. I had had enough sleepless nights for one lifetime. “There’s gotta be a way you can let me see him today. I can’t tell you how important this is.”
I heard him grumbling on the phone. “Mr. McKnight, you are one genuine pain in the ass, you know that?”
“Does that mean you’ll let me see him today?”
“Don’t kill yourself getting down here, you hear me? The speed limit is fifty-five miles an hour.”
“I’m on my way,” I said.
“Ask for me at the gate,” he said. “Otherwise, they’ll never let you in.”
I hung up and ran to the truck. I made it to the Lower Peninsula in less than an hour, with about 250 miles to go. I had the speedometer up in the eighties most of the way. If my truck didn’t go into a death rattle at ninety, I would have gone even faster.
I didn’t want to waste another minute. The answers, the resolution, my own sanity. It was all there waiting for me.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
The State Prison of Southern Michigan, otherwise known as Jackson State, is sixty miles west of Detroit, past Ann Arbor, out in the middle of the state where the cows and the cornfields are. The prison itself is a city unto itself, a sprawling gray complex of cement and razor wire. I knew there were several wings there, with different security classifications. I was headed for maximum security.
I had driven straight through in just over five-and-a-half hours, stopping only once to fill up the truck and to use the bathroom. I splashed some cold water on my face, got back in the truck, and kept driving. The plastic on my window kept most of the cold air out, but it was still noisy. My ears were still humming when I finally turned off the highway at Jackson.
I gave the man at the gate Browning’s name. He looked at his clipboard, asked to see my driver’s license, and then let me through. I parked in the visitor’s lot and went into the waiting room. There were a hundred plastic chairs lined up in rows. A tile floor, a row of lockers on one wall, a glass trophy case on the other. I had the place to myself because the regular visiting hours were over. I gave my name to the guard sitting behind the bulletproof window. He took down one of the clipboards off the wall. There must have been twenty of them. Somewhere in the city of Jackson there was probably a man who made a nice living supplying clipboards to the prison. The guard looked at his clipboard and told me to have a seat.