She shook her head. “I just thought he needed some time to himself. You know how he is. He’s always been that way.”
I stood there watching a dark cloud pass over her face, this woman who had already been through so much.
“Mrs. LeBlanc, I’m sure you’re right. After all that time at the funeral, he probably doesn’t want to be around anybody for a few days. Even me. Or even-”
“What is it, Alex?”
“His cousins,” I said. “Could he be with them somewhere?”
“I don’t think so. Most of them were here today.”
“They didn’t say anything about where he might be?”
“No, they didn’t. They thought he had gone home, too.”
“You know what? I bet he’s at the casino. He’s either back on the job, or maybe he just got a room for a couple of days. I’ll go check on him, okay?”
“Yes,” she said. “Please check, Alex. Will you call me?”
“Of course I will. You just relax.”
I gave her a quick kiss on the cheek and left. When I was back in my truck I fired it up and pulled out hard, ready to bury the accelerator. The only problem was I had no idea where I was going. I had told Mrs. LeBlanc he was probably at the casino, but it sounded weak even as I was saying it. But what the hell. I drove over to the Bay Mills Casino and looked for Vinnie’s truck in the parking lot. It wasn’t there. I doubled back and hit the Kings Club. No luck there, either. So I gunned it down Three Mile Road into the Soo and checked the Kewadin. It was a bigger casino with a much bigger lot, so it took me a few minutes to cover the whole thing. There was no sign of Vinnie’s truck.
I drove over to the Big Bear Arena, thinking maybe he was there playing some hockey or just skating. It seemed like the kind of thing he’d do to clear his head. But he wasn’t there, either.
I didn’t think I’d find him at a bar. Not with eight years of sobriety under his belt. But I couldn’t help taking a look through the couple of parking lots I passed on my way back to the reservation. I rolled past his mother’s house again, hoping he’d be there now. He wasn’t.
I was running out of ideas. It was getting dark. I drove past the road that led up to Mission Hill, turned around and went up. I wasn’t even sure why. Maybe he was up there, I thought, sitting next to his brother’s grave. At this point, it was about all I had left.
It was a steep climb up that road, and the wind and the snow racing around in the air didn’t help me. There was no guardrail on the road. It just snaked up to the top of the hill, with nothing to the right but a long drop into Waishkey Bay. I put the truck into low gear and ground my way up, swearing at the wind. When I got to the top, I didn’t see Vinnie’s truck anywhere. It was just an empty graveyard and the overlook. I was about to turn around when something came back to me. A memory of Vinnie looking out over the cliff the day he buried his brother, that beautiful high view where you could see forever.
And then another memory, something he had said to me before, when he was telling me the story about Tom, about finding him as he was about to hang himself.
“If you’re gonna kill yourself, you go up to the old graveyard on Mission Hill, you say hello to your ancestors and then you jump off the cliff. Just walk right out into the sky. That’s how you kill yourself.”
That’s what he said.
I parked the truck. I got out and walked over to the edge of the overlook. This was where he stood, right next to the little shelter, with the message painted in yellow about respecting this land where the spirits of your ancestors live. I went up to the very edge of the cliff and looked down at the rocks and trees far below. It was too dark to see. I couldn’t tell if Vinnie’s truck was lying down there in a broken heap. Or his body. My friend. My brother.
“God damn it all,” I said. “You didn’t do it. I know you didn’t.”
The wind caught me. It almost took me right over.
“How could I even think it? There’s no way, Vinnie. I know you’re not down there.”
I put one knee down on the ground. I looked out at the few lights scattered along the shoreline. Beyond that there was only the dark mystery of the lake.
“So where the hell are you?”
Chapter Twenty-Three
I had a tough call to make. The last thing I wanted to do was get Mrs. LeBlanc even more worried than she already was, but if I was going to figure out where he was, I’d have to start with her. I had no other choice.
She looked surprised when I showed up on her doorstep again. “Alex?” she said as she let me back in. “You found him already?”
“No,” I said. “Mrs. LeBlanc, I have to talk to you.”
“What’s wrong?”
“Nothing’s wrong. I think Vinnie went somewhere to be by himself for a while. I’m sure he’s okay.” It sounded reasonable. Hell, for all I knew, it was the truth. Maybe I was totally wrong.
When she let me in the house, I saw Buck sitting at the kitchen table. He stood up and came into the front room.
I looked him in the eye. “Do you know where he is?”
“If I knew he was going to leave, do you think I’d let him go alone?”
“What about his other cousins? Could somebody else be covering for him?”
He was staring right back at me. “Of course not.”
“You said you were gonna take care of him.”
“You can blame me for this later,” he said. “Right now we’ve got to find him. You got any ideas?”
“Yeah,” I said. “I’ve got one idea. Does Vinnie know anybody in Detroit?”
“Why would he go down there?”
“There are a couple of men down there. They might know something.”
He thought about it. “There’s the casino. A lot of Sault members go down there to work.”
Of course. Detroit had three casinos, and one of them was partially owned by the Sault tribe. There was a busload of Sault Ojibwas going down to Detroit every week.
“Can you find out if he contacted any of them?”
“I will.”
“Will you let me know if you get anything?”
“Yes, Alex. Give me your number.”
He gave me a piece of paper, and I wrote down my cell phone number.
“I’m gonna go do that now,” he said. “I’ll call you.” He put one big hand on Mrs. LeBlanc’s shoulder, then he stepped in front of me, hesitating for one instant, and then he opened the door.
Mrs. LeBlanc watched him go out into the night. Then she looked up at me. “I don’t understand any of this.”
“Please don’t worry,” I said. The expression on her face was enough to turn my stomach inside out. “I’ll find out where he is. I promise.”
She looked back out the door. A car rumbled by. It was Buck on his way home to make phone calls, or maybe over to the Sault Reservation to make the rounds in person.
“His cabin,” I said, an idea coming to me. “Do you have a key?”
She nodded her head, turned and went down the hallway. A minute later, she came back with a single key.
“Here,” she said. “I’ve never given it to anyone before.”
“Thank you, Mrs. LeBlanc.” I kissed her on the cheek again and left. For the second time that month, I went out to find one of her sons.
Detroit. I said it over and over in my mind as I drove back to Paradise. It was once my hometown, at least in the sense that I lived right next to it and grew up rooting for the Tigers and Lions and Pistons and Red Wings. People ask you where you’re from and you say Detroit, because that’s the simple answer. You don’t tell them that you never actually lived in the city itself, that hardly anyone lives in the city itself if they can help it.
Later, I worked in Detroit as a police officer. Eight years of my life. And even then I didn’t live there, which was technically illegal. But I knew the city inside and out, through hot summer nights and cold winter mornings.
There is crime in Detroit. There is crime in Detroit like there are fountains in Paris, like there are canals in Venice. People all over the world know this about Detroit. It might not be fair to think that way. You can look at the art museum and the new ballpark and the casinos and restaurants and believe it’s all part of the Detroit Renaissance, and maybe you’d be right. You can even love the place like I do. But it’s still Detroit, and always will be.