He waited a beat. “So? What can you tell me about him?”
“Not much. In small towns folks kind of look out for each other. I know who Walter is, I even know some of his friends. I don’t know you.”
“Calderon,” he said. “Jimmy Calderon. You?”
“Michelle Mitchell,” I said. “People call me Mitch.”
“Okay, Mitch, I’m not a friend of Mr. McClain’s exactly. More like a... distant relative. So tell me what you know about him. Here’s something for your trouble.” He laid a five on the bar.
I was wearing my morning work scruffs, jeans and a Michigan State sweatshirt. I dug in my pocket, came up with a quarter, and dropped it on his five. “There’s a pay phone by the door,” I said. “If Walter’s in the book, I’m sure he’ll be glad to hear from a distant relative.” Again I waited for some guff. But he just smiled, slid off his barstool, and sauntered to the phone.
“Thunder Bay Drive?” he said, scanning the book. “Where’s that?”
“A mile or so down the lakeshore,” I said. “But I imagine he’ll be at the plant. McClain Hydraulics.”
“Yeah? He own the place, does he?”
“I really couldn’t say,” I said.
“Right,” he nodded. “Small towns. Thanks, Mitch. You been a big help. Maybe after I get settled in you and me can go out some time. Have dinner, a few laughs. I’ll see ya around.” And he strolled out, cocky as a goose the day after Christmas.
I walked to the end of the bar and watched him get into a tan Ford Escort with airport rental plates. Odd. He didn’t strike me as the tourist type. He gunned the Escort out of the lot like a teenybopper showing off for his buddies. I thought about giving Walt McClain a call, but what would I say? Somebody asked about you? The guy seemed harmless. And then business picked up and I forgot about him.
“What do you mean, he walked on water?” I asked.
“Exactly that,” Sheriff Bauer said blandly, leaning on the bar. “Hughie LeBlanc was fishing below the Narrows Dam. A flatlander from Toledo asked him where the bass were bitin’, so Hughie tells him to wade out in the channel till he feels the footing slope away, then drop a hook. Only the guy just kept walking, six, seven feet out. Water was barely over his ankles and the channel’s at least ten foot deep there. Hughie swears he thought it was the second coming. The guy was walking on water.”
“What’s the joke, Charlie?” I said. “You’d need stilts to walk more than a foot out from that bank.”
“It’s no joke, Mitch. There’s a car down there, jammed crossways in the channel. The guy from Toledo walked up the trunk and onto the roof and stood there. And old Hughie almost had a heart attack.”
“If the car’s near the surface, why didn’t Hughie spot it?”
“It’s black water there. River silt’s all roiled up from the dam spillway upstream. 1 couldn’t see the car even after Hughie showed me where it was. Had to poke around with a fishing rod to be sure he wasn’t pulling my leg. I need a diver to check out the vehicle and hook up a towline, Mitch, somebody who can work blind. Know anybody who can use a quick seventy-five bucks?”
I glanced around the Nest. There were a few scuba divers in the club, we do a good lakefront trade. But there was no one I’d send into black water. It’s an ugly, dangerous job, definitely not for amateurs. “I know a heckuva diver who’ll do it for a hundred,” I said.
“Thought you might,” Charlie said. “Get your gear.”
The sun was setting as Charlie Bauer guided his blue sheriff’s department Blazer carefully down the embankment to the narrow shelf of the Huron River’s floodplain. The wrecker was already there, backed up to the river’s edge. Biff Kowalski was stalking around his huge GMC 7500, stomping his greasy engineer’s boots into the soft clay of the bank. Biff’s built as solidly as his tow truck and weighs nearly as much. He’s usually an even-tempered sort, placid as a side of beef and only slightly brighter. But he knows trucks and winches and rivers. And he looked worried. Which made me worried.
“I don’t like this, Charlie,” Biff said, scowling at the river. “Current’s awful damn fast here. When the car comes outa the muck it’s gonna have one helluva lot of water leanin’ on it. Maybe enough to burn out my bull-winch or even drag my wrecker in if the car’s big enough. I’ve seen it happen.”
“Mitch’ll get the make and model while she’s down there,” Charlie said. “Now stand next to me, give a lady some privacy.”
Charlie and Biff stood together with their backs to the Blazer to shield me from the gawkers along the road as I slid out of my jeans and got ready for the river. Charlie’s courtesy wasn’t really necessary, I was wearing a swimsuit, but the people up on the shoulder wouldn’t know that, and Charlie Bauer is a very old-fashioned guy in many ways.
I put on a “woolly bear” suit of long underwear first, then a Farmer John-style foam-neoprene wet suit topped by a hooded vest. The kibitzers up by the road were probably making wisecracks about a woman overdressing, but working in river current is like standing in front of an air conditioner going full blast. Hypothermia can make you stupid and clumsy before you know it, and in black water, stupid and clumsy can kill you quicker than Bonnie and Clyde.
When I stepped out of the vehicle I got a smattering of applause from the peanut gallery along the road, and I gave ’em a quick bow. I popped open the Blazer’s tailgate, then hesitated.
Something was odd. I glanced back up at the motley line of spectators and spotted the young Latin I’d met in the Nest the week before. He’d cleaned himself up. He was wearing a dark blazer and tie and he’d lost the ratty goatee. Maybe he really was a relative and Walter took him in. Surprise, surprise.
Back to business. I strapped on a lightweight backpack with a single thirty-minute air tank, opting for maneuverability over dive time. My gear belt held a lifeline on a reel and two flashlights, and I had a helmet light as well, powered by a belt-mounted battery pack. I didn’t bother with flippers, I’d be wading down there, not swimming. I double-checked my regulator, then joined Charlie at the river’s edge and handed him the end of my lifeline.
“Three hard tugs if I’ve got trouble. Five if I want you to haul me out. How do you want to work this?”
“You know the drill. Check for a body first. If you find one, come on out and we’ll see about getting the spillways closed to get a better look at the scene. If the car’s empty, get the make and model and come up for the cable. And Mitch, be careful, okay? Biff’s right, last week’s rain has the river up and the current’s nasty here.”
“Right.” I waded a few steps downstream, then stepped away from the bank. Even with the water only waist deep, the pressure from the river was a living thing, tugging at my legs, trying to pull me out into the main thrust of the current. I felt a roller-coaster rush of adrenaline. Excitement, tempered by fear. This one would be interesting.
I moved cautiously upstream, groping blindly in the murk ahead until I touched metal. I ran my hands quickly over it, tracing its contours. It was the rounded edge of the trunk. The car was nose-down in the riverbed and I was on the driver’s side. I braced myself and pushed hard on the rear fender. Couldn’t budge it. Good. It was bedded firmly in the muck. The greatest danger in a dive like this is having the vehicle shift at a bad time and pin you under it. This one was solid as a stone elephant.
Using the car’s body to shield myself from the current, I slipped under the surface. Absolute blackness. Not a hint of light. I switched on my helmet lamp, but it only haloed off the turbid silt. Whiteout instead of blackout. No help. I switched it off and worked blind, feeling my way along the side of the car.
Roofline, rear window... And then a gap. The driver’s door was open. Damn. This would make it trickier. If the car had been closed up, the silt would have settled out of the water inside it and I could have checked the interior with a light. As it was, the only way to check for a body in there was by touch. I felt an icy chill that had nothing to do with the river current.