I shook my head and kept driving. Grant stayed quiet for a while. The snow started to come down harder. I began to worry about making it all the way out to Blind River. “I don’t know why you’re doing this now,” he finally said. “But I appreciate it.”
“Just shut the hell up,” I said. “I’m not doing it for you. If your stupid brother is over at her house, or if anything has happened to Natalie, I swear I’m gonna go after all three of you guys, one by one.”
He nodded his head slowly. “Fair enough.”
I rolled down the window, letting in an icy blast of air. “I’m gonna throw this away, if you don’t mind. If the customs guy sees it, he might not be amused.”
I threw it into the snowbank, then rolled up my window.
“I hate real guns,” he said. “All my life, since I was a little kid. Never went hunting with my father or anything. That was always Marty.”
“I’m not too fond of guns, either.”
I picked up the cell phone and called Natalie again. The line was still busy. That didn’t make sense to me. She wasn’t the type of person to sit around talking on the phone all day.
“So tell me,” I said, putting the phone down, “if your father said the devil lived in Blind River, I’m thinking that had to be Natalie’s father, Jean Reynaud. You ever hear that name?”
“No, I don’t think so. I just heard the last name.”
“You’ve got no idea what might have happened between them? Your father and Jean Reynaud?”
“I really don’t. Like I said, he might have told Marty something. He was the favorite son, after all.”
I picked up on the bitterness in his voice, but I wasn’t about to pursue it.
“What about New Year’s Eve?” I said. “Did your father ever say anything about that?”
He looked at me. “Which one?”
“There was a party over at the Ojibway, New Year’s Eve, 1973. You think your father might have been there?”
“I was a teenager,” he said. “I don’t remember it, but I wouldn’t be surprised if he was there. My father knew everybody.”
“Think he might have taken Natalie’s father outside and shot him in the back of the head?”
“God, what are you saying?”
“Is it possible?”
Grant just shook his head slowly.
“Let’s say he did,” I said. “Of course, first he made him take off his hat.”
Grant looked down at the hat in his hands.
“You’re saying this was the devil’s hat?”
“Who knows?” I said. “Maybe we’re about to find out.”
I kept driving. The snow kept coming down. The wind picked up and drove the snow sideways. Grant didn’t say anything for a long time. He sat there and looked at the hat.
We went over the International Bridge. I sure as hell didn’t think I’d be coming back this way so soon. This time, the wind and the blowing snow made it downright scary. When I stopped to pay the toll, the man asked me how bad it was, and told me they’d probably be closing the bridge until the wind let up. Then we rolled through Canadian customs and answered the questions, the man taking a hard look at our faces.
“What happened to you guys?” he said. “You both look like something the cat brought in.”
“A little disagreement,” I said. “We got carried away.”
He pressed us a little more, asked us where we were going, how long we’d be in Canada. I told him we were going to the clubs. Eventually, he let us go through.
We followed a snowplow for a few miles through town. When we hit the open road, I passed him and settled in for the long stretch to Blind River. It was still blowing hard.
“By the way,” I finally said, “everything your nephew told you, that whole business about me contacting your father, making him come out that night to the hotel, making him go back outside… You know he was just covering his ass because he lost track of the poor guy, right?”
“I’m open to that possibility now. I’ll say that much.”
“Afterward, I was just trying to find out what had happened. That’s why I came to the funeral.”
“For what it’s worth,” he said, “when you were getting worked over behind the church, that was me who was telling those guys to cool it.”
I thought about it. “I remember somebody saying something like that, but I don’t remember anybody actually stopping the other two guys.”
“I know,” he said. “Like I say, for what it’s worth. Which ain’t much.”
“No.”
“We all go to trial in a couple of weeks. I had to put the garage up to make bail.”
“That hardly seems fair,” I said. “Me, I got a nice four-day vacation in the hospital.”
“I’m not saying we’re even, McKnight. But you did get your shots in the other day. I’m still feeling it.”
I let that one go. I picked up the cell phone and gave Natalie one more try. The line was still busy.
A few miles later, we came to our first accident. One car was right in the middle of the road, pointed sideways, another car pushed into the ditch. I rolled my window down to see if anyone needed some help, but there was nobody around. A hundred yards later, I saw a house, with smoke blowing sideways from the top of the chimney. I figured everybody was inside that house, instant neighbors, waiting for the tow truck to come. I kept driving.
The next accident was just outside Thessalon, another car off the road, this time all the way down a steep embankment. A tow truck was on the scene, the man holding his hand in front of his face to ward off the blowing snow as he hooked a chain to the car’s trailer hitch.
“Getting bad out here,” Grant said.
“I’m not turning around now.”
“The man said the bridge was closing anyway. We couldn’t go back even if we wanted to.”
We came to Iron Bridge, saw a few more cars abandoned on the side of the road, already covered with six inches of new snow. We passed McKnight Road, but I didn’t smile at it this time. We passed the Mississauga Reserve. There was one more stretch of empty road until we finally reached Blind River. As we got closer to the town hall, we could see the trucks parked right on the road itself, next to a telephone pole that had fallen down across the entrance. A half-dozen men were hard at work, all of them wearing orange ski masks. With the lines down and the snow blowing harder than ever, the whole scene looked like the end of the world.
“Looks like the phones are out here,” Grant said. “You think that’s why her line’s been busy?”
“Could be,” I said. “Depending on when this pole went down.”
“Is her house coming up soon?”
“Couple more miles.”
“Okay, good.”
He was sitting up in his seat now, nervously turning the hat in his hands again. I was a little uptight myself, with no idea what we’d find at the house. When I got to the driveway, I put the plow down and pushed the snow off, all the way to the barn.
“I don’t see Marty’s truck here,” he said.
“Not at the moment,” I said. “Doesn’t mean he didn’t come out here.”
He opened his door and got out of the truck. I did the same, the driving snow stinging my face.
“God, this is painful,” he said. “What the hell are we doing? Is anybody even home?”
“Let’s go see.”
I went up the unshoveled walk to the front door, stepping carefully through the snow. It felt strange to be here now, with officially no relationship with the owner of this house, no good reason to be here beyond a general sense of dread. I wanted to know that Natalie was safe. That was all. After that, I never wanted to see this place again.
I tried the door. It was locked. I rang the bell and heard the faraway chiming in the empty house.
“What do we do now?” he said.
I looked around the place. The windows. If one of them is unlocked
…
Or wait. The back door. I led him around the house, working hard to get through the deep snow. There at the back, leading into the kitchen, was an old-fashioned Dutch door. The top section had a large window with nine separate panes. The lower-left pane, the one closest to the doorknob, was broken.
I turned the knob, wishing at that moment like all hell that I had a gun. A real one. I pushed the door open and stepped inside. Grant followed. My stomach was starting to burn. What the hell was going on here?