“I’m not following you.”
“Come on, you know exactly what I’m talking about. Bateman was all over the television after King was arrested. He even got that award, remember? But what did you get?”
“You know what I got.”
“Yeah, you and Franklin. I know. But that was a totally separate thing. You should have gotten a lot more credit for tracking down the man who butchered that woman.”
“Well, that’s not where I was going at all,” I said. “I honestly haven’t even thought about it that way, not once in all these years.”
“Then I’m sure I have no idea what you’re talking about, Alex. What exactly is bothering you?”
“Well, that’s the crazy part. I actually sorta stumbled upon Darryl King’s mother today, and-”
“Excuse me, what?”
“I was just driving by the house where we picked him up. I wanted to see it. She was sitting right there on the porch.”
I wasn’t about to tell him I went inside and had chocolate cake with the woman. That would be too unbelievable, even if it was the truth.
“That’s a new one,” he said. “I’m sure she was glad to see you. The man who helped put her son away.”
“She couldn’t have been nicer about it. And I don’t know, even last night… I was just thinking about the case, and I guess I just want Detective Bateman to fill in some gaps for me, help me to understand how that case got closed in the end. Because I wasn’t there to see it.”
“It got closed because he confessed. You know that.”
“I know. But I never got to see the tape. I never even read the transcript. So I guess I just want to know how it went, that’s all. Call it curiosity, after all these years.”
“It sounds like you’ve got something else on your mind,” he said. “More than just curiosity. But I can tell you, I did see the tape of the confession. It was airtight.”
“Okay, I appreciate you telling me that. That makes me feel better.”
“But you’re still going to call the detective, aren’t you.”
“I thought I might. Unless you think it’s a bad idea.”
“I suppose it might rattle his cage a little bit, you showing up after all these years, wanting to know how he closed out the case. But you know what? That sounds like a good enough reason right there. Hell, I wish I could be there myself.”
“You’re sounding just like the sergeant we all knew and loved.”
“Let me get you the number,” he said. I wrote it down as he read it off to me.
“Okay,” I said. “I got it. Thank you.”
“Let me know how it goes, all right? Let me know what shade of red his face turns when you ask him if it was a clean confession.”
“It’s a deal.”
“Oh, by the way,” he said. “I know I said he’s not the man he used to be, but you should know, he’s really had some health problems over the past few years. So don’t be surprised when you see him, is all I’m saying.”
“I appreciate the warning.”
“You take care of yourself, Alex. It was good seeing you again.”
I thanked him again and hung up. Then I sat there for a while on the side of that empty street. It was a clean confession, I told myself. The sergeant saw it himself, and he would know.
So why do I still have Mrs. King’s voice in my head, telling me her son was innocent?
I picked up the phone again and dialed Detective Bateman’s number.
A few minutes later, I was on the road, driving north. I took the Lodge Freeway out of the city. When I hit Eight Mile Road, the infamous northern border, I had a strange moment of regret and something almost like heartache. This city wasn’t a part of my life anymore. I lived over three hundred miles away. Yet it had meant something to me, once upon a time. I grew up rooting for its sports teams. I went to work here every day for eight years. I saw a thousand terrible things here back in the day, but I also saw what the people of Detroit were really made of. When people tell you this city essentially won the Second World War, it’s not crazy. Even back in the eighties, when things were really starting to fall apart, I still felt like the people who lived here could put the city back together. Now it felt like most everyone had given up on the place. I couldn’t even imagine what it would look like in another twenty years.
I was heading back to Paradise, but with a little detour in mind. When I had reached the retired Detective Arnie Bateman, after exchanging the standard pleasantries, he had told me that he lived “up north” now. “On the lake.” I was already wondering if he had ended up in Marquette, or maybe Eagle Harbor. That was the real “up north,” after all, and the real “on the lake.” But no, he lived on Houghton Lake, the inland lake right in the middle of the mitten. It was about halfway home for me. Hell, not more than a few minutes out of my way, so we ended up arranging to grab a bite to eat on his boat.
He would no doubt want to show me the lake, and I’d have to act like I was impressed. I’d have to resist the urge to tell him that my lake was a thousand feet deep and bigger than ten states.
It took me less than three hours to get there, through Saginaw and Bay City. I got off at the exit and worked my way around the southern shore to the town of Houghton Lake. There were plenty of lakeside motels, restaurants, bars, places to buy fishing tackle. There was a week left until Labor Day, so the place was still moderately busy.
I passed another Ash Street. The day winking at me, if you believe in that sort of thing. Soon after, I left the main road and found the marina. Another quarter mile up the shoreline, I found the address. I’m not sure what I was expecting. Maybe a big white Cape Cod with a sign up front bearing the house’s name, BATEMAN’S BEACH HOUSE or something like that, but I was surprised to see nothing but a mailbox with a number and his last name assembled with those reflective letter decals you buy at the hardware store. I turned down the driveway and pulled up next to a Jeep. The house was a simple log cabin, not much different from my own.
When I got out of the truck, the side door to the cabin opened, and out stepped a man I wouldn’t have recognized in any other context. I mean, I knew Sergeant Grimaldi gave me the heads-up, but the man I saw was at least fifty pounds heavier than the detective I remembered, and he was walking slowly, gripping a cane in his right hand. As he got closer, I could start to see that old face from the precinct, but there wasn’t one single bit of flash left to the man. He looked, honestly, like he was seventy years old.
If Sergeant Grimaldi had lost a step or two with age, then Detective Bateman had lost a whole staircase.
“Officer McKnight,” he said, looking me up and down. “I swear, you don’t look any different.”
I shook his hand. He still had some strength left, at least.
“I’m afraid I’m not moving around quite as well,” he said, looking down at his cane. “But they’re gonna give me a new hip soon, so I’ll be good as new. I told the doctor he should keep going, just turn everything bionic.”
“I could use some of that myself,” I said, rubbing my right shoulder.
His smile went away for a moment, as he made the connection. The reason my shoulder should need such attention when the rest of me seemed to be holding up just fine.
“Yeah,” he said. “How are you doing with that, anyway? I never really got to talk to you after… You know.”
“I don’t even think about it anymore.” Half a lie on my part.
“I heard they left one inside you. Was that just for a souvenir?”
“Something like that.”
The smile came back as he patted my other shoulder. “Come on,” he said. “Let’s have a little something on the lake.”
I followed him around the cabin, down to his dock.
“You live in Paradise now? Is that right?”