“No, it doesn’t.”
“I used to know a parole officer,” he said. “Going way back. I remember he once told me, when murderers get out of prison, they’re statistically the least likely to ever get in trouble again.”
“Is that right?”
“Sex criminals, child molesters, those guys are almost guaranteed to end up arrested again, but plain old murderers? They usually stay straight.”
“Does that make you feel any better now?” I said.
“No, actually not. How ’bout you?”
I shook my head and took another long drink.
“It’s funny,” he said. “I called you because theoretically somebody you helped put away for a long time might come after you. But while I’m sitting here thinking about him, walking free like that…”
“It’s more likely we’d go after him,” I said. “I hear what you’re saying.”
“Okay, good, so it’s not just me thinking that.”
“Something you think about. Not something you actually do.”
“No, I guess not. But if I were her husband? Even after all these years?”
“He’s probably remarried now. Maybe with a family. You don’t destroy that just to kill the man who killed your first wife.”
“I know, I know,” he said. “It wouldn’t bring her back. I’m just saying…”
He waved the whole thing away with one hand. Then he looked up at the screens.
“I never did get the whole soccer thing,” he said. “Did you?”
“I’ve got a friend from Scotland,” I said. “He’ll talk about it like it’s life or death sometimes.”
“You’ve been up there ever since you left the force?”
“Took me about a year. Then I finally wandered up there.”
“I know that must have been rough. And you do realize…”
He hesitated, looking me in the eye.
“I’ll just say it, Alex. You do realize that nobody blamed you for what happened to your partner.”
I waited a few beats before answering.
“I did. I blamed myself.”
He shook his head. There wasn’t much else to say, and he was smart enough not to try.
“So when’s the last time you got back down here?” he finally said.
“It was a few years ago. I saw the new stadium, but I don’t remember if I drove by the old one.”
“You would have remembered, believe me. If you saw Tiger Stadium half torn down… That was just the worst. Of course, now it’s just a field, and the old flagpole.”
“I do remember going by the old precinct,” I said. “The building didn’t look much different, at least.”
“You realize that the First and Thirteenth are combined now.”
“Are you serious?”
“Yep. The old rival precincts are now the Central District. They’ve got six districts now, instead of thirteen precincts.”
“That’s amazing.”
“The city’s lost half its people, Alex. I mean, literally half the people are gone now. The population is back at around what it was in 1900. A couple of those precincts, they became like outposts in the desert. No houses around them. Hardly any people. They’ve even got bears living in some of the old buildings now.”
“Bears? Are you serious?”
“That’s what I’ve heard. They’ve got companies that go around tearing down houses as fast as they can. Whole blocks, just disappearing. When you were down here before, did you drive though any of the neighborhoods?”
“A little bit through Corktown, but not much else.”
“What about the train station? Did you see that?”
“From a distance. I never got too close.”
“Well, you have to go see it, then. The whole city, Alex. Just take some time today and drive around. You have to go see what’s happened to our old Motown.”
So that’s what I did. After I thanked him for the beer and saw him back to his car, I got in my truck and started driving around. FBI Agent Janet Long was still at work, after all, and I had a few hours to kill before meeting her for dinner.
You have to understand, Detroit is a huge city. Not in terms of population-not anymore, at least-but it’s 140 square miles in area. You could fit Boston and San Francisco inside the city borders, and still have room left over for Manhattan. I drove straight east, through Redford, where I lived as a young married cop, just across the border. Then a minute later I was in the city itself. This place I was sworn to serve and protect.
It’s so easy to stay on the freeway and to zoom right through it all. As I crossed over the River Rouge I made myself get off and start driving down those residential streets. I had to see it for myself.
I crossed through the northern reaches of the city, turning down one street after another. I saw the abandoned houses. I saw the garbage and the graffiti and the high weeds. I saw the charred remains of houses that had burned down. This is something Detroit had always been known for, of course. Devil’s Night, the night before Halloween, when people would come from literally all over the world to watch the city burn. Every fireman on the job would be out that night, and just about every cop, too. It always felt like a losing battle, but now…
Now it was like the whole city just said, all together… Let it burn.
An hour later, I was still driving. I finally had to stop for a while. I sat there in my truck and looked at an entire row of empty houses. They would be torn down eventually. The demolition companies just hadn’t gotten to them yet.
Having worked my way through the west side, it was hard to imagine that the east side could be any worse. But I was wrong. By that time I was getting a little numb, but still I’d see something like a beautiful old church turned into a half-collapsed wreck and it would hit me all over again. A park where children once played. A school with every window covered over with plywood.
As I finally worked my way back to the heart of the city, I came down East Grand Boulevard and passed through the old Packard plant. It had already been abandoned when I was a cop here, but at least then it stood out from everything around it. Now it was just one more forty-acre postapocalyptic wasteland in a city filled with them, with yet more decayed buildings, more graffiti, more garbage, more weeds. This plant where they once made the most beautiful automobiles in the world. It was easy to see how much this one wrecked-out old plant could stand for the whole city, the way it was back in the glory days, and the way it was now.
I hit Woodward Avenue, the center of town, the dividing line between east and west. The old Thirteenth Precinct building, with the indoor gym they were so proud of, was closed now. They had put up a fence with razor wire around the whole complex.
I drove south, feeling a tightness in my chest as I got close to that corner. Even though I knew the building was gone now, that apartment building with the broken elevator and those stairs that Franklin had to climb, complaining with every step. Until we finally got to the top and knocked on that door.
It was gone now, replaced with a Burger King. But it didn’t make me feel any better to see it gone, because Franklin was just as much gone himself.
I drove downtown, past the First Precinct building, still open, at least for the moment. Past the new ballpark where the Tigers played now, to Grand Circus Park, where the streets fanned out like spokes on a wheel. It was a weekday. A working day. There were people walking around the place, enjoying the nice day. It was good to see that much. It was good to see that the whole city hadn’t been abandoned yet.
I went down to Michigan Avenue, headed west past where the old Tiger Stadium once stood like a huge gray battleship. It was just a field now, like the sergeant said, with only the old center-field flagpole still standing.
I wasn’t far from Roosevelt Park and the old Michigan Central Station. I looked at my watch. I still had an hour. Plenty of time to go see the station up close, to see what it looked like now. To see that empty parking lot, those tracks, that desecrated building.