“Alex! What the hell?”
“Good to see you, Leon.”
“What are you doing here? Are you seeing a movie? Can I get you some popcorn or something?”
“No thanks,” I said. “I actually just wanted to talk to you for a minute.”
“I don’t know. As you can see, I’m pretty swamped here.”
“Yeah, it’s a madhouse,” I said, looking around at the movie posters and the ugly carpeting and the velvet ropes. “But maybe you can break free for a minute.”
He came out from behind the counter and sat down at one of the little tables they had scattered around the place. He made a sound when he sat down, like an old man on his last legs. He rubbed his eyes and smiled when he caught me looking at him.
“It’s been a tough month,” he said. “I’m not selling sleds anymore.”
“I know. I went by there first. Then I went to your house.”
“My wife let you live, I see.”
“She did.”
“She loves you, you know.”
“As long as I’m not asking to borrow one of your guns.”
“I was hoping that’s why you were here today.”
“Nothing that exciting,” I said. “I just want to run something by you and get your opinion.”
“Okay, shoot.”
“You read about the murder at the chief’s house?”
“I sure did. Wait a minute, didn’t the paper say ‘an unidentified local man’ found the body? Don’t tell me.”
“You’re looking at the unidentified local man,” I said. “The victim was a U.S. marshal named Charles Razniewski Sr. He and Maven used to ride together for the Michigan State Police.”
“Okay, and?”
“His son committed suicide in January. And Raz-that’s his nickname-Raz hired me to go out to Houghton to find out everything I could about his state of mind that night.”
“Are you kidding me? That sounds impossible.”
“I told him to hire you, Leon. I really did.”
He waved it away. “Come on, like Ellie would let me go do something like that.”
“It wasn’t dangerous. It was just talking to people.”
“It still would have been me trying to be a PI again,” he said, looking away. “That would have been enough. But anyway, what’s the problem?”
“You mean besides coming back and finding the client dead on Chief Maven’s kitchen floor?”
“Besides that, yes. I assume there’s more.”
“That’s just it,” I said. “I don’t know what it is. It’s just a feeling I’ve had that I’ve somehow missed something.”
“Do you think there’s a connection between the suicide and the murder?”
“I don’t know. The FBI doesn’t think so. They think Raz was murdered because of some high-profile cases he’s been working on down in Detroit. He’s been a marshal down there for the past ten years.”
“I read that part in the paper, yes.”
I smiled and shook my head. “Do you normally memorize everything you read in the paper?”
“When it’s about a local murder, yes. But go on. You say the FBI doesn’t see a link?”
“Not that they’d talk about. They haven’t really said much to me at all.”
“When you went out there to look into the suicide,” he said, “did you find anything suspicious?”
“You mean to indicate it wasn’t a suicide at all? No, I didn’t. Not really.”
“Not really?”
“Well, I mean, I just got this feeling that something wasn’t quite right about it. I didn’t find anything concrete.”
“But your instincts told you something was wrong,” he said. “You should definitely listen to that.”
“That’s the thing. I’ve been wondering if maybe Raz himself had an instinct about it.”
Leon narrowed his eyes and leaned in close, like I was finally getting to the good stuff.
“I mean think about it,” I said. “Your son kills himself, right? It’s the worst thing that could ever happen. Obviously. But why try to find out more about it? It’s not going to fix anything.”
“Maybe he just wanted to know. So he didn’t have to wonder anymore.”
“That’s what he said. It made sense at the time, but ever since then, I don’t know. I’m just thinking maybe there was something else. Like maybe he himself knew that the idea just didn’t make any sense.”
“How could it ever make sense? For anyone?”
“Think about everyone you know,” I said. “Out of all those people, there are some that simply would not kill themselves. You know what I mean? Those people, if somebody told you… you just wouldn’t believe it. Am I right?”
“Whereas some people…” he said, leaning back in his chair. “You might still be shocked, but that doesn’t mean you wouldn’t ultimately believe it.”
“Exactly. Maybe that was part of why Raz couldn’t leave it alone.”
“Even if it was just a half-conscious thing, you mean. Interesting.”
“It’s just a gut feeling. I’m probably wrong.”
“I bet you’re not. So tell me what you found out when you went out there.”
“All right,” I said. “Here’s what happened…”
I gave him the same rundown I’d given to Agent Long. Everything I did, from the moment I met Raz to the moment I came back to town and found him dead on the floor. Leon sat absolutely still, watching my face as I talked and absorbing every single word. Even Agent Long, who presumably interviewed people almost every day, didn’t seem to be listening with half the attention that Leon was giving me.
When I was done, he thought about it for a while.
“The kid was drunk. Yet somehow he was able to string up a rope just right, stand on the back of his car when it was snowing, and it was probably zero degrees at that point, then he stepped off and hanged himself.”
“Correct.”
“I understand why you’d have a problem with that,” he said, “but it’s probably not impossible. Not if you really wanted to do it.”
“Not impossible, no. But it still bothers me.”
He thought about it some more.
“There might be something else,” he finally said. “Something you haven’t told me yet.”
“I told you everything. Why would I leave anything out?”
“Because you don’t think it’s important. Even though it might be exactly what you’re looking for.”
I threw up my hands.
“Tell me everything again,” he said. “But this time, don’t leave anything out. Tell me about every second. Everything you saw. Every word that was said, as best as you can remember.”
I let out a long breath.
“Okay,” I said. “Uh, let’s see. I started driving out there on Wednesday morning…”
“No, go back. Start with the first time you met your client.”
“That was the day before. I met him at Chief Maven’s office.”
I told him everything I could remember. I played it all back in my mind, trying to pick up every word he said. How he asked me to do this thing for him. Then, the next day, driving out to Houghton, making my detour to Misery Bay. Even the way I asked the old man at the diner why the place had gotten that name, and how he didn’t have a good answer. When I got to the place itself, Leon made me slow down and describe every detail. Where the tree was in relation to the parking lot. Where the lake was.
“There were no buildings in sight?” he asked. “No summer houses or anything?”
“Not that I could see. I mean, I knew there were a few up the road.”
“No trails leading to the parking lot? Just the road?”
“I think there might have been a snowmobile trail in the woods, but it didn’t look like it had been used recently.”
“You said there was fresh snowfall that day. Either way, that has nothing to do with what might have happened three months ago.”
“Granted. Good point.”
“Okay, so go on.”
I continued with my conversation with the undersheriff. Everything he told me about being the one who had to climb up the ladder to cut Charlie down, and his answers to all of my questions. The length of the rope. The way the car was discovered with the driver’s side door open, the key still in the ignition. The car out of gas and the battery dead.