I was about to move on to the interviews with the friends, but then I remembered what the undersheriff had told me about his own personal experience with suicide. When I was done with that, Leon stopped me.
“Tell me that part again,” he said. “Slow down even more and tell me everything.”
“He just said it seemed like a lot of suicides going on. There was this other kid who had killed himself, down in-where was it? Iron Mountain, I think he said. The son of somebody he knew, or worked with, or whatever. Then he told me about his own father-in-law, how he ran away one day and killed himself in his car.”
“His father-in-law-that wasn’t this winter, was it?”
“No, that was a while ago, I think. Some years ago.”
“Okay, so put that one aside for a minute. Tell me more about this other suicide. Think hard. What exactly did he say?”
I closed my eyes and put myself back in that office. The undersheriff sitting across from me, with that pained look on his face as he talked about young men killing themselves.
“It was definitely Iron Mountain,” I said. “This winter. I think he said like two weeks after Charlie hanged himself. Something about going back behind his barn and shooting himself in the head. Yeah, that was it. But then he went right into talking about his father-in-law.”
“Because that was the thing that was important in his own experience. That was the connection. But not for you, right? Not at all. For you, it’s just this one other suicide that happened to take place two weeks later. You said the kid’s father was what again?”
“Somebody he knew down in Iron Mountain,” I said. “Somebody who… no, wait, it was a sergeant. I remember that now. He said it was a sergeant’s son.”
“A sergeant, as in someone in the military? Or in the state police?”
“I got the feeling he was talking about another cop. But if he’s a sergeant, yeah. He couldn’t be another county guy. He didn’t say sheriff or deputy. He said sergeant.”
“So now you have two sons of state police officers, killing themselves within two weeks of each other.”
“But Raz was only a state guy for like two years. A long time ago.”
“Okay, but either way, it’s still two men in law enforcement, right? Could it just be a coincidence? Maybe. Maybe not.”
“Damn,” I said. “Of course. It was right there, but I just wasn’t seeing it. You’re amazing, Leon. Yet again.”
“I think you would have worked it out. Now that you see it, what are you going to do?”
“I guess I could try to find out more about this other suicide. Maybe give the undersheriff a call, although the FBI was pretty adamant about keeping this case to themselves. They wouldn’t even let Chief Maven anywhere near it.”
“You said they were investigating the murder of the father. Who says that has anything to do with the son? Besides, didn’t he pay you to look into it?”
“He never got the chance. Not that I would have taken any money from him.”
“But even now,” Leon said, “you could theoretically send a bill to his estate.”
“I’d never do that.”
“But you could.”
“What are you getting at?”
He waited patiently for it to come to me. The snow fell outside and the wind blew and the earth turned a few degrees and then I finally got it.
“He hired me to look into his son’s suicide,” I said. “If I feel like there are still unanswered questions…”
“Then you’re still on the case.”
“No. This is crazy. Come on.”
He leaned forward and put both hands flat on the table.
“You know I’m right,” he said, drawing out each word. “As long as you don’t have your answers yet, you are still on this case.”
I felt bad leaving him there. I could see in his eyes how much he missed working on a case. Any case at all. And it was obvious to me, more than ever, that he was way better at this than I would ever be. He didn’t deserve to be standing behind a snack bar, serving popcorn to teenagers. I couldn’t help wondering if my visit had made him feel even worse.
With that cheery thought in my head, I drove over to the other side of town and parked next to the City-County Building. I went inside and asked the receptionist if I could see the chief.
“He’s not here right now,” she said. “Can I take a message?”
“How about the FBI agents?” I said, remembering how well that message business worked the last time I called him. “Are they here?”
“They left for Detroit this morning. I think they were all done with their work up here.”
That surprised me a little bit. I mean, it’s not like I expected them to come back and fill me in on everything, but damn. Did they hit a big dead end up here? Or did they just get tired of the weather?
“Where’s the chief right now?” I asked. “Is there any way I can reach him?”
She looked both ways before lowering her voice. “I think he’s actually out on some kind of administrative leave. I haven’t seen him at all for two days straight.”
“The chief? Out on leave? Are you kidding me?”
“They just told me to take messages for him, and to refer anything important to the county. Which I’ve never done before.”
“That is definitely strange.” I thanked her and went back outside. There was only one other place I could think of going, so that’s exactly where I want. Down Easterday Avenue, past the college, to Summit Street. To Chief Maven’s house.
Three days had passed since the last time I had been there. The police cars were all gone now, of course. Even the crime scene tape had been taken down. You’d have no way of knowing anything unusual had happened inside the house.
I went to the front door and knocked. I was about to knock again when the door opened and I saw Chief Maven standing there holding a paint roller.
“What do you want?” he said.
“I left you a message. You never called me back.”
He shook his head and turned away from me. “Come on in.” He was wearing old jeans and a T-shirt speckled with paint. “Wipe your feet.”
I went inside and did as I was told. There were plastic drop cloths everywhere, and the unventilated smell of paint was almost overwhelming. It took me back to my days right after baseball, when I kept from starving by painting houses.
“I’m kind of busy here,” he said, his voice coming to me from the kitchen. “So make it quick.”
“Good to see you, too.”
“What was that?”
“Nothing,” I said, turning the corner. The kitchen had been virtually taken apart. The table and chairs were gone, and everything else that wasn’t bolted down had been removed. Beneath the paint smell I caught a strong undercurrent of bleach. There was a plastic tarp on the floor and from the bare wood along the edges I could tell he had ripped up all of the tiles.
The chief poured more cream-colored paint into his tray. It looked like he was about halfway done with his first coat.
“How’s your wife?” I said.
“She’s in Amsterdam.”
“Really?”
“My daughter’s been traveling around Europe since right after Christmas,” he said, rolling the paint on the wall. “Kind of a lifelong dream. When this happened here…”
He paused for just a half second to look down on the floor, at the exact spot where Raz breathed his last breath.
“When this happened, my wife took the chance to go over and spend some time with her.”
“That sounds like a good thing.” I tried to remember what I knew about Chief Maven’s daughter and came up with only one thing. The very first time I sat in his office, I saw the picture of a young girl on his desk and asked him if it had come with the frame.
“Do you know how much it costs to fly to Amsterdam at the last minute? Take a guess.”
“I have no idea.”
“Soo to Detroit. Detroit to New York. New York to Amsterdam. Twenty-three-hundred dollars.”