“She didn’t get that far,” I said. “By that time, I was wishing we were there in person. It just doesn’t feel right to ask somebody these kinds of questions over the phone.”
“So we’re driving all the way out here just to drag these poor people through their misery again? Is that what you’re telling me?”
“I didn’t force you to come, Chief.”
He didn’t answer that. He looked out the window at the snow on the trees and the rocks and the great nothingness that lies between the towns.
“You have the same feeling I do,” I said. “Am I right?”
“Yes, you’re right. Something’s not adding up.”
“She did ask me to make her a promise.”
“Who, Mrs. Steele?”
“Yeah. When I asked her if we could come out and talk to her, she said we could, as long as we promised to do one thing for her in return.”
“And what’s that?”
“She wouldn’t tell me. I guess we’ll find out when we get there.”
We kept hugging the shoreline as we made our way around the bottom rim of the UP, Lake Huron looking calmer and bluer than Lake Superior. We hit Escanaba, the closest thing to a real city we’d seen since leaving Sault Ste. Marie, stopped for gas and a bathroom break. We’d been on the road for a good three hours, with another hour to go. I had told Mrs. Steele we’d be there around eleven o’clock, but as we were ordering our food to go I remembered the thing about the Michigan time zones. With virtually the entire state on Eastern time, it’s easy to forget that there are four counties, all bordering Wisconsin, that are on Central time. So we’d be picking up an hour before we got to Iron Mountain. As tough as this visit would be, there was no reason to make it worse by arriving an hour early.
So we sat down with our food and Maven told me a few more stories about his old friend and fellow state cop, Charlie Razniewski. He made it sound like being a trooper was all about spending a lot of time in the patrol car, driving up and down I-75. If you do it for a while, you can eventually move on to other things, but Raz just wasn’t cut out for it. He wanted to go go go every minute of the day, and sitting behind a big rock with a speed gun in his lap was not his idea of time well spent.
“We did have some excitement now and then,” Maven said. We were sitting by the window in a place called Elmer’s, while the snowplows rumbled by on the main road. “There were a few big arrests. A couple of really terrible accidents. That’s when you find out if a rookie recruit can carry his weight.”
“And he did?”
“Hell yes. That’s when he showed his true colors. I could tell he’d make a fantastic trooper if he stuck with it. It was all the other stuff he couldn’t deal with. The paperwork. The riding around all day. Being patient. Putting your time in, you know, playing the game. It’s not an easy life if you’re not wired for it.”
“So tell me,” I said, thinking maybe now’s the time I can finally ask this question. “When he was killed, you seemed to take it especially hard.”
“He was a fellow cop, McKnight. I’m supposed to take care of him.”
“I know, I know, but you weren’t together for long. And it was a long time ago.”
“Spending all that time with me was supposed to be his punishment for mouthing off to a lieutenant, if you can believe that.”
I remembered what Raz had told me about Maven being nicknamed “Sergeant Cooler,” but I figured I should keep my promise to Raz and not mention it. Even if he was dead now.
“But we ended up hitting it off,” Maven went on. “You don’t really get a partner when you’re with the state police, but that’s what it felt like to me. He was my partner. Now all these years later, he comes to me for help and he ends up dead on my kitchen floor. How do you expect me to react?”
“You’re right,” I said, holding up my hands in surrender. “If he’s your partner, he’s your partner, no matter what. I would have reacted the same way.”
“Except you were there when your partner died.”
I let that one hang in the air for a long moment. I looked at him and he looked right back at me. The waitress was about to come over and offer us more coffee but thought better of it and kept on walking.
“What do you mean by that?” I finally said.
“You were with him at the end. I didn’t get that chance. That’s all I’m saying.”
“You didn’t get the chance to save him, you mean? The chance I had? Which I didn’t use?”
“Easy, McKnight. I wasn’t going there.”
“It sounds like you were.”
“Raz died alone, is all I’m saying. Or with his killer there watching him, which is even worse. I can’t stop thinking about it. That’s all I meant. Honestly.”
“Okay,” I said, mostly believing him. I waved at the waitress to bring us our check.
“I’m sorry,” he said. The second apology from Chief Maven in one day. “So let’s go talk to the Steeles.”
If you want to get to Iron Mountain, you need to leave the shoreline at Escanaba and drive straight into the heart of the woods. That’s all you’ll see for miles on end-trees and more trees. An hour of this and you’ll finally see Hermansville and Norway flash by, until you finally come to the very edge of the state. There, on the northern bank of the Menominee River, is the small town of Iron Mountain.
By the time we got this far, the roads were starting to rise and fall again. We were close enough to the Porcupine Mountains to see some real elevation, even though Copper Country was way the hell north of us, on the other end of the UP. It wasn’t about copper down here at all, and never had been. As we got close to town we saw an iron miner with a pickax standing two hundred feet above us. It was just a huge billboard, of course, and the sign between the giant miner’s legs read, BIG JOHN WELCOMES YOU TO IRON MOUNTAIN IRON MINE!
“Hard to miss that one,” Maven said. “I guess that means we’re here.”
“The Steeles live just south of town,” I said. “They’ve got a farm down by the river.”
I found the road and turned off. The road twisted back and forth through the woods until we were finally going up a big hill. I felt my tires start to slip, and I wondered how many other vehicles had gone into the ditch here. When we got to the top of the hill we were looking down at an old farmhouse with a great red barn just behind it.
“This has got to be it.” I stopped there and stared down at the scene below me.
“Yeah? So what’s the problem?”
“No problem. I’m just noticing something here. See that barn down there?”
He leaned over toward my side and looked out the window. “Yes?”
“We could sit right here and see everything that’s happening behind the barn, would you agree?”
“Uh, yes.”
“I’m just saying, if you were trying to figure out if there was any kind of routine, you could drive right by here a few times and observe everything that goes on down there.”
I hit the gas and we kept on going. As we looped around to the driveway, I saw that it was covered with a good ten inches of snow, so I put down my plow and started pushing.
“Mighty neighborly of you,” Maven said.
“She said she wanted to ask us a favor, right? Maybe this was it.”
I ran the length of the driveway, then backed up to do it all over again. If I’m going to plow, I’m going to do it right. Maven started getting a little impatient, but I finished the job and then we finally got out of the truck.
“Tell me the truth,” he said as we walked to the door. “Are you trying to get on their good side? Or would you have done that anyway?”
“I’ll pretend you didn’t ask that.”
I pressed the doorbell and heard a three-note chiming deep within the house. As we waited I looked around and saw nothing but the road curving around the farm, the woods, the barn, an old fence and a piece of rusted farm equipment here and there. Plus a hell of a lot of snow. Besides that there were no signs of life at all.