“He was asked to go on leave because he was actively and aggressively interfering with our investigation into the death of a U.S. marshal. You understand that part of it, right?”
“I thought you said you guys were all on the same team.”
“All right, stop,” Maven said, uncrossing his arms. “Will you just tell us what you want to tell us so we can get the hell out of here?”
Agent Fleury kept trying to stare me down until Agent Long cleared her throat and joined in.
“If you gentlemen had any other material leads pertaining to either Mr. Razniewski or his son, which apparently you did, you should have brought them to us. Especially if those leads involved crossing a state line.”
“We had no way of knowing we’d end up in Wisconsin,” I said. “But come on, does that really matter? Why are you laying into us, anyway? We were just asking some questions.”
“Alex,” she said, going with the first name thing now, “do you really think there’s some kind of connection between Razniewski and his son’s death, and Sergeant Steele and his son’s death?”
“I don’t know. That’s what we were trying to find out.”
“I understand how you could look at the close timing and think it was kind of suspicious, but take a step back. You’ve got one young man who has a conflict with his father over his future. He ends up taking his own life. A tragic thing that happens all the time. Every single day. His father is a U.S. marshal, who’s actively hunting down some of the worst criminals in the country. He ends up getting murdered in cold blood. Again, it’s tragic. Of course. That goes without saying.”
I looked over at Maven. He was listening carefully. Once again, I could only marvel at his newfound calm demeanor, and wonder where the hell he had found it.
“In an entirely separate branch of law enforcement, you have Sergeant Donald Steele of the Michigan State Police. His son, as we’ve learned today, was a bit of a loner. Liked to go back behind his barn and fire his guns. Pretty much every afternoon he did this.”
“How did you find that out?”
“We’ve been in contact with the officers out there. They’ve been very helpful. I hope this shows you how seriously we’re taking this.”
“And let me just point out one more time,” Agent Fleury cut in, “that if you had simply come to us instead of going out there yourself-”
“They get it,” Agent Long said, snapping a quick icy look at her partner. It was the first break I had seen between them. “Anyway, the bottom line is we have another young man with some troubles, who takes his own life. But again, as we all know, it happens.”
I was about to speak up on that one. The fact that neither kid had left a note, percentages be damned, and the fact that both suicide scenes gave me the same gut feeling that things just weren’t adding up. But then what? They’d ask for some piece of hard evidence that something was amiss in either case, and what would I give them?
“Finally,” she said, “in the case of Sergeant Steele himself, and the murder of both him and Ms. Donna Krimer, I assume you were aware that the two of them were involved in a long-term extramarital relationship?”
“We got that impression, yes.”
“Were you aware that Ms. Krimer was still legally married to a man with a history of domestic violence?”
“No, we didn’t know anything about her.”
“No, you didn’t,” Agent Fleury said. He obviously couldn’t resist jumping back in with that one. “Were you aware that Mr. Krimer has been missing ever since the two bodies were discovered?”
“The police mentioned that they hadn’t been able to contact him yet.”
“Yes, well, they still haven’t tracked him down as of this morning. Without presuming any guilt on his part, can we at least try to imagine a likely scenario here? If he were to come back to the house unannounced, say, and find his still lawfully wedded wife in bed with another man?”
“Okay,” I said. “I see where you’re going. It makes sense.”
“Good,” he said. “I’m glad we’re all on the same page now. So in the meantime, if anything new does come up, I can assure you we’ll be right on top of it.”
“It sounds like you’ve already decided that there’s no connections between any of these events,” Maven said. “You can just go back to Detroit and forget all about it, eh?”
“Is that what you just heard me say?”
It was Maven’s turn to get the hard stare now. He returned it without blinking.
“If any further information is developed,” Agent Fleury said, slowly, “we’ll follow up on it. At this point, if there is any connection, not only does it involve the original case with a U.S. marshal, but it also crosses state lines now. In which case, it should be even more abundantly clear to you, if it wasn’t already, that this falls under our jurisdiction. Are we clear on that point?”
Maven took a few beats to answer him. “Yes, we’re clear.”
“I don’t get it,” I said. “You didn’t come all the way back up here just for this.”
“We’re still pursuing leads in the Razniewski case,” Agent Long said. “Seeing you gentlemen again was just a bonus.”
“We’ll be at the Ojibway again,” Agent Fleury said. “If you think about chasing down any more leads, maybe you should give us a call instead?”
On that note, they said their good-byes and left us sitting in the interview room. Maven was staring off into space, just like the last time we found ourselves here together. He was the kind of man whose actions I was sure I could predict, a man with clearly marked buttons that you pressed at your own risk. Apparently some kind of alien life force had taken over his mind and body now. There was no other way I could explain his behavior.
“You know why they’re back up here,” he finally said.
“Why?”
“They’re not getting anywhere in Detroit. It’s a marshal so there’s a lot of pressure to solve the case. But they’ve got nothing, so they’re back up here to start from scratch. They probably have orders not to come back empty-handed this time.”
“The case is getting cold,” I said. “I don’t like their chances.”
“Neither do I.”
A minute of silence passed. Neither of us moved.
“What do you think?” I said. “Are they right?”
“About what?”
“About all these deaths not having anything to do with each other.”
“I don’t know, McKnight. If we think differently, I’m not even sure what we can do about it now. They made that pretty clear.”
“Well, if you think of something else and you want to run it by me…”
He nodded. “I’ll keep that in mind.”
I got up and grabbed my coat.
“It seems like we sort of ended up on the same team the past couple of days,” he said as I went to the door. “That’s a little different from our usual arrangement.”
“You’re right. It is.”
He didn’t say anything else, so I left. A half hour later, I was driving home in my truck, making that last turn around Whitefish Bay, heading toward Paradise. That’s when a thought came to me out of God knows where.
I turned around and gunned it all the way back to the Soo.
Half hour out, half hour back, so I’d only been gone an hour. I didn’t know where Chief Maven would be, and I didn’t have his cell phone number. Hell, I wasn’t even one hundred percent sure he’d carry a cell phone out of uniform. But either way, I didn’t figure there were too many places he could be.
I tried the City-County Building first. The receptionist told me he had left just after I did. She didn’t know where he was going, and no, she didn’t have his cell phone number.
Okay, so he’s at his house, I thought. Doing more painting or God knows what else. Or maybe just sleeping it off. We’d both had a pretty rough couple of days.
I drove over there and pulled into his driveway. I didn’t see his car. I peeked through the window on the garage door and saw an immaculate set of tools hanging from a set of pegs on the wall, a snowblower, and three snow shovels, and one car that I’m sure belonged to Mrs. Maven. Left there when he took her to the airport, no doubt. But Maven’s car was gone.