“What was that?” Maven said. “What did he just say?”
“Hey, Jim!” Coleman said. “Get back here.”
“No, no, you heard the chief. I’m gonna do something useful.”
“Get your ass back here,” Maven said. “Repeat what you just said.”
“Hey,” Fusilli said, coming back to us with his hands up, “I didn’t mean anything by it. I was just saying, with Sergeant Steele in Iron Mountain, and Haggerty in Marquette…”
“Haggerty?” Coleman said. “What do you mean?”
“What about him?” Maven said. “Who is he? What happened?”
“Well, he’s been retired for a while now…”
“But he was a state cop at one time?”
“He was a forensics guy, up at the lab in Marquette.”
“What happened to him?”
“Not to him,” Coleman said. “To his daughter. She just died recently. But it was in her sleep, right? A heart attack or something?”
“She was twenty-seven years old,” Fusilli said. “You really believed that story about the heart attack?”
“I don’t know,” Coleman said. “It can happen.”
He waved that one off and was about to walk away again.
“Stop,” Maven said. “Tell us what happened.”
“It’s none of your business, Chief. He was a state man and some things stay in the family.”
“You’re the one who brought it up,” Maven said. “Now start talking.”
“Jim,” Coleman said, putting up both hands to calm everybody down. “This might be important. Please tell us what you heard about Haggerty’s daughter.”
He worked it over for a moment, then he started talking.
“All right, if you really need to know. This was like two weeks ago now. Up at Northern, in the university housing. Haggerty’s daughter was like an associate professor or something. She didn’t come to class and when they finally opened up her apartment, she was dead. Apparently, there were some… unusual circumstances in terms of the way she died.”
“Unusual how?” Maven said.
“I didn’t get the details. I just heard it wasn’t as simple as a young woman dying of a heart attack. Whatever happened, it may have been self-inflicted, that’s all I know. I think the guys at the Marquette post have been so tight-lipped about it in deference to Lieutenant Haggerty. Just out of respect, I mean. He was a very popular guy up there.”
“You say this happened two weeks ago?”
“Yes,” Fusilli said. “And that’s all I know. You want anything else, you’re gonna have to talk to the guys in Marquette.”
He walked away from us. Maven sat there looking like somebody had just slapped him in the face.
“Where is Haggerty now?” I said. “I mean, is he-”
“I don’t know,” Coleman said. “I would assume he’s still up in Marquette, but I guess I don’t know that for sure. I haven’t heard anything about him since he retired. Until this.”
“Do me one favor,” Maven said. “Can you look him up in your records there? See where he’s been on the police force?”
Coleman went back to his keyboard and his mouse and started going through the database.
“He started out in St. Ignace,” he said. “He was a trooper on the road for what-seven years, I guess, until he transferred to forensics. He was probably taking a lot of extra classes at night or something, because I know that’s pretty heavy stuff.”
“St. Ignace,” Maven said. “Where did we just see that?”
Coleman hit a few more keys.
“Right here,” he said. “Sergeant Steele was also stationed in St. Ignace. In fact…”
He sat back in his chair and looked at us, one by one. The words and the numbers and the dates glowed on the screen and for the first time the whole thing was coming together before our eyes. It wasn’t just a gut feeling anymore. We had a hard connection now and I knew everything was about to change. I felt a sick cold wave rising from the bottom of my throat.
“They were there at the same time,” Coleman said. “For seven years, it looks like. Steele and Haggerty were riding out of the same post for seven years.”
And we’re rolling…
… This is going to be a tricky shot, but let’s try it.
… Get as close as you can to the blade of this knife.
… Yes, even closer. I want to feel like I’m riding the edge.
… Stay in focus, as much as you can. That’s it.
… Feel that metal? Feel it on your skin? That’s how I want it to feel.
… We’ll need the right sound mix here. A musical note, off-key. Grating and painful, until you’re begging it to stop.
… All the way up the edge. To the very point. That’s right.
… This will come across on film. This feeling. I know it.
And cut.
CHAPTER TEN
Nobody said anything for a long time. As Sergeant Coleman sat there looking back and forth between us, the other state policemen kept walking by, grabbing their coffee and heading outside to their cars, like it was just another normal day.
“We have to talk to this guy Haggerty,” I said. “I mean, don’t we? Do we have any choice?”
“He just lost his daughter two weeks ago. How the hell is he going to be able to talk to anybody?”
“We have to find him. If we don’t, he may be next.”
“It’s time to fill me in here,” Sergeant Coleman said. “What the hell’s going on?”
“Do you know anybody up in the Marquette lab?” I said. “We have to get to this man. Even if he’s retired, you must be able to find him, right?”
“Probably,” the sergeant said. “But come on, guys. Give me the rest of the story.”
Maven and I looked at each other.
“This is going to sound crazy,” Maven said, “so promise me you’ll hear us out before you say anything.”
“Uh, okay,” he said, not looking too certain about his ability to keep that promise.
“It all starts with a suicide,” Maven said. “Another kid. A son of another former state cop. Out in Misery Bay.”
An hour later, we were outside the Soo post, shivering in the cold and wondering what the hell to do next. Sergeant Coleman had told us he’d call the Marquette lab and get back to us as soon as he could. But first, he had to figure out a tactful way to tell whoever answered the phone that he needed to contact a former lieutenant who was certainly just beginning to grieve his dead daughter.
“How long do you think we’ll have to wait?” I said to Maven.
He shrugged his shoulders. Then he leaned over to shelter his cigarette while he tried to light it.
“You can’t do this again,” I said.
“Do what?”
“Go running off without me.”
He looked up at me, his cigarette still unlit.
“You have to trust me,” I said. “We’re both into this now.”
“That line you gave the FBI about this still being your case. I know you were just trying to cover for us. You really don’t have to do this anymore.”
“I told you, we’re both in this. Okay?”
He got the cigarette going at last, then stood up and blew a thin plume into the cold air.
“Those agents aren’t going to be happy if we keep sticking our noses in their business.”
“I don’t consider this to be their business,” I said. “I don’t think they even believe there’s any connection here.”
“You know we have to tell them. This new thing with Haggerty… it might change their mind.”
“So you’re saying what, give this to them and then go home?”
“I’m saying give this to them and see what they can do with it. But the hell with going home.”
He gave me a nod and told me to follow him in my truck.
“Where are we going?” I said.
“It’s our turn to go ruin their day.”
I followed Maven across town, all the way north to the frozen St. Marys River. There on Portage Street sat the one and only three-star hotel in Sault Ste. Marie. The Ojibway. As I parked in the lot, I couldn’t help running through my own personal history with the place. I had come here a million years ago to spend the night with Natalie and to find out if we could make a future together. If I really wanted to break it down, I could probably trace back to this very building and find my last real happiness here, before it all went to hell. But that was something I didn’t have the heart to think about. No, better to just go find the FBI agents who were camping out here so we could share our new horrible secret.