“All the more reason to start right here,” Fleury said. “So what do you say? Are you ready?”
Maven took out a pair of reading glasses I’d never seen on him before.
“Ready as I’ll ever be,” he said. “Bring it on.”
It was a long afternoon. Steele and Haggerty turned out to be two especially active and energetic state police officers. It was easy to see why they both had such successful careers. On top of that, they happened to be stationed in St. Ignace, one of the busier posts in Michigan. It’s the last stop before you get on the Mackinac Bridge, after all, meaning that everybody coming to and from the Upper Peninsula has to pass by your doorstep. They have to go through the toll booth there and pay their money and let you get a good look at them if you happen to be sitting right there in your squad car. So it’s the perfect place to camp out and watch for suspicious vehicles. Anyone going too fast or even too slow. Anyone trying way too hard to act natural. You get a feel for it eventually. You watch the people go by and you let your gut tell you if the person is holding his or her breath until you’re safely out of their rearview mirror. You pull up behind the vehicle and you run the plates. If something comes back, you light them up. Or hell, anything else you might happen to notice. One of the taillights out, for instance. Or one of those tiny white lights that illuminate the license plate. Those things go all the time and people hardly ever replace them.
Once you’ve got them stopped, you get out of your car and approach the driver’s side window, your right hand ready above your firearm, just in case. You do a quick visual on the backseat. If there’s anybody back there acting squirrely, trying to hide something or worse yet, trying to dig out something from under the seat. You watch the driver carefully. You look in the glove compartment when he opens it, the whole time waiting to see that familiar sight of cold blue steel. A hundred different things to process at once and a fraction of a second to react.
That’s what a good trooper does. That’s what Steele and Haggerty did, again and again, to the point that they developed a reputation for apprehending so many high-profile offenders. The agents went through their official daily logs, one day at a time, finally settling into a rhythm-Agent Fleury with Haggerty’s logs, Agent Long with Steele’s. They looked for the “A” entries and occasional “F” entries, A standing for Arrest and F for Fugitive. They passed over all of the “S” for Summons entries, the “V/W” for Verbal Warning entries, and all of the other minor incidents that filled out a state police officer’s day. It was amazing to me just how detailed these logs were.
Each arrest had a file class number associated with it, and we ended up seeing some of the same file classes again and again, after, 8041 for driving under the influence of alcohol, 2408 for possession of a stolen vehicle, 5202 for a concealed weapon. Maven had to step out to clarify two or three obscure file classes with the guys in the office, but for the most part it all went by in a blur.
It was just raw data, that was the problem-date, time, file class, name of the arrested party, driver’s license number, place of residence, date of birth-there was no room for pictures or for stories. By the end of a long, long afternoon, after we’d gone over hundreds of arrests involving both Donald Steele and Dean Haggerty, not one of those arrests could be cross-referenced to Charles Razniewski’s daily logs. Or Roy Maven’s either.
No, it would not be that easy.
When the post commander finally showed up, he invaded the room and we had to go through a minute or two of rooster strutting until Agent Long finally sat everybody down and tried to make them play nice. I couldn’t help wondering how many times she’d done this same routine before, and whether she ever got fed up with men wearing shiny badges. In the end, we all agreed that the Michigan State Police should be made aware of what the FBI was doing, and that the St. Ignace branch in particular could be a big help. There might have been a few old-timers left down there, after all, who might have memories of Steele and Haggerty and hell, why not? Maybe even a particular suspect who vowed revenge someday. We’d never know if somebody didn’t ask.
“You see,” Maven said to me when we were finally outside, “that’s the problem I keep coming back to. Let’s say somebody did get arrested all those years ago and what, he went to prison? He did his time and now he’s out? If he’s still got a beef, why would it be the cops he goes after? If he went to trial, it was the district attorney who stood up and pointed his finger at him, and told the judge he should be put away. Then of course it was the judge who actually banged his gavel and sentenced him. Why do you think Raz spent so much of his time guarding federal judges, anyway? They’re the real targets. Not the poor schlubs just doing their jobs who happened to catch you.”
“Still, you might have to testify,” I said. “You could still be the one person who makes it all happen. At least, it might feel that way if you’re looking at prison time. In fact, we should mention that angle to the agents, have them check the court records.”
“I don’t know, McKnight.” He sounded more tired than ever. “I was hoping I could help find the connection today, but it was like a total waste of time.”
“They’ll move on to that second time period now, after Raz became a marshal. If there’s something to be found, they’ll find it. I know Agent Fleury tries to talk a big game sometimes, but I think they’re both pretty sharp.”
He shook his head and turned his collar up against the wind. There was no good reason for both of us to be standing out there. Maven wasn’t even smoking a cigarette.
“You look like hell,” I said. “You should go home and get some rest.”
“I went back out there.”
“Where?”
“To Haggerty’s house. I just had to check on him.”
I counted to three in my head.
“You promised me you wouldn’t go off on your own again,” I said. “What happened?”
“There was a state car on the road, by his driveway. I rapped on the guy’s window and just about gave him a heart attack. Then I asked him why he wasn’t in the house with Haggerty. You know what he said?”
“What?”
“He said Haggerty kicked him out and told him to stay off his property. That’s why he had to sit on the road.”
“He’s still waiting,” I said. “He doesn’t want anybody else there to keep the killer away.”
We both stood there shivering for a while, thinking this over. There wasn’t much else to say about it.
“So what now?” I finally said.
“When we were talking about letting the guys at St. Ignace know about this, you know what occurred to me?”
“What?”
“All the time I’ve been a cop here in the Soo, I’ve never once set foot in the St. Ignace post.”
“It’s in a different county,” I said. “Why would you ever have business down there?”
“I wouldn’t. That’s just it. The only time I might have gone there was back in the day, when I was a state cop with Raz and I happened to come up here for something.”
“Something you can’t remember.”
“Right,” he said. “But what if…”
I waited for him to finish.
“Come on,” he said. “It’s not that far away. Let’s go see if I’m crazy.”
Sault Ste. Marie to St. Ignace. From the top of the eastern UP to the bottom. Not even an hour away, straight down I-75. It’s the busiest road in the state, the main artery running up from Detroit, all the way into Canada, so it’s always the first to be cleared. Plus the speed limit is seventy, so I’ll routinely buzz it between 85 and 90, even in wintertime.
It was early evening. I could have been having Jackie’s famous beef stew, I thought, along with the first of several cold Canadians. Sitting by the fire with my feet up. Yet I was here with Chief Maven again, and I wanted to see how this played out.