Exactly what Leon and I were talking about last night, I thought. I was going to bring that up as soon as I got here today, but it looks like Agent Long is already way ahead of me.
“It’s not easy to make those connections, because the information isn’t in one place. But we have people in the Detroit office working on it.”
“You say you have some hits already?”
“The three men arrested by Steele and Haggerty working together, yes. All in the right time frame, as I said, and in all three cases, there was a suicide in the family, within the following two years. The only sticking point will be tying in Razniewski and possibly Chief Maven.”
“It sounds like the right place to start,” I said. “So who are these guys?”
“Well, here’s what we have…”
She shuffled back through her papers.
“Candidate number one,” she said. “Andrew Parizi, age forty-five at the time of his arrest. His vehicle was stopped by Steele and Haggerty just short of the bridge. He was driving a station wagon and they could see all this stuff piled up in the back, lots of boxes and a few television sets. He went racing up to the toll booth, it sounds like, but they caught him before he could go through. He became combative when they tried to cuff him, so they could already add on felony resisting to the felony eluding, to whatever they ended up finding in his car.”
“What did they find?”
“The stuff they’d already spotted. The televisions and the stereo equipment and a bunch of other stolen items. Power tools, jewelry. There’d been a string of break-ins in Cedarville and out on Drummond Island. Vacation homes, mostly. This guy was loaded up and heading downstate with it, so they were able to connect him to most of the robberies. He was already a repeat offender, so he got sent away for five years. He did three, it looks like, but about a year and a half in, his son Patrick killed himself. He jumped out a window.”
“What was his name? Andrew Parizi? Does that mean anything to you, Chief?”
“No. Agent Long and I have already been through this. The name doesn’t ring a bell.”
“Neither Razniewski nor Maven were involved in the arrest,” she said. “That much we know from checking their daily logs. That was pretty early on in Razniewski’s career, actually, so he was definitely in the car with Sergeant Maven all day. From the logs, we can determine that they never went farther north than Mount Pleasant. Of course, we’re still keeping open the possibility that they may have had some form of contact with our eventual killer. On a different date, or maybe even out of uniform.”
“So it’ll be hard to eliminate anybody,” I said. “But okay, who’s next?”
“Clyde C. Wiley. You may have heard of him before.”
“Doesn’t ring a bell, no.”
“He’s an actor,” Maven said. “You’ve probably seen him on TV.”
“I don’t know,” I said. “I don’t even watch that much TV anymore.”
“This guy’s been around forever,” Agent Long said. “He did a lot of biker movies, right after Easy Rider came out. Did you ever see Road Hogs? That was probably his biggest.”
“I vaguely remember the title,” I said.
“He was kind of a maniac back then, even for Hollywood. He got busted a few times for possession, got in a big fight on a movie set, ended up getting thrown out of town for a while. He did some low-budget horror movies, until he finally worked himself back into television. Whenever some crime show needed somebody to play a psycho tough guy, they’d give him a call. He’s got real wild eyes, long hair, tattoos, arms like a body builder. I’m sure you’ve seen him a million times.”
“Honestly, no. I don’t own a television.”
She looked at me for a moment like she was trying to decide what planet I’d come from.
“You really don’t watch TV,” she said.
“If there’s an important game on, I’ll catch it at Jackie’s place. That’s about it.”
“Okay, whatever. Point is, Mr. Wiley’s had a long and colorful relationship with law enforcement, going all the way back to before he even went to Hollywood. He grew up here in Michigan, down in Bad Axe.”
“‘The Bad Boy of Bad Axe,’” Maven said. “I remember when he got arrested.”
“He was in his sixties at the time of this arrest,” Agent Long said. “Now he’s seventy-two.”
“But you say Steele and Haggerty popped him?”
“Flying down I-75. Apparently, he had assaulted somebody and a tip was called in. They were waiting for him at the bridge, ended up chasing him all the way down to Indian River, until they finally ran him off the road. Then he got into it with both troopers.”
“So what happened to him?”
She picked up another sheet of paper.
“Besides the assault, there was a gun in the car. Traces of cocaine, a few bottles of pills. Tack on the eluding, obstruction, another assault or two on the officers, and just for good measure, he was on probation back in California and wasn’t supposed to leave the state. So with the violation and the prior offenses, he ended up getting fifteen. Did seven and a half. During that first year his daughter killed herself. It was hard to track that down because she had a different last name, but we found her.”
“How did she do it?”
“She cut open both wrists,” Agent Long said, then she drew an imaginary line down the length of her forearm. “She even knew to do it the long way to bleed out faster. There was no chance of saving her.”
“So what do you think, Chief? This Wiley made it a few miles downstate at least. Any chance you were involved?”
“I told you, I recognized the name right away,” Maven said. “But if anybody assisted on that arrest, it would have been out of the Mackinaw City post, or maybe Gaylord. And hell, if it was me helping to bust a celebrity, I’d certainly remember it.”
“Not to mention he’s kind of old now to be killing people,” Agent Long said. “And according to the logs, neither Razniewski nor Maven had any activity that day at all. It just says ‘Admin.’”
“What does that mean?”
“It means running around doing nonsense,” Maven said. “We were at the Lansing post, remember, so every once in a while we got to go run errands for the governor.”
“Didn’t he have a regular attachment for that?”
“The governor had four state guys on a permanent assignment, yes, but you know how it is. There’s always somebody from the mansion who needs a ride somewhere, or something stupid like that. You can guess who usually got picked for that exciting duty.”
“So maybe you guys were close to the arrest that day,” I said, “while you were running an errand. Isn’t that possible?”
“If we were in on that arrest, it would be in our daily logs, believe me. And I told you, I’d remember it, anyway.”
“All right, all right,” I said. “So I guess that’s strike two. Who’s the third candidate?”
“Here’s where it takes a little different turn,” she said. “Candidate number three, a man named Kenny Fraser, was actually a city police officer in St. Ignace. He was charged with a number of aggravated assaults, apparently committed while on duty, and as you can imagine, it would have been tough for one of the other officers in town to arrest him. I mean, the whole force couldn’t have been more than a half dozen officers, right? So they called in the state police to make the arrest. You can guess who did that.”
“Steele and Haggerty.”
“Apparently, Fraser made quite a scene about it. I’m told he even swore to both Steele and Haggerty that they’d pay for breaking the cop code. No matter how long it takes, this guy’s yelling as they’re taking him away, he’ll get even. At least that’s what the guys at the St. Ignace post are saying. We found one sergeant this morning who’s been around long enough to remember it.”
“What kind of assaults are we talking about?”
“We don’t have that information yet. The sergeant can’t quite recall. But if you think about it, a former cop knows how to use a gun, knows how to access information about other cops…”