I went down the short hallway, past the bathroom, to the only bedroom in the place. There was a desk over by the big window, which looked out over the lake. There was a pile of manila folders on the desk, each of them stuffed with papers. I took a quick look down the hallway, but still didn’t see Connie. So I started thumbing through the folders. I couldn’t help myself. I had come this far and I had to see if my gut feeling about this guy could be validated.
The first two folders were a collection of court documents. They portrayed a lifetime of trouble with the law, and right there on top was the most recent record of all, an arrest record dated ten years ago. Clyde C. Wiley detained on a certain mile post of I-75, just north of Indian River. Arresting officers, Sergeant Dean Haggerty and Trooper Donald Steele, both of Michigan State Police Post 83, St. Ignace. I paged through the report, which listed the initial assault on a man named Darryl Bergman. Along with menacing and unlawful detention. There was an attempt to intercept Wiley at the Mackinac Bridge, then as I kept reading there were details of the pursuit itself, from the bridge down to Indian River, then a description of the extreme physical resistance offered by the arrestee once the vehicle had been stopped. There was some question about whether the resistance itself constituted lethal force, which would of course have upped the ante considerably. Then finally the list of items found in the car, the firearm, the cocaine residue, the three bottles of prescription painkillers. Stacked onto the probation violation from California, it was no wonder he got a stiff prison sentence for this little joyride. As a repeat offender, it was actually kind of amazing he didn’t do a lot more time. He must have had a hell of a lawyer.
I didn’t see any mention of Razniewski or Maven in the arrest report. We’d already been told that by the FBI agents, yet here it was in living color and I had to read through every word to make sure nothing was missed. There were no other officers assisting on the arrest. No other officers mentioned in any way.
I looked through the other folders, but they were all from earlier arrests and mishaps, and none of them had even taken place in the state of Michigan. It was all California and Oregon and Texas. This man certainly got around, I thought. And he seemed to make quite an impression wherever he went.
I put down the last folder and left the bedroom. “Hey, where did you go?” I said.
There was no answer.
I went back into the kitchen and stood there, trying to figure out where the hell Connie could be. That’s when I noticed the leather portfolio sitting on the counter, right under the phone. I opened it and there on the right side was a pad of yellow legal paper. On the very top sheet there were three names written.
Steele.
Haggerty.
Razniewski.
That was it. Nothing else. No other information. Just three last names of three men who buried children and then who died themselves in the most violent ways imaginable.
Right there in the man’s kitchen. Those three names.
I picked up the phone. I was about to start dialing. That’s when I heard the sound. It was like a repetitive scraping. Over and over. It was coming from somewhere… below me? I looked over and saw the door to what had to be the basement. It was ajar. I hung up the phone.
The sound got louder as I opened the door. There were rough wooden stairs leading down to a concrete floor, and just enough light to see where I was going. I picked up the musty basement smell as I started to go down, along with something else-a faint chemical smell. When I finally reached the bottom of the stairs, there was almost too much to see at once. A single bulb burning in the center of the ceiling. Another light of some sort just around the corner ahead. A long table on my left, with cameras and tripods and a big glass cabinet with a million small parts. Cans of film, some the size of dinner plates. Others smaller. On the other wall a cork board almost completely covered with film strips. They were all tacked to the top of the board and many of them had slips of paper attached to them, with a jumble of letters and numbers.
I caught the chemical smell again and as I stepped down onto the concrete I saw that there was a small room built underneath the stairs. Through the open door I saw jerrycans and a high metal tub and even though I knew nothing about this I would have guessed this is where Clyde C. Wiley did his own developing, just as his son had boasted.
“Connie,” I said, “are you down here?”
Still no answer, and now it was starting to get to me. The scraping sound was louder now. It got louder still with each step as I approached the other side of the L. As I turned the corner I saw the light coming from a single desk lamp. This was the old edit bay that Connie was talking about. There was a small monitor in the middle of the console. There was an empty film reel mounted horizontally on the left side. On the right side a full reel was still spinning, the end of the film licking at the metal guide post with each revolution. Scrape scrape scrape.
There was a chair. A man was sitting in it, facing away from me. Long hair hanging down the back. Connie was standing next to the man, looking down at him. Connie’s mouth was open. No sound was coming out.
I stepped closer. The man in the chair… it had to be Clyde C. Wiley. After everything I had been through that day, I had finally come face-to-face with him. He was staring straight ahead at nothing. I pressed two fingers against his neck. His skin was cold. He had been dead for hours. But not days.
Connie didn’t move. He was paralyzed.
“He’s gone,” I said to him. “Let’s go upstairs and call somebody.”
Connie let out a puff of air. He kept staring at his father’s dead face. You never know how somebody’s going to react in a situation like this. I’d seen every possible emotion back when I was on the night shift in Detroit. All those dead bodies on the hot pavement, and then whoever was left alive, usually a mother but sometimes a son or a daughter… they’d cry or they’d scream or they’d let out a high whooping noise that you might even mistake for laughter. Or else they’d shut down completely. Stand there like Connie was doing now, like they’d never be able to move again.
“Come on,” I said. “Let’s go.”
“What was he doing down here?”
“Connie…”
“We were supposed to be working today. Why is he here?”
Before I could say another word, Connie found the switch inside himself and flipped it back on. He reached for the console, taking the full reel right off its post.
“You shouldn’t touch that,” I said, but he wasn’t listening to me. He pulled out the end of the film and stretched it back to the empty reel. The film looked yellow and brittle.
“No,” I said. “Leave that alone.”
I tried to turn him toward the stairs, but he pushed me away. He pressed a button and the reels started turning fast. He was rewinding the film.
The hell with it, I thought. He’s a zombie right now. I’m gonna go call the police.
Yet something made me hesitate. It didn’t take long for the film to rewind, or for Connie to rethread it through the console. He hit another button and the monitor came to life.
I stood there and watched it with him.
There was a neighborhood, the camera panning down the street, one house after the next. Pausing on one house, then finally moving. An ordinary scene, but strange at the same time. There was no sound, for one thing. That would come later. Or at least that’s what I assumed. Music and narration and whatever else, to complete the story. But for now as the film looped through the machine it was nothing more than a string of images, one after the other, rough and jittery and washed-out like something that had been filmed a hundred years ago.