It all goes back to that first death, I thought as I got back in the truck. It has to, right? Charlie Razniewski Jr. hanging from that tree in the middle of the night… it was the first death, and if you think about it, it was the one death that probably took a lot more planning than all of the others. With a clean getaway we still haven’t figured out.
Yes, it was definitely the biggest and boldest death of them all. What better place to do that than a carefully chosen spot just down the road from where you live?
I checked my cell phone. I was still in the Lower Peninsula, so I still had good reception. Just call me, I thought. Tell me you sent somebody over there and picked up Bergman. He’s behind bars as we speak. And Sean Wiley is safely on his way back home.
Call me and tell me that right now.
The phone stayed silent. I kept driving.
I was getting close to the Mackinac Bridge when my phone finally rang. It was just before six o’clock.
“What do you have?” I said.
“Where are you?”
“Just below the bridge. How’s Maven’s daughter now?”
“They’re cautiously optimistic right now.”
“Good,” I said, letting out a breath. “That’s good to hear.”
“We’re on our way up right now,” she said. “We’re about three hours behind you. So I think you should just stop and let us catch up to you.”
“Did you find Bobby Bergman?”
“Not really, no.”
“What do you mean, ‘not really’?”
“Well, you were right about the Michigan Tech connection. He was definitely going to school there.”
“He was going to school there?”
“He dropped out at the end of last year.”
“Where is he now?”
“Unknown, Alex. I’ve got nothing on him at all since the end of the last school year.”
“It’s April now, so that’s like a full year ago. Where the hell could he be?”
“He’s not at Tech anymore. That’s all I can tell you.”
“Damn,” I said. “So how do we find him?”
“Well, he did grow up in Houghton. He may still be in town, but we don’t have an address for him. It’s like he just disappeared off the face of the earth.”
I let out another breath, feeling dead tired now. After so many miles today, and now I had no idea where I was going.
“Alex, are you still there?”
“I’m here.”
“We confirmed what you said about the father. He died in that fire, four years ago.”
“A house fire that was captured on film.”
“Apparently so. It gets better. I went back and took a closer look at the daily logs. That day Wiley attacked his son-in-law, you know what else Steele and Haggerty did, besides making that arrest?”
“Tell me.”
“They drove Bobby Bergman and his mother back home to Houghton, right after their shift ended.”
“What? Why, were they in the car with Wiley?”
“No, that would have shown up in the arrest record. Apparently, the two of them ended up at the St. Ignace station somehow, and those two officers drove them home.”
“That makes no sense.”
“No, it doesn’t. If you look at Darryl’s sheet here, by the way, it’s mostly minor stuff-possession, simple assault, general misdemeanors. But there were a few domestics, too. If Wiley came all the way out from California, he must have been trying to help them get away, right? Why would they end up going back home?”
“We’ll just have to ask Bergman when we find him,” I said. “But you really don’t have an address? Is that what you’re telling me?”
“No, we don’t.”
“Do you have any prior addresses?”
I heard muffled voices on the other end of the line.
“Janet, are you there? Is that Fleury?”
“We’re on our way out there,” she said. “Please just let us handle this, okay?”
“Just give me his last known address, then. I’m closer than you are.”
“I can’t do that, Alex.”
I let a few seconds pass. I drove and I listened to the distant hum of static on the line.
“Hey,” I said, “how come you didn’t correct me this time?”
“What are you talking about?”
“I called you Janet and you let it slide.”
“Alex, I’m serious. You need to stop right now.”
“I’ll see you in Houghton,” I said. “Drive carefully.” I ended the call.
My signal was starting to fade as I crossed the bridge. Before it disappeared completely, I went to my saved numbers and looked up Leon’s cell phone. It rang twice and then he picked up.
“Leon,” I said. “Are you at work?”
“No, I’m home. I actually have a night off for once.”
“I’m sorry to bother you, but I just need you to look up an address for me if you can.”
“Sure thing, just tell me what I’m looking for.”
“The name is Bobby Bergman and the address is Houghton. The problem is, this address might be a little old. He hasn’t lived there since last year.”
I heard the clicking of keys, and then in the background I heard Eleanor’s voice, asking Leon who was on the phone. I wasn’t sure what the exact trouble threshold would be in that household, if just talking to me on the phone would get things going again.
“Eleanor says hello,” Leon said, still working away at his keyboard. “She also says you need to stop by and have dinner some time.”
“So she can kill me, right? Look, I don’t want to get you in hot water again. I wouldn’t be calling if this wasn’t important.”
“It’s okay. It’s just a phone call, and besides, we came to an agreement. She knows I can’t help myself, so whenever you drag me into this stuff, it’s all your fault, not mine. I’m just a helpless pawn in your wicked game.”
“I really owe you, Leon. Yet again.”
“Not a problem. As a matter of fact, I’m seeing three different addresses here.”
“Three? What are you talking about?”
“I’m going back in time, Alex. On the Internet. I can go back about ten years and see everywhere he lived.”
“You can really do that?”
“You really need to get a computer. Can we set you up with one, please?”
“Then I’d have no excuse to call you,” I said. “But seriously, can you tell me those addresses? And while you’re at it, maybe help me find where they are?”
I pulled over for a minute and wrote everything down. When he was done, I thanked him, told him to kiss Eleanor for me, then thanked him again. I don’t know how much of it he heard, because that’s about when the signal cut out for good. I put the phone down and got back on the road, taking that first exit past the bridge, to that thin lonely U.S. Highway 2 that runs along the shores of Lake Michigan, straight west into the setting sun, toward Houghton.
It felt strange to be back in Copper Country, where everything had begun. Winter wasn’t gone for good quite yet, but now it seemed to be fighting a losing battle. Where the snow had melted away there was dead ground and what deciduous trees there were looked like they’d never carry leaves again. I knew it would all come and it would come quickly, but tonight as my headlights swept across the empty road, the springtime felt like a fairy tale.
It was just after ten o’clock at night when I finally hit Houghton. There were lights now, and people driving around in their cars, but that empty feeling of foreboding I had brought with me didn’t go away. Maybe I was just too tired now, but I’d spent so many hours on the road and I knew there was a good chance I’d find something horrible here, just as Sean’s girlfriend had predicted.
As I went down the main street in Houghton, past the college buildings and the fraternities and everything else, I saw a lot more kids outside than I would have expected. They were walking up and down the sidewalks, some of them carrying beer bottles and most of them underdressed for the weather. I guess if you go to school in Houghton, an April night with the temperature just above freezing must feel like Bermuda.