He backed the car into just the right position to stand on, the noose just close enough for him to slip his neck through. He fell backward off the car and the weight of his body tightened the rope around his neck. With only this short drop, he probably didn’t lose consciousness right away. It probably took several seconds for the blood flow to his brain to be reduced, and then for his lungs to start screaming for air. I had to wonder, as I stood under that tree, did he live long enough to regret his choice?
Why the hell do it this way in the first place? Why here? It must have been so cold that night. Why not just take a few dozen sleeping pills and lie down in your warm bed and never wake up?
Or hell, if you had to do it here, why not just stay in your car? Take your pills there, or if you can’t find pills, go buy a rifle and put the barrel in your mouth. It’s Michigan, after all. You can always buy a rifle somewhere, twenty-four hours a day.
More than anything else, why make such a spectacle of it? Hanging from a tree like this, facing the lake like some sort of horrible sacrifice? I couldn’t imagine doing such a thing, even in my darkest hour. Not this way.
I looked at his picture one more time. You see someone’s face in a picture like this and you think you can form a basic impression of what kind of person he is. But everything I’d ever know about him would be completely secondhand, and even if I talked to every friend he had, every classmate, every teacher, every person who ever knew him in any way… how would I ever know what was really going on inside him?
I stayed there for a long time, taking it all in. There were no houses or other buildings to be seen in any direction. No sign of life at all. Just high drifts of snow and more trees and the lake itself. I started to feel a strange foreboding about the place, and I could only wonder if it was because I came here already knowing what had happened. Would I have felt the same thing if I had just stumbled upon this place by accident?
There was no way to know.
I got back in the truck and started it. I turned up the heat to warm my hands. Then I started driving up to Houghton to see what else I could find out about the late Charlie Razniewski Jr.
CHAPTER FOUR
Houghton, Michigan. If you know your history, you know what this city once meant to the rest of the state. Hell, to the whole country.
The first big mining boom happened here, even before the gold rush out west. Copper Country, they called it. That’s how all of the Finns ended up here, along with a few Swedes, Danes, and Norwegians. You can still hear the accents in many of the locals. You can still see some of the heavy equipment standing silent and rusted where the mines were. This is where they took all the copper from the ground and turned it into electrical wire and shipped it all over the world. It all happened right here.
They built the college and it went through several mining-related names until it finally ended up being known as Michigan Technological University. It’s not about mining anymore, of course. It’s all about science and engineering now. The students come from all over Michigan and besides studying, the one thing they’d better be ready for is snow, because they get a hell of a lot of it. Most years, anyway. I was reminded of that as I drove up into the Keweenaw Peninsula and saw the big sign by the side of the road. It was a measuring stick as tall as a tree, with that winter’s current snowfall amount marked at around twelve feet. On the second day of April, usually they’d have at least twice that by now.
As I got closer to the city, I passed a huge set of concrete slabs along the shoreline. Even taller than the snowfall stick, they looked like a giant set of dominoes. More relics from the copper mining, I’m sure, but beyond that I had no idea what they were used for. It made the whole place feel even more foreign to me.
When I got to Houghton itself, that feeling got even stronger. You lose sight of Lake Superior, but as you go inland, you see Portage Lake stretching out across the middle of the Keweenaw. The land rises on either side of the water, and the biggest lift bridge you’ll ever see connects Houghton to Hancock, the city to the north. The middle section of the bridge can rise a hundred feet to let ships pass beneath it.
Most strange of all is how the city of Houghton is built on an incline, with streets running parallel to each other and climbing in elevation as you get farther away from the water. It looks like a miniature San Francisco, I swear, and you have to remind yourself that you’re still in Michigan.
I passed Michigan Tech on my way into the center of the city, then I found the Houghton County Sheriff’s office on the fourth street up from the water. Just like back in the Soo, they seemed to have had the same idea when they put up the building. Start with the county courthouse, the tallest, grandest, most beautiful building in town. Connect another building to that, but make sure this one is a gray concrete box, with all the charm of an air raid shelter.
One of the county plows was touching up the parking lot. I waited for him to finish and gave him a little wave as he left, one plow operator to another. Then I parked the truck and went inside.
The receptionist asked if she could help me, and I picked up yet another Scandinavian accent. I would have guessed Swedish this time, but I wouldn’t have put much money on it. I bet if you live out here you can pick them out right away.
“I’d like to talk to the sheriff,” I said. “I’m a private investigator visiting from Chippewa County.”
I had my license with me, burning a hole in my pocket. It felt strange to refer to myself as a PI.
“He’s not in the office right now. I believe the undersheriff’s here, if you’d like to speak to him.”
“I’d appreciate that.”
A minute later, the undersheriff came out looking for me. He was a big man with a perfect cop’s mustache. He had a hell of a strong grip.
“Undersheriff Michael Reddy,” he said, looking me up and down. “What can I do for you?”
“I don’t mean to impose on your time, sir. I just wanted to ask you a couple of questions.”
“Can you give me a topic?”
“Charles Razniewski Jr.”
I didn’t have to say anything else. The undersheriff exchanged a quick look with the receptionist. Then he motioned for me to follow him.
“Come on back,” he said. “Let’s talk.”
A few minutes later, I was sitting on the opposite side of his desk. There were piles of paper everywhere. Organization was obviously not his strong suit, but I was holding a good strong cup of coffee and the man had listened carefully when I had told him why I was there. So I had no complaints.
“How far did you have to come to get here?” he asked.
“I live in Paradise.”
“Yeah, I know the place. Over by the Soo, right?”
“Other side of Whitefish Bay, yes.”
“Let me ask you, do you happen to know the chief of police there?”
“Roy Maven, you mean?”
“Yeah, that’s him. Is he the one who sent you out here?”
“No, sir. You see-”
“Because if it was, I’d like you to explain to me how one single person can be so charming and persuasive.”
“It was the young man’s father who sent me,” I said. “Charles Razniewski Sr. He and Chief Maven were once state police officers at the same post.”
“Okay, now it makes a little more sense. Maven called out here himself a few days ago, is the reason I ask. He didn’t say anything about his history. He was too busy grilling me like he’d just caught me trying to steal his car.”