“Alex…”
“In fact, that’s why you weren’t there last night. Your detective said you were out of town. Little did he know.”
“You want to know where I was last night, Alex? I’ll tell you. I was on my way back from a retreat down on Mackinac Island. My wife and I went together. You want to know why?”
“This is even scarier than the alien thing,” I said. “It’s starting to sound like you’re talking to me like one human being to another. But go ahead.”
“It’s really a couple of different things that all happened at the same time,” he said. “First thing was, my doctor told me I was killing myself. I mean, literally killing myself. High cholesterol, high stress, no exercise. I was a coronary waiting to happen. Second thing was my wife tells me one day, she says, Roy, we’ve been married almost forty years now, and I’ve never had the nerve to tell you this until now. You’re bringing your job home with you every night, and I’m sick of it. You either quit the job, or you talk to somebody about how to handle it better, or you find yourself a new wife. I’m not going to watch you kill yourself.”
He stopped. I just sat there. I couldn’t think of a single thing to say to him.
“The third thing,” he said, “was my oldest daughter told me I was going to be a grandfather. She’s due in…” He looked behind him at a calendar sitting on a credenza. “Ten weeks, Alex. I’m gonna be a grampa.”
“Congratulations,” I said, finally finding a word.
“So this retreat, it was just something my wife and I did. There was a lot of New Age mumbo-jumbo they were talking about. I didn’t have much use for most of it. But one thing they said made sense. You want to hear it?”
“Why not?”
“They said that in life there are all sorts of things you have no control over. The only thing you can control is your reaction to those things. It’s a pretty simple idea, but I don’t know, it just hit me. All this stuff I get upset about every day, I can’t stop it from happening, no matter how hard I try. But I can choose how to react to it.”
“Okay…”
“This is a perfect example,” he said. “In fact, maybe it’s a little test. You know, somebody upstairs seeing how I’d do. Here I come back from vacation and I’ve got three men breaking into one of the most expensive houses in town. They’re holding six men at gunpoint, breaking into a safe, destroying the man’s valuables. I look at the list of people who were in the house, and who do I see? Alex McKnight! What do you think my reaction’s gonna be?”
“I don’t know,” I said. “But it wouldn’t be pretty.”
“That’s how it would have been,” he said. “That’s how the old Chief Maven would have reacted. But not now, Alex. Not now. In fact, it’s a good thing you were there. Look at this report! You’re the only one who gave us any kind of physical description. For all I know, you were the only guy there who kept his cool and showed everyone else how to get through it. If you weren’t there, it might have all turned out pretty badly. I’m glad you were there, Alex. I really am.”
“If all this is true,” I said. “And I’m still not sure I can believe it. But if it’s true…”
“Yes?”
“Then I guess I’m surprised, Chief. Surprised and even a little impressed.”
He raised his hands, sat back in his chair. If he had wished me a good day right then and sent me on my way, I might have left the place fully convinced he was a new man.
But he didn’t do that.
“Besides…” he said. He picked up a pen and twirled it in his right hand, looking down at the report again. “Even though you seem to show up every time there’s a major crime in my town, look at how well it turned out this time.”
“How do you mean?”
“Nobody was killed,” he said. “Nobody was abducted. I’m not out looking for anybody. I’m not dragging the lake for bodies. And the best part of all…”
He looked up at me. He was smiling.
“The best part of all,” he said, “is that you won’t even be involved this time. I won’t be seeing you every time I turn around. I won’t be hearing your name every time I pick up the phone. Because you…”
He put the pen between his two palms and rubbed it back and forth, like he was a Boy Scout starting a fire.
“…are not…”
He kept rubbing and smiling.
“…a private investigator…”
I couldn’t decide which was more annoying.
“…anymore. Am I right?”
“Yes,” I said. “You’re right.”
“This man Vargas,” he said. “You don’t work for him.”
“No.”
“You never will work for him.”
“I’m sure I won’t.”
“You’ll never work for anybody again. Not as a private investigator, anyway. Not in my town.”
“Are we about done, Chief?”
“I saw your old partner last month,” he said. “Leon what’s-his-face. I was getting some lunch and I saw him on Ashmun Street. He actually has an office there now?”
“I wouldn’t know.”
“No, I guess you wouldn’t. I asked about you, and he said you weren’t his partner anymore. Said you never wanted to have anything to do with private investigation ever again. Said you hadn’t even talked to him in quite a while. I gotta tell you, Alex, I sensed some hurt feelings there.”
“I appreciate the insight,” I said. “Are we done now?”
“I think we are. I think that covers it. Thank you for your help on this case. And if I’m ever out in Paradise, I’ll buy you a beer.”
Maybe I should have left right then. But I couldn’t resist.
“You know, Chief,” I said, “I’m only getting this secondhand, but I do believe that Vargas has a private investigator working for him.”
He just looked at me. He stopped rubbing the pen between his hands. He stopped smiling.
“But as much as Vargas wants to find out who did this to him, I’m sure he’d never ask his man to get in your way. I’m sure he’ll only be trying to help you. And if you think I’m helpful, wait ’til you see what this man can do.”
“Who?” he said. “Not…”
“The only private eye in town,” I said, “now that I’m gone. His last name is Prudell, by the way. Leon Prudell. You should remember that, because I think you’re going to be hearing from him. A lot.”
I heard the pen break just before I closed the door.
Chapter Six
It was a beautiful day in Sault Ste. Marie. For much of the year you couldn’t say that with a straight face. In the dead of winter, especially, it would be nothing but gallows humor. On this day, the day after the Fourth of July, Sault Ste. Marie was a better place to be than anywhere else I could think of.
The rest of the country was hot that day. I saw it on the weather map in the paper that morning, all the nineties and hundred-pluses throughout the South, the West, the Midwest, even the Northeast. It was ninety-three degrees in New York City that day. It was ninety-two in Detroit. I’ve been in that kind of heat in Detroit. I’ve done it wearing a police officer’s uniform and watching what it does to everybody else around me.
On this day in July, while the rest of the country stewed and simmered, it was eighty-one degrees in the Soo, with a constant breeze off Lake Superior. I didn’t feel like getting right back in my truck. I just couldn’t do it. The City-County building sits at the east end of Locks Park, so I took a walk along the St. Marys River. There was one freighter heading toward the locks, along with a few smaller boats and a couple of jet skis. The center of town was busy. It was a holiday week, and such a goddamned gorgeous day, I wasn’t surprised to see all the people. I suppose I couldn’t blame them for wanting to be here. I’d take the tourists any day over a man like Win Vargas, with his new-money dreams of condos and golf courses. The tourists came up here for a few days at a time, they stayed in one of the new hotels, they watched some ships go through the locks, bought T-shirts for their kids at the gift shops. Maybe they had their own boats on trailers, took them out on the lake for a few hours, caught a few whitefish. With the casinos up here now, maybe we had a few more tourists than we ever did before. But I could live with them. They come, they spend some money, they take some pictures, and then they go home.