Blaze had that look in his eyes, the one he gets when his infected brain starts playing tricks on him. Meningitis, our family has learned the hard way, is one of the scariest diseases on the planet. If it doesn’t kill you outright, it robs you of your ability to distinguish between fact and fiction. Blaze spends part of every day in a different world, sliding through muddy fields on his belly, fighting for his life, and searching for a way to escape.
That’s one of the reasons why his wife Mary stripped the house of weapons. It’s why I got a hold of his Glock.
Blaze moaned like it was the end of the world, but he let me take the radio from him. I turned it off. “See those keys?” I pointed to his car keys lying on the desk on the other side of his big body. “Hand them to me. We’re going to bust out of here and Fred’s going to help.”
“If they catch us, we’re dead.” His gaze slid to Fred, who was eye level with my seated son. “What the hell is that animal?”
“You know Fred. He’s my dog.”
Blaze scowled, searching his memory for clues.
Just then, Dickey opened the jailhouse door. Fred has good instincts so he growled. Even showed enough incisor to cause Dickey to take a step back. I patted my dog on the head, praising him for his smarts. “Good Boy.”
“Why does he have to growl at me?” Dickey wanted to know. “I used to own him.”
“Maybe that’s why,” I pointed out.
“Did any of them see you coming in?” Blaze said. “They’ll torture us if they find out.”
Dickey glanced sharply at me.
“We’re behind enemy lines,” I explained. My heart ached for my son. I hated to see him this way.
“I need to talk to Dickey,” I said to Blaze. “Then we’ll go turkey hunting.” That was a lie, but it calmed him down. Yeah, right. Like I’d be caught dead out in the woods with him armed and mentally disabled.
“You know I dislike being called Dickey,” Dickey said. “If you can’t address me properly and respectfully as Deputy Snell, at least refer to me as Dick.”
“I wiped your hinder when you were a baby,” I reminded him. “You’ll always be Dickey to me.”
“Hand me the twelve gauge shotgun on the rack,” Blaze said, pointing at the jail cell, which obviously didn’t include a line of firearms. “I’m going to polish it up before we go.”
“Not right now, son.” I shifted my attention back to Dickey, who hung his hat on a hook and ran his hands through his hair. Dickey Snell was skinny as a pole, but he made up for it in strut. He had played cops and robbers since he was old enough to walk, and he took the job seriously. No monkey business. Rules and regulations were sacred, whether or not they made any sense.
“You have to keep Blaze out of the office,” he said, watching Blaze fiddle with a ball of fuzz he’d picked off his sweater. “This is the fourth incident.”
“It’s like home to him,” I said. “Lighten up. Did you figure out who the robber was?”
“Kent Miller from the Soo.”
“Our side of the water?”
He nodded.
Sault Ste Marie, or The Soo as we call it, is at the northeastern-most tip of the Michigan Upper Peninsula and is connected by a bridge to its twin city on the Canadian side. Pronounced Su Saint Marie (not Salt Sty Marie), its home to the Soo Locks and is located a good two, two and a half hours, from Stonely.
“What else?” I asked.
“His wallet was in his pants, he didn’t have any priors, and he was the worst bank robber I’ve ever seen.”
As though Dickey had any experience with armed robbers. I could have yanked Dickey’s chain by saying that Miller
“Who shot him?” I said after a reasonable time, when Dickey didn’t offer it up.
Dickey straightened the lapels on his green jacket. “That’s yet to be ascertained. You’re the only one who witnessed the shooter.”
“I was on the floor of the credit union,” I said. “The guy on the roof wore the same kind of clothes we all wear.” I glanced at Dickey’s Joe Friday clothes. “The same as most of us, anyway. Jeans, brown jacket with a big hood bunched up at the back of his neck, black gloves.”
“Did you see his face?”
I sighed and thought back. “He was across the street, too far away for facial details.”
“Well?”
“I’m thinking. Let me think.” I snapped my fingers. “Okay, I know. He was wearing a black Kromer.”
Dickey glared at me. “That’s your contribution? A Kromer? Everybody in the U.P. owns one.”
I glared back. “You now have more information than you had before. You can’t even keep your deputies under control or you’d know who it was. You’re lucky to have what I just gave you.”
“A Kromer.” Dickey shook his head.
A Kromer is a special hat designed by George “Stormy” Kromer, a railroad engineer who lost his hat so many times he modified an old baseball cap with earbands that wrapped around the sides of the cap and tied in the front. In cold or windy conditions, the bands could be untied, wrapped around the ears, and tied under the chin. Michigan loggers and hunters have been wearing them for years.
“Which one of your Keystone cops,” I fairly shouted at Dickey, “was wearing a Kromer?”
“I’ll continue to interrogate residents until I find out.”
Fred sat down on my foot. With a little effort, I pulled it out. “How’s the teller?”
“An ambulance transported her to Escanaba. The hospital is keeping her overnight for observation. She’s the one who sounded the alarm.”
This Kent Miller really was a dumb bank robber. Not only did he have identification in his pocket and orange sneakers on his feet, he left the teller behind the counter with the alarm button, and he filled his pillowcase with play money.
“What’s the teller’s name,” I asked.
“Confidential, Mrs. Johnson. This is official law enforcement work. Please take your son and your old dog home.”
Fred stared at Dickey, and a soft but audible growl tickled his throat. What a dog!
“I’d like to send flowers to the injured woman,” I punted. “I need her name to do that. If you won’t tell me, I’ll have to talk to someone in the emergency room.”
Dickey pulled a notebook out of his pocket and flipped through it with a sigh. “Angie Gates,” he said.
“The case is closed, right?” I asked. If Blaze had been well and handling the case, he’d be all done. The distant glare of retirement had blinded my son, and he put most of his energy into making it to the social security line without breaking a sweat.
“An outside auditor is ascertaining the credit union’s cash. I demanded a full accounting. This investigation isn’t over until I have all the pertinent facts and feel comfortable with those facts.” I have to say this for him, he didn’t give up easily. There was more to learn than we knew at the moment. I was sure of it.
Fred plopped his head on the desk, causing Blaze to leap from the chair. “Get me a rifle! There’s a bear in here.”
“Time to go,” I said, steering Blaze out the door, to my truck, and coaxing him in. Fred rode in the back bed to keep my son from overreacting. We drove through our small town, headed south and turned, passing my house and following the gravel road that led to Blaze’s trailer home.
His wife Mary was at the kitchen table, sobbing her eyes out.
“What did they take?” Blaze demanded, when he saw her. “I knew it. The minute I turned my back. Did they get the money?”
“I can’t take it one more minute,” Mary sputtered. “He wanders around day and night. I can’t keep track of him.”
Blaze stormed down the hall.
“He’ll be back in a minute,” she said, “telling us someone stole his money.”
“Someone stole my five million dollars,” Blaze hollered.
“I moved the hiding place,” Mary shouted back, then turned to me with sad, puppy dog eyes. “See? It was a
