Envy the Night

and go on his way. He had a map on the seat beside him, and the Willow Flowage was way up there, just south of Michigan’s Upper Peninsula. Looked like a five-hour drive at best, and that was counting on forgiving traffic and no delays.

He should have left last night. As soon as Frank had hung up the phone, Grady should have been in the car. Hopefully it wouldn’t matter. Hopefully Atkins was already out there. He’d be giving Frank hell, of course, but that didn’t matter so long as he was getting Frank off the lake and out of Devin Matteson’s path. With any luck they’d have Matteson’s wife and her boyfriend, the prison guard, in custody by noon, and by the time Matteson did arrive it would be over, nothing left but the shouting.

His phone rang just before nine, and he answered expecting Atkins and hoping for good news.

It was someone from the Bureau, but not Atkins.

“Good news,” Jim Saul said, “you won’t have to worry about picking up any speeding tickets in Miami. Police down here love you dearly. Hell, get drunk and drive naked down the strip. They won’t care. Of course, that wouldn’t be far out of the ordinary for this town, either.”

“Why do they love me?”

“Vaughn Duncan.”

“You turn something up?”

“Turned a murder warrant up. The Miami police guys had one complete fingerprint and one partial on a casing they found in the parking lot where Matteson was shot. Shooter got two of the casings but left one behind, lost it in the gravel. Either he panicked and didn’t want to take the time to find it, or it was too dark and he couldn’t. Anyhow, Miami PD ran the print through IAFIS and didn’t get a match. Surprising, right, because they were betting whoever took Matteson out had a record.”

“Right.”

“Well, no match on IAFIS, which means no record, at least not one of substance. And the cops down here were confused, because the print on the shell indicates whoever popped Matteson wasn’t a pro, and that seems wrong. Then you throw this guy Duncan at me, and I call around and find out he decided to quit his job up at Coleman without giving any notice, and I think, hmm, the good folks at Coleman probably have his prints on file.”

“They matched?”

“Bet your ass they did. Nothing on IAFIS because he didn’t have a record, but once we got the prints from Coleman and compared them, they matched up. I had some unhappy people down here, bitching about turning this around on a weekend, but I assured them I had a first-rate tip.”

“Duncan shot Matteson, then left with the wife?”

“That’s the flavor of the month, yes. The print is enough for the warrant. Now, you care to tell me where you’re getting this information?”

“Wisconsin,” Grady said, “and now I’ve got to make a call up there. I’ll talk to you soon, Jimmy—”

“Hang on, hang on. I also had the flights checked. Miami to Wisconsin. Guy matching Devin’s description got a private charter to some place called Rhinelander, flew out late yesterday, real late.”

“Rhinelander.” Grady felt numb, even though this was what he’d been expecting. The map beside him showed Rhinelander clear enough. It was about thirty miles from the Willow Flowage.

“Yeah. Like I said, private charter, and it landed in Rhinelander just after midnight—”

“I gotta go, Jimmy.”

Grady hung up and found Atkins’s number, dialed it as a car behind him blew the horn, Grady letting his own car drift into the next lane. He veered back to the right and slowed, held the phone to his ear. It was answered immediately.

“He’s not here, Morgan. He’s not at his cabin, and I’m getting pretty damn pissed off because I think when he talked to you he heard something that made him bolt.”

“No,” Grady said. “He’s not gone. Trust me.”

“Trust you. Sure.”

“Listen, Atkins, I’m on my way north—”

“I told you to stay the hell away from here.”

“I know that, but I thought maybe you’d want some help serving the murder warrant.”

“Warrant?”

“That’s right. You got a pen handy, Atkins? I think you’re going to want to write some of this down.”

The conversation might have gone on all morning and into the afternoon if nothing had interrupted them. Ezra and Frank were prying for more information, sorting through the mess of memories Vaughn and Renee offered, when Nora’s cell phone began to ring. She’d slipped it into her pocket before leaving Frank’s cabin, and the first two times it rang she simply put her hand inside her pocket and silenced the phone. On the third call, though, she took it out and checked the display and saw the call was from the receptionist desk at her father’s nursing home.

“Give me a minute,” she said and started to walk off the porch. Renee’s eyes went wary, though, and Nora realized she was probably afraid that the call was from the police. Might as well stay on the porch, then. Relax the woman.

She answered and said hello and Barbara, a receptionist whom Nora had seen several times a week at the nursing home since arriving in Tomahawk, burst into a tirade of worry and concern.

“I don’t know how he got the newspaper or who brought it to him, Nora, I really don’t, but your father saw this article and he is beside himself because he doesn’t understand it but he knows it’s bad. He’s so worried, and we are, too. We were worried even before, but now that he’s seen it, I really think you need to come down and show him you’re okay. They’ve got a photograph of all the police cars outside your shop, and he keeps looking at that, and he won’t let us take it away.”

Nora squeezed her eyes shut. Wonderful. Of course he would have seen or heard about it by now, and of course he’d be panicked. How could she have forgotten that, or ignored it till now?

“Barb, can you put him on the phone? Let me say a few things to him, and then I’ll come in and visit. Please?”

“Nora, I don’t think you understand—he’s not able to talk on the phone right now. He was extremely agitated. We had to give him some tranquilizers to get him calmed down. If there’s any way at all you can get in here to see him, that’s what I’d suggest. He’s not going to be calm until he sees you.”

What could she do? She hesitated, felt annoyance and disbelief in Barb’s silence at the other end of the line, then promised to be in as soon as possible. When she hung up, everyone on the porch was staring at her.

“It’s my father,” she said. “He’s in a nursing home, and somehow he got his hands on a newspaper. He doesn’t understand what happened, but he’s worried about me.” She looked at Frank. “I need to go see him.”

He looked irritated, but said, “All right. We’ll take you. Ezra?”

Ezra worked his tongue around his mouth, looking at the lake. “There are two boats. Why don’t you take her back in mine, and I’ll stay here.”

“Don’t trust us enough to leave?” Renee said.

“You want to be left alone if your buddies show up?”

“No,” she said.

“I was thinking an extra body wouldn’t hurt anything,” Ezra agreed, “and we still got some talking to do. So, Frank, you take Nora in and get her to her father. You stay with her, okay, and keep your eyes sharp. You know why.”

“Yeah, I do.”

Ezra nodded, looked at Nora. “That work? Time you get this settled with your dad, maybe we’ll have a better idea of what the hell needs to happen out here. Y’all can come back out, and we’ll see what we’ve got.”

“All right.”

“You got a phone?” Frank said to Ezra. “A way we can get you if we need to?”

“Most times it doesn’t work on the water, but I’ll give you the number. It’ll ring, if nothing else.”

He ran Ezra’s boat hard all the way back across the lake, a stupid thing to do considering his lack of recent knowledge of the sandbars and stumps, but one that had an advantage. When the motor was roaring and the boat was sluicing through the wind and water, conversation was impossible, and right now Frank didn’t want to talk. His