I hung up before he could say another word, then dialed his home number. It rang a few times. Then the answering machine came on. It was Roy Maven’s wife, telling me they weren’t home just then but that they’d like me to leave a number so they could call me back. I’d met the woman exactly one time that I could remember. She seemed quite human and perfectly nice, and at the time I couldn’t help wondering how she had ever come to marry outside of her species. Maybe someday I’d get to sit down and ask her, but right now I had other matters to deal with.
For the hell of it, I tried calling Raz’s cell phone again. No luck there, so I called Maven again and told him there’d been no answer at his house.
“My wife helps out at the hospital,” he said, “so she might be there. But Raz should be at the house. I don’t know where else he’d go.”
“Where’s your house? I’ll stop by and see if I can find him.”
“McKnight, you’re giving me a bad feeling here. How come whenever you’re involved in anything, I end up getting an ulcer?”
“Just relax, Chief. Give me your address.”
He gave me a number on Summit Street.
“I’ll call you right back,” I said. As I hung up, I tried to shake off the same uneasy feeling. He’s out taking a walk, I told myself. Or he’s asleep. Or maybe he and Mrs. Maven are out having a late lunch somewhere. There were a hundred different possibilities.
I swung up I-75 and then got off by the college. Down Easterday, past the students outside taking advantage of what passes for a nice day in April around here. I’d seen so many young faces in just the past two days. I made the turn at Summit and went halfway up the block until I found the number I was looking for. I pulled into the driveway.
It was a nicely kept raised ranch. Nothing too extravagant, but then I wouldn’t have expected anything approaching extravagance from a man like Roy Maven. The walkway was clear. The shovel was leaned against the house, right next to the front door. I went up the steps and rang the doorbell. There was no answer.
I rang the bell again. Nothing.
I tried the knob. The door was unlocked. I pushed the door open and took one step inside. Under the circumstances, I didn’t think Maven would mind.
Okay, maybe he would have, but I did it anyway.
“Hello? Anybody here? Raz?”
The house was silent. I stood there for a while, thinking about what to do next.
That’s when the odor came to me. Something I’d smelled before. Organic and metallic at the same time. A basic, instinctive foulness. It was the smell of death.
The whole scene flashed before me in a fraction of a second. I imagined Raz hanging from a rope he had somehow tied to the ceiling. Taking the same way out. Following his own son into the abyss.
Or no. He’s a cop. Marshal, ex-trooper, whatever the hell. He’s a cop and he’d do it the cop way, by eating his own gun.
I went through the living room to the kitchen. As soon as I turned the corner, I saw Raz’s body laid out on the hard tile floor. There was blood all around him. His throat was cut open. He was lying facedown but his body was twisted as if he were still trying to get away. His eyes were still open. He stared right at me as if to accuse me of thinking even for a moment that he’d actually take his own life.
I stood there for a long moment while it all washed over me. Then I pulled out my cell phone and called 911.
I went outside and sat down on the front step. The voice on the other side of 911, a woman’s voice, wanted me to stay on the line with her until the police showed up. I told her to send somebody and that I’d wait right here and she started to argue with me so I hung up on her. I sat on the step and I looked out across the street at the other houses. All of them sealed up tight against the winter. We live in such a frozen wasteland for much of the year. That’s the strange thought that came to me as I sat and waited. It feels so cold sometimes, you wonder how anyone would choose this place. Yet we do. We live here, some of us for our whole lives, and the one benefit we should receive in return is that the violence from the rest of the world should leave us in our frigid state of peace.
That doesn’t seem like too much to ask.
The thought was interrupted by the first squad car. It was a Sault Ste. Marie police officer who got out and came hustling up the walkway. I knew the state police would be here soon, too. For a crime this big in a city this small, they’d all come running.
I didn’t recognize this officer, and he turned out to be a youngster right out of the academy, so we had to go through the whole song and dance, with me putting my hands up and him patting me down. I was even thinking he might feel uncertain enough to go ahead and put the cuffs on me and I wasn’t about to complain because I knew that’s exactly what they taught this kid. He had no idea who I was and he hadn’t checked inside the house yet. For all he knew, I could be the killer myself, and I could even have an accomplice waiting inside to jump out and surprise him. So just like they drilled it into his head, whenever you’re alone and there’s any doubt at all, you put your man in cuffs, even if it’s just for a minute while you secure the scene. Even if you have to apologize while you’re doing it, you “hook” your man until the backup arrives.
But that’s when Maven’s car pulled up and I suddenly had bigger things to think about than a pair of handcuffs.
“Chief,” I said. “Don’t go in the house.”
“What’s going on here?”
He came up the steps and I tried to block him.
“McKnight, get the hell out of my way.”
“Chief, don’t. He’s dead.”
He pushed past me and into the house. I stayed where I was. I didn’t follow him inside because I didn’t need to see it again, and there was nothing I’d be able to do to help him now. A few seconds passed. When he came back out, his face was white.
“What the hell happened?” He wasn’t facing anyone. He was staring out into the middle distance and it looked like he was trying hard to swallow.
“My God,” he said. “My God, what the hell-”
Then he stopped dead.
“Where’s my wife?” he said. “Has anybody seen my wife?”
There were three more city cops on the scene now. Another car was pulling up, with two state cars close behind. The whole street was fast becoming a riot of red and blue flashing lights.
“Where’s my wife, God damn it! Somebody find her right now!”
“Chief,” I said, grabbing him by the shoulders, “take it easy. You said she might be at the hospital. Remember?”
He pushed past me again and went into the house. I heard him running up the stairs.
“Call the hospital,” I said to the young cop, the same first cop who’d responded, and who was experiencing a hell of a first major crime scene. “I think she volunteers there or something.”
“Where is she?” Maven, careening back down the stairs. Halfway down he almost fell and broke his neck. “Somebody find her!”
He ran around the house into the backyard. Finally, the young cop heard back on the radio that they’d located his wife at the hospital. She’d been sitting next to an old woman’s bed, reading to her. The other cops had to practically tackle Maven to convince him that his wife was safe. When he finally sat down on the front steps, he was breathing hard and rubbing his hands up and down his thighs. He looked totally undone, something I’d never even imagine seeing from him.
“Tell me,” he said to me when he finally got his wind back. “Give me an explanation for why Raz is lying there in my kitchen like that? Huh? Can you tell me, please?”
I didn’t have an answer for him. I just sat there next to him on the cold steps while the madness went on all around us.
I had no idea this was just the beginning.
