open, feeling like I’d seen more than any man should have to see in one day.
Agent Long called me at seven o’clock the next morning.
“We’re on our way up,” she said. “We need you at the station at one. Please don’t be late.”
“Good morning to you, too. Thanks for calling so early. Six hours should be just enough time for me to get dressed.”
“We’ll see you there,” she said. Then she hung up.
I went back to sleep for a little while. I’d already spent the entire night dreaming of dead bodies and blood and an unholy smell that had somehow become like a living thing, snaking through a cracked door and trying to wrap itself around me. It was after nine when I finally got up, took a hot shower, and got dressed. I went down to the Glasgow and grabbed a late breakfast, fending off Jackie’s complaints about my erratic schedule and how I expected him to reopen the kitchen whenever I waltzed in the place-in other words, the usual routine. Vinnie stopped in and told me he wouldn’t be able to help me with the finish work on the cabin that day. His mother was feeling even worse, so he was on his way over to the rez to sit with her. I told him I wouldn’t be doing much work that day anyway, which got Jackie going again. By the time I got out of there, I was almost glad to be heading to my FBI grilling.
Chief Maven was already there waiting. As strange as it had been to see him out of uniform the day before, it was doubly strange to see him out of uniform and sitting in his own interview room. I sat down beside him and gave him a nod. He returned the nod and we both stayed quiet. I started to wonder how long the agents would make us wait, but at that very moment the door opened and the two of them walked in.
They put their coats and briefcases down and took all of thirty seconds to settle in before getting down to business. Agent Long sat down in a chair across from us. She had her hair pinned back tight today and I didn’t think it suited her, although I sure as hell wasn’t going to tell her that. Agent Fleury stayed on his feet. He started pacing back and forth like a caged animal, which was our first indication that this particular meeting was not going to go well.
“Okay, so Chief Maven,” he finally said, still pacing. “You know, when we came up here the first time, I think we really did try to treat you like we were all on the same team.”
“That wasn’t my impression,” Maven said, folding his arms. “Thanks for returning my last call, by the way.”
“We’ve been very busy down in Detroit. You know that.”
“It takes one minute to return a phone call.”
“When we left here, I believe we had established that the FBI would be taking the lead on this case, did we not?”
“This was a different case,” I said. “This was my case.”
He stopped pacing. “What are you talking about, Mr. McKnight?”
“Mr. Razniewski hired me to look into his son’s suicide. Even though he’s dead, I felt it my duty to complete that assignment. Chief Maven came with me as a private citizen, out of uniform.”
It had sounded good when Leon had said it. In the light of day, with a federal agent standing over me, it was maybe not quite as convincing. But now that I’d hit my ground ball, I had to run it out.
“You are joking, right?”
“No, I’m not.”
“And you needed the chief to come with you… because you’re such good buddies?”
“He was good friends with the young man’s father. It’s natural he’d have an interest. And since he was asked to go on leave and had a lot of time on his hands…”
“He was asked to go on leave because he was actively and aggressively interfering with our investigation into the death of a U.S. marshal. You understand that part of it, right?”
“I thought you said you guys were all on the same team.”
“All right, stop,” Maven said, uncrossing his arms. “Will you just tell us what you want to tell us so we can get the hell out of here?”
Agent Fleury kept trying to stare me down until Agent Long cleared her throat and joined in.
“If you gentlemen had any other material leads pertaining to either Mr. Razniewski or his son, which apparently you did, you should have brought them to us. Especially if those leads involved crossing a state line.”
“We had no way of knowing we’d end up in Wisconsin,” I said. “But come on, does that really matter? Why are you laying into us, anyway? We were just asking some questions.”
“Alex,” she said, going with the first name thing now, “do you really think there’s some kind of connection between Razniewski and his son’s death, and Sergeant Steele and his son’s death?”
“I don’t know. That’s what we were trying to find out.”
“I understand how you could look at the close timing and think it was kind of suspicious, but take a step back. You’ve got one young man who has a conflict with his father over his future. He ends up taking his own life. A tragic thing that happens all the time. Every single day. His father is a U.S. marshal, who’s actively hunting down some of the worst criminals in the country. He ends up getting murdered in cold blood. Again, it’s tragic. Of course. That goes without saying.”
I looked over at Maven. He was listening carefully. Once again, I could only marvel at his newfound calm demeanor, and wonder where the hell he had found it.
“In an entirely separate branch of law enforcement, you have Sergeant Donald Steele of the Michigan State Police. His son, as we’ve learned today, was a bit of a loner. Liked to go back behind his barn and fire his guns. Pretty much every afternoon he did this.”
“How did you find that out?”
“We’ve been in contact with the officers out there. They’ve been very helpful. I hope this shows you how seriously we’re taking this.”
“And let me just point out one more time,” Agent Fleury cut in, “that if you had simply come to us instead of going out there yourself-”
“They get it,” Agent Long said, snapping a quick icy look at her partner. It was the first break I had seen between them. “Anyway, the bottom line is we have another young man with some troubles, who takes his own life. But again, as we all know, it happens.”
I was about to speak up on that one. The fact that neither kid had left a note, percentages be damned, and the fact that both suicide scenes gave me the same gut feeling that things just weren’t adding up. But then what? They’d ask for some piece of hard evidence that something was amiss in either case, and what would I give them?
“Finally,” she said, “in the case of Sergeant Steele himself, and the murder of both him and Ms. Donna Krimer, I assume you were aware that the two of them were involved in a long-term extramarital relationship?”
“We got that impression, yes.”
“Were you aware that Ms. Krimer was still legally married to a man with a history of domestic violence?”
“No, we didn’t know anything about her.”
“No, you didn’t,” Agent Fleury said. He obviously couldn’t resist jumping back in with that one. “Were you aware that Mr. Krimer has been missing ever since the two bodies were discovered?”
“The police mentioned that they hadn’t been able to contact him yet.”
“Yes, well, they still haven’t tracked him down as of this morning. Without presuming any guilt on his part, can we at least try to imagine a likely scenario here? If he were to come back to the house unannounced, say, and find his still lawfully wedded wife in bed with another man?”
“Okay,” I said. “I see where you’re going. It makes sense.”
“Good,” he said. “I’m glad we’re all on the same page now. So in the meantime, if anything new does come up, I can assure you we’ll be right on top of it.”
“It sounds like you’ve already decided that there’s no connections between any of these events,” Maven said.
