“I rent cabins for a living. What can they do to me?”
“They can do plenty, believe me. I didn’t want to drag you into this any deeper.”
“That’s a load of crap, Chief, but we’ll talk about it later. Tell me what you guys are working on.”
He let out a long breath and rubbed his eyes. “It was just a thought. I mean, I was just thinking…”
“You were looking for a link between Raz and Steele,” I said. “You figured the only thing they ever had in common was being a state cop.”
“Right, and this is the place to come to find out.”
“Even though it was a long time ago, and even if you were his only regular partner…”
“I was thinking, still, if they came in around the same time…”
“Because they’re about the same age. So you’re wondering if maybe they went to the academy together. There’s just one for the whole state, right?”
“Yes.”
“So even though they never worked together, they might have run into each other there.”
Sergeant Coleman looked between us and couldn’t help smiling. “Sounds like the two of you are on the same wavelength,” he said.
“Most days I’d take offense to that,” I said. “But yes.”
Another trooper came by, carrying a cup of coffee. He was looking at us with great curiosity, until Coleman told him to keep on walking.
“The chief has had a problematic relationship with most of the men in this building,” Coleman said to me. “I’m not sure any of them can believe he’s voluntarily sitting here. Or hell, that I’d even let him through the door.”
“All right, knock it off,” Maven said. “Everybody here hates me. I got it.”
“So what did you find?” I said. “Did Raz and Steele train together?”
“No, that’s a dead end,” Maven said. “Steele went right in after a couple years of community college. Raz was in the military first, didn’t join the police until he was twenty-five. They missed each other by a good five years.”
“We can’t find any connection at all,” Coleman said. “All of Steele’s posts were in the UP. Raz did his two years down in Lansing with Roy here. There weren’t any special assignments or anything else that would ever bring them together, as far as I can see.”
“I take it the chief has explained our general situation,” I said.
“He has,” the sergeant said. I could see him hesitating about what to say next.
“What’s your opinion?”
“Well, we all heard about Sergeant Steele this morning. I didn’t know the man very well. I think I only met him once. But it’s never easy to hear about one of your fellow officers going down.”
I waited him out. He was doing a good job of not answering the question.
“As far as this other man goes, I obviously know nothing about him at all. But the two suicides… hell, I don’t know, guys. It seems like a big coincidence, but I’ve seen bigger. That’s all I’ll say. If you have something else that’s concrete, that’s a different matter.”
“You’d make a good FBI agent,” Maven said.
“That’s a low blow, Roy.”
Maven took a long sip of coffee while another trooper wandered by to gawk at us.
“It’s true,” the trooper said, “Chief Maven is really here. Did somebody arrest you?”
“Sergeant Fusilli,” Maven said. “Always a pleasure. Alex, meet the biggest pain in the ass in Sault Ste. Marie.”
“We’re just kidding around,” the man said, shaking my hand. “We all have the utmost respect for the chief. What are you guys working on, anyway?”
“It’s nothing,” Coleman said. “Just a little legwork.”
Fusilli leaned over and peered at the computer screen.
“Nothing to see here,” Maven said. “Go do something useful.”
“Sergeant Steele,” Fusilli said. “What a shame, huh? He was Iron Mountain, right?”
“Right,” Coleman said.
“Didn’t his son kill himself, too?”
“A couple of months ago, yeah. Actually, if you’ll excuse us-”
“Been a tough winter for old state men in the UP, eh?”
Fusilli said it as he walked away. It took a few seconds for the coin to drop, then Maven and I looked at each other.
“What was that?” Maven said. “What did he just say?”
“Hey, Jim!” Coleman said. “Get back here.”
“No, no, you heard the chief. I’m gonna do something useful.”
“Get your ass back here,” Maven said. “Repeat what you just said.”
“Hey,” Fusilli said, coming back to us with his hands up, “I didn’t mean anything by it. I was just saying, with Sergeant Steele in Iron Mountain, and Haggerty in Marquette…”
“Haggerty?” Coleman said. “What do you mean?”
“What about him?” Maven said. “Who is he? What happened?”
“Well, he’s been retired for a while now…”
“But he was a state cop at one time?”
“He was a forensics guy, up at the lab in Marquette.”
“What happened to him?”
“Not to him,” Coleman said. “To his daughter. She just died recently. But it was in her sleep, right? A heart attack or something?”
“She was twenty-seven years old,” Fusilli said. “You really believed that story about the heart attack?”
“I don’t know,” Coleman said. “It can happen.”
He waved that one off and was about to walk away again.
“Stop,” Maven said. “Tell us what happened.”
“It’s none of your business, Chief. He was a state man and some things stay in the family.”
“You’re the one who brought it up,” Maven said. “Now start talking.”
“Jim,” Coleman said, putting up both hands to calm everybody down. “This might be important. Please tell us what you heard about Haggerty’s daughter.”
He worked it over for a moment, then he started talking.
“All right, if you really need to know. This was like two weeks ago now. Up at Northern, in the university housing. Haggerty’s daughter was like an associate professor or something. She didn’t come to class and when they finally opened up her apartment, she was dead. Apparently, there were some… unusual circumstances in terms of the way she died.”
“Unusual how?” Maven said.
“I didn’t get the details. I just heard it wasn’t as simple as a young woman dying of a heart attack. Whatever happened, it may have been self-inflicted, that’s all I know. I think the guys at the Marquette post have been so tight-lipped about it in deference to Lieutenant Haggerty. Just out of respect, I mean. He was a very popular guy up there.”
“You say this happened two weeks ago?”
“Yes,” Fusilli said. “And that’s all I know. You want anything else, you’re gonna have to talk to the guys in Marquette.”
He walked away from us. Maven sat there looking like somebody had just slapped him in the face.
“Where is Haggerty now?” I said. “I mean, is he-”
“I don’t know,” Coleman said. “I would assume he’s still up in Marquette, but I guess I don’t know that for sure. I haven’t heard anything about him since he retired. Until this.”
“Do me one favor,” Maven said. “Can you look him up in your records there? See where he’s been on the police force?”
Coleman went back to his keyboard and his mouse and started going through the database.
“He started out in St. Ignace,” he said. “He was a trooper on the road for what-seven years, I guess, until
