you don’t leave skid marks, you might be leaving behind that one single clue. But otherwise it’ll be a mystery forever.
Hanging yourself from a tree, on the other hand… well, there was a hotshot assistant district attorney in Detroit and he had this Latin phrase I’d hear him use at least once a week. Res ipsa loquitur. The thing speaks for itself.
I hit the Soo around 9:45 that next morning. Sault Ste. Marie, Michigan, second-largest city in the Upper Peninsula. Sister city to Sault Ste. Marie, Ontario, and site of the Soo locks, where the big freighters line up to go from Lake Huron to Lake Superior, or vice-versa. I usually take Lakeshore Drive instead of the highway, because I like the way it winds around the shoreline, and I usually drive way too fast for my own good, because there isn’t a police officer, deputy, or state trooper in the entire Upper Peninsula who’ll give me a speeding ticket. It’s the one benefit of being an ex-cop who took three bullets on the job. That plus the three-quarter salary for the rest of my life.
The City-County Building sits behind the courthouse on Portage Avenue, as charmless a rectangle as you’ll find anywhere in the state. If you were to take a shoebox and cover it with gray paper, then draw a couple doors and some windows, you’d have an exact scale replica. The county sheriff and his deputies all have offices there, and downstairs you’ll find the county jail. The Sault Ste. Marie police department has to share space in the same building, even borrow use of the jail, which makes you start to understand why Chief Maven is always so damned unhappy about everything. Add to that the state police barracks on Ashmun Street, the Coast Guard station next to the locks, and the U.S. Customs office at the border, and you see the rest of the picture. The man is as low on the totem pole as you can get, in his very own town.
I parked and went inside. The receptionist told me to go right back to Chief Maven’s office. It was a trip I’d made on five or six occasions, and every single time I’d end up sitting in a hard plastic chair just outside his door for what felt like half a day. Today I was obviously on a different program. Chief Maven was there waiting for me as I came down the hallway.
“McKnight,” he said. “You’re not late for once.”
Maven showed me into the office, a place as welcoming and stylish as always with its four bare cement walls and lack of windows. Another man was already sitting in one of the guest chairs. He stood up when I entered. He was about my age, maybe two or three inches taller. Blond hair cut close, blue eyes. He looked sharp and he looked fit, maybe a little tired now, a little used up. Which wasn’t a surprise. Still, I had no trouble believing he was a topnotch U.S. marshal.
“This is Raz,” Maven said. “Raz, this is Alex.”
“Pleasure to meet you.”
“I’m sorry for your loss,” I said.
Raz just gave me a tight smile and a nod. Then Maven waved us into our chairs. Nobody said anything for a few seconds, so I figured I should dive in.
“I understand you once rode with the chief,” I said. “Way back when.”
“We were both at the Lansing post for about two years. Then I left the state police.”
“Yeah, that would do it for me.” It was out of my mouth before I could even think about what I was saying. I mean, maybe this wasn’t the time for making jokes, but Raz gave me half a smile and even half a laugh. For a man who had just lost his son three months before, he seemed to be holding up amazingly well.
“I couldn’t stand all the time on the road,” Raz said. “Most of it just doing speed patrol.”
“Yeah, so he quit to go babysit federal judges,” Maven said, falling right back into the pattern. This is what you do to your fellow cop, no matter how many years it’s been. “And to drive around handcuffed to gangsters.”
“He’ll never get it,” Raz said to me. “But I understand you were a police officer in Detroit.”
“Yes. Third precinct.”
“Hell, yeah. Right around the corner.”
“I didn’t run into many U.S. marshals.”
“It’s a small office. There aren’t that many of us.”
“He’s a private investigator now,” Maven said. “The best in town.”
Raz stopped smiling and looked down at his hands. So much for the small talk. It was time to get to it.
“Actually, I’m not,” I said. That was Maven’s cue to turn the first of many shades of red, but I wanted to level with this man as soon as I could.
“I have a license,” I went on, “but I sort of fell into it by accident. It’s a long story, but suffice to say, I haven’t actually done much PI work, and I don’t want to misrepresent myself. God knows you’ve been through enough already. You deserve the truth.”
“We’re not talking about standard PI work,” Raz said. “Didn’t Maven tell you what I was asking you to do?”
“He did, but I’ve been thinking about it, and I’m honestly not sure if I can be of much help to you. There does happen to be another private investigator in town, a man named Leon Prudell.”
“McKnight, God damn it…” Maven was moving through shades two, three, and four.
“Just take it easy,” Raz said to him. “You’ve gotta stop being so upset all the time, Roy. Can you just try that for me, please?”
But Maven was already halfway out of his chair, looking like he was about to come around his desk and strangle me.
“Alex, can we go take a walk so Roy can calm down?”
“It’s twenty degrees outside,” Maven said. “If you want me to leave, just-”
“Come on,” Raz said to me as he stood up. “Come show me the famous locks.”
When we were safely outside, I led him down through the locks park to the edge of the St. Marys River. Someone had plowed the walkway, but the whole park was empty. I turned my collar up as a cold wind blew across the snowdrifts, but Raz seemed unfazed by it.
When we got to the observation deck, we climbed up and sat on the bleachers. The metal was cold but at least we were out of the wind now. Through the Plexiglas we could look down on the MacArthur Lock and the Poe Lock just beyond it. It was the first day of April, so everything was still closed down for the season.
“No offense, but this is pretty anticlimactic,” he said. It was cold enough for us to see our breath as we spoke.
“Come back in the summer. When a seven-hundred-footer goes through, it’s impressive.”
“I lived in Michigan most of my life, but this is the first time I’ve ever been up here. My son was supposed to meet me here last summer, but it never happened. I was thinking maybe next summer…”
He stood up with both fists clenched and took a few steps forward. He punched the glass and made the whole thing rattle. He took a few deep breaths and finally turned around to face me.
“I can’t cry anymore, Alex. I had a whole lifetime of tears stored up and I spent the last three months crying out every single last one of them. I’ve got nothing left.”
I didn’t say anything. I just watched him and listened to what he was saying.
“His mother and I have been apart for a while now. He’s been living with me for the past few years. Just the two men, you know? Just me and Charlie. When he decided to switch majors, I was kinda skeptical, but hell, his girlfriend was in the same program, this forestry thing. Managing… you know, forests. Trees. Taking care of trees. Tech’s got a good program for that, so I thought, okay, why not. Maybe he wasn’t cut out for criminal justice. Maybe that was just because of his old man, you know? So I said, sure, go for it. Give it a try, see if it works. But don’t complain to me when you get ten feet of snow.”
He smiled again for the briefest of moments, then it was gone.
“Okay,” he said. “Maybe I wasn’t so supportive when he told me about the forestry thing. Maybe I didn’t quite get it. The last time I saw him was over Christmas break, and we didn’t exactly end things on a good note.
