I couldn’t go quite as fast as Chief Maven, and of course he already had a head start on me. I drove over the Mackinac Bridge again, into the Lower Peninsula. Straight south on I-75, just like my trip to Bad Axe, only this time I branched off at Grayling and headed straight for Lansing. I had left at about five in the morning, and I figured it would take me about four hours to get there. I stopped for gas and coffee and got right back on the road. When I got near Lansing I stopped again to ask for directions to the hospital. It was just after nine when I finally got there.
I went to the main reception desk and had a few minutes of tense wrangling with the woman about where Olivia Maven was and whether I could go anywhere near her. In the end, I called the chief on his cell phone again and he told me to come up to the Critical Care unit.
When I stepped out of the elevator, there was a nurse at the main station who didn’t want me to go any farther, as only immediate family members were allowed in the unit. That’s when Chief Maven came out of one of the rooms and flashed his badge at her. He didn’t technically have any authority to do that, but it seemed to work, at least for the moment. He gave me a quick nod and I followed him over to a small waiting area.
“How’s she doing?” I said.
“Better than a few hours ago.”
His voice was tight. He wouldn’t look at me. He wouldn’t stand still.
“Why did I let her come back?” he said. “Will you tell me that, please?”
“The case was solved, Chief. It was over. How were you supposed to know this would happen?” I didn’t know what else to tell him. I knew that whatever I said, it wouldn’t help one little bit.
“For as long as I live,” he said, “I will never forgive myself for being such an idiot. I don’t care what anybody else says. It was up to me to look after her and I completely, totally failed.”
He grabbed a magazine off the little table and threw it at the window. The nurse looked up from her station and was about to say something. Wisely, she decided against it.
“I understand what those other guys went through now,” he said. “This is what it’s like to see your child… just, I mean…”
He picked up another magazine. I grabbed him by the shoulders and sat him down. “Chief, tell me what happened.”
He pushed me away from him, but he stayed in the seat.
“My wife was there, McKnight. She was in the guest room downstairs when he came in. He must have come in through the front door and walked right by her door. Gone upstairs, into Olivia’s bedroom.”
He started rocking back and forth as he went on.
“He went in there and… and I don’t even know what happened next. Somehow he woke her up and got her to drink a glass of water with all these pills in it. Pentobarbital. You know what that is, right?”
“A tranquilizer.”
“An old one. It’s been around forever. It’s what Marilyn Monroe took when she…” He stopped talking. He kept rocking back and forth in his chair.
“Chief, your wife didn’t hear anything?”
“No. No, she takes her hearing aid out, and she just didn’t…”
“So what’s the prognosis right now, Chief? You said she’s doing better?”
“Yeah, that’s what they’re saying. You want to know why? Because he made a mistake. It’s the oldest trick in the book, right? You wait for them to make a mistake.”
“What do you mean? What kind of mistake?”
“When you’re going to kill yourself by taking a lot of tranquilizers or sleeping pills or whatever else, you know what you usually have to do first? If you really want to make sure it works? You take an antiemetic.”
“ Anti emetic, so you mean you don’t-”
“So you don’t throw it all back up, yes. That was his mistake, McKnight. He didn’t realize that my poor Olivia’s always had a nervous stomach. It probably didn’t stay down for more than a few minutes. By that time, he must have been gone.”
“What are they saying now?”
“They’re still saying she could have some liver damage. It’s too early to tell.”
“Is she awake? Have you talked to her?”
“No, not yet. They said she’ll be out for a while. Probably all day.”
“But when you do… she should be able to tell us what happened, right?”
“Yes. You would think so. She should be able to tell us. I don’t know.”
He leaned all the way back in his chair, finally coming to rest for one second at least. He put two fingers from each hand on his temples and closed his eyes.
“But until she does that,” I said, “we have no idea exactly what happened, right?”
“What are you getting at?” He opened his eyes. “Are you suggesting she might have really tried to kill herself?”
“No, Chief.”
“Because if that’s what you’re saying-”
“All I’m saying is that we don’t have any idea who to look for. That’s all I meant.”
“Whoever it is,” he said, “he must be rattled now. After making a mistake like that…”
“What are you thinking? This has to be somebody who was close to Wiley, right?”
“Probably. The film was in his basement. Which reminds me…”
“What?”
“Two agents were just here a minute ago,” Maven said. “Not Long and Fleury, two other guys from Detroit. They went out to Bad Axe as soon as they found out about this. You know what they found?”
“What?”
“Somebody broke into that house on the lake. The feds had it all locked up tight, because they were still processing stuff. But sometime between yesterday evening and this morning, somebody got in, went down to the basement, and turned the whole place inside out.”
“Looking for the film,” I said. “Gotta be, right?”
“You would think. But whoever it was, he didn’t find it.”
“So what about Connie and Sean? Did the agents talk to them?”
“Naturally. Neither of them was alone last night. They both seem to have airtight alibis.”
“They seem to?”
“Yeah, and neither of them has any idea who could have broken into the house. Of course, I’m getting all of this secondhand.”
“We’ve been down this road before,” I said.
“Last time around, secondhand wasn’t good enough for you, you mean. So you ran off to see for yourself.”
“Pretty stupid thing to do. As usual.”
He nodded slowly. “The kind of thing I’m always yelling at you for.”
“You stay here with your daughter,” I said. “I’ll call you as soon as I can.”
Bad Axe was about two hours away from Lansing. I took the expressway due east through Flint, but then I had to cut north on a smaller two-lane highway, all the way north into the thumb. So the last hour was hard driving.
When I finally hit Bad Axe, I knew exactly where to go. I parked in the lot next to the theater and went across the street. I pressed on the buzzer next to the Grindstone Productions plate, but nobody answered. I pressed again and took a peek through the window. It was dark inside. I rapped on the window a few times, then I turned and left. I went across to the theater and tried the door. It was locked. Not a big surprise. It wasn’t even noon yet. I knocked on the door, but nobody answered.
Okay, think, I said to myself as I walked back to the truck. Where do I try next?
