But come on.”
He looked down at the floor.
“I just want to know what happened to him. That’s all I want. I don’t think it’s too much to ask. Just somebody, please… tell me what was going through his head. That’s all I want and nobody will tell me. You understand, Alex? Nobody will say a word. The only thing they say is that there’s no way for anybody to know what he was thinking. I’m sorry, but that’s not good enough for me. I will not accept it.”
He kept staring at the cold concrete between his feet.
“His girlfriend, and all of his friends… they’re gonna graduate soon. Then they’ll all be gone. They’ll forget all about him and they’ll move away and start their lives and have families and everything else. So I figure I’ve got this one chance, while they’re all still together in the same place. While it’s all still fresh in their minds. I want somebody to sit down with them and go over the last few days of-”
He stopped.
“The last few days of my son’s life. So I can, I don’t know what, make enough sense of it so I can keep on living myself. Not just give up and join him.”
“Raz, come on…”
“Try on my boots, Alex. See if you don’t feel the same way.”
“I can’t do that. I never had a son.”
He thought about that for a moment.
“You might find this hard to believe,” he finally said, “but Roy has a lot of respect for you. He wouldn’t have come to you if he didn’t.”
That one was hard for me to believe, but I wasn’t about to argue with him.
“He has a funny way of showing it, I know, but believe me. I wasn’t on the force with him for long, but it was enough. It sounds like he treats you exactly the same way he treated me.”
“Once again, no surprise you’re not a state cop anymore.”
“It was actually kind of unusual for us to spend so much time together,” he said. “Most troopers lead pretty lonely lives, and if they do end up riding with somebody else, it’s usually not the same partner every time. But as soon as I got to Lansing, I think I must have pissed off the wrong lieutenant or something, because I kept ending up in the same car as Sergeant Maven. Don’t ever tell him I told you this, but they used to call him ‘Sergeant Cooler.’ Like we’re not sure if we want this guy around anymore, so let’s put him with Sergeant Cooler for a while, see how long he lasts.”
I had to smile at that. Then he shifted gears.
“Forgive me if I’m hitting too close to home here,” he said, “but I understand you’ve suffered some losses yourself. On the job and-”
“My partner, in Detroit…”
“And then someone you loved, not that long ago?”
We sat right here, I thought. The two of us, once upon a time. On another winter’s day, right here in this observation booth.
“Yes,” I said. “Not that long ago.”
“So we have something in common.”
“The circumstances were different, but…”
“Look me in the eye,” he said, “and tell me we don’t have something in common.”
“We do. I know we do.”
“Were you with her when she died?”
I looked at him for a long time. “No,” I finally said. “Not at that last moment, no.”
“Okay, then. Neither was I.”
Through the glass, I could see snowflakes starting to swirl all around us.
“Start at the beginning,” I said, “and tell me everything.”
I set out early the next day, coming down from Paradise through Newberry to M-28, the main highway that cuts across the middle of the Upper Peninsula. It was twelve degrees, but the sky was clear and there was sunlight gleaming impossibly bright on the unbroken fields of snow.
I hit the infamous “Seney Stretch” that runs right through the middle of the Great Manistique Swamp. It’s twenty-five miles of road as straight as a ruler’s edge, with absolutely nothing to see on either side but snow- covered trees and such a perfect line ahead of you it’s downright hypnotizing.
I stopped for a quick breakfast in Munising, then continued along the shoreline. I didn’t see as much ice in the lake as you’d expect in a normal year. It was just a vast expanse of open blue water here in the widest section of Lake Superior, with Canada a good two hundred miles to the north. I hit some actual traffic in Marquette, the biggest city in the UP, then kept going west through Ishpeming, Champion, and Three Lakes. Small towns where you’d buy your gas and your groceries and your fishing tackle and you’d rent your movies for the weekend, all from the same corner store.
In the heart of the day, I was finally getting close to my destination, and I could feel it in the way the road started to rise and fall. The Porcupine Mountains lay far ahead of me. I cut north through L’Anse and Baraga, heading up the eastern coast of the Keweenaw Peninsula. Copper Country. But I wanted to see where it happened first, though, before talking to anyone, so I cut back to the west and headed for Toivola. It’s the last real town on the map until you finally hit Misery Bay.
If you ever do find yourself in Toivola, Michigan, I’d recommend stopping at a little place called Toivola Lunch. Of course, it’s not like you’d have much choice. There’s Toivola Lunch with a little convenience store attached to it on one side of the road, and on the other side there’s a small post office attached to a house. That’s it. That’s Toivola, as far as I could see, anyway. It made Paradise look like a metropolis.
I went inside and had a quick glass of Coke. No beer for me while I was doing so much driving, and I’m sure they only had American beer, anyway. The old man who served it to me had a slight Finnish accent. I was his only customer, but then the lunch rush was probably already over.
“Misery Bay,” I said. “That’s right down the road, right?”
“Misery Bay Road, yes.”
“You know why they call it that?”
“What, Misery Bay?”
“Yes, is there a story behind the name?”
He scratched his head. “I’ve heard two stories. Not sure which is true. One is that there was a big Indian battle there, and the other is that a French fur trader got stranded there, and he was so miserable he called it Misery Bay.”
“That’s it?” With such an evocative name, I was expecting a lot more.
“Yeah, although if it was the French guy, you’d expect it to have a French name, wouldn’t you? So maybe the Indian story, except for the fact that it’s not an Indian name, either.”
“Okay, either way. But it’s right down that road.”
“Sixteen miles. If you go too far, you’ll be in the lake.”
I was about to leave. Then I figured there was no harm taking a shot in the dark.
“I heard there was a suicide down there. In January.”
The old man’s smile evaporated. “Yeah, hell of a thing. A boy from Tech hanged himself.”
“Did you know him? Did he ever stop in here?”
The man shook his head. “No, I didn’t know him. Hell of a thing, though.”
“Thanks for the Coke, sir.” Then I was out the door, back in my truck, and heading down that sixteen-mile road.
There was a small sign around the halfway point. It read simply, MISERY BAY, and it had a deer’s head beneath the letters. There were thick trees on either side of the road and as I got closer to the end I could see a small river moving through random holes in the ice and snow on the left. The Misery River, feeding into Misery Bay, at the end of Misery Bay Road. It kept bothering me that the man didn’t even know where the name came from. I mean, if anybody in the world would have known…
