“You’ll have to forgive me,” he said. “I told you I value good information.”
“Well, I’m going to have to pass on your offer. Thanks just the same.”
“I sure wish you’d think about it. I’m prepared to make this well worth your time.”
“Fair enough,” I said. “FU think about it.”
He was back two nights later, this time with one of Prudell’s reports in his hand. “I want you to read this,” he said. “This is what I have to deal with every day.”
Prudell had apparently been sent to a resort out on Drummond Island to document some haphazard life- guarding in support of a suit over a drowning. The report was a jumble of irrelevant notations and misspellings.
“Listen to this, Alex,” he said. “Twelve-fifteen. Subjects back on duty after eating lunch under a medium-size tree. Subjects become aggravated upon observation of my picture taking with the camera.’ I assume that when he says subjects, he means lifeguards. Why can’t he just say lifeguards, Alex? I tell ya, this guy is killing me.”
“What makes you think I could do a better job?” I said.
“Alex, come on. Don’t make me beg.”
“I don’t know, Mr. Uttley.”
“Alex, you work when you want to work, and you name your price. I’ll even put up your state bond myself. You can’t beat it.”
The truth was, I had been thinking about it. As a cop, I was always good at dealing with people, making them feel at ease, making them feel like they could talk to me on a human level. I was pretty sure I could make a decent private investigator. And I still wasn’t comfortable with the idea of drawing three-quarter disability pay and not having much else to do except cut wood and clean up after deer hunters.
“There’s just one condition,” I said. “No divorce cases. I’m not going to go following some guy, waiting to get a picture of him with his pants around his ankles.”
“It’s a deal,” he said. “I haven’t done divorce work in ten years.”
A month later, I had my license. He apparently knew someone in Lansing, was able to get the forms through that quickly. One day in late August, after I had just received the license, he gave me a piece of paper with a name and address on it.
“Who’s this?” I said.
“It’s a dealer in the Soo,” he said. “I’ve ordered a gun for you. You have to pick it up yourself, of course. Fill out the paperwork. You know some guys in the county office, right? You’ll need your permit, too.”
“Wait a minute,” I said. “What kind of gun are we talking about?”
“A. 38 service revolver. That’s what you used when you were a police officer, isn’t it?”
“Yes,” I said. “But I really don’t want to carry one again, if you don’t mind.”
“Hey, no problem,” he said. “Just keep it at home. You never know.”
It took me a while to figure out why he ordered that gun. Then it came to me. He probably just liked the idea of me having it. I could see him sitting across the table from a prospective client, saying, “Yes sir, I’ve got a good man working for me now. He packs heat, of course. It’s a rough world out there. My man took three bullets once, still has one in his chest. That’s the kind of man we both need on our side…”
When I had finally picked up that gun, I took it home and put it in the back of my closet. I hadn’t touched it since.
The bartender was no help. I asked him if he had been there that past Monday. It took him a full minute to figure that one out, so I didn’t think he’d be able to remember if there were any suspicious characters there that night. So I just paid the man and headed down to Uttley’s office. It was right around the corner from the courthouse, between a bank and a gift shop. The whole downtown area was starting to smell like money again, thanks to the casinos. Uttley was doing well, as were a lot of the other local businessmen. The strange thing was that, for once, a lot of the money was coming to the Chippewa Indians first and then trickling down to everyone else. I knew a lot of people around here who had a hard time dealing with that.
Uttley was on the phone when I came in. He gave me a little wave and motioned me into a big overstuffed guest chair. His office was classic Uttley: a desk you could land an airplane on, framed pictures of hounds and riders ready for the foxhunt, a good ten or twelve exotic houseplants that he was always misting with his little spray bottle. “Jerry, that number doesn’t work, and you know it,” he was saying into his phone. “You’re going to have to do a lot of work on that number before we talk again.” He gave me a theatrical headshake and double eyebrow raise as he covered the receiver with his hand. “Almost done here,” he whispered to me.
I picked up the baseball that was sitting on his desk, read some of the signatures. Without even thinking about it, I turned the ball over into a four-seam grip, ready for the throw to second base.
“Okay,” he said as he hung up. He rubbed his hands together. “How are you doing?”
“Can’t complain,” I said.
“Wouldn’t do you any good if you did complain, eh?”
“I did receive an interesting phone call last night,” I said. By the time I told him everything, he was just staring at me with his mouth open.
“Did you tell Chief Maven about this?” he said.
“I haven’t stopped by to see him yet,” I said. “I thought I’d try the bar first, see if the bartender remembered anything from Monday night.”
“I take it he didn’t.”
“No.”
“Well,” he said. “I don’t know what to say. Do you want me to come to the police station with you?”
“You don’t have to do that. I’ll go see him right now.”
“Chief Maven can be a bit… blustery,” he said.
“That’s one word for it.”
“Oh and, by the way,” he said. “I was wondering if you could do me a favor.”
“What would that be?”
“Mrs. Fulton would really like to speak with you as soon as possible.”
I swallowed my surprise. “Sylvia Fulton wants to see me?”
“No no,” he said. “Theodora Fulton. Edwin’s mother. She came up from Grosse Pointe yesterday. She’s staying with them for a couple days.”
“Why does she want to see me?”
“She’s worried about her son. She thinks you might be able to help him.”
“What does she expect me to do?”
“Mrs. Fulton is a great old lady, Alex. A little eccentric maybe. Only rich people are eccentric, by the way. Everyone else is just crazy.”
“So I’ve noticed,” I said.
“Anyway, she’s very protective of her son. She came up as soon as she heard about what happened. She seems to think he’s in some sort of danger up here.”
“Then I probably shouldn’t tell her about our new friend the killer, huh?”
“I’d find a way to leave that out of the conversation,” he said. “Alex, I should warn you, this is a very intense woman we’re talking about. She has a different way of looking at things. She wants to talk to you about a dream she had.”
“What kind of dream?”
“She dreamed about what happened on Saturday night. It got her very upset, Alex. She thinks Edwin is next.”
“Are you serious?”
“I don’t know what to think of it, Alex. All I know is, while we’re standing there in that parking lot, Edwin’s mother is down in Grosse Pointe, three hundred miles away. And she’s dreaming about it. She saw it, Alex. She didn’t see who did it or anything. She just saw the way it looked afterward.”
“What, you mean…”
“The blood, Alex. She says she saw the blood in her dream.”
