“There’s been another murder,” he said. “Another bookmaker, it turns out. They found this guy behind a restaurant on Ashmun Street.”
“What happened?”
“The cook found him when he was taking the garbage out,” he said. “He was shot three or four times, looks like.”
“Do you think it was the same killer?” I looked up at Edwin and Sylvia. They were both staring at me. Sylvia started to shiver.
“Well, I’m not psychic, McKnight, but I have a feeling that we’re going to find the same bullets from the same gun.”
“Who was the victim?”
“Guy named Vince Dorney. You know him?”
“Vince Dorney. No, I don’t know him.” I looked to Edwin. He shook his head. “Edwin doesn’t know him, either.”
“He’s right there by the phone, eh?” Maven said. “Sounds like I called you right in the middle of your slumber party.”
“Save it, Maven. What about… I mean, did he cut him again?”
“No, not this time,” he said. “This time he used the knife for something else.”
“What do you mean?”
“I think you better get down here, McKnight. Right now.”
“What are you talking about? Where are you?”
“As a matter of fact, I’m calling from a squad car parked right outside your cabin.”
I saw the lights from the squad cars first, the blues and reds bouncing madly through the pine trees. When I rounded the corner, I saw four cars in front of my cabin. There was a county car, a state car, and two Soo cars. Eight men stood together by my door. When I stopped my truck and got out, it didn’t take too long to figure out who was running this little show.
“Mr. McKnight,” Maven said. “How nice of you to join us this evening.”
I nodded to the two county deputies. I had seen them once or twice at the Glasgow Inn.
“Some of the county and state boys were good enough to stop by,” Maven went on. “We’re a few miles out of the Soo, after all. But this pertains to a Soo case, so I’ll be handling things. I was just explaining that to these gentlemen.”
“What’s going on?” I said. “Why are you here?”
“I tried to call you as soon as I found out about the murder behind the restaurant. You weren’t home, so I got worried. I sent a car out here just to make sure you were all right. That’s the kind of guy I am,” he said.
“So why did you come out here? And why are all these officers here?”
“I called the county and state out here just as a courtesy,” he said. “I’d expect the same if one of them came calling in the Soo. Now go take a look at your front door,” he said.
I thought of the rose that had been left there. I shuddered to think what he might have left this time.
I went to the door. One of the Soo cops was taking a picture with an instant camera. In the sudden moment of white light I saw a piece of paper pinned to the door by a large hunting knife.
“Don’t touch it yet, McKnight,” Maven said from behind me. The officer carefully removed the knife and put it in a plastic bag. He put the note in a separate bag. “That’s a shame about your door,” Maven said. “It’s gonna leave a nasty mark.”
“What does it say?” I said. “Let me read it.”
“Just hold on,” Maven said. He took the bags from the officer and held a flashlight over them. “Looks like blood on this knife,” he said. “Three guesses who the lab says it belongs to.” He passed it back to the officer and then stretched the clear plastic flat against the letter. “Sweet Jesus,” he said as he read it. It took a long time to read it. I could see that there were many words crammed on the single page.
When he was finished, he passed it to me without another word. The note looked like it was typed on an old manual machine with a ribbon that needed changing.
ALEX
You know who I am. It is hard to believe I think but you must believe because I am here now and it is time for both of us to be together and to finish the work that has been given to us. Iron bars could not hold me. I flew to you over all this time. Yes you know who I am. You know who YOU are that is to say you know that you are the one who will take us all to a better place. I did not see this before because I was blinded by the power of evil but now I see that you have been chosen to overcome death and to show the way for others to follow. The evil is here. It knows who you are and you must be very careful. I removed the one man who was threatening your little friend just as a sign of good will from me to you but there are others all around us to make this lonely place into a battlefield and tonight I removed another man who was sending out microwave signals for more of them to come. I used a different technique of course to keep them guessing. You always have to keep them guessing and not so much blood means it will take longer to discover he is missing but they will find us in time. They will not get to you I promise. It feels so good to help you now after all these years. Who would have thought it would turn out this way. To think I once thought you were one of them in disguise. I am watching over you and I cannot wait for the day when we can be together at last.
Yours forever
ROSE
P.S. I called you tonight but you were not there which makes me very sad so please do not do it again.
I read the letter twice and then I gave it back to Maven. All the officers just stood there watching me.
“I’ll say one thing for you,” Maven finally said. “You certainly get more interesting mail than I do.”
“This is impossible,” I said. “There’s no way he could be here. There’s no way he could have written this letter.”
“I take it you know who this Rose woman is?”
“Yes,” I said. “I know Rose. It’s a man, not a woman.”
“All right, a man named Rose. How do you know him?”
“It was fourteen years ago,” I said. “He’s the man who shot me. He’s the man who killed my partner.”
CHAPTER SEVEN
It was 1984, a long hot summer in Detroit. Cocaine was still king that summer, the good old-fashioned powder, long lines of it all over the city. Crack was just a rumor. I had been on the police force about eight years, and was just about ready to take the detective’s exam. My partner, Franklin, was new on the job. He was an ex- football player, an offensive lineman. He played at the University of Michigan and made second-team All Big Ten his senior year. The Lions drafted him, but he blew out his knee the first week of training camp. He went back and finished up his degree, and a couple years after that he joined the force. They stuck him with me, figuring an ex- football player and an ex-baseball player would get along together. They were wrong.
“This is what a baseball player does,” he said one evening in our squad car. The argument had been going on all day. “He stands around in a field. Once in a while, a ball might get hit to him. And if it’s not hit right at him, he might have to move sideways a little bit. I’ll give you that. Occasionally, the man has to move sideways.”
I just shook my head. We were on our way to the hospital. One of the emergency room doctors had called in a disturbance, and we were the closest car.
“Now after he’s done standing in the field,” Franklin went on, “he comes back into the dugout to rest. I mean, it’s hard work standing out there like that, right? So he’s gotta come into the shade and sit down on a bench. All right, so he’s sitting in that dugout for a while, having a drink, and then what do you know, it’s time for him to get up and go to bat! So now he’s gotta get up and go stand in a little box they painted in the dirt and swing this big stick, right? Now again, I’ll admit to you, swinging a big stick is a lot of work. I mean, if he fouls a couple balls off, he ends up swinging that stick something like five or six times!”
