Mrs. Fulton, anyway?”
“She’s lying down,” Uttley said as he came into the room. “What’s going on?”
“This is Lane Uttley,” Maven said to the detective. “He’s the Fultons’ lawyer.”
“I’m Detective Allen from the State Police,” he said as he shook Uttley’s hand. “We were just going over some matters with Mr. McKnight.”
Uttley looked back and forth between them and then at me. “Going over what matters?”
“They may have some information about Rose,” I said. “They want me to go back to the station to talk about it.”
“I’m coming with you,” he said.
“No,” I said. “You’ve got to stay here, Lane. Mrs. Fulton needs you here. And Sylvia-” I turned around and looked out the window. “Sylvia is out there.”
Lane came to the window and looked out. “Where is she?”
“On the beach,” I said. “She doesn’t have a coat on.”
While we stood there, the two Soo officers came back into view. They walked up the path toward the house, and when they saw all four of us standing at the window watching them, they stopped. I felt a lump in my stomach, and I pictured Sylvia wading out into the cold water, shivering and blue. But then finally I saw her walking down the shoreline. She walked right behind the officers, but they were oblivious to her. They just stood there looking at us looking at them.
“For God’s sake, Lane,” I said. “Will you go out and get her?”
“Why don’t we both go get her?” he said.
“Just go,” I said. “I need to go to the station.”
He looked at both Maven and Allen. They had already started toward the door. “Alex, something’s not right here.”
“We’re just going to talk about Rose,” I said. “Don’t worry about me.”
He shook his head. “Call me when you’re done, Alex.”
I went outside with the two men. “I’ll follow you in my truck,” I said.
They looked at each other. That look, it should have tipped me off. “Why don’t you ride with us?” Allen said.
“Then I’ll be there and my truck will be here,” I said. “Go on, I’ll be right behind you.”
“Mr. Uttley can take care of that, can’t he?” Maven said. “His car is back at the casino, anyway, isn’t it? He can bring your truck into town and then you can go get his car.”
I didn’t feel like arguing about it, so I just threw my keys on the front seat of my truck and got in the back of Maven’s car.
It had been a long time since I had seen the back of a police car. When we were on our way I sat up and laced my fingers through the wire cage and looked at them. “All right, so what’s going on with Rose?” I said.
Maven just sniffed and kept driving.
“Come on, tell me what’s going on,” I said.
“We’ll talk at the station,” he said. It finally sank into my thick head. They were taking me in.
“Maven, what the fuck do you think you’re doing?” I said.
“Please, Mr. McKnight,” Allen said, turning his head. “Just relax. We’ll all be more comfortable at the police station.”
I sat back in the seat. After all that had happened in the last twenty-four hours, I couldn’t make any sense of it. Surely they don’t think I had anything to do with what happened to Edwin, I thought. They didn’t arrest me. They didn’t read me my rights.
I looked out the window at the pine trees. Edwin is dead. I poked my finger through a hole in the seat. Somebody was smoking back here and they burned a hole.
When we got to the station I tried to open the back door. It didn’t open, of course. I had forgotten, the back doors don’t open from the inside on a police car. I waited for Maven to open it for me. “Come on in, Alex,” he said. “Right this way.”
“I know the way,” I said. But instead of taking me to his office, he led me into an interview room. There was a table in the middle of the room, with four chairs. Another table stood against the wall with a coffee pot and a small refrigerator. A map on the wall showed the different types of fish in the inland lakes.
“We’ll have more room in here,” he said. “Have a seat.”
“Is somebody going to tell me what’s going on here?”
“Of course, Alex,” Allen said. “Please sit down.” He pulled a chair out for me.
“Now how did you say you like your coffee?” Maven said. “One sugar, no cream?”
I sat down. “Yes,” I said. “That’s right.” The man is finally going to make me some coffee. This is getting worse by the minute.
He poured the coffee in a mug and put it down in front of me. Then he sat down across from me, next to Allen. I looked from one face to the other while a curl of steam rose from the coffee.
“Mr. McKnight,” Detective Allen said, “tell me about this man Rose.”
“I thought you said Maven told you all about him,” I said.
“I want you to tell me,” he said. “Chief Maven might have left something out.”
I went over the whole story, starting at the hospital in Detroit, Rose’s apartment, the gun, the shooting. I told him how Rose went away for life, how I never figured on hearing from him again, until the phone calls and the notes started coming.
“These notes,” Allen said. “They all seem to have been typed on the same typewriter.”
“Makes sense,” I said.
“Why do you say that?”
“Because the same man wrote them.”
“Yes,” he said. “Of course.”
“What are you getting at?”
“Just thinking out loud,” Allen said. “Let’s talk about the dead men. The first two, I mean.” Maven just sat there, watching me.
“I didn’t know them.”
“Tony Bing, a local bookmaker,” Allen said. “Your friend Edwin found him in his motel room.”
“Yes,” I said.
“I understand he called you before he called the police.”
“Yes.”
“You were on the scene, in fact, before the police even got there.”
“Yes.”
“That strikes me as rather odd,” he said.
“It was odd,” I said. “Edwin did an odd thing.”
“A very odd thing,” he said. “Wouldn’t you call that odd, Chief Maven?”
“It was odd at the time,” Maven said. “And it’s still odd now.”
“The next man was, what was his name?”
They both looked at me.
“Dorney,” I said. “Vince Dorney. At least that’s what the chief told me.”
“Yes, that’s right. Vince Dorney. Another local character, from what I’m told. In fact, I believe Mr. Dorney was known to engage in a little bookmaking himself, wasn’t he?”
They both looked at me again.
“I don’t know anything about the man,” I said.
“It’s just another odd thing,” Allen said. “Here’s another bookmaker who ends up dead.”
“Another odd thing,” Maven said.
“Your Mr. Rose seems to have a specific dislike for bookmakers, Mr. McKnight. Funny, I didn’t see any mention of that in his notes.”
I could feel a line of sweat starting down my back. Both of the men had their forearms on the table. As they shifted their weight it made the coffee splash out of the cup.
“I don’t like where you’re taking this,” I said. “A homicidal maniac has been terrorizing me for the last week.
