I sat there for a long time. I had never seen such fear in a man. For a tenth of a second, I almost felt sorry for him. Then I thought about Franklin and his family and got over it.
Browning was waiting for me when I left the room. “You certainly pushed his hot button,” he said. “They’re going to have to sedate him.”
“I’m sorry,” I said.
“Don’t worry about it.”
“So I’m going to ask you a question now.”
“No harm asking.”
“Has Rose had any contact with a man named Raymond Julius in the last six months? Letters or visits?”
He exhaled heavily and looked up the hallway. “Walk this way,” he said.
“Where are we going?”
“To the exit.”
“Fine,” I said. “I give up.”
He walked me back through the waiting room and out the door. I was expecting a handshake and a good- bye, but he gave me a little bit more. “You didn’t hear this from me,” he said. “Rose has had no outside contact for the past five years.”
“None at all? Are you sure?”
“None. No letters. No lawyer calls. No visits since a mental health follow-up five years ago. Even then, the file says he just sat there, wouldn’t say a word. So that’s it. I hope that tells you what you need to know. Have a safe trip back.” He shook my hand and then he was gone.
I got in the truck, drove through the gate, watched the prison recede in my rearview mirror. When I made the highway I turned the radio on for a minute and then turned it back off. I wasn’t ready for noise yet. I needed to think.
Okay, so Julius never really talked to Rose. So what? Maybe it was all in his head. He read the clippings and then he imagined that Rose was talking to him in the shower or in his sleep or wherever the hell else.
So how did he know about the microwaves and the chosen one and all that? Because he was nuts. Because Rose is nuts and Julius is nuts and that’s how they think. Paranoia, fear of technology, delusions about a messiah, it all comes with the territory, right? They were both tuned to the same station.
And the rest of it you’re just imagining, Alex. If you keep it up, you’re going to end up just as crazy as they are. So just find a way to put it behind you. Rose is in prison forever, Julius is in the ground. It’s over. O-V-E- R.
I turned the radio back on and settled in for a long drive back. I was in no rush this time. I figured I’d just keep driving until I got hungry or tired. Pull over, have some dinner, maybe get a room for a night. Probably do me some good, a night away from everything.
By the time I reached Lansing, the sun was beginning to go down. I started to relax a little bit. Just a little.
By the time I reached Alma, I started to see a few flakes in the air again. Winter would come quickly, as it always did. Soon the cabins would be buried in two feet of snow. There wasn’t much hunting in the winter, just some rabbit and coyote. There’d be mostly snowmobilers renting the cabins, maybe some ice fisherman. The locks would close, the bay and the river would freeze over, so hard you’d be able to walk across it, all the way to Canada if you wanted to.
I stopped for dinner in Houghton Lake, found a little place that served fresh walleye. I thought about Sylvia, what might happen to the two of us. She said she didn’t know if we could start over. I wondered if we really could, or if the guilt and the pain would come back to ruin everything. But then as I went back to the truck and breathed the cold night air, I got a little boost from somewhere. A second wind, whatever you want to call it. Back when I was playing ball we’d have a lot of doubleheaders late in the summer. You usually try to split your catchers, but there were a couple times when I had to work both games. A whole day behind the plate, setting up for the pitch, standing up to throw the ball back, setting up again, a good three hundred times. Trying to keep the pitcher’s head together, holding runners on base, taking foul balls off the mask. By the middle of the second game, I’d be so drained they’d have to help me off the bench so I could strap the shinpads back on.
But on a good day, I’d find something extra in the last couple innings, some reserve of strength that I didn’t know about. That one day in Columbus, my best day as a ballplayer, I drove in the go-ahead run in the eighth inning, and then in the ninth I had to block the plate on their big first baseman. He was coming down that line like a house on wheels. I caught the ball just before he hit me. When I came to, I checked to see if I still had the ball and then I checked to see if my head was still attached. The umpire called him out and we won the game.
It felt good to think about those days again, to think about anything else for a change.
And then around Gaylord, it started to come to me. I thought about Julius again. And about everything that had happened. Everything I had seen, everything that had been said. I couldn’t keep it out of my mind any longer. For the first time, I had stopped thinking about it, and now that I looked at it again, I was starting to see some things I had missed.
By the time I got to Mackinac, I had it all worked out. I could see how it all fit together, from beginning to end. And what I saw made me mad.
You’re a fool, Alex. You’re a goddamned fool. How did it take you so long to figure this out?
I crossed the bridge into the Upper Peninsula doing seventy. Suddenly I had somewhere to go.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
It wasn’t hard to find his house. Not like when I dragged Prudell all over town for Julius’s house. This house was in the book.
It was a nice neighborhood, up on the hill by the college. Maybe not as nice as I thought it would be. The house was actually quite modest, a little two-story mock Tudor with a small yard. His car was parked in the driveway.
It was just after eleven o’clock at night. But I could see that his lights were on. I felt good about that. I wouldn’t have to wake him up. That would have been very rude.
I parked the truck on the street, careful not to block his car in the driveway. That would have been very rude, as well.
I walked up to the front door. I was about to ring the doorbell, but instead I tried turning the knob. It was unlocked. How nice. I walked right in.
There was a little entry way with a stone floor. A living room. There was a fire going in the fireplace. I walked through the room. In the back of the house there was a study. Lots of books on the walls. He was sitting there behind the desk, looking through a pile of travel brochures.
“Alex!” he said when he saw me. “My God, you scared me!”
“Good evening, Lane,” I said. “I hope I’m not disturbing you.”
Uttley gathered up some of his brochures. “I was just trying to decide where to go on vacation,” he said. “I’m leaving tomorrow morning.” If he was surprised to see me here, he was doing a good job of hiding it.
“That’s nice,” I said.
“Alex, are you all right? What’s going on?”
“Don’t get up,” I said. “I’m just going to sit right here and ask you a couple questions.” I pulled up a chair and sat down in front of his desk.
“I don’t understand,” he said. “What questions?”
“I’m not even sure where to begin,” I said. “I don’t know which question I want answered first.”
“What’s going on, Alex? What are you doing here?”
“Okay, here’s a good one to start with,” I said. “A little ice breaker, if you will. Where’s Edwin?”
“Edwin is at the bottom of Lake Superior. You know that.”
“I’m supposed to know that, yes. Just like the police are supposed to know that. And Sylvia. And everybody else in the world.”
“I don’t get it,” he said. “What are you talking about?”
