I kept driving to the Soo, wondering when I’d see my new friends in my rearview mirror again. The snow was coming down harder now, in big wet flakes that stuck to my windshield and made it hard to see where the hell I was going.
I called the sheriff’s department again. Bill still wasn’t in, and they still wouldn’t give me his home number. I left another message for him to call me as soon as he could. I didn’t want to try to explain to a deputy over the phone that two men were following me all over Chippewa County. I wanted Bill on the other side of a desk, or better yet a table in a bar, listening to me and writing it all down.
I made my way to the east side of town, over by the ice rink where this whole mess started. The address was in a neighborhood just off of Spruce Street, near the old Union Carbide site. The map calls it a “spoiled area” now. In the summer it’s a big field of weeds and sumac trees that nobody ever touches. In the winter it’s covered by a couple feet of snow like everything else so you don’t think about it. The houses are small, with windows sealed in plastic to protect them from the wind off the St. Marys River.
I found Leon Prudell’s little red car parked in the driveway of the house. The snowbanks on either side of the driveway were as tall as the car itself, so I almost missed it. I had just enough room to park my truck behind him and then squeeze my way between the car and the snowbank to get to the front door. When I rang the bell, it was answered by an elderly woman with thick glasses and the first real smile I had seen in days. How she could smile like that in the middle of winter was a mystery to me, but I instantly loved her for it. She was wearing a thick white sweater and holding a coffee cup in one hand while opening the door for me with the other hand. I could see Leon on the couch, holding a cup from the same set. “You must be Mr. McKnight,” she said.
“Yes, ma’am,” I said. “And you must be Mrs. Hudson.”
“May I offer you some coffee? Mr. Prudell and I have been having quite a party here waiting for you.”
“I apologize for being late,” I said. “As a matter of fact, some hot coffee would do me a lot of good right now.”
“Mr. Prudell and I just finished some apple pie,” she said. “Can I cut you a slice while I’m in the kitchen?”
“You gotta try this pie,” Leon said. Now that she mentioned it, I could see the crumbs all over Leon’s shirt.
“That sounds wonderful,” I said. “If it’s not too much trouble.”
“You have a seat,” she said. “I’ll be right back.”
When she left, I took a quick look around the place. There were a lot of old black and white pictures of children and color pictures of what must have been grandchildren. The room was small, but it looked comfortable and well-kept. There was a plastic slipcover on the couch Leon was sitting on. “What took you so long?” he said.
“I had to help out a couple guys who got stuck in the snow,” I said. I sat down on the other end of the couch. The plastic made a sound like popcorn popping.
“So I’ll brief you, Alex,” he said.
“Brief me?”
“Yes, bring you up to date on the information I’ve developed today.”
“Or you could just talk to me and tell me what’s going on,” I said. “Where was Bruckman staying, anyway? Upstairs?”
“No, there’s a big apartment out back, over the garage,” he said. “He’d been renting the place for about six weeks.”
“How did you find this place?”
Prudell leaned forward and sneaked a look around the corner at Mrs. Hudson in the kitchen. “I had to throw a few Franklins around, Alex, but it was worth it.”
“Franklins? You mean, what, fifty-dollar bills?”
“No, hundreds. Grant is on the fifty.”
“Leon, what are you talking about? Who did you pay to find out where Bruckman was living?”
“Hockey players, Alex. At the Big Bear Arena. You said you played against him on Thursday night, right? So that’s where I started. First I tried the office. I told them I wanted to find Bruckman and I knew he was on one of the teams that played there in the Thursday night league. I got nowhere with that, so I figured I’d just hang around with the players, see if I could get a lead on him that way.”
“You hung around with the hockey players?”
“Yeah, I just walked around in the locker rooms. Said hello, how’s it going, tried to act like I was playing in the next game or something.”
“Leon, no offense, but you don’t exactly look like a hockey player.”
“I told ’em I was a goalie,” he said. “That’s where they put the guy who can’t skate, right? Just like in baseball when they put the worst player at catcher.”
I counted to three in my head. “Okay, right,” I finally said. “So eventually you found somebody who knew Bruckman?”
“Eventually,” he said. He peeked into the kitchen again. “Alex, I believed you mentioned that this Bruckman fellow may have been involved in drugs?”
“Yes,” I said. “Very involved.”
“Well, it was certainly no secret to these players I talked to. It didn’t take me very long to see what angle to play. I pretended I was looking for him so I could buy some drugs.”
I tried to picture Leon Prudell in a locker room, pretending to be a hockey goalie looking to score some coke. The image didn’t quite work. “How long did it take you?” I said.
“I had to work several games,” he said. “Maybe seven or eight. There was a lot of… reluctance to tell me where he lived. I guess they figured that if I had really bought drugs from him before, then I should know where he lived. That’s where the Franklins came in. They can be very persuasive.”
“Leon,” I said, “just how many Franklins did you have to spend?”
“Four or five,” he said. “A couple of guys gave me bogus information. I had to go out and check the addresses and then come back again. But one guy finally came through for me. A real dopehead who was playing in the midnight game.”
“Here we are,” Mrs. Hudson said as she came back into the room. She set a slice of apple pie in front of me, along with a cup of coffee. “The cream and sugar are right there next to Mr. Prudell.”
“I can’t tell you how much I appreciate this, ma’am,” I said. “I understand you had a man named Lonnie Bruckman staying in your apartment out back.”
“Oh yes,” she said, looking down at her hands which were folded in her lap. “As I was saying to Mr. Prudell, I’m afraid it hasn’t been a very pleasant experience, especially the past couple days. He seemed like a nice enough man when he first took the place, but then there were all these people that started showing up. There was always loud music going on, and those snowmobiles that he and his friends would ride. I’ve always hated those things.”
A woman after my own heart. “Mrs. Hudson, I just have to say that this is the best apple pie I’ve ever tasted.” It was a perfect creation of apples and cinnamon and a flaky crust. It made me feel human again, if only for a moment.
“Oh, why thank you,” she said. “You have to know how to save the right kind of apples over the winter.”
“But go on,” I said. “He had all these people over. Was there one woman in particular who was staying with him?”
“Yes,” she said. “There was. I never found out what her name was. I didn’t see her much, but when I did… I don’t know. There was something about her. She always looked very sad and alone to me. Even when all those people were around.”
“The police were here on Friday night,” Leon said. “And then again on Saturday morning.”
“Friday night?” I said. “What time?”
“I called the police around two o’clock in the morning,” she said. “I heard all these noises back there. Woke up the whole neighborhood. Things crashing into the walls, glass breaking, like somebody was destroying the place.”
“Two o’clock,” I said. “The same night he… Okay, go on. Did you see who it was? Was it Bruckman?”
