there at his counter, reading the Grand Rapids Press. He was leaning back in his chair as if he had been sitting there for the last two hours. I stood in front of his counter, waiting for him to look up at me. He didn’t.
“I’ve got a little problem,” I said.
“Is that so?” he said, turning the page.
“I have four flat tires.”
“That is a problem,” he said.
“I guess I should be thankful he didn’t slash them,” I said. “He just let the air out.”
“It’s your lucky day,” he said.
I stood there watching him read his paper. I counted to ten again. “Where’s your air pump? I didn’t see one outside.”
“We’re out of air,” he said.
“Come again?”
“No air,” he said. “We’re fresh out.”
I started counting to ten again. I got to three and then tore the newspaper out of his hands. I balled it up and threw it away, and then I put both hands on the counter and leaned over him. “Listen, Stu,” I said, looking him in the eye. “I don’t know what’s going on here. Or who you think I am. Or what you think I’m doing here. Or why the hell you think you need to let the air out of my tires. Which is something a little twelve-year-old punk would do, by the way. I’d expect something more creative from somebody who works in a gas station.”
He didn’t say anything. He just looked at me.
“What’s next, Stu? You gonna soap my windows?”
A voice from behind me: “No, we’ll skip that one.” And then I heard the unmistakable sound of a somebody racking a shotgun. “We’ll go right to this.”
I turned around. Rocky was standing in the doorway, leveling a shotgun at my gut. His bartender was right behind him.
I swallowed. It was the second time that day somebody had pointed a shotgun at me. This time, it was a pump-action Remington with a short barrel, exactly like the riot gun I used to carry in the trunk of my squad car. And the man holding it obviously knew what he was doing.
This is what happened to Randy, I thought. This is what happens to any stranger in this town. They pull some kind of stunt to get you trapped into a corner like this, and then they shoot you.
“Will you please put the gun down,” I said. I watched his hands. I waited for the muscles to tense just before squeezing the trigger. It would be the last thing I’d ever see.
“Give me your pad of paper,” he said.
“What?”
“Harry saw you writing something on a pad when she drove away,” he said. “Give it to me.”
I slipped the pad out of my coat pocket and threw it to him. He caught it with one hand and gave it to Harry the bartender, who then thumbed through the pages. It didn’t take him long to get to the last page.
“It’s her plate number,” he said. “And another number.”
“Who’s that?” Rocky said. “Who’s the other number?”
“The guy who’s been following her,” I said. “In a white Cadillac. He’s the one you should be pointing the gun at.”
“Who are you?” he said. “What are you doing here?”
“I’m looking for Maria,” I said. “I just want to talk to her. About the man who was shot here yesterday.”
Rocky and Harry exchanged a quick look over that one. I was thinking of my next brilliant line when the squad car pulled up outside. There was no siren, no lights. Just Chief Rudiger opening the door and getting out slowly. Like he was just there to pump some gas.
“What’s going on, Rock?” he said.
Rocky pointed the gun down. “We’ve got a man threatening Stu here,” he said. “He was just about to physically assault him.”
Rudiger raised his eyebrows when he saw me. “Well, look who it is,” he said. “Why am I not surprised?”
“You know this man?” Rocky said.
“I do,” the chief said. “I’m gonna have a talk with him. Go on back to your place.”
“He’s all yours,” Rocky said.
When the two men had left, Stu started uncrumpling his newspaper. “Let’s go, McKnight,” Rudiger said. “Get in the car.”
“Where are we going?”
“You wanted to see my hard-ass cop routine, didn’t you?” he said. “I’m gonna show it to you.”
It was a short trip, maybe a quarter mile north on the main road to the town hall. I sat in the back of his squad car. It was one of the newer cars, with hard plastic seats in the back so a suspect had no place to hide anything. When we were parked behind the building, he opened the door for me and led me to the back door, the same door I’d looked through when I first got to town. He turned the light on, pulled a chair over in front of his desk, hard plastic like the backseat of the squad car. Then he went over to the other side of the desk and sat down. He took his hat off and put it on the desk, ORCUS BEACH, MICHIGAN, with the cannon in the sand.
He waited for me to sit down in front of him. When I did, he looked at me for a good minute without saying anything. I was amazed once again by how much hair the man had. Say what you want about this town, the chief had good hair.
“You’re not making me coffee this time,” I finally said.
“Why are you here?” he said.
“I came to see Maria.”
“Why were you threatening Stu?”
“I wasn’t threatening Stu,” I said. “And you can stop lying to me about Maria. I know she’s here. I saw her.”
He gave me a little smile. “If you say so, Mc-Knight.”
“Where did it happen?”
“The shooting?” he said.
“Yes, the shooting.”
“Why do you want to know that?”
“Why didn’t you turn this over to the county?” I said. “Or the state? This is a major crime.”
“I don’t need to turn it over to anybody,” he said. “This is my jurisdiction.”
“You’re the only full-time officer,” I said. “You told me that yourself. How many part-timers did you say you have?”
“Four,” he said. “You just met two of them.”
That stopped me. “Who?”
“Rocky and Harry,” he said.
“The men who were going to cut me in half with a shotgun.”
“Everybody’s a little jumpy around here today,” he said. “Don’t forget, we had a shooting yesterday.”
“Yeah? And where was Rocky at the time?”
“He didn’t shoot the man, McKnight. He was in his bar. Like every other night. Until he got the call…”
“What call?”
“Rocky was the one who answered the ‘shots fired’ call. He found Wilkins.”
“This keeps getting better and better,” I said.
“Let me ask you something,” he said. “You said you were a Detroit cop.”
“Yes.”
“How long?”
“Eight years.”
“Then what? You quit?”
“I got shot.”
“I’ve been shot,” he said. “I didn’t quit.”
“Some people never learn,” I said. “What’s your point?”
“My point is, I’ve been a cop my whole life,” he said. “I started out as a deputy down in Oakland County.
