himself came on the line. I was going to ask him about the Canadian license plate. Then I was going to ask him if he had any revelations yet-like maybe realizing that somebody was leading him in the wrong direction, and he was falling for it.
I didn’t get the chance.
“McKnight, where the hell are you? I’ve been calling you all morning!”
“I’m downstate,” I said. “What’s going on?”
“Downstate? Where?”
“Just outside of Petoskey,” I said. “Are you gonna tell me what’s going on or not?”
“How soon can you be here?”
“A couple of hours,” I said. “About one o’clock.”
“Make it twelve-forty-five, McKnight. I’ll be waiting for you at War Memorial.”
It took a few seconds for that to sink in. “Chief, what the hell happened?” I said. “Why do you need me at the hospital?”
“Go downstairs to the coroner’s office,” he said. “You’re the only man who got a good look at those guys… We want to see if you recognize this one.”
“One of the gunmen? He’s dead?”
“No, McKnight, we just thought he’d be more comfortable waiting down here in the morgue.”
“Take it easy, Chief. I’ll be there as soon as I can.”
I hung up and punched the accelerator. Whoever was behind this, it looked like the stakes had just gotten a lot higher.
Chapter Fourteen
War Memorial Hospital is right in the middle of the Soo’s business district, a few blocks south of the river, a few blocks west of Leon’s office. I got there a few minutes before one o’clock, and walked into the outpatient waiting room. Maven was sitting there, looking at a magazine. Aside from him, the chairs were empty. He didn’t smile when he saw me.
“The hell took you so long?” he said, standing up. He threw the magazine back on the pile.
“I was going seventy,” I said. “I don’t have a siren I can flip on like you do.”
“Let’s go,” he said. I followed him to the elevator.
“Were you waiting here the whole time?”
“Of course not. You think I have time to sit in a waiting room for two hours? I went to the office. I just got back here five minutes ago.”
“Then why are you reaming me out for taking so long?”
“Who’s reaming you out, McKnight?” he said. He pushed the down button. “You’ve always been way too sensitive.”
I just shook my head, got in the elevator with him, and rode down to the basement.
“When’s the last time you were in a morgue?” he said.
“Nineteen eighty-four.”
“The last year you were a cop?”
“Yes,” I said.
“Long time ago.”
“I don’t imagine they’ve changed much.”
The elevator stopped. The door opened. Maven led me down a long hallway. When he opened the door to the morgue, I smelled the antiseptic, felt the touch of cold air on my skin. Maven was right-it had been a long time. But it was all coming back to me.
The coroner was sitting at his desk when we came in. He stood up to shake my hand. He was a round little man, and his white lab coat somehow made him look more like a pastry chef than a coroner. “Mr. McKnight,” he said. “I’m Dr. Pietrowski, the Chippewa County coroner. We appreciate you coming in.”
I looked at Maven. “My pleasure,” I said.
“He’s in this room,” the coroner said, showing me to the far door. “Are you prepared to look at him?”
“I’ll give it my best shot.”
“Are you uncomfortable with this?”
“No, I’m just not sure that I’ll be able to recognize him.”
He nodded. “Let’s see what happens.”
I followed him through the door, Maven behind me. There was a steel table in the center of the room. The body on top of the table was completely covered by a white sheet. The fluorescent lights hummed above us.
The coroner pulled on latex gloves, then drew back the sheet, folding it neatly across the dead man’s shoulders. The face was so white it was almost blue. The eyes were half open. The mouth was half open. I took a step closer.
“Is this one of them?” Maven said.
I tried to replay the night in my head, looking down at the lifeless face, trying to make some kind of connection. It was impossible.
“I only really saw the two men who stayed downstairs with us,” I said. “One was very fair-skinned, with blond hair and blond eyebrows. That’s the one who sounded Canadian to me. This man obviously isn’t him. The other man was heavier…How much did this man weigh?”
The coroner picked up a clipboard. “Two hundred twenty-five pounds,” he said. “That’s minus a few liters of blood.”
I nodded. It sounded about right. “How tall is he?”
“Five eleven.”
“He was wearing a mask,” I said. “A surgical mask, and a cap, too.”
The coroner went to his work table. “Like these?” he said, holding up a green mask and cap.
“Yes.”
He looked at Maven for a moment, then stepped over behind the dead man’s head. He slipped the cap over the man’s dark hair, then draped the mask over his mouth. “Does this help?”
I looked down at him. I took a deep breath, tried to put myself back on the floor at Vargas’s house. The men were walking around. The dog was barking. “He does look familiar now,” I said. “I think this may be the other man who was downstairs. I can’t be a hundred percent certain.”
“There was something in the report about the shoes,” Maven said behind me. “Would you recognize the shoes?”
“If he was wearing the same shoes, yes, I might.”
The coroner went back to his work table, opened up a black plastic bag and pulled out a pair of old athletic shoes. He brought them over to me. “Take a good look,” he said. “But please don’t touch them.”
They were old, beat-up shoes, once white, now a dingy gray. Two blue stripes ran diagonally on each side. “These look like the shoes he was wearing,” I said.
The coroner went back to put the shoes away. I looked down at the dead man, still wearing the cap and mask. “What happened to him?” I said.
“He was shot in the back,” the coroner said. “Two slugs from a forty-five. One passed through the upper abdomen, the other was stopped by the sternum.”
“How long has he been dead?”
“Approximately four days.”
“Four days. That would be…” I thought about it. “That would be the night of the robbery, after they drove away. Where did you find him?”
The coroner just looked at me while he pulled off his gloves. “You’ll have to ask the chief about that.”
“Let’s go,” Maven said. “We’re done here.”
“I did my part,” I said. “Tell me what happened.”
“I’m going upstairs,” Maven said. “You can stay down here if you want.”
