down here, there was already one man in the cell. He was sleeping on one of the three beds, and the loud clang of the metal door didn’t wake him. The poisonous smell of alcohol hung all around him, so it wasn’t much of a mystery.
My hands hurt like hell, but Vinnie’s hands looked even worse. He sat on one of the beds with his back against the concrete wall, his hands tucked under his armpits. He didn’t say much all night. I knew better than to try to talk to him, so all I could do was count the hours until sunrise. Eventually, I lay down and tried to sleep. When I closed my eyes I saw Vinnie going at it with the man named Cap. He was going at it like I’d never seen him before, like he seriously didn’t want his man to walk away alive.
I was having my own problems with the big man named Bruce. If he had had two good hands, he probably would have taken me apart. But his taped-up strained right wrist didn’t help him much, especially after I grabbed onto his thumb and twisted it backward. Funny how a large dose of pain will take the fight right out of some guys.
The drunk slept. Vinnie stared straight ahead at nothing, lost inside his own head. I just sat there and wondered how this would get written up in the paper. They have this senior reporter at the Soo Evening News who likes to get creative with the police blotter. For this particular item, he’d probably describe a “violent altercation” at a “local watering hole.” Or perhaps even a “spectacular melee” at an “after-hours drinking establishment.” Whatever words he used, it would go on to say that Vincent LeBlanc and Alex McKnight, both of Paradise, were taken into custody and spent the night at the Chippewa County Jail. And that the other participants were all released.
The time passed. There was no way to see if the sun was up yet. But somehow I knew it was morning. The guard was nowhere in sight, so I had no choice but to use the toilet in the middle of the cell. A new low in my life, to be exceeded one minute later when the drunk finally woke up and threw up on my shoes. Then it got even worse.
Chief Maven showed up.
The chief and I already had a colorful history, of course. For some reason we had taken an almost instantaneous chemical dislike to each other. The only thing going for me was the fact that everyone else seemed to hate him, too.
He stood at the bars and looked through at both of us.
“Good morning, Chief,” I said.
“What happened to your shoes?”
“Are you going to let us out of here now?”
“I got to see you in this very cell once before, remember?”
“Chief-”
“I never thought I’d get to see it again.”
“If you’re not going to let us out, then-”
“I will,” he said. “Eventually. Just give me a chance to burn this image into my mind. It’ll keep me warm all winter.”
Some days I could almost understand why he had such a big chip on his shoulder. He was the chief of police for the second-biggest town in the Upper Peninsula, but he had to share a building with the county guys. He didn’t even have his own jail. The state police down the street got most of the serious cases, not to mention the U.S. Customs office at the bridge and the Coast Guard on the locks. He was low man on the totem pole and it had to eat at him every time he went into his little cement box of an office.
Yeah, some days I could actually feel for the man. But today was not one of those days.
He slid the key into the lock and opened the door. Vinnie and I both stepped out. I was surprised at how good it felt to be out of the cell, even if Maven was responsible for it. As he led us down the hall, I looked back at the drunk. He was back on the bed, fast asleep.
“This way,” Maven said. He led us up the stairs and right to his office. I knew it all too well, especially the crappy little waiting area just outside it, with the hard plastic chair and the magazines a decade out of date.
He opened his office door and waved us inside. There were two more hard plastic chairs waiting for us, facing his desk. “You gentlemen have a seat. I’ll be right back.”
“Come on, Chief,” I said. “You don’t have to play the waiting game today, all right?”
“I can take you back downstairs to the cell if you’d rather wait there.”
We sat down. He closed the door and left us there.
Chief Maven had never wasted much effort decorating his office. It had four gray cement walls. There were no pictures. There wasn’t even a window. How the man could ever spend time in this room, I didn’t know.
“I got you into this,” Vinnie said.
“He speaks.”
“I’m just saying I’m sorry.”
“Don’t worry about it. Seriously. I think I owed you a few.”
“I’m in no position to ask,” he said. “But I’ll ask anyway.”
“Shoot.”
“If we tell him everything, it’ll put Caroline in a tight spot.”
“Potentially.”
“You know it will.”
“So what do you want me to say?”
“Just put it on me. It was my fault.”
“Vinnie, does this woman mean that much to you?”
“I told you before. She’s a good friend.”
“Let me guess. There was a time she was something more.”
“You could say that.”
“When was this?”
“A long time ago. Before you came up here.”
“You were kids, then.”
“Pretty much, yes. It didn’t feel like it at the time. We were pretty heavy there for a while. I guess you could say we were engaged.”
“What happened?”
“We were both drinking back then. All the time. I decided to get straight, but she didn’t. I mean, maybe she tried, but…”
“You had to end things.”
“I tried to help her,” he said.
“I’m sure you did. But if she was still drinking…”
“I feel like I failed her, Alex. It’s like I could only save myself. I had to leave her behind.”
“So even now, when she makes this problem for herself…”
“I think you’d do the same. I know you would.”
I didn’t try to argue. He had me dead on that one.
We didn’t say anything else until Chief Maven came back a few minutes later. He sat down behind his desk like it was a hugely painful inconvenience for him to be there.
“Why were we held overnight?” I said.
“Because you trashed a bar. I’d call that a no-brainer.”
“Neither of us was drunk.”
Maven looked back and forth between us. “So I understand. Mr. LeBlanc, you were quite sober as well, right?”
“Yes,” Vinnie said. It occurred to me that Vinnie had probably never had this pleasure before, a personal visit to the legendary Chief Roy Maven’s office. From the sound of his voice, it sounded like Vinnie was taking to it about as well as I had my first time.
“We spent the night in jail,” I said. “The other guys were released at the scene.”
“The bartender said you guys came in and attacked them. What were they supposed to do?”
“There’s more to it than that.”
“Yeah, I kinda figured there might be, McKnight. That’s why you’re sitting here.”
