The thing.
Another hour on the road until I hit Paradise. The last town on the edge of the earth, it felt like. Lights on in the Glasgow Inn. I kept going, turned onto my road. Drove up past Vinnie’s place. His truck there, the lights out. Past my cabin. Where the thing happened.
The thing. The thing.
I went to the second cabin, my new base of operations. My new home, if I had to have one. I went inside, turned the lights on. I put some wood in the stove. Then I finally took off my jacket, heard the rattle in my pocket. I put my hand in, pulled out the bottle of pills.
It took me a moment to remember how I’d gotten them. It was the day I went to the house in Hessel, back when I was stupid enough to think I could point a gun at those guys and scare them away. There had been two empty pill bottles on the kitchen counter, and this one, half full. The prescription was for a woman named Roseanne Felise. I was figuring Vinnie could take these, show them to Ms. Felise, and ask her why she sold them. That’s what I was thinking when I took them. But now…
I sat down at the table with the bottle in my hand. I opened it. I turned it over and watched the pills scatter out onto the table. I counted them. Twenty-three pills. Twenty-three perfect little Vicodins.
I thought back to what Mr. Gray had told me. About painkillers, about how some people need them and can’t get them. How much he was really motivated by that, I couldn’t say, but I did know one thing. When you really need them, these pills do the job. I knew that all too well.
A couple of these and I could close my eyes tonight. I could keep the thing away from me, not have to deal with it until the next day.
Unless I took a couple more of these tomorrow morning.
Or hell, if I took them all right now…I’d never have to deal with the thing at all.
I sat there for a long time, looking at the pills, making up my mind.
That’s when Vinnie came in the door. He didn’t knock. He came in and saw me sitting there looking at the pills on the table.
“What are those?” he said. One eye still swollen now, the other almost normal.
“Vinnie…”
“Alex, what are those pills?”
“Vinnie, she’s dead.”
He came over and tried to sweep the pills off the table. I grabbed his arm.
“Let me have them,” he said. He tried to hold me with one hand, going for the pills with the other. We were in a wrestling match now. I pulled at his shirt, got hold of his ponytail and tried to throw him to the ground. He put his shoulder into me and the whole table got turned over, the pills rolling off along the floor in every direction.
The thing was breaking through now. I couldn’t hold it off any longer.
“She’s dead, Vinnie. She’s dead. Do you hear me?”
“Yes,” he said, still holding on to me. “Yes.”
I had him by the collar now. I could have wrapped my hands around his neck and strangled him.
“Natalie is dead,” I said, my face just a few inches from his. “Somebody killed her.”
“I know, Alex. I know.”
I grabbed Vinnie’s shoulders. He put his hand behind my neck.
“Somebody killed her,” I said. The thing was all over me now, pouring through the broken ramparts. The rout was on.
“She’s dead, Vinnie. She’s dead.”
Chapter Fifteen
I slept. From complete and total physical exhaustion I fell into a deep sleep, with no dreams. Thank God for a night with no dreams, but the cold fact of what had happened was waiting for me when I woke up. I had to face it. I opened my eyes and saw that I was in a strange bed. The second cabin. Yes. Vinnie there on the couch, still asleep.
Through the window I could see the gray sky and the long needles of a white pine. I could hear Vinnie breathing, a light wind outside, a bird calling to another. I could hear the last piece of wood burning down in the stove.
Then a loud knock on the door. It startled me, and woke up Vinnie. He looked around, disoriented for a moment, then saw me. The bag of ice he had pressed to his face the night before was now a bag of water. There was another knock on the door.
I got out of bed, still in my clothes from the day before. I opened the door. I was expecting Jackie. Maybe Leon. Maybe the state police detective catching up with me again. Instead I saw the last person I ever would have expected at my door.
It was Chief Roy Maven.
“Chief,” I said. “What the hell.”
“Can I come in?”
I stood aside and let him in. He took off his hat.
“What are you doing here?” I said.
“Did the state police reach you yesterday?”
“No, I was gone most of the day. I got back late.”
“You know they were looking for you?”
“I’m sure they’ll find me sometime today. Why do you ask?”
“You didn’t hear the news, then. The Mounties found Natalie’s partner yesterday. He’d been dead for at least twenty-four hours.”
“What? Her partner’s dead, too? Don something.”
“Don Resnik. They believe he was killed a few hours before Natalie.”
I stood there holding on to the door.
“Umm,” Maven started to say. “I guess I don’t know what to say. I’m sorry about what happened.”
“Thank you. But how was Resnik killed? Was he shot?”
“Yes. Twice.”
“Do they think it was the same gun?”
“They don’t know that yet for sure. Maybe later today they will.”
“I don’t understand,” I said. Everything was starting to look different now. “I thought this was about me. I thought it was someone here in Michigan…Not from Canada.”
“They don’t know anything for sure yet.”
“Why did you come all the way out here? The state guys could have told me about Resnik.”
“I’m doing this as a personal favor to Staff Sergeant Moreland.”
“Moreland? Isn’t that Natalie’s commanding officer?”
“Yes. That’s him.”
“I don’t get it. Why would he want you to tell me about Natalie’s partner?”
“That’s not why I came here.”
“Then why?”
“I came here to take you to Canada. Please go get cleaned up.”
“ You’re taking me to Canada?”
“Yes,” Maven said. “That’s what Moreland asked me to do. So come on, go take a shower, shave, put yourself together. It’s a long way to Sudbury.”
“Why are we going to Sudbury?”
“Because, McKnight-” He was about to lay into me, like I’d seen him do at least a dozen times in the past. Force of habit, I guess. But he stopped himself just in time. “Alex…we’re going to Sudbury because they’re going to have a service for Natalie there. Okay? Moreland asked me to bring you there.”
A service for Natalie. I had to let that one sink in for a while.
