A Cold Day in Paradise

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

I was sitting in the same interview room. The fishing map was still on the wall. Someone had made a halfhearted attempt to clean off the coffee, but there was still a pale brown streak from Lake Nicolet all the way down to Potagannissing Bay.

Uttley had called the police on his cellular. Maven showed up not long after the first officers. He brought me down here himself, made me go over it a couple times. When Detective Allen got there, they made me go over it a couple more times. And then they made me go over it eight or nine times more, just for good measure. I imagined Uttley had been put in another room to give his statement, Sylvia in yet another room to give hers. I hoped they were both long gone by then, home in their beds. Or eating breakfast. I couldn’t guess how long I had been there. I didn’t even know if it was night or day. There was no clock in the room. I didn’t know where my watch had gone. I couldn’t even remember if I was wearing it the night before. I suppose I could have gotten up and opened the blinds, but I just sat there in the chair, my arms on the table, staring at the map.

The last time through my story, a uniformed officer stuck his nose in the room, told Maven and Allen he had something important for them. As I watched them get up and leave the room, I noticed that they both had that stiff, middle-aged cop way of moving around. Put a couple of hats on them and they’d be Joe Friday and Bill Gannon. That’s the kind of thing you think about when you’re as tired and shell-shocked as I was.

I didn’t think about what had happened. I didn’t think about what it meant, that I had killed the man, whoever he was. That I would have to deal with later, when I had the strength to face it.

Finally, the door opened again. Maven and Allen walked in and sat down across from me. Allen took a long breath and looked me in the eyes. Maven just stared right past me at the wall. He had a look on his face like he was trying to pass a kidney stone.

“Mr. McKnight,” Allen said, “does the name Raymond Julius mean anything to you?”

“No,” I said.

“That’s the man’s name.”

“The man I shot?”

“Yes. You’ve never met him before?”

“No.”

“You don’t know anything about him?”

“No.”

“Well,” Allen said, “apparently Raymond Julius knew a lot about you.” Maven kept staring at the wall. He wouldn’t look at me.

“I don’t get it,” I said.

“Apparently, Mr. Julius spent a great deal of time thinking about you. Following you, watching you. Writing about you.”

“How do you know this?”

“There were certain items found in his residence.”

“I still don’t understand,” I said. “Did he write the notes? Did he kill Bing and Dorney? And Edwin?”

“That seems fairly obvious,” Allen said. “From the physical evidence, I mean.” He snuck a sideways glance at Maven, who still hadn’t said a word. I was finally beginning to see what was going on here. Maven had convinced Allen that I was their man. Allen agreed to help double-team me. Now that he knew the real story, Allen was embarrassed. And not too happy about helping Maven in the first place.

“What kind of physical evidence are we talking about?”

Allen took out a pocket notebook and paged through it. “Traces of blood. We’ll run those, see who they match. A silencer for a nine-millimeter pistol, consistent with the weapon found on Mr. Julius. We’ll do ballistics on both, of course. See if they match the bullets removed from Bing and Dorney.”

“He didn’t use the silencer last night,” I said.

“No,” Allen said. “He left it in his gun case.”

“Doesn’t make sense.”

“Who knows. You live in the middle of the woods. He didn’t figure he’d need it.”

I just shook my head.

“There was a typewriter on the desk,” Allen went on. “We found several pages of text, describing his movements over the last few months. You know, like a journal. A diary. At first glance, the actual type on those pages seems to match the type on the notes.”

“You were there? You saw all this?”

“Yes,” Allen said. “That’s where we were while you were detained here for the last couple hours.” He snuck another look at Maven. Maven didn’t say anything.

“What did the diary say?”

“I can’t go into too much detail at this point. But I can tell you that Mr. Julius was a very disturbed individual. There were several news clippings on his desk, as well. Copies of stories that appeared in the Detroit News and the Detroit Free Press, summer of 1984.”

“Summer of 1984?” I said. “Were they about…”

“About Rose, yes. About the shooting. There was one column, in particular. About your recovery.”

“I think I remember,” I said. “The guy from the News got into the hospital.”

“That one was pinned on his wall. Right next to his bed.”

“Wait a minute,” I said. “This is just too weird.”

“Like I said, Mr. McKnight, this was a very disturbed individual. He apparently thought you have some sort of special… power or something. He thought you were some sort of messiah.”

“The chosen one,” I said. “He said that in the notes.”

“Yes, exactly.”

“But what about the other stuff in the notes?” I said. “How did he know about what Rose said to me? There’s no way he could have known that, unless…”

“There appears to have been a connection,” Allen said. “In the diary, he referred to some sort of communication he might have had with Mr. Rose.”

“While Rose was in prison? What kind of communication? Letters? Phone calls?”

“That’s not clear at this point,” Allen said. “He wasn’t specific. He did write something about becoming Rose, about taking over his identity in some way.”

“I have to see this stuff,” I said. “Do you have it here at the station?”

“No, Mr. McKnight,” he said. “You know how this works. Right now, it’s all still at the residence. We need to go through it all very carefully.”

“I thought you said it was obvious.”

“It is,” he said. “But we have to follow our procedures.”

“Can I go to his house?”

“No, Mr. McKnight. Please, just let us work on this. I promise you we’ll let you see it when it’s all over.”

“I still don’t get it,” I said. “I don’t even know this guy. How did he even know about Rose?”

“He just picked you,” Allen said. “Who knows why? He just did. I’ve seen a couple cases like this before. There was one I remember very well. A man was out driving, and he cut somebody off at an intersection. Turns out the guy he cut off, he followed him to his house, found out who he was, started calling him, sending him notes. It escalated to the point where the man had to move out of the house. Even then, the guy found him again, finally tried to kill him. Fortunately, we caught him in time. I think that’s the type of individual we’re talking about here. It’s usually just a little thing that triggers it. He sees you. Something clicks in his head. Suddenly, he has to know everything about you. In your case, he finds out that you had been shot, he goes back and finds the old news clippings. He just makes up this whole little universe with you at the center of it.”

“How long has this been going on?” I asked. “When did it all start?”

“Judging from his diary, it looks like five or six months ago.”

I shook my head. “Why me?”

Maven cleared his throat. “Just because,” he said. Finally, he had opened his mouth. “Maybe it was your dynamic personality. Maybe your incredible personal charm. Maybe it’s the way the whole room lights up when you walk in.”

Allen gave him a long icy look and then turned back to me. “Mr. McKnight,” he said. “Alex. Although you were never formally charged in this matter, I just want to say on a purely personal level that as painful as this ordeal must have been for you, the treatment you received in this office obviously made it even worse. For whatever part I played in that, I just want to apologize to you.”

“Fair enough,” I said. I looked at Maven. “Is there anything you’d like to add to that, Chief?”

He just sat there chewing on the inside of his mouth for moment. “Just one thing,” he finally said.

“I’m all ears.”

“This didn’t have to happen.”

“You got that right,” I said.

“No, I mean what happened to Mr. Fulton. He didn’t have to die. If you had just cooperated for one minute on this case, we might have had this Julius guy’s ass behind bars before that ever happened. Of course, then you couldn’t have had your little cowboy shoot-out last night. Mrs. Fulton wouldn’t have been there, scared out of her mind because her husband’s killer is at the front door. Although what she was doing at your cabin while they’re still out dragging the lake for his body is another story.”

“Chief Maven,” Allen said, “is this really necessary?”

“No, it’s not necessary,” Maven said. “If ex-policemen who get their partners killed don’t decide to retire here and make my life miserable, then none of this is necessary.”

“You’re way out of line, Chief.”

“Just get out of here,” Maven said. “Go back to your little state office. You’ve been a big help.”

Allen stood up and shook my hand. “Alex, please let me know if I can be of any assistance in the future.” He looked down at Maven. “You’ll be hearing from me, Chief.”

“I can’t wait,” Maven said.

When Allen had left, we both just sat there at the table, looking at each other.

“I assume I’m free to go?” I finally said.

“You’re free to kiss my wrinkled white ass,” he said.

I stood up. “I’m going to miss these little chats,” I said. “Maybe we can go fishing some time.”

I WALKED OUT of the station into daylight. It was late morning already. The sun was actually trying to shine a little bit, but it wasn’t doing anything to warm things up.

I stumbled around in the parking lot for a minute until I realized that my truck was still parked next to my cabin, minus one passenger-side window. If I had had the strength to laugh, I would have. I certainly didn’t feel like going back into the station and asking for a ride. So I just started walking. I wasn’t sure where I was going, but it felt good to be moving.

I walked around the courthouse toward the river, then followed the sidewalk that ran along the water as far as I could go. When I got to the edge of the park, I turned around and came back to the locks. There was a large freighter going through. My ears were starting to hurt from the cold so I climbed the steps to the observation deck. It was empty.

The ship was about seven hundred feet long. It was entering the southern-most lock, so close to the deck that it was like looking across the street at a slowly moving building. The flag was three horizontal stripes, red, white, and black, with some kind of golden bird in the middle. I guessed Egypt. There were a dozen dark-skinned men standing on the ship, wrapped up tight in their coats, looking back at me as they passed. They were so far from home. This must have seemed like a new and strange world to them. And now with a full load of iron ore, they were on their way back out to sea, down through the Great Lakes to the St. Lawrence Seaway and out to the Atlantic Ocean.

I could jump on that ship, I thought. It’s close enough. They could take me back to Egypt with them.

“Alex, I’ve been looking all over for you.” Uttley appeared next to me. “The officer at the station said you just walked off.”

“Just watching the ship go through,” I said.

He looked out at it. “Where’s it from? Whose flag is that?”

“Egypt, I think.”

He nodded. “Detective Allen called me. He told me everything.”

I didn’t say anything.

“You really don’t know who this Raymond Julius guy was?”

“No,” I said.

He let out a long slow breath. “That ship’s got a long way to go,” he said. “How many days you figure it takes to go to Egypt from here?”

“Couldn’t say.”

“You know they built the first lock here in 1797? It was destroyed in the War of 1812. They had to rebuild it.”

I kept looking out at the ship. They had closed the lock and started to lower the water level. When the boat had come down twenty-one feet, they would open the other end and let the boat go on its way to Lake Huron.

“In World War Two, this was the most heavily defended part of the country. If somebody was going to drop bombs on us, the government figured they’d start here. You know, mess up the iron supply, stop us from making tanks. That’s why they built two Air Force bases way up here in the middle of nowhere.”

“Why are you telling me this?” I said.

“Because I don’t know what else to say.”

Neither of us spoke for a while. We watched the boat sink as the water left the lock.

“It’s got to be a little easier to deal with now, isn’t it?” he said.

“How do you mean?”

“You thought it was Rose before. Even though everybody else was telling you he was still in prison. It must have been driving you crazy.”

“So instead it’s just some guy off the street,” I said. “And for some reason he decides to spend his whole life just following me around, watching me, finding out about my past. Trying to become my past, for God’s sake. It doesn’t make any sense.”

“Of course it doesn’t make any sense.”

“They say he was in contact with Rose somehow. I guess that would mean mail, right? You can’t just call a guy in prison.”

He thought about it. “Or he could have visited him.”

“Right. But either way, they’d have a record of it, wouldn’t they? Don’t they screen your mail in prison?”

“I’m sure they do,” he said. “I’m sure Detective Allen will look into that. Or Maven, if he ever gets his head out of his ass. Allen didn’t go into details, but it sounds like you and Maven haven’t kissed and made up yet.”

“What would happen if I called that Browning guy again?”

“The corrections officer? He’d stonewall you again and you’d get mad again. Why would you even want to call him? What are you going to find out? Alex, it’s over. The guy is dead.”

“It doesn’t feel over.”

“You’ve got to give yourself some time,” he said. “Take a vacation. Go someplace warm for a few days.”

The freighter had moved through the other end of the lock. We could see the back of it now. There was some Arabic writing and next to that it read “Cairo.”

“You were right,” he said. “That was the Egyptian flag. Come on, let’s get out of here.”

He took me home in his BMW. I stared out the window at the pine trees. Pine trees and more pine trees. I was starting to get sick of pine trees. We rode in silence the whole way, and then we were at my cabin. It felt strange to be looking at it again after what had happened. It was the same place. A small cabin made in the woods. And yet everything was different now.

“You want me to stick around for a while?” he said. “Help you clean up?”

“No, thanks,” I said. “I need to be here by myself for a while.”

“I understand,” he said. “Give me a call if you need me.”

“Okay.” I got out of the car.

“Hey Alex?”

I looked back in.

“It’s over,” he said. “It’s really over.”

“I know,” I said.

I watched him leave and then I turned around to face it. My truck was sitting there, the hood still ajar, the seat still covered with glass. Where Sylvia’s car had been, there was just an impression in the grass.

And where the body was. Over in the woods, past the woodpile. They had taken him away, of course, but I wasn’t ready to go look at where I had killed him.

I went into the cabin, wondering if I’d ever feel at home there again. I remembered back when I was a police officer in Detroit. They told us if we ever had to kill somebody, no matter how justified it might be, there would eventually be a price to pay. At some point, an hour later, a day, a week, it would suddenly hit you, the fact that you killed another human being. I kept waiting for it to hit me. But I felt nothing.

I picked up the phone. It was dead. I had forgotten, he had cut the line. I’d have to go down to the Glasgow to use the phone. But first I’d have to go out and clean all the glass out of the truck. Or else I’d have to walk all the way down there. I couldn’t imagine doing either. I needed to sleep. Let me just get a little sleep first. If I can. If it’s possible to sleep, ever again.

I needed those pills. Just one more time. After all that had happened, who could blame me for needing them?

Hell, maybe I can sleep without them. I’ll give it a try.

I lay down on my bed. I put my head back on the pillow and looked up at the rough wooden ceiling. And then I was out.

I WOKE UP a few hours later from a dreamless sleep. It felt like something beyond sleep, like a temporary total shutdown. It was late afternoon. I had never felt so hungry in my life.

I went outside with the broom and tried to sweep most of the glass out of my truck, knocked out the few fragments of glass that were still stuck in the window frame. I tried starting it. Nothing.

I threw the hood up and looked at the wiring. Just standing there, it all came back to me, the way I felt when I had tried to put the wires back, wondering how long I had to live. In my rush, I had gotten two of the wires crossed. I switched them and tried again. The truck started.

I left the truck running while I took a quick look around the place for my cellular phone, hoping he had just thrown it into the woods. When I came to the spot where I shot him, I stopped and looked down at the ground where he had fallen. There were pine needles on the ground, a few pine cones. I could have gotten down on my knees and looked for blood, but I didn’t. I just stood there and replayed it in my mind. He didn’t think my gun was real. Did that give me an unfair advantage? Should I have fired a warning shot into the trees? But then what would have happened? Would he have thrown his own gun down? Am I going to have to wonder about that now for the rest of my life?

There will be no trial, no chance to sit in a courtroom and hear an explanation for it all. FU never find out why he picked me.

Five or six months ago, they said. That’s when this all started. What did I do to him? Why was he so obsessed with me?

As I got back into the truck I felt a sharp sliver of glass slice through my finger. I pulled it out and looked at the thin line of blood. There is nothing so red as blood, nothing so simple. And I had seen quite enough of it for one lifetime.

I ordered a steak at the Glasgow, the biggest damned steak Jackie could find, medium rare, with grilled onions and mushrooms and four ice-cold Canadian beers. Jackie slipped me a quick smile. I think he knew I was on my way back. If I wasn’t quite myself yet, he knew it would only be a matter of time. I borrowed his phone, started to dial the phone company, then I realized it was probably too late in the day. I’d call them tomorrow to have my phone line restored. And an auto glass place to have my window replaced.

I sat there tapping my beer bottle for a few minutes and then I picked up the phone again. She answered on the third ring.

“Sylvia,” I said, “I’m just calling to make sure you’re okay.”

“Why wouldn’t I be okay?” she said. “I’m so okay I’m way past perfect.”

Her voice wasn’t right. “Are you drunk?”

“I’m way past drunk,” she said. “I’m just sitting here in this big old house on the edge of the world all by myself getting way past drunk.”

“Do you want me to come out there?”

“Why would I want you to come out here?”

“Because you shouldn’t be alone.”

“Why shouldn’t I be alone?”

“Because you shouldn’t. Damn it, Sylvia, you came all the way out to my cabin last night. Why did you do that?”

“You know, that’s a good question. I’m not sure why I came out there. But obviously it was such a wonderful thing to do. Another brilliant turning point in my life. I got to meet the man who killed my husband, after all. Well no, I didn’t get to meet him really. I did get to see him on the ground with half his head blown off.”

“You didn’t want to be alone,” I said. “That’s why you came to my cabin, all right? It’s okay. After everything that’s happened, there’s nothing wrong with that.”

“Yes there is, Alex. There’s something very wrong with that. I’m not sure what, but I’m sure if I think about it-Christ, where did that bottle go?”

“I’m coming out there.”

“So help me God,” she said. Suddenly, she sounded sober. “If you come here I will kill you. I will kill you or I will kill myself. Or I will kill both of us. And believe me, I can do that now. I’ve been watching the experts.”

“All right, Sylvia,” I said. “All right. Take it easy.”

“Don’t tell me to take it easy. Just leave me alone. You got that? Leave me the fuck alone.”

I didn’t know what else to say. I closed my eyes and listened to the faint sound of her breathing.

“What have we done, Alex?” she finally said, her voice drained of all emotion. “What have we done?”

She hung up before I could answer. I just sat there with the phone in my hand. And then I had Jackie bring me another beer.

A couple hours later, I was back at my cabin. It was dark. I walked around the outside of the cabin a couple times. I couldn’t bring myself to believe that nobody was watching me anymore, that nobody was waiting to kill me.

My gun. I didn’t have my gun anymore. It was still at the police station. But that was okay. I didn’t need it anymore, right?

I went inside and found the phone book. I tried to look up Raymond Julius. He had no listing.

Five or six months ago. What happened five or six months ago?

You’re not going to figure this out tonight, Alex. Just go to bed. You need to cut some wood tomorrow, clean up the place. Get some food in the house, for God’s sake. Become a human being again.

I slept. Two hours, maybe three. And then I sat up in my bed and turned on the light. It was just past midnight.

Five or six months ago.

The phone book was still on the kitchen table. I paged through it until I found Leon Prudell. The address was in Kinross, a little town south of the Soo, down by the airport. I threw some clothes on and got in the truck. With the cold air whipping through the open window I raced toward Kinross. It was late, but Leon and I had something to talk about.

It didn’t take long to find his house. Kinross is almost as small as Paradise, one main road and a few side streets. It was a little clapboard house, not much bigger than my cabin. There was a faint smell of dead fish in the air. A tire swing hung from a tree in the front yard.

I knocked on the door, waited, knocked again. Finally the porch light came on and a woman looked around the door at me. “Who is it?” she said.

“I need to speak to your husband,” I said.

“He’s not here. Who are you?”

I thought for a second. “I want to hire him,” I said. “I understand he’s a private investigator.”

“He was doing investigations,” she said, “but he don’t do that no more.”

“I hear he’s good,” I said. “Are you sure he won’t take a case? I’ll pay five hundred dollars a day.”

That got her to open the door all the way. I saw a lot of woman and a lot of red bathrobe. The way she was built, I was glad that Leon had come after me in the bar that night and not her. “He’s working up at the truck stop on I-75 tonight,” she said. “In the restaurant.”

“The one by the Route 28 exit?”

“Yeah, that’s the one.”

“I appreciate it, ma’am.”

“He works nights,” she said. “Ever since he lost the investigating job.”

“I see.”

“Do you know a guy named Alex McKnight?”

“Can’t say that I do,” I said.

“That’s the man who got him fired. You see him, you tell him he’s an asshole, okay?”

“I’ll do that, ma’am. I’m sorry I had to disturb you at this hour.”

“For five hundred dollars a day, you can disturb me anytime you want.”

“Thank you, ma’am. Good night.”

I got out of there and made my way back to the highway. The truck stop was a few miles north on 1-75, one of those places you see from the road, lit up all night long, a hundred trucks gassing up or just sitting there while the drivers have their apple pie and coffee.

I found Prudell clearing off a table, a big white apron hanging over his gut. As soon as he saw me, he set his pile of plates down with a clatter.

“Well, look who it is,” he said. “Don’t tell me, you came to take this job away from me too, right?”

“Sit down, Prudell.”

“Here, let me take my apron off for you. You’ll be needing this.” There were a couple truckers at the counter, a waitress serving them, another one just sitting in a booth. They all looked over at us.

“Just sit down,” I said.

“All you got to do is keep these tables clear,” he said. “And once an hour you gotta go clean up the bathrooms. I’m sure you’ll be able to handle it.”

“Prudell,” I said. I was trying to control myself. I was really trying. “If you don’t shut up and sit down, I’m going to hurt you. Do you understand me? I’m going to beat the hell out of you right here in the restaurant.”

“McKnight, if you don’t get out of here right now-”

I grabbed his left hand and bent it back against his wrist. It had always been a great way to convince someone to get into the back of a squad car. Not as dramatic as an arm behind the back, but just as effective. Prudell gave out a little yelp and then he sat down in the booth. The whole place was watching us now, but I didn’t care.

“What the fuck is wrong with you?” he said. “You trying to break my wrist?”

I sat down next to him. It was a tight fit. “Listen to me very carefully,” I said. “Do you remember that night in the bar, the first night you came after me? I know you were drunk, but try to remember what you said to me.”

“What are you talking about?”

“You said I took your job and now you were going to go broke and you had a family to take care of, remember? You gave me the whole sob story about your kids not going to Disney World and your wife not getting a new car and all that shit. And then you said something else, something about a man who was helping you out. You said he was down on his luck and the only thing keeping him together was running errands for you and feeling like he was doing something important. Do you remember that?”

“I remember,” he said. “It was all true. You really fucked over a lot of people. Not just me.”

It had been five months and change since I took Prudell’s job. He had nursed his grudge for a few months until he had finally worked up the nerve to face me.

“Okay, fine,” I said. “Whatever you say. I ruined all your lives. Now just tell me his name.” “The guy who was working for me?” “Yes,” I said. “Tell me his name.” “His name is Julius,” he said. “Raymond Julius.”