A Stolen Season

Chapter Fourteen

From where I was starting, it was over three hundred miles to Detroit. I crossed the Mackinac Bridge, hit the Lower Peninsula. I stopped for gas in Gaylord. An hour south and it already felt twenty degrees warmer. I got back in the truck and pointed it straight down I-75, the lifeline of the state but just another lonely road up here, going through little towns like Grayling, West Branch, Pinconning. Around Bay City the traffic started getting heavier. I kept driving. No music, no radio. Hardly a thought in my head, beyond I’m here and I need to get there. Not even thinking yet about what I’d do when I arrived. Everything turned off but the driving muscles.

Except for the pain. I couldn’t turn that off. I didn’t see how I ever could.

The thing was still there. Not owning me yet. Somehow I was still keeping it just outside. As long as I kept moving…

Another hour and I was in Flint. The sun was out. I drove through Auburn Hills. I was getting close to Detroit now. My old hometown, the ring of suburbs on three sides, inching out farther and farther into the farmlands. All these sleepy little crossroads turned into boomtowns now, with all the new houses, the strip malls. I saw the places without recognizing them. Not that I was really looking. I kept my eyes on the road and ate up the miles.

When I was on the edge of the city, I took I-696 due east cutting through some of the older middle class suburbs, Warren, Center Line, Roseville. The highway ended: I got on 11 Mile Road, headed straight for the water, where the original old-money suburbs were strung along Lake St. Clair like pearls. Grosse Pointe, Grosse Pointe Park, Grosse Pointe Farms, Grosse Pointe Shores, where the automotive families had their big houses. As a Detroit cop, long ago, I knew exactly where Detroit ended and the Grosse Pointes began. I knew it to the inch, and so did the people who lived on either side of that line. Needless to say, the Grosse Pointe cops were better paid and better equipped. Their motivations were slightly different than ours. As long as the trouble stayed on our side, they were happy.

On the northern end of the Grosse Pointes was St. Clair Shores, always trying to keep up. Hell, maybe it had caught up by now. I had been away from the place for more years than I cared to count.

I hit Jefferson Street, the main thoroughfare, turned right, and went south into the heart of town. There were nice houses, nice little shops. At every block a cross street ran east to the water. There were so many peninsulas, so many boat channels. In a way, it was sort of like Hessel, but here there was so much more of everything. More houses, more people, more money. The traffic was heavy. I couldn’t even remember the last time I had rolled my truck down a busy suburban street. I felt like a madman from the great white north, descended upon the big city.

I kept driving down Jefferson, looking at the street signs. Lakeland, Manor, Madison. All the old money names. Statler, Benjamin, Revere. I was starting to wonder if I’d missed it. I figured a few more blocks and I’d be in Grosse Pointe Shores.

Then I saw it. Trombley Street.

On the water, Cap had said. I took the left, drove down the peninsula. The houses got bigger. Lots of Tudors, the occasional Victorian. Seriously upscale houses. I wasn’t surprised Mr. Gray lived here. I wondered if his neighbors knew he was a stone-cold killer.

At the end of the street, there was a big iron gate. An intricate script G was centered on either side. I had just been wondering how I’d find his house, how I’d have to pull up to some woman walking a poodle, roll down my window so she could see my unshaved face, ask her where the Gray house was. Like that would go over well.

But no, here it was. I was sure of it.

The gate was wide open.

I drove through. The driveway led up to a big white Mediterranean house. Columns, statues, the works. There was a yard big enough for a football game, with immaculately cut grass. A huge white tent was set up, like they were going to have a wedding here. Or just had one. Through the poles of the tent I could see down to the shoreline. A double-decker yacht sat next to the dock.

I couldn’t see anybody anywhere.

I parked the truck near the tent and got out. This time I knew enough to put the gun in my waistband right away, save me from having to come back for it. They were actually having summer weather down here, so it was too warm for my jacket. But I left it on to cover the butt of the gun.

So now what? Do I just walk around to the back of the house?

Yes, Alex. That’s exactly what you do. Walk right around the house like you belong here.

There were tables set up under the tent. Some of them had vases with cut flowers in them. From the looks of the flowers, the event had already happened, maybe a couple of days ago. I grabbed the biggest bouquet I could find, took out a few of the wilted flowers, and carried it toward the house.

I saw a pathway leading around to the back, flat circles of stone set in the grass. As I turned the corner, I saw the gate to the pool, between a statue of a man drawing a bow and arrow and a statue of a woman holding a big urn. The statues were blindingly white, like everything else around the place. It said something about the man who lived there, but I wasn’t sure what. At this point, I didn’t care.

I opened the gate and walked through. The area around the pool was all white marble. There were more white statues. White pool furniture. A high white fence all around the place. I was wondering when I’d see something that wasn’t white when somebody hit me hard in the back of the neck.

I went down on the marble. The vase came out of my hands, shattering when it hit the floor. There were shards of glass everywhere, water, flowers. I was lying in the middle of it. Before I could get up, I felt somebody’s foot on my back. I was pushed down hard on the marble. I could feel the glass cutting into my chest. Then something exactly like the barrel of a gun pressed against my back.

“Don’t move,” a voice said. I didn’t. He gave me a quick one-handed pat-down, taking the gun from my waistband.

“Up,” he said.

I stood up slowly, brushing off the glass, pulling a few shards out of my jacket and pants.

“This way.”

He was a big man, bigger than Brucie. He probably had the biggest hands I’d ever seen on anyone in my life, so big the automatic in his right hand looked like a water pistol. This had to be the man Cap had mentioned, the man who could take me apart without breaking a sweat. He was wearing a white track suit.

I walked ahead of him, as he gestured to the door leading into the house. He stopped me with one huge hand, opened the door, and ushered me inside. After all the white, this room was done up in dark wood. It was like stepping out of the sunlight into a cave.

There was a plasma screen television on one wall. Mr. Gray sat in one of several leather chairs, watching a soccer game. An immense field of green. For some reason that surprised me. From the one time I had seen the man, he didn’t seem like someone who would watch television, or do anything a normal human being would do.

“Sit down,” he said to me. He glanced at me for all of one second, then turned his attention back to the game.

I sat down in one of the leather chairs. The man in the white track suit stood behind me. Nobody said anything for a while. Gray kept watching the game. I never cared much about soccer, and I was in no mood to pay attention to it today. The players on one team were passing the ball back and forth, looking for an opportunity to shoot. That much I could tell. This was the last result I could have predicted for myself that day, sitting in Gray’s house while he watched soccer.

Somebody finally took a shot. It went a good thirty feet over the goal and into the crowd.

“When it doesn’t bend,” Gray said, “you just look foolish.” He hit the pause button on the television, freezing the goalie in the middle of his goal kick. Then he turned to face me. He was wearing a gray golf shirt. Gray pants.

He studied me for a few seconds. “You were at the summerhouse. You were the man with the gun.”

I didn’t answer him.

“Your name again?”

“Alex McKnight.”

“Apparently, Bruce couldn’t close the deal with you,” he said, shaking his head. “Yet another disappointment. What a team those two make.”

“I have another name for you.”

“Another name?”

“Natalie Reynaud.”

“Who would that be?”

“That’s the woman who was killed in my cabin last night.”

“I don’t understand what that has to do with me.”

“I have good reason to think you were responsible.”

“Why would you think I had something to do with that?”

“You wanted me dead,” I said. “If you found out I was still alive…”

“You think that would concern me? I didn’t want you dead per se, Mr. McKnight. I just wanted you gone. There was nothing personal involved.”

“You’re a killer. You’re a criminal who gets rid of people without a second thought.”

Gray looked up at the man standing behind me. I was expecting to feel his hands around my neck, or the gun pressed to the back of my head. It didn’t happen.

“A man can be many things,” Gray said. “A soccer fan. A father…”

“A gangster. A drug lord.”

He gave me a little smile. Not a warm one. “Is that what you think I do? You think I sell crack to kids in Detroit?”

“You’re not out on the corner yourself, no.”

“I make my living in imports and exports, Mr. McKnight. Imports and exports. I’m a businessman.”

“Uh-huh. What kind of ‘import’ are your men up north working on?”

“They’re not my men anymore. I can assure you of that. But let me ask you, do you know the difference between an illegal drug and a prescribed medicine?”

I thought about it, what the right answer would be. “A doctor, for one thing.”

“Yes. A doctor tells you to take the prescribed medicine. He gives you permission to take it.”

“Meaning what?”

“Have you ever seen somebody die a slow, painful death?”

I didn’t have to go far for that one. The darkest year of my childhood, watching my mother die. “Yes,” I said. “I have.”

“Have you seen someone lose their very sanity because of the pain they’re in?”

“Let me guess. That’s where you come in. You sell pills to people who need them. I bet you don’t even make a profit.”

Gray looked up at the man behind me again. “What do you make of our Mr. McKnight?”

The man didn’t say anything. If he made some kind of gesture, like a shrug of his huge shoulders, I couldn’t see it.

“When we last met,” he said, “how come you didn’t tell me I owed you a great debt?”

“I wasn’t aware you did.”

“You saved my son’s life.”

“I helped get him off the boat. That’s all.”

“You’re being modest. Harold was knocked out cold. He would have drowned.”

“I did what I could at the time. I wasn’t the only one.”

“You’re not making this very easy,” he said. He leaned forward in his chair and put his hands together in front of him. “It’s generally not in my nature to be forgiving. Aside from which, it’s usually bad for business.”

“Did you send somebody to my cabin or not?”

“If I did?”

“Then I kill you,” I said. “Or I die trying.”

He tapped his fingertips together. “First of all, and please understand this…If I had indeed sent someone to your cabin, I would have sent him to kill you, not this woman you speak of, who I’m sure I’ve never even laid eyes on. And second, if I sent someone, you wouldn’t be here right now talking to me. You would be in the ground. Are we clear on those two points?”

“We’re clear.”

“This woman,” he said. “She was close to you?”

“Yes.”

He shook his head. “If Cap did this on his own…”

“He didn’t.”

“You’re sure about that.”

“I don’t believe he knew I was alive.”

“You think you’d know if he was lying.”

“I don’t think you can fake an immediate reaction like that. He was surprised that I was alive.”

“Okay, so you trust your gut on that one. I’m with you so far. But what did he say after that?”

“I don’t remember every word. The bottom line was that if you found out I was still alive, you’d send somebody else. And if that person found Natalie instead of me in my cabin…”

“You believed that?”

“I had no reason not to.”

“At some point, did he actually suggest that you come down here and kill me?”

“He didn’t have to,” I said. Although I was beginning to see the point. Shoot him in the head, he had told me. Don’t wait for him to say a word. Just shoot him in the head.

“Look at it from his point of view. What’s his biggest problem in the world right now?”

“That would probably be you.”

“I assure you, you can eliminate the word ‘probably.’”

“He told me which door to come in.”

“There you go. You wanted to believe it was me. So you did. Cap played you like a harp, Mr. McKnight.”

“Or else you’re the one playing me right now.”

“I think it’s time for you to use your gut again,” he said. “Now that you’re sitting here, who do you believe?”

I looked him in the eye. We both sat there for a long time. The television cast a an eerie green glow over everything in the room.

“If you did it,” I said, “then you wouldn’t be having this conversation with me. You’d just have your man here kill me and be done with it.”

“Actually, Mr. Stone doesn’t do that kind of housekeeping for me. But yes, aside from that, you’re exactly right. So what should we do now?”

“I don’t know.”

“My daughter got married two days ago. We had three hundred people here.”

If I was supposed to congratulate him, I missed the opportunity. I kept quiet.

“It was a beautiful day. Two days ago. You’re telling me that the very next day, yesterday…someone took this woman from you.”

“Yes.”

“You loved her.”

“Yes.”

“Enough to do this, to come here. The very day after she died.”

“Yes.”

“I’m sorry, Mr. McKnight. That’s all I can say. I know it’s not much.”

It was a strange thing to hear from him, this man who would next have to decide if I’d get a bullet in the head.

“In your case, you lost her in a second. Like that.”

He snapped his fingers.

“For me,” he said, “it was nineteen months of watching my wife die. If I could, I wonder if I’d trade places with you.”

He picked up the remote again. He weighed it in his hand.

“Thank you for helping my son,” he said. “Please go now and do not come back here again. Mr. Stone will show you out.”

He hit a button and the soccer players came back to life. The ball was advancing to the other side of the field now. I didn’t get the chance to see if they scored. Mr. Stone ushered me back to the front door. He followed me outside to my truck. When I was about to get in, he took my gun out of his pocket and gave it to me. He held it dangling between two fingers, like you’d hold a dead rat.

I took it from him. He turned around and went back to the house without saying a word to me. I started the truck, turned around, and went back out the driveway. When I got back to the main intersection, I stopped. My hands were shaking.

Easy, Alex. Easy.

Okay, I can go left here. Or I can go right. Left or right. Which way do I go?

I wasn’t lost. I knew exactly how to get back to I-75, how to go back to the Upper Peninsula and everything that was waiting for me up there. But in that moment, sitting there in my truck in St. Clair Shores, waiting for my hands to stop shaking, I wasn’t sure if I wanted to go home.

I didn’t see the car pulling up behind me. When he honked his horn, I just about leaped out of my skin. I looked in the rearview mirror-it was a BMW convertible, some guy in sunglasses with both hands raised like I was the most helpless human being he ever had to wait behind. I was about to open the door and go after him, had my hand on the door handle in fact. I thought better of that idea, took the left turn, and headed down toward Detroit. I wasn’t sure what I would do there. I just couldn’t think of anywhere else to go.

I drove through the Grosse Pointes. It was funny how Jefferson Avenue meant one thing here, then all of a sudden you hit the Detroit city limit and the same street became something else entirely. It took me downtown, past Woodward Avenue, where I had been shot, where Franklin had died. How many years had that been the black hole in my life? I was free of it now. It was ancient history, utterly surpassed by this new thing.

I was so tired now. But I had to keep moving. I could feel the thing right behind me, waiting for me to slow down.

No. Not yet. Keep moving.

I drove by the old precinct house. I could walk in there now and not a soul would know me. The way I looked right now, they’d think I was a crazy person. An EDP, as they still probably call it. Emotionally disturbed person. Sure, you used to work here, they’d say to me. Sure, you were once a cop.

I almost stopped at a bar. From somewhere inside me a little voice told me that would be the worst possible thing to do right now. The exact opposite of “keep moving.” Besides, they wouldn’t have Canadian beer.

I could go to Windsor to get some. It was right across the river, just a few minutes away.

No, not that either. Not Canada.

I drove by Comerica Park, where the Tigers played now. Next to it was Ford Field, the new park for the Lions. For old time’s sake, I drove by the old Tiger Stadium. The great gray battleship. What next? My old high school? The house in Redford? From out of nowhere I remembered a day in my life, a million years ago when I was a sixteen-year-old sophomore playing on the varsity baseball team. My first game in the uniform. First at-bat, I walked. Second at-bat I nailed one over the center-field wall. It was a 3-0 count. I even remember that. I didn’t take the pitch. I always hated to take a pitch. I swung and I crushed it.

Why do I remember that right now? Why does it come back to me like it just happened? Everything about that day.

It was an away game. In Dearborn. I had to go see that ball field. Before I faced anything else, I had to go see where that day happened.

Dearborn is right next to Detroit. Home of the Ford Motor Company, where my father had put in so many years. I took Michigan Avenue to Telegraph. Took that north, over the Rouge River. Where was that ball field again? I needed to find it. I was afraid to stop and ask somebody. I was afraid they’d have no idea what I was talking about, or if it was an old-timer, that they’d tell me the field had been turned into something else a long, long time ago. No more center-field fence, just a parking lot or a row of houses or whatever the hell else.

When I got to Warren Avenue, I started to wonder if I’d gone too far. There had been a hardware store here when I was a kid. Tela-Warren Hardware, that was its name. All this stuff coming back to me today. Where was it coming from?

I was starting to see double. I almost sideswiped somebody and pulled over while two or three cars honked at me. There was a big salt dump here now, where the hardware store had been. A big building full of salt and sand for the trucks to spread on the road during the winter. It was a lonely place now, a place out of season. I stopped the truck in front of it. I’ll be no bother to anybody here, unless I’m still here in a few months when the snow starts falling.

I put my head back. I closed my eyes. After being in motion all day long, it felt strange to be still now. Who’d have thought this is where I’d end up? Next to a big pile of salt in Dearborn, Michigan.

I don’t want to sleep now. I just want to rest my eyes.

Just rest my eyes. Yes. That’s all…

The banging woke me up. I had no idea how long I’d been out, but it was dark outside now. How the hell did that happen? And who the hell-

Somebody was banging on my side window. A beam of light came stabbing into the truck, blinding me. A flashlight. I rolled down the window.

“Excuse me, Mr. McKnight?”

“What? How do you know my name?”

“I called in your plate, sir. They told me the Michigan State Police are looking for you.”

That didn’t sound good. Next he’ll say they need to speak to me, that I need to come with him, the whole routine. Not that I cared anymore.

“They’re very worried about you,” he said. “I understand you lost your, um…”

I finally looked up at his face. It was a local Dearborn cop. He looked like he was about fourteen years old.

“That you lost your companion, sir. I’m sorry to hear of your loss.”

Companion. An odd word. An odd thing to say to me. And yet it sounded about right. That’s what Natalie was. After a life of being lonely, she was my companion.

“Thank you,” I said. “I appreciate it.”

“If you’d like, I can find a place for you to stay tonight.”

“No, thanks. I should head home. What time is it?”

“It’s about nine thirty. Would you like me to call the state guys? Get you a ride back up there?”

“No. I’ll be all right.”

“Okay, then. Please drive carefully.”

“I will,” I said. “I will. Thank you.”

When he was gone, I pulled out onto Telegraph, heading north. The sleep had given me a little energy boost. I felt like I could make it all the way if I really wanted to.

I stopped for gas again. A million insects buzzed in the bright lights above my head as I filled up the tank. I got a big mug of coffee and hit the road.

I spent the next four hours driving. Straight up I-75. I had the vent open so the fresh air would hit me in the face. The air getting colder and colder as I drove.

By the time I hit the Mackinac Bridge, it felt like November again. Just a few hours on the road and I was back in the land with no summer. It was a stolen season.

My right headlight started to flicker. Finally, it went out. It must have been damaged when I ran Cap off the road. Hard to believe it was just this morning. Hard to believe, as it hit midnight, that the world had made one complete revolution since the thing happened.

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.”