Dead of Winter

CHAPTER 20

There was too much empty road and too much time to think on the way to Dollar Bay.

About Pryce, Lovejoy and Lacey. About watches that ran in cold water, serial numbers on meaningless guns. About dead teenage girls and Jesse’s hair-trigger temper. About Gibralter. About Zoe. About himself.

Keeping his left hand on the wheel, Louis used his thumb of his bandaged right hand to ease the lid off the Styrofoam cup. He took a sip of the hot coffee and carefully set it back in the cup holder. His stomach was sending up groans of hunger, despite the greasy 7-Eleven muffin he had already downed. He glanced at his watch. Back at the 7-Eleven he had called Dollar Bay and was told Sheriff Bjork would meet him at twelve-thirty at a local tavern. He was running late and he pressed the gas pedal, easing up over the speed limit. No matter. The road was empty. It pretty much had been that way since he crossed the Mackinac Bridge about an hour back.

The stunning scenery flew by but he didn’t really notice it. It occurred to him that he was becoming immune to the vistas of pristine snow with their black-green frames of pine forest. He no longer saw the beauty in it, no longer found anything of charm in the stark serenity of the Michigan wilderness. Now, it all looked just…lonely. So incredibly, terribly lonely.

He passed through a tiny town, some speck called Little Bear, and didn’t slow down. It was like the countless others he had seen as he made his way north up the peninsula. Not a human being in sight. He pressed on.

A half hour later, he came to a sign announcing the city of Houghton. He glanced down at the map open on the passenger seat. Dollar Bay was just beyond.

He had half expected Houghton to be like some Siberian tin-shack outpost but it turned out to be a pretty town, handsome red brick buildings built on snowy bluffs overlooking the river below. The streets were freshly plowed, lined with towering drifts. As he drove along the river, he passed the modern buildings of Michigan Tech. On the other side of the river, he could see the colorful parkas of skiers racing down a steep hill. The town had the cozy bustle of any college town and it reminded him a little of an arctic version of Ann Arbor.

He headed the Bronco to the center of town, slowing to look for King’s Tavern, where Bjork said he would meet him for lunch. He would have preferred to conduct business at the sheriff’s department but he knew how these small-town sheriffs could be. Long on down-home wisdom but short on the kind of technical know-how that solved murder cases.

King’s Tavern was a small log building set down between an antique shop and a bookstore. Louis parked, fed a couple quarters into the meter and went in.

It took him a few minutes to adjust to the dim light within, but he soon picked out the requisite mahogany bar, jukebox, pool table and booths. It looked like Jo-Jo’s, but cleaner with a pleasing hickory smell coming from a black potbellied stove. His nose also picked up a delicious meaty smell.

His eyes swept the flannel-clad patrons. Great, so where was Dudley Do-Right already?

“Kincaid?”

Louis turned at the sound of the soft voice. A woman’s face poked out from the last booth. She was wearing a brown shirt. Louis stared. There was a badge pinned to it.

“Over here.” She waved him over.

He went slowly to the booth, taking off his hat. She stuck out her hand.

“Sheriff Bjork,” she said.

He stared at her.

“Sit down, please,” she said.

Louis slid across from her. She was about forty, with a strong square-jawed, sun-freckled face. Lines fanned out from her lively blue eyes, framed by sprigs of red hair that sprouted from her heavy braid. Christ, a woman sheriff. Louis could almost feel the gears shifting as his brain tried to digest this.

A small smile played on her lips. She was enjoying his confusion and wasn’t going to give him an easy entree into conversation by apologizing for her gender.

“I hope you don’t mind but I went ahead and ordered for us,” she said.

“That’s fine,” Louis said.

“What’ll ya have to drink?”

“Ah, Dr Pepper, if they’ve got it.”

“Dave!” Sheriff Bjork yelled out.

“Yeah, Liddie?”

“You got Dr Pepper back there?”

“Got Coke, Vernors, Faygo Rock and Rye. That’s it for pop.”

Bjork looked at Louis.

“Coke,” Louis said.

Sheriff Bjork settled back in the booth. Louis found himself staring at her badge. And at her breasts. They were big and healthy, like the sheriff herself seemed to be. He was grateful when Dave brought over a Coke and glass, and he immersed himself in the process of pouring it.

“So, how was the drive up?” Sheriff Bjork asked.

“Fine. Roads were pretty clear.”

“You have trouble finding King’s here?”

“No, Not at all.”

“Saw that little U-ey you did out there. That’s illegal here.”

He managed a smile. “Professional courtesy?”

She returned the smile and nodded. “So, where you want to start with Lacey?”

“Well, with any records you might have on him.”

She set a thick folder on the table. “I could have faxed you this stuff. You didn’t have to make the trip.”

“My chief thought it would be better this way,” Louis said. “Plus, I want to talk to his mother.”

“Millie?” Bjork slowly shook her head. “I don’t know how much help she can be to you.”

“Why?”

“She’s not exactly Donna Reed.”

Louis nodded. “Just the same, I need to see Lacey’s home.”

Bjork shrugged. “It’s after noon. She might be sobered up by now.”

Dave came to the table and deposited two plates between them. Louis looked down at the steaming, fragrant pie-like concoction.

“It’s a pastie,” Bjork said. “Kinda like a Swanson’s pot pie, only better.” She smiled. “It’s the ne plus ultra of Yooper cuisine.”

Louis took a bite. It was delicious. “May I?” he said, pulling over the file.

Bjork nodded, digging into her food. Louis quickly scanned the contents of the file. It was filled with detailed reports: Lacey’s arrest records, including copies of every incident report, judicial files, fingerprints, even high school transcripts. Louis focused on the military record. It took him a moment but he found it: Lacey had been attached to the 123rd squadron in Vietnam. He closed the file.

“This is very complete,” he said.

Bjork gazed at him over the frosty glass. “You sound surprised.”

“No, I just…”

“We run a very professional department here, Officer Kincaid,” Bjork said.

“I didn’t mean — ”

“Do you know how many Yoopers it takes to screw in a lightbulb?”

“Pardon?”

“None. We don’t have electricity here.”

Louis smiled weakly.

“You hear about the Yooper who saw the billboard that said ‘Drink Canada Dry’? He’s been trying to ever since.”

Louis gave a chuckle.

She smiled. “We know what you think of us up here. We know you think we do nothing but hunt deer, drink and go bowling. That’s how you trolls see us, right?”

“Trolls?”

“Yeah, all you folks who live under the bridge.”

Louis laughed.

“Eat up, Officer Kincaid,” Bjork said. “And I’ll take you to meet Millie.”

“Call me Louis, please.”

She gave him a curt nod. “Only if you call me Bjork.”

They rode in Bjork’s Jeep. Leaving Houghton, they passed over an old iron bridge that spanned a partially frozen river. Abandoned shipping berths loomed to the south, framing the river like a giant rusty chain. Hancock on the other side was not nearly as pretty as its sister-city Houghton and faded quickly as Bjork steered her Jeep up a hill and out of town. Five or six miles later, they saw the state-issue, green metal sign for Dollar Bay.

The town had a haphazard look, as though it had come together out of plain bad luck rather than some neat chamber of commerce design. Even the streets seemed an afterthought — no names, just numbers that intersected letters. The town’s core was a clump of buildings: a general store, a beauty parlor, a bar and further on, a ramshackle lumberyard.

Louis stared at the rows of shingled houses that made up Dollar Bay’s residential area. Gray..everything here was gray. Even the damn snow. The place smelled of dirt, rust and defeat. Coverdale’s profile came back to him in that moment. The blue-collar dream gone gray.

They passed a two-story school of old brick and just as Louis was wondering why they needed a school so large, Bjork told him that it drew students from all around the area.

“So Lacey went there?” Louis asked.

“Me, too.”

“Did you know him?”

She nodded. “There were only ten in my graduating class. So yeah, I knew Duane.”

“What was he like?” Louis asked.

“Quiet. Skinny. Skipped school a lot, ya know? I never took him to be dangerous, though. He was just one of those weird guys who took shop class, smoked in the john and lurked around the edges of everything.” She reached down and pulled out a thin blue book. “Here’s our yearbook. Make sure you get it back to me.”

Louis took it and opened to the seniors. He quickly found Lacey’s picture. He was thin-faced and unsmiling, his odd watery eyes unsettling even then. He looked like some kind of feral animal, like a stray cat or ferret. There was nothing listed under his name except “Audio-Visual Club.” The yearbook editors had used popular song titles for future predictions and in a stroke of cruelty some smartass had stuck Lacey with Chuck Berry’s “No Particular Place to Go.”

“Duane wanted to go to college,” Bjork said.

“College?” Louis said.

“Yeah. He applied to Tech but didn’t get in. Couple months later he got arrested, joyriding with some older kids in a stolen car. Judge told Lacey to shape up or he was headed for jail. Recommended he join the service.”

“Lacey have a juvenile record?”

“Yeah, but it’s sealed.”

Louis nodded. “Judges think if parents can’t straighten a kid out, the service will.”

“Well, all I know is we were glad he was somebody else’s problem for a change,” Bjork said, swinging the Jeep down a side street. “He was gone for eight years, on and off. Then one day, I saw him in town, standing outside the Rexall. He was discharged but still wearing his uniform, boots, the whole shot. He wore his fatigues and hair shaved off for months.”

“Lots of vets were raw around the edges,” Louis said.

Bjork shook her head. “It was more than that. Duane was always weird but he was downright creepy when he got back. Always talking about how the government was screwing everybody over.” Bjork glanced over at him. “I mean, lots of folks around here feel the same way, that their freedoms are being chipped away and they want authority off their backs.”

She shook her head again. “But Duane seemed to take it personal. I remember one day he walked into the post office, cut up his driver’s license and social security card and threw the pieces at the poor woman behind the desk.”

“Was he ever involved in any organized anti-government groups?” Louis asked.

“He joined the Michigan Militia. But we keep an eye on them and they’re pretty harmless,” Bjork said. “They sit in their trucks, get tanked up on beer and bitch a lot. But next morning, they go back to work with hangovers and forget about it.”

“And Lacey?”

Bjork shrugged. “Not enough action for him. He dropped out after six months.” Bjork slowed the Jeep. “This is it.”

Louis looked up. It was a narrow, two-story, gray-shingled house, just like all the others. There were peeling wooden flower boxes beneath the front small windows, tendrils of dead plants snaking out through the snow. As he got out of the Jeep, Louis peered around the side of the house. No red truck.

“We checked the house this morning when we heard the BOLO but Lacey wasn’t here,” Bjork said. “Since then, we’ve had Dennis down there keeping an eye out. Lacey hasn’t shown up.”

As Louis closed his door, he saw a Jeep sitting a block down the snowy road.

Bjork trudged to the porch through knee-high drifts and knocked hard on the door.

“Have you spoken to his mother?” Louis asked, following.

“Usually she’s three sheets to the wind. Maybe we’ll have better luck hitting her this early in the day.”

Bjork banged again and the thin curtain in the small window moved slightly. “It’s okay, Mrs. Cronk, it’s just me,” Bjork called.

The door cracked and a pale single eye, embedded in shriveled skin, peeked out at them.

“Cops again?”

Bjork opened the screen and gently pushed against the wood door. Millie Cronk moved backward and let them enter.

The house was dark as a cave and smelled of stale liquor and cigarettes. Dust and smoke floated in a ray of yellow light from a torn window shade.

Millie was small, a humped shadowy figure huddled near the bottom step of a long, steep staircase. The top disappeared into darkness. Bjork reached in front of Louis and flipped on a switch. A weak overhead lamp lit up the foyer. Millie withdrew like a mole unused to sunshine.

“You sober today, Millie?” Bjork asked. “I need to talk to you about Duane.”

Millie’s lip curled and she shuffled off toward the living room, her hand on the wall. They followed her and Bjork flipped up the torn shade, flooding the room in sunlight.

Louis glanced around. The tables were old mahogany stuff that almost looked valuable, except for the glass rings and dust that covered them. Millie’s couch was, what, green, maybe? It was covered in frayed afghans and doilies yellow with nicotine stains.

Louis forced his attention back to Millie. She had slumped down on the couch, her hands clasped between her knees. A cotton housedress, splashed with ugly daisies, hung over her knees. She had on calf-high stockings and dirty pink fur slippers with little pig snouts and plastic eyes.

She combed her bleached hair with shaking fingers. She looked up, her eyes slithering to Louis’s face. “Who’s he?”

“He’s from down under, Millie. He’s looking for Duane.”

“What’s he done now?” She asked. Her voice was husky, scarred with years of smoke and booze.

“Officer Kincaid thinks Duane might have caused some trouble there and he just wants to ask you some questions, ya know?” Bjork said.

Millie raked her hair. “I don’t like cops. Never did.”

“Millie…” Bjork said

“Why can’t you just leave him alone? Why ya always gotta cause him trouble?”

Louis had to remind himself this was Lacey’s mother. She was entitled to believe he was harmless.

“Mrs. Lacey — ” Louis began.

“Cronk!” Millie spat. “My name is Cronk. I ain’t been a Lacey in years.”

“I’m sorry. We need to find your son. If we can locate him peacefully, no one will get hurt.”

“Peaceful…right,” Millie said with a sneer. She turned and reached for a pack of Pall Malls on the end table. A book of matches slid to the floor and Bjork picked them up. She took one look and passed them to Louis. The front said: Jo-Jo’s Tavern, Loon Lake, MI.

“When’s the last time Duane was home, can you tell us that?” Bjork asked.

Millie sucked on her cigarette, her gray skin pulling over her high cheekbones. “Last Tuesday or Wednesday,” she said, smoke drifting from her mouth as she talked. “It was, no, wait, about a week before Christmas. He came home ‘bout the first of the month and stayed ‘til…hell, I don’t know. Days get mixed up, ya know?”

“He left around the first of December?” Louis asked.

“’Round then, ya.”

“Where did he go?” Louis asked.

“Don’t you know?” Millie asked.

Louis stared at her. She had the same weird eyes as Lacey, only hers were clouded with cataracts, more milky than watery.

“He don’t tell me things, ya know?” Millie went on. “He was gone a coupla days. When he got back he started drinking and talking about things that made no sense, ya know?”

Louis stepped forward. “What did he say?”

Millie glanced around the room. Bjork watched her then went to the tiny kitchen, returning with a bottle of Beefeater’s Gin. She set it loudly on the end table.

Millie picked it up and twisted off the cap. She looked back at Bjork. “What? Ya think I got no class?”

Louis saw a glass on the coffee table and reached down to take the bottle from Millie. He poured her half a glass and handed it back.

Millie looked up at him. “I ain’t never had no black man in my house before.”

Louis glanced at Bjork, who rolled her eyes.

“Mrs. Cronk, did your son say anything when he got back from his trip?” Louis repeated.

“He was talking about things not goin’ right. He said it was all fucked up. All fucked up.”

Louis frowned. “Did he say anything else? Mention any names?”

“No, no, said he needed to think things out.” She gave a little snort. “Like he could think straight. He ain’t been right in the head since…since, shit, who knows?”

“Did he take anything with him when he left?” Louis asked.

Millie’s eyes were closed.

“Mrs. Cronk?” Louis said.

“What?”

“Did your son take anything with him when he left here?”

“Clothes and food. Cleaned out the kitchen, took all the Dinty Moore and Spaghettios. Took my truck, too.” She puffed furiously on the cigarette.

“Anything else?” Louis pressed.

“His guns. And snowshoes. I remember he went down and got ‘em out of the basement.”

Louis glanced at Bjork then back at Millie. “Mrs. Cronk, may we look at Duane’s room?” he asked.

“You need a warrant for that, eh?”

Bjork pulled a paper from her jacket. “Got it right here, Millie.”

“Well, just don’t tear anything up,” Millie said, falling back onto the couch.

Bjork led Louis up the gaunt staircase, pushing open several doors as they walked the narrow corridor. There were only two bedrooms and a tiny dingy bath. Bjork stepped aside so Louis could enter Lacey’s room.

Louis stopped at the door. It was a small room, smelling of soiled clothes and cigarettes. The wallpaper was a drab yellow with what looked like flowers, but were little figures of cowboys and bucking horses. The furniture seemed undersized — a narrow single bed, a tiny nightstand, a small desk and an old four-drawer bureau with DUANE carved prominently on the front. It was kid’s furniture, a little boy’s room. Until you looked more closely.

Louis’s eyes went from the taut army blanket on the bed to a framed photograph hanging above the desk. It was of three bare-chested soldiers.

He went to the desk. It was covered with junk — papers, a few books, beer cans, an overflowing ashtray and several Soldier of Fortune magazines. Louis carefully sifted through the papers.

There were brochures from gun shows, including one flyer that shouted “Get Yours Before It’s Too Late.” There was an ad for fully dressed AK-47s, “Visa and MasterCard accepted,” and another for flak vests and rifles with infrared scopes. A flyer hawked burial tubes to hide guns and food in preparation for “The New World Order.”

Louis turned his attention to the small stack of books. There was a paperback called How to Create a New Identity and a guide to Third Reich daggers. Another was a poorly bound paperback that detailed homemade bombs. Louis picked up the last book, titled The Turner Diaries, by a man named William Pierce. His gut tightened. He had heard about the book before. It was a novel set in the future, the late 1990s, about a race war in the United States. The hero, Earl Turner, leads a group of Aryan warriors who dole out justice by lynching or shooting Jews, blacks, journalists, politicians, feminists and race-mixers.

“What’s that?” Bjork asked, coming up behind him.

“His bible,” Louis muttered, tossing it back on the desk.

Louis looked back at the photograph of the GI’s and spotted Lacey immediately. He took the photo off the wall. He felt suddenly lightheaded in the stuffy room and went slowly to the bed and sat down with it.

“You okay?” Bjork asked.

He looked up. Bjork was standing at the closet. He nodded, staring at the photograph. It was quiet, except for the scrape of wire hangers against a metal closet pole as Bjork sifted through Lacey’s clothes.

Louis’s glance fell on the nightstand. He reached over and pulled open the single drawer. It was a mess of papers, nothing that looked important. He pulled out a printout from a Radio Shack store in Houghton. It was an instruction sheet on how to program something, followed by a printout of numbers.

His gaze drifted to the top of the nightstand. Its scarred top was filmed with a heavy layer of dust except for one small area about two by three inches. Louis stared at it for several seconds then looked back at the Radio Shack printout in his hand. The spot on the nightstand was exactly the size of a portable, battery-powered scanner. The printout, he realized suddenly, showed the police frequencies for Oscoda County.

“Louis, look at this.”

Bjork came over to the bed and handed Louis an envelope. It was addressed to Lacey in prison, in a childish scrawl. Louis pulled out the letter. It was from Cole, dated December 5, from the juvenile center.

Dear Dad,

I saw it on TV! I am proud of you. I can’t wait until you come see me Sunday. Man that was so cool. Everyone here was talking about how that nigger cop got blowed away. I bet that fucking Gibralter guy is pissed. And scared too now. Right? You must be feeling real good right now.

Louis handed her the letter. She read it quickly. “Bastard,” she whispered, moving away.

Louis felt a tightening in his stomach. He had known when he set out for Dollar Bay that Lacey was the killer. But being here, in his room, breathing his air, made things different. It made Lacey real, more real even than he had been that day in the bar. He slipped the letter into his pocket with the Radio Shack paper.

“So, what’s your area of search?”

Louis looked up at Bjork. She was leaning against the door frame, arms folded over her chest.

“What?” Louis asked.

“Where you looking for him?” she asked.

“I don’t know exactly,” Louis said. He looked away, not liking the question he saw in her eyes, namely, “Why the hell aren’t you down there looking for him?”

“I’d bet he’s holed up in the woods somewhere,” Bjork said, pushing off the door.

“He’d freeze,” Louis said.

Bjork shook her head. “Lacey lived outdoors all his life. When he was a kid he built a shack out in the woods. He used to hide in there when Millie went off the deep end on one of her binges.”

“You check it?”

“First thing. No sign of life.”

Louis rose slowly from the bed. He glanced around the room, unsure where to go next. “I don’t get it,” he said.

“Get what?” Bjork said.

“How’d his kids get to Loon Lake? Lacey never lived there.”

“His wife did. She was from there.” Bjork frowned. “Shoot, can’t remember her name…”

“But Lacey never lived there?” Louis pressed.

Bjork shook her head. “No, but after his wife finally got fed up and put him in jail for battery she went back down there to stay. That was in early ’77, I think. Then when Duane went up for the assault she left here for good.”

“Any idea where she is now?”

Bjork shook her head. “I had my men check but we can’t find her.”

“Think she’ll come back?”

“Would you?” Bjork paused. “I feel sorry for Cole. My daughter went to school with him.”

Louis gave a derisive sigh. “Oh yeah, Cole’s a real upstanding young man. Real proud of his dad for blowing away a nigger cop.” Louis shut the drawer of the nightstand roughly.

Bjork said nothing. She turned and went to the window. “I was here that first time we came out on the child-abuse complaint,” she said. “I was a rookie.”

Louis turned to look at her. She was staring out the window.

“Cole was only five,” she said. “He had all these little red circles on his back. He was crying and I remember thinking it was chicken pox. Turned out to be cigarette burns. Duane burned him because he wet his bed.”

Louis waited, not knowing what to say.

“The doc said that he thought Cole had been sodomized, too. Probably with a broom handle. But Cole refused to tell us. The doc wouldn’t swear to it in court and we had no proof. Social Services refused to act. Cole was returned to Duane after six months in the system.”

Louis let out a sigh. The room was very still for a few moments.

“Helen,” Bjork said finally. “That was her name. The mother…Helen.” She turned to face Louis. “Let’s get out of here.”

He followed her down the staircase. Bjork went quickly out the front door without a word to Millie but Louis paused at the living room, trying to think if there was anything else to ask the old woman.

She had pulled the shade back down and turned on the television. She sat hunched on the couch, backlit by the muddy amber light, puffing on her Pall Mall. Her hair spiked out around her head and her face was hid in shadows.

“Mrs. Cronk,” Louis called. “Thank you for your cooperation.”

Millie turned her attention away from The Newlywed Game to look at him, all milky eyes, smoke and Medusa hair.

“You see Duane, you tell him to call me,” she said.

Louis stared at her.

She took a deep sucking drag on her cigarette, squinting back at the television through the smoke. “You talk to him, tell him I want my truck back, you hear?”

“I’ll tell him,” Louis said.

“Damn kid,” she muttered. She turned away and punched the remote-control button, filling the fetid room with canned laughter. Louis backed out, closing the door behind him.