Die a Stranger

CHAPTER TWELVE

He pulled me to the street. I tried to push him away, not for any coherent reason, just a reflexive reaction to what I’d seen through the window.

“Let’s get the hell out of here,” he said through clenched teeth. “Right now.”

“We have to stay here,” I said. “We have to call somebody.”

“Like hell we do.”

I took him by the arm and was halfway into a wristlock, pure muscle memory from all of those years on the force. A suspect resists and you twist that arm right around and turn that wrist. All of a sudden he’s a lot more cooperative.

“I’m calling the police,” I said. “Then we’re going to wait until they get here.”

“Don’t be an idiot. If we call the police, they’ll lock us both up.”

“Why would they do that?”

“Because that’s what they do.”

I knew that was the reality for him, at least. That was his own personal experience.

“No, Lou. Come on.”

“We came here earlier today,” he said, “and now we’re back and those two guys are lying in there in a lake of blood. What do you think they’re gonna do?”

“They’re gonna talk to us, and we’re gonna tell them everything we know.”

“So you want them to take us down to the station, is that what you’re saying? Best case, they put us in a room for the next twenty-four hours. Ask us the same questions over and over, which won’t do anybody any good. Meanwhile, whoever it was who did this is getting closer and closer to Vinnie.”

“He wasn’t there, you realize that.”

“What are you talking about?”

“Vinnie’s not involved in this. He’s never had anything to do with Dukes or these people from downstate, and he wasn’t even at the airport that night. He just picked up Buck and-”

“And helped Buck get away,” Lou said. “He’s been with Buck ever since. Go ask Dukes’ neighbor in there, what’s his name? Eddie? Go ask Eddie how that one works. You think Eddie was a big player in this whole thing?”

I took a quick look up and down the street, expecting somebody to be watching us. Two men standing in the yard, having an argument. But the street was empty.

“You make a fair point,” I said, “but we still can’t just leave. We can’t let somebody else find these guys like this.”

“Then we call the cops when we’re on the road. Give them an anonymous tip, tell them to come check out this house. It’ll do just as much good, without jamming us up. We have to keep moving, Alex, don’t you understand?”

“But we have no idea where we’re going. You know that.”

“We have to think. We have to figure it out.”

I let go of him. I wasn’t ready to leave with him, but what he was saying, it was starting to sink in.

“Whoever did this,” Lou said, “if they get to Vinnie and Buck first…”

In which case it would be hopeless, I thought. In which case they’re as good as dead. But I didn’t dare say it.

Then it hit me. If Buck was really the next target…

“You win,” I said. “Let’s go.”

I was back behind the wheel, driving hard from Sault Ste. Marie to Bay Mills. I had to remind myself that I wasn’t driving my truck now. If I roared by a Michigan State Trooper going eighty, he wouldn’t know it was me and he’d pull me over in a second. In the state I was in, I had no desire to explain why I was driving so fast.

I kept seeing it in my head, those two men on the floor. The blood, the unnatural positioning of the bodies. The way the television cast the whole scene in an otherworldly glow. And something else. One more detail.

“Those two men,” I said, not using the names. They didn’t have names anymore. They were just dead meat on the floor. “They weren’t shot.”

He thought about it. He brought up the same image in his mind and, assuming he had the same power of recall, went over the two bodies from head to toe.

“No, they weren’t,” he said. “There was a lot of cutting.”

“But not the throat. Did you notice that?”

“They bled to death,” he said, nodding. “It probably took a while.”

“So whoever did this, there was probably more than one of them. With a gun you can kill them both single-handed. But not this way.”

“Yes,” he said, nodding again. “There’s at least two of them.”

I kept the car on the road. Going straight. Between the lines.

“So pull over at this gas station,” he said. “Let me call it in. If I do it, they won’t have your voice on the tape.”

“We’ll do that in a minute. We’ve got something else to do first.”

“Wait, aren’t you the one who insisted we call somebody? Where are we going?”

“To Buck’s house.”

“We both know Buck’s not there.”

“You’re right. We know that. But we have no idea if they know that.”

“I don’t follow you.”

“Whoever these people are,” I said. “If you happened to be sitting in Buck’s house and they rang the bell, do you think you’d be safe opening the door?”

He looked at me while he thought about that one.

“Are you saying there might be somebody at Buck’s house today? Even though he’s gone?”

“I’m saying there’s almost definitely somebody there. It’s the local party house, whether he’s around or not.”

He didn’t say anything to that. He didn’t have to. I kept driving as the sky got darker and the moon rose above the trees. When I got to the intersection in Brimley, we could see all of the cars in the Cozy’s parking lot. We barreled down that road, around the curve of Waishkey Bay, until we finally got to Buck’s house. There were no cars in Buck’s driveway besides his old beat-up clunker, but that meant nothing. Not in a neighborhood where most of your extended family and every close friend is within walking distance.

We got out and went to the door. I knocked but nobody answered. I tried the door. It was unlocked. I pushed it open. Then I turned on the first light switch I could find. The living room was empty. There were beer cans by the dozen, lined up in rows on every flat surface.

“Good thing you’re not a cop anymore,” Lou said. “This would not be kosher, just walking in.”

“It’s not kosher for anybody. But I figure we can make an exception.”

I went down the hallway to the bedroom. I turned on a light and saw an unmade bed and several loads of laundry all over the floor. There was a faint odor of marijuana in the air.

When I am done with this and Vinnie is home safe, I said to myself, I will make sure I never have to smell this stuff again. I don’t care if it really is nonaddictive and the plant itself is the answer to every problem in the world, I swear to God I hate the sickly sweet smell of it so much right now.

I backed out of the bedroom and stuck my head into the next room. A guest room, I suppose you would call it, on account of the folded-out futon, but really it was just another place to throw piles of clothes and a huge old tube television that probably weighed a ton and a half. The most important thing was that there were no dead bodies anywhere.

I poked my head into the bathroom and even pulled open the shower curtain. The tub needed cleaning, but at least it wasn’t full of blood.

I met back up with Lou in the kitchen.

“Nobody here,” he said. “I guess that’s good news for once.”

I was about to agree with him. Then we both heard it behind us and we froze. It was the unmistakable sound of a pump-action shotgun being racked, a sound that would turn even the hardest man’s knees to jelly.

“Don’t move,” a voice said. “Either one of you. Now turn around slowly.”

I wasn’t about to point out that we’d have to move to turn around. I figured just keeping my mouth shut and following his last instruction was probably the way to go. As we both turned at the same time, I saw the man standing there. I was expecting a police officer. Hell, maybe even Chief Benally himself. In which case we could immediately begin explaining ourselves. But no, the man was not wearing a uniform. He was wearing a light windbreaker and a baseball cap. I had never seen him before.

“I suppose you’re Buck,” he said, pointing the gun barrel at Lou.

“No,” Lou said. “You’ve got the wrong guy.”

The man looked a little confused. Then the gun barrel came over to me.

“He’s not Buck, either,” Lou said. “Buck’s not here.”

“How do I know you’re not just lying to me?”

Canadian, I thought. That accent. In a land of Yoopers, many of whom sound almost but not quite Canadian, this guy was the real thing.

“This man’s name is Alex,” Lou said. “Does he look like an Indian to you? And hell, I’m probably twice Buck’s age.”

“How would I know how old he is?” the man said. “I just know he lives in this house. That’s all. So I figure that has to make you him.”

“Well then, you don’t know a thing about Indians,” Lou said. “We walk into other people’s houses all the time.”

The man closed his eyes for a moment. He let out a long breath.

“Where is he, then?” he said. “Where is Buck Carrick?”

“We’re going to tell you the truth,” I said. “And then I hope you’ll put the gun down. Buck Carrick has been missing for four days. Lou and I have been trying to find him. That’s why we’re here right now.”

Another long breath from the man. A few seconds ticked by. It seemed to me like he had no idea what to do next. Not a good idea when you’re holding a shotgun. It looked like a Benelli to me. One of the sleek black models. But I was pretty sure even a cheap gun would have blown us both apart just fine.

“I need to know where he is,” the man said. “That’s the only reason I’m here. Tell me where he is and I’ll leave.”

“I swear we don’t know,” I said. “Please put the gun down.”

He hesitated for a few more seconds. Then he lowered the gun barrel. Lou took a step toward him, but I grabbed his arm.

“It’s not even loaded,” the man said. “I apologize if I scared you.”

Lou still seemed to want to get a lot closer to the man, whether to take the gun away or to smack him right in the face, I didn’t know.

“Just put it down, please,” I said. “You’ll make us both feel a lot better.”

He bent down and laid the gun down on the kitchen floor. He did it slowly and carefully. Then he just stood there rubbing his forehead, his eyes closed.

I went over and picked up the shotgun. It was indeed a high-end Benelli and it was unloaded.

“It’s my brother’s gun,” he said. “I’ve never shot it before. I’ve never shot any gun. I hate guns.”

“Who’s your brother?”

“His name is Pete. I mean, his name was Pete. He’s dead now.”

“What happened to him?”

The man opened his eyes and looked at me.

“He was killed four days ago. At the Newberry airport. I assume you men know about what happened there?”

I let that fact sink in. I was about to ask the obvious follow-up question, but he beat me to it.

“He was the pilot,” the man said. “He’s the guy who flew the plane and never came back.”

We sat down with the man, right there in the kitchen. He apologized a few more times. His first name was Perry. We never even got his last name. We found a bottle of cheap whiskey in the kitchen cupboard and poured him a drink. He sat there and nursed it for a while. Then he finally told us his story.

“My brother Pete and I,” he said, “we’ve been making these flights over to the States, from Port Elgin. We were flying at night.”

“We know that part of it,” I said. “You find an empty airstrip in Michigan, turn on the ground lights from your cockpit.”

“The PCL, yeah. Pilot-controlled lighting.”

“That’s how you deliver a whole planeload of marijuana across the border, without anybody catching you.”

He just looked at me.

“We’re not the police,” I said. “We don’t care at this point. Please, continue what you were saying.”

“Yes, it’s pot,” he said. “Not hard drugs. Not even an addictive drug at all, if you want to get technical. Way less dangerous than tobacco or alcohol.”

He raised his glass to emphasize that last point. I didn’t feel like hearing the whole extended argument again, so I just waved him on.

“We were doing it for the money, I’ll give you that much. These growers in Canada, they can make a lot of money moving it over to the States, and we get a good cut of that. Even though it’s a pretty easy flight. Just fly low, right over the water. Light up and land. They’re waiting right there, unload, boom, you’re done. Back in the air in ten minutes. Fly back home. It was actually kind of an adrenaline rush. I really enjoyed it, I admit. Until the one night I landed and the wrong people were there waiting for me.”

“Wait a minute,” I said. “That was you? Earlier this summer?”

“That was me, yes. I landed and there were these two guys there, with guns. I told you, I hate guns. But they pointed them at me and they told me I would be working for a new organization now. Same schedule, same pay. Everything nice and friendly, they said. Which would have sounded a little better if they didn’t have guns pointed in my face. Then they made me help unload the cargo. When I was going to their truck, I could see my regular contacts handcuffed to the fence. They were alive, at least. I mean, nobody got killed that time, right? That should have been enough of a warning.”

“Who were these guys who hijacked the cargo?”

“They weren’t exactly wearing name tags. But they said they were working for a man named Corvo.”

“Corvo,” I said, looking over at Lou. He shook his head. The name was just as new to him.

“I think they were from Chicago,” Perry said, “if I know my American accents. But whatever. I didn’t care. As far as I was concerned, that was my last flight. I tried to convince Pete of that, too. But, well, he wasn’t there with me when the men with guns showed up, first of all. And second of all, he always was a little more crazy than me.”

“Was he doing the flights all along?”

“We both were, yeah. Mostly me, because I had a lot more hours in the air and visual flying by night can be a little tricky. But once he got his license, I started bringing him along once in a while. I figured he could start spelling me if I didn’t want to make a run, and hell, he could start making some money, too. He’d already done like three or four solo flights by the time this happened. I told him, hey, that’s it for us, we’re done. No sense getting killed over it. But then when Harry and Jo kept calling…”

“Those are the Kaisers you’re talking about,” I said. “Harry and Josephine Kaiser.”

“To tell you the truth, I never did hear their last name. They weren’t calling us directly, they were calling the growers and then they’d put the product together and they’d say like, ‘Harry and Jo will have a couple men waiting for you. Go to this airport at such-and-such a time.’ That kind of thing. I never met Harry and Jo, because they’d always have their guys there doing the unloading.”

“Would they give you the money, too?”

“No, that was all done separately, between Harry and Jo and the growers. Then the growers would pay us. But anyway, when this thing happened with Corvo and his men, like I said, I was all done. But then Harry and Jo got this idea that they could move the drops way the hell up north, in the Upper Peninsula. I said no way, because we’d have to fly over Lake Superior instead of Lake Huron, which means taking off from a different airport, like maybe Batchawana. You need something small but not too small. But even if you got that worked out, it would only be a matter of time until the wrong people found out about it again. And this time they wouldn’t be so ‘friendly.’”

“So he did the flight to Newberry,” I said. “You tried to stop him.”

“I didn’t get the chance. I didn’t even know about it until he was gone. The growers came right to him, told him they had this new route worked out. Harry and Jo were gonna pay more, and it was a longer flight so Pete would be paid more, and everybody would be happy. It’s four days later and I still don’t even know which airport he took off from. None of the growers will talk to me. They’ve all disappeared. Their phones are disconnected. Finally, I remembered I had this one number for Harry and Jo, an emergency number in case their men ever didn’t show up. I called and I talked to them. To Jo, actually. She sounds like a real charmer. She was all like, oh my God, we’re so sorry, we had no idea. We lost two of our own men here, they were like family to us. And I was like, I just need to know what happened. Why did they have to kill Pete? He was just the pilot. What on earth were they thinking of that they had to kill the guy flying the plane?”

He stopped talking for a while. He sat there in the kitchen holding a half-empty glass of whiskey with both hands. He stared down at the floor.

“Please keep going,” I said. “Did they mention Vinnie and Buck?”

“They mentioned Buck,” he said, looking up at me. “Buck and his getaway driver. I assume that’s Vinnie you’re talking about.”

“His getaway driver?” Lou said. He’d been leaning back in his chair, listening intently to Perry’s story. Now he was halfway to his feet.

“Jo said it was all Buck’s idea,” Perry said. “This whole new plan. Buck was working with this other dealer up here, some guy named Dukes.”

“Andy Dukes,” I said.

“Yeah, she said it was Buck and this guy Dukes who were really running the show now. Harry and Jo didn’t even want to be in the business anymore, not after what happened. That’s what she said. But then these guys went behind their backs and made the new arrangement to keep things going.”

Lou sat back down, but he was leaning forward in his chair now. I could see him flexing his forearm muscles as he made two fists.

“I know it was a lie,” Perry said. “Okay? I’m not that stupid. I know she was trying to cover her ass. I know this was all Harry and Jo and that these other guys were just the hired help. Like always.”

“So why are you here?” I said. “If you know they weren’t behind this…”

“They told me Buck was there,” Perry said. “At the airport. They told me he was the only guy who walked away. Whether this other guy, this Vinnie, whoever he is, if he was the man who drove him away, I don’t care. Whether any of this other stuff they’re saying is true, I don’t care. I just want to know if that one part of the story is true. If this one man named Buck Carrick was there that night, and if he really lived to talk about it. That’s why I’m here. I just wanted to look him in the face and ask him what happened. Why my brother got killed. Or if he was, I don’t know, if he was even alive when Buck just walked away from it. If he left him there dying on the ground.”

He stopped again. I watched him stare at the floor for another half a minute.

“Even if this guy Buck is a walking dead man,” he finally went on, “I had to hear it from him, face-to-face.”

“Why did you say that?” I asked. “Why is he a walking dead man?”

“That’s what Jo said. Him and Vinnie both.”

I looked at Lou, waiting for him to react. But he just sat there like someone had slapped him across the face.

“She said Corvo would carve them all up like Thanksgiving turkeys,” Perry said. “Her exact words. She told me I should stay out of the way, in fact, or I might get caught in the middle of it. She said I should just lay low for a while, wait for Corvo to get it out of his system. That’s what Harry and Jo were going to do.”

“Do you know where they are?” I said. “Do you know where Harry and Jo are right now?”

“No, I don’t.”

“Please think,” I said. “This is very important.”

“I promise you. I don’t. I just had the one phone number. Here, I’ll find it.”

He took out his cell phone and did a quick scroll through the memory. He read me off a number and I recognized the 231 area code. It was almost certainly the number at their farmhouse in Cadillac. Either that or a cell phone. He tried calling the number, right then and there, but there was no answer. There wasn’t even voice mail. Another dead end. Lou kept sitting there, watching both of us but not really seeing anything. I could tell his mind was somewhere far away.

In the end, when all the words had been said and his story was done, we took him and his unloaded shotgun back outside to his car. He had been parked down the street, where he could watch Buck’s house. I told him that if we found Buck, I would have him call him. I told him Buck would tell Perry everything he knew about that night. About his brother Pete and the way he’d died. I figured that was the least I could promise him.

“I was thinking maybe I should go talk to this guy Dukes,” he said, just before he got into his car. “Maybe he can tell me something.”

“Don’t bother,” I said, and then I put up my hand before he could even pursue it. “Please, just go back home. You look exhausted.”

“So do you,” he said. “Both of you.”

He was right, of course. But we were far from done. We watched him drive away.

“Come on,” I said to Lou. “We still have to call the police.”

I drove back down off the rez to the gas station next to the Cozy. I figured that was the closest pay phone. Lou sat in silence while I drove, then he got out and went to the phone. He had a quick one-sided conversation with the 911 operator. Then he got back into the car.

“What did you tell them?”

“I gave the woman the house number on Hursley Street,” he said, “told her to send a car over.”

“That’s all?”

“I told her to send someone with a strong stomach.”

We drove back to Paradise, once again passing the two houses on the rez that held his two daughters, along with his grandchildren, all sound asleep at this hour. Lou looked out the window as we drove by, and I couldn’t even imagine what he was thinking.

The moon was waning but still bright. The lake was there just beyond the trees and when the trees broke we could see far out onto the water’s cold surface. I was tired, but I was even more hungry, so when we came to Paradise I pulled into the Glasgow Inn. Lou still hadn’t said a word.

Jackie took one look at us and knew better than to ask how the day had gone. We ate some of Jackie’s famous beef stew and we each had a cold Molson. When we were done we got back into the car and drove up my road. My road and Vinnie’s road. We stopped in front of Vinnie’s cabin and gave it a quick once-over. Nobody had been there.

We were standing outside under the stars and I don’t think either of us knew what to do next. We both needed to sleep, but to give in to that would have been to admit failure. We had looked for Vinnie and Buck all day long and had ended up right here where we had started.

The only difference was, now we had much more to worry about. Including a man named Corvo, who apparently liked to carve up each of his victims like a Christmas goose.

“You had a good idea last night,” Lou finally said.

“Did I? I don’t even remember.”

“It was your idea to go find Dukes. You thought he was probably still close to his home and you were right.”

“Not good thinking on his part,” I said. “But yeah, that’s how we started the day, huh? Seems like a long time ago.”

“I’m trusting that you’ll have another good idea tonight. So go and get some sleep. We both need our strength for tomorrow.”

“Okay. You’re right.”

“We’ll find them tomorrow,” he said. “I know we will.”

I drove him to my second cabin and dropped him off there. Then I went back to my own cabin. Get some sleep, the man says. Like it’s that easy.

As I lay down, the thought came to me. A whole train of thought, running through my mind as unavoidably as a real train roaring down a set of real tracks. This man Corvo came to Sault Ste. Marie to butcher Dukes and he happened to find his neighbor in the house, too. But he didn’t come out here to Buck’s house. And he didn’t come to Vinnie’s house.

He knows they wouldn’t be here. Either one of them. If he knows where they’re not, he probably knows where they are. Which can mean only one thing. The one unavoidable thing I must stop myself from thinking, no matter how hard that may be.

Vinnie and Buck, wherever they are…

They’re probably already dead.