Envy the Night

18

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They separated Frank from Nora almost immediately, and for the next six hours he didn’t see her again. None of the cops bothered to search him for a weapon at first, but he was conscious of the gun in his shoulder holster, and eventually told the officer who seemed to be in charge of the scene that he was carrying. The guy didn’t handle it well, took the gun and then searched Frank with rough hands, as if he might have voluntarily given up the pistol only to attack them with a knife a few minutes later.

At first it was nothing but local cops, small-town guys who all seemed to achieve a certain level of shock with the realization that someone had been tortured and murdered at noon on a Saturday in the middle of town. They ran through the basic motions, asked Frank the basic questions, but nobody seemed focused, a high level of confusion permeating the group.

He was left alone in an interrogation room at the little Tomahawk police station for more than an hour. People came and went outside, talking in soft voices, and he caught snippets of their words, muttered curses and musings, references to Mowery. Tomahawk’s police department had just hit the big time, and Frank probably understood this better than they did.

When the door finally opened again, the cop who entered wasn’t one he’d seen before. Even before the guy settled into a chair across the table and introduced himself, Frank knew he was an outsider. He was about fifty, with a receding hairline and weathered skin, bony shoulders poking at his shirt. When he looked at Frank, one eye drifted just a touch, seemed to gaze off to the left and up.

“Mr. Temple, my name is Ron Atkins. Feel free to call me Ron. How are you doing?”

“Fine,” Frank said. “Who are you with?”

Atkins raised an eyebrow. “You imply I’m from a different agency than the one that brought you here.”

“I do.”

“What makes you think that, might I ask?”

“You don’t look excited.”

Atkins considered Frank for a long moment after that, then gave him a few slow nods. “Interesting observation, Mr. Temple. No, I am not excited. There’s nothing exciting about what we’re dealing with here.”

“Rest of the cops seem to think so.”

“Agreed. That’ll pass with time.”

“So who are you with?”

The repeated question seemed to irritate Atkins, causing a quick, hard flicker of his eyes before he answered.

“I’m with the FBI, Mr. Temple.”

“Milwaukee?”

Atkins’s eyebrow went up again. “No, Wausau. We maintain a small field office there.”

Frank nodded. If Atkins had come in from Milwaukee already, that would have told him something, suggested that the cops here were already getting a sense of things, maybe knew something about who these guys really were. Nobody from the FBI responded to a murder otherwise. But if he’d just made the hour-long drive from Wausau, maybe it wasn’t quite as strange. There weren’t a lot of homicides up here, certainly not of this nature, and Frank guessed the FBI office in Wausau wasn’t swamped. Probably welcomed the chance to step in, give this one a look.

“Not a real good start to your weekend, is what I’m hearing,” Atkins said. “First you had this trouble yesterday in which, according to what I’ve been told, you performed quite admirably. Then, not twenty-four hours later, you found a murder victim in the same building.”

Atkins cocked his head at Frank. “No way to start a vacation, right?”

“Nope.”

“So you are here on vacation?”

“Yes.”

“That’s what brings most people here. Most people, though, they don’t have a string of bad luck like you’re experiencing.”

“I wouldn’t think so.” Even this early in the conversation, Frank had reached two conclusions about Atkins: First, he was smart, and deserving of respect. Second, Frank didn’t like him.

“You rent a cabin up here, is that it?”

“Own one.”

“Really? Very nice. Out there on the Willow Flowage, is it?”

“Yes.”

“How’d you come into possession of the cabin, might I ask?”

Here was the reason Frank didn’t like him, drifting out in these casual questions. The man had come here to ask about Frank’s father. Either he knew the name, or somebody had done the homework.

“It was in the family,” Frank said. “But I don’t see what relevance that has to the poor bastard we found with his leg broken and his throat cut, Mr. Atkins. Ron.”

“I understand that. I’m going to ask you for a little patience. See, I may find relevance in places you don’t.”

“Tell you what,” Frank said, “let’s go ahead and talk about my dad.”

Atkins pursed his lips into a little smile but looked at the tabletop instead of Frank. “Your father. Yes, I’ve heard about him.”

“A lot of people have. And, hate to tell you this, but he’s been dead for seven years. Tough to blame him for this one.”

“I’ve heard a few terms used concerning your father—”

“I’ve used a few of them myself.”

“I believe it. But I’m talking about his, uh, entrepreneurship, you see. Because the man didn’t just kill people. He made money doing it, for a while. One of those terms that people use is ‘hit man.’ ”

“I’ve heard it.”

“Right. So—and I understand how frustrating this has to be for you, trust me—when a cop ends up beaten half to death outside of a body shop on a Friday and another man ends up killed in the same body shop on a Saturday, and the key witness to both events is, well, the son of a hit man . . .”

“This is what brings the FBI up from Wausau,” Frank said.

Atkins nodded with a theatrical sense of apology. “Like I said, Mr. Temple, I understand this may not be fair to you, but sometimes we have to endure a little extra suffering along the line just because of our families. That happens to everybody, in one way or another.”

I could tell you some of the ways, Frank thought. Could tell you what it’s like to be seventeen years old and fooling around with your girlfriend, biggest concern in the world just trying to get her shirt off, when your father comes home and walks into your bedroom. And for a minute, Mr. Atkins, you’re still worried about the girl and about his reaction and this all seems like a major crisis. Seems like that until he says, Son, we’re going to need to be alone right now, and something in his eyes tells you that the pending conversation has nothing to do with anything as innocent as you and the girl.

“So I understand, is what I’m trying to say,” Atkins said. “But I’ve still got to ask the questions.”

“Yeah,” Frank said. “I kind of figured you would.”

“Right off the bat, I’m curious about this: I was told you were wearing a gun when the police got down to the body shop. A gun, I might add, with your father’s initials stamped into the stock. FT II would be him, right? You’re FT III?”

Frank nodded.

“You always carry the gun?”

“No.”

“Okay. Then you come up here on vacation, a fishing trip, and you think, yeah, this seems like the time and place to pack a pistol?”

Frank looked at Atkins for a long time before he said, “It had started to seem like a dangerous town.”

Atkins nodded. “Almost from the moment you arrived.”