Misery Bay

CHAPTER FOUR

Houghton, Michigan. If you know your history, you know what this city once meant to the rest of the state. Hell, to the whole country.

The first big mining boom happened here, even before the gold rush out west. Copper Country, they called it. That’s how all of the Finns ended up here, along with a few Swedes, Danes, and Norwegians. You can still hear the accents in many of the locals. You can still see some of the heavy equipment standing silent and rusted where the mines were. This is where they took all the copper from the ground and turned it into electrical wire and shipped it all over the world. It all happened right here.

They built the college and it went through several mining-related names until it finally ended up being known as Michigan Technological University. It’s not about mining anymore, of course. It’s all about science and engineering now. The students come from all over Michigan and besides studying, the one thing they’d better be ready for is snow, because they get a hell of a lot of it. Most years, anyway. I was reminded of that as I drove up into the Keweenaw Peninsula and saw the big sign by the side of the road. It was a measuring stick as tall as a tree, with that winter’s current snowfall amount marked at around twelve feet. On the second day of April, usually they’d have at least twice that by now.

As I got closer to the city, I passed a huge set of concrete slabs along the shoreline. Even taller than the snowfall stick, they looked like a giant set of dominoes. More relics from the copper mining, I’m sure, but beyond that I had no idea what they were used for. It made the whole place feel even more foreign to me.

When I got to Houghton itself, that feeling got even stronger. You lose sight of Lake Superior, but as you go inland, you see Portage Lake stretching out across the middle of the Keweenaw. The land rises on either side of the water, and the biggest lift bridge you’ll ever see connects Houghton to Hancock, the city to the north. The middle section of the bridge can rise a hundred feet to let ships pass beneath it.

Most strange of all is how the city of Houghton is built on an incline, with streets running parallel to each other and climbing in elevation as you get farther away from the water. It looks like a miniature San Francisco, I swear, and you have to remind yourself that you’re still in Michigan.

I passed Michigan Tech on my way into the center of the city, then I found the Houghton County Sheriff’s office on the fourth street up from the water. Just like back in the Soo, they seemed to have had the same idea when they put up the building. Start with the county courthouse, the tallest, grandest, most beautiful building in town. Connect another building to that, but make sure this one is a gray concrete box, with all the charm of an air raid shelter.

One of the county plows was touching up the parking lot. I waited for him to finish and gave him a little wave as he left, one plow operator to another. Then I parked the truck and went inside.

The receptionist asked if she could help me, and I picked up yet another Scandinavian accent. I would have guessed Swedish this time, but I wouldn’t have put much money on it. I bet if you live out here you can pick them out right away.

“I’d like to talk to the sheriff,” I said. “I’m a private investigator visiting from Chippewa County.”

I had my license with me, burning a hole in my pocket. It felt strange to refer to myself as a PI.

“He’s not in the office right now. I believe the undersheriff’s here, if you’d like to speak to him.”

“I’d appreciate that.”

A minute later, the undersheriff came out looking for me. He was a big man with a perfect cop’s mustache. He had a hell of a strong grip.

“Undersheriff Michael Reddy,” he said, looking me up and down. “What can I do for you?”

“I don’t mean to impose on your time, sir. I just wanted to ask you a couple of questions.”

“Can you give me a topic?”

“Charles Razniewski Jr.”

I didn’t have to say anything else. The undersheriff exchanged a quick look with the receptionist. Then he motioned for me to follow him.

“Come on back,” he said. “Let’s talk.”

A few minutes later, I was sitting on the opposite side of his desk. There were piles of paper everywhere. Organization was obviously not his strong suit, but I was holding a good strong cup of coffee and the man had listened carefully when I had told him why I was there. So I had no complaints.

“How far did you have to come to get here?” he asked.

“I live in Paradise.”

“Yeah, I know the place. Over by the Soo, right?”

“Other side of Whitefish Bay, yes.”

“Let me ask you, do you happen to know the chief of police there?”

“Roy Maven, you mean?”

“Yeah, that’s him. Is he the one who sent you out here?”

“No, sir. You see-”

“Because if it was, I’d like you to explain to me how one single person can be so charming and persuasive.”

“It was the young man’s father who sent me,” I said. “Charles Razniewski Sr. He and Chief Maven were once state police officers at the same post.”

“Okay, now it makes a little more sense. Maven called out here himself a few days ago, is the reason I ask. He didn’t say anything about his history. He was too busy grilling me like he’d just caught me trying to steal his car.”

“Yeah, that sounds about right.”

“Okay, so I won’t hold that against you. Just tell him he might want to cool it next time you see him. But you’re saying this kid’s father sent you all the way out here to find out more about… what again? I’m sorry, I still don’t quite follow you.”

“That’s the tough part,” I said. “He’s not sure what he thinks I can do. He just wants somebody to do something. Find out what I can from people while it’s still fresh in their minds.”

“He basically wants you to find out why his son killed himself?”

“I guess you could put it that way, yes.”

The undersheriff shook his head slowly. “I think he’s asking you to do the impossible. Is that something you’re usually good at?”

I had to smile. “Generally not. Most days I’m just trying to keep my road clear.”

“I had to cut the kid down, you know.”

My smile disappeared.

“The EMS guys,” he said, “they sorta just put the stretcher underneath him. There was a fire truck there, so we had the ladder, but for some reason I got elected to climb up there and cut the rope. Hell, it wasn’t even officially my jurisdiction.”

“What do you mean?”

“Misery Bay is actually in Ontonagon County, not Houghton County.”

“I didn’t realize that. The map made it look like-”

“It’s barely over the line. But we always help each other out, you know, and as soon as we found out this kid was one of ours…”

“Sounds like a tough day, no matter who’s in charge.”

“He’d been hanging out there for a day and a half, you realize. Nobody had seen him that whole time. That’s how lonely that place is. This time of year, anyway.”

“I sort of got that idea,” I said. “I drove by there today.”

That seemed to surprise him. “You were at Misery Bay?”

“I just wanted to see it.”

“Yeah, well, I keep seeing it, too. Every night when I try to go to sleep.”

“I understand,” I said. “But still. I felt I had to start there.”

“What was your impression?”

“Well, I tried to reconstruct the event in my mind. Let me ask you this while I’m thinking of it. How long was the rope?”

The undersheriff picked up a blank pad of paper from the mess on his desk. He picked up a pen and stared down at the pad. It was obvious to me he was coming to some sort of decision.

“Mr. McKnight, I take it you were in law enforcement at some point?”

“Detroit Police Department. Eight years.”

He nodded. “And now you’re private?”

“On paper, yes, but I’ll be honest with you. This feels more like I’m just doing the man a favor. So really, I know I’m just a stranger showing up out of nowhere, asking you all these questions.”

“Do you feel that there was something inappropriate about the way we handled this case?”

“No,” I said. “God, no. That’s not why I’m here.”

“Let me tell you what kind of winter it’s been for me. A couple nights after New Year’s, a kid from Tech drives down to Misery Bay and manages to hang himself from a tree. Like I said, I was the lucky bastard who got to cut him down. Had to look this kid right in the face. He was as frozen as an icicle. Just a couple weeks later, I hear about an old friend of mine, a sergeant down in Iron Mountain. His son shot himself behind the barn. Put a bullet right in his own head.”

He paused for a moment, then continued.

“My wife’s father killed himself a few years ago, so it’s already kind of a hot spot for me.”

“I’m sorry to hear that.”

“Yeah, he just drove off one day. He found a deserted spot and he tried to run a hose from the exhaust pipe through the window, had it all taped up with duct tape. He didn’t realize that new cars don’t put out that much carbon monoxide anymore. So it must have taken hours. If he didn’t have a full tank, it might not have worked. Although in that case he might have just froze to death. But anyway, he’d been suffering from depression. We had him on some new medicine, but I guess it wasn’t doing the job. Takes a while, they said. So meanwhile he has to slip away from us when we’re not looking and take all damned day to kill himself. It absolutely destroyed my wife, I’ll tell you that much.”

He dropped the pad back on the desk. The mess made a little more sense to me now. This man was just trying to keep it all together, and a clean desk was pretty low on his list of priorities.

“It would have been better if her father had died in an accident,” he said. “Or hell, even if somebody had broken into the house and killed him. At least that way, you wouldn’t have to keep wondering why he did it to himself, you know? I can’t imagine a worse thing to have to go through. But anyway, ever since then, every time I hear about a suicide, it just hits me right in the gut, you know? Now two kids killing themselves in the same winter. One of them in my county.”

“Look, I’m sorry I’m bringing all this back up. I had no idea this was going to hit so close to home with you.”

“You just have to understand. Lately I’m beginning to think that everybody I see is going to find some way to kill themselves.”

“Well,” I said, “I’m not going to. I promise.”

“Okay. That’s good to hear. That’s a start, I guess. But you know, to tell you the truth… maybe it’s a good thing I’m the one you got to talk to today. Because maybe most cops wouldn’t understand why you’d come all the way out here just to pry into a situation that’s obviously not going to change.”

I started to protest, but he put up his hand to stop me.

“It’s okay, Mr. McKnight. I get it. If it was somebody from my family, I’d be asking the same questions myself. Or else I’d be sending out a wise-looking old cop like yourself to ask the questions for me.”

“I’ll take that as a compliment, I guess.”

“I meant it no other way. And to answer your question, the rope was approximately fifty feet long.”

“So more than long enough to tie off around the trunk, and then extend over that big branch.”

“That’s how he did it, yes. Beyond that, I just wish I could give you more information. We’ve got so many kids who come up here for college. Then they’re gone. I’m afraid that young Mr. Razniewski was just one of those temporary residents.”

“His father gave me three names to look up-his girlfriend and two of his other friends.”

“You got the phone numbers?”

“I do, yes.”

“Then give them a call. On a Wednesday, this time of year, there’s not a whole lot to do besides going to class or hanging out in a bar somewhere.”

“Sounds familiar,” I said. “Except for the going-to-class part.”

“This is a terrible thought,” he said, his voice lowered, his head leaning toward me. “But sometimes in the dead of winter up here… as I get older, I mean, I start to wonder why we don’t see even more suicides.”

There wasn’t much I could say to that. So I thanked the man and left him to his pile of papers and his morbid thoughts.

Before I could even get to my truck, it started to snow again.

I checked into a hotel on Shelden Avenue, down in the center of town, close to the water. From my window, I could see the lift bridge and the light stream of traffic crossing in either direction, headlights on as the snow came down harder and dimmed the late afternoon light.

I took out the list of names and numbers Raz had given me. There were only three names-Bradley, Wayne, and Charlie’s girlfriend Rebecca. That was it. I started with Rebecca’s number and got her voice mail. I left a message, told her who I was and that I just wanted to ask her a couple of quick questions about Charlie. I asked her to call me as soon as she got the chance.

I called Bradley, got his voice mail, and left a similar message. As I called Wayne, I wondered if I was about to get shut out completely. It’s quite possible that nobody will talk to you, I said to myself. If they don’t want to deal with this, they’ll just avoid you.

But Wayne answered the phone. I went down the same path with him, who I was, why I was here in Houghton. When I was done, the line was silent for a few seconds.

“I understand,” he finally said. “I don’t know what I can do to help you, but… I mean, I’ll do whatever I can.”

“I called his girlfriend, and this other friend of his. Bradley? Do you know him?”

“Yeah, Bradley. We’re two of Charlie’s apartment-mates. We were, I mean. Anyway, I’ll see him in a few minutes. But did you say his girlfriend? You mean Rebecca?”

“Yes, that’s the name I have here.”

“Your information’s a little out of date,” he said. “I guess his father didn’t know.”

“They weren’t together anymore?”

“No, not for a while.”

“Would it be possible to meet with you for a few minutes? Just to ask you some questions?”

I could hear him letting out a long breath. “Yeah, why not? We’re gonna be at the Downtowner tonight. It’s right on the end of the main drag, next to the bridge.”

“That sounds good. And hey, if you happen to think of anyone else who might have known him well…”

“I’ll see if I can round up some people,” he said. “Say about eight o’clock?”

“That would be fantastic, yes. You’ll see if Rebecca can come, too?”

“Yes. Of course. She’ll be there.”

I hadn’t even met the kid yet, but I could tell he was feeling funny about something. It was right there in his voice.

“You and Rebecca…” I said, taking a shot.

“Yeah, we’re kinda together now. But she and Charlie were broken up since last fall, I swear.”

“You don’t have to explain.” I thanked him and I told him I’d see the whole gang at the Downtowner at eight.

I hung up the phone and looked out at the snow. Okay, that’s one possible reason to kill yourself, I thought. As old as mankind.

I left the hotel around 6:30, figuring I’d get something to eat before talking to Charlie’s friends. It was still snowing. The sun was going down and it was getting even colder. I walked down Shelden, feeling my face go numb and the snow collecting in my hair. There were bars and restaurants on either side of the street, each one glowing with warm light and looking more inviting than the last. I saw the Downtowner at the very end of the street, just as Wayne had told me. I stepped inside and saw that it was doing good business that night. Mostly college kids, all hanging around the high tables, drinking beer and talking over the music. There were televisions over the bar, a basketball game on some, a hockey game on the others. The whole place was loud and smoky and basically everything that the Glasgow Inn would never be in a thousand years.

There was a back room with big windows overlooking the bridge. It was a little less noisy and there was room to sit down, so I grabbed a table. When the waitress came over-another college kid, of course-I ordered a hamburger and a beer. She didn’t have to card me.

I looked out the window as I ate. There were a million little lights sparkling on the bridge. Funny how it could be so ugly in the daytime and then a few hours later look like a giant piece of art glowing in the darkness. I thought about what I was going to ask Charlie’s friends when they got here. I wasn’t so sure about having them all come at once. Normally, when you’re interviewing several people, you want to keep them separate as much as possible. There’s a group mentality that takes hold when one person gets talking and the others are listening and they each start to chime in and tell the same story. You get each one alone and you usually get a different take on the story from each person telling the tale.

Of course that’s the way you play it when you’re taking statements. When a crime has been committed and you’re trying to sort out the bad guys from the innocent victims. This was nothing like that, so I knew I’d just have to try to ask the right questions, and listen as carefully as I could. Even though at that moment I still had no idea what anyone could say that would make a father feel any better.

At five before eight, a young man and a young woman came into the room. They were obviously looking for someone. And I was obviously the only man in the place more than thirty years old. They spotted me and walked over.

“You must be Mr. McKnight,” the young man said. He had long black hair tied in a ponytail. Not exactly what I’d expect at Michigan Tech, but what the hell did I know? “I’m Wayne. We spoke on the phone.”

“Please, call me Alex.”

“This is Rebecca,” he said, indicating the young woman standing next to him. She was pretty in a slightly plain Midwestern way, with blond hair and green eyes. She was already looking a little nervous, and we hadn’t even gotten down to business yet.

“It’s good to meet you,” I said.

She nodded and pursed her lips, but didn’t say a word.

“Have a seat,” I said. “Can I order you some drinks?”

“Um, I’m afraid I’m not legal yet,” Wayne said as they both sat down across from me. “I turn twenty-one next month.”

That’s when I looked him over and realized how truly young he looked. Rebecca even more so. Hell, I thought, I am sitting in a bar filled with children who have run away from home and are pretending to be college students. They shouldn’t be here alone on a cold winter night and I shouldn’t be here talking to these two about yet another child who hanged himself from a tree.

“You’ll have to excuse me,” I said. “I’m not quite sure how to begin here. So why don’t you just tell me about Charlie, okay?”

That seemed to put him at ease a little bit. Rebecca still looked a little anxious, but as soon as Wayne started talking, she relaxed and even found a few words of her own. The picture they painted for me was of a young man who truly didn’t have an enemy in the world. One of those kids who light up a room the moment they walk in. It might have been a little bit of exaggeration-as-eulogy, but I got the impression that Charlie Razniewski Jr. would be missed by a lot of people.

He had switched to forestry at the beginning of his junior year, after getting together with Rebecca. Before that, he’d been a criminal justice major, as I already knew, hoping to follow in his father’s footsteps. But when Rebecca told him she was a forestry major, well, the whole idea sounded a lot more rewarding to him. More time outside, less time behind a desk. It was just the kind of thing he always secretly knew he wanted to do. At least that’s what he told Rebecca.

They were together for their junior year at Tech. But in the summer Rebecca had the chance to do an internship with the U.S. Forest Service, along with Charlie’s good friend Wayne. Charlie was still playing catch-up with his new major, so he said good-bye to Rebecca for the summer and they both promised to pick up where they left off come September.

As I was hearing the tale, I already knew what was coming next. By the time they saw each other again, Rebecca had spent the whole summer with Wayne, and Charlie had apparently sort of met somebody else, too. That part was a little fuzzy. Bottom line, there was a big fight and an official breakup and then an okay-let’s-be-good-friends a few weeks later. By the time winter break rolled around, everybody was reasonably happy. Or so it seemed.

“I don’t think Charlie’s father knew anything about the breakup,” I said.

“I just feel so bad,” she said. “I can’t help thinking I had something to do with what happened.”

“No, come on,” Wayne said. “That’s not true at all. You know better.”

Wayne sat there rubbing her back for a while as she fought off the tears. That’s when a few more of Charlie’s friends and classmates showed up. It became a jumble of names and young faces at that point, with lots more stories of how great a guy Charlie was and how nobody ever would have thought he’d be the kind of man to hang himself. There were apparently enough people over twenty-one now, so the beers started getting passed around and everything got a little louder. There was even a little bit of dark humor centered around the fact that Charlie was a forestry major and he decided to hang himself from a tree. That’s about when I decided it was time to leave.

Wayne had introduced me to Charlie’s two other apartment-mates-Bradley, whose name I already had on my list, and another kid named RJ. They invited me to come back to the apartment to see where Charlie had lived, so a few minutes later we were all outside. The wind had picked up, so we were all trying to shield our faces from the driving snow as we walked up the hill, away from the water. It was Bradley and RJ and me, with Wayne and Rebecca tagging along behind us.

It was a squat little apartment building on the very top of the hill, assaulted by the wind and the snow. I wasn’t even sure how it was still standing. They opened up the door and we all went inside and slammed the door behind us, flakes of snow still flying around us in the living room as we took off our coats.

It was everything I expected from a college apartment, with odds and ends and cast-off furniture. Posters for rock bands I’d never heard of on three walls, but on the fourth, in place of the crappy little television and the CD player with the cheap speakers, was a forty-eight-inch hi-def LCD television surrounded by a sleek black sound system. I guess that’s the minimum these days, even for four half-starving college kids.

Or rather, make that three. They showed me to the room Charlie shared with Wayne-his half of the room was pretty much empty now.

“The police asked us to box up all his stuff,” Bradley said. He was a big kid, maybe fifty or sixty pounds overweight. A late bloomer with bad skin. I didn’t imagine he had much of a social life. Not up here where the men outnumber the women by a good seven to one.

“It was just clothes and books and a few CDs,” RJ said. He was tall and thin and had dark hair and heavy eyebrows. There was something intense about him, and I’m sure most of the college girls would call him attractive. Unlike Bradley, I was sure he had no trouble finding someone to be with on a lonely Saturday night. “They said they were going to mail it all back to his father.”

That makes sense, I thought, and it also means he’s already seen it all and gone through it. If there was anything to learn from it, he’d already had that chance.

“It’s so weird not having him here,” Bradley said. “I mean, it’s not like we’d even want somebody else in here. Not that you’d find somebody in the middle of the school year. Heck, I don’t even know what I’m talking about.”

I sat down on the bare mattress. Then I stood up and on a whim I lifted up the mattress to see if there was anything hidden underneath. There was nothing. No secret journal into which he poured out his thoughts every night. No answers at all.

When we went back to the living room, the private stash of beer had been tapped into, everybody holding a bottle now and obviously not worrying about the legal drinking age anymore. It had been years since I’d been a cop, of course, and even if I was wearing the uniform that night I wouldn’t have said a word to them. They all sat around drinking in total silence and staring at the floor.

“I want to ask you something,” Rebecca finally said. “Do you think I can talk to Charlie’s father sometime? Just to say how sorry I am?”

“I don’t see why not. He’s in Sault Ste. Marie tonight, staying with a friend. I can give you his phone number.”

“Maybe I should just wait until he goes back home. I don’t want to disturb him right now.”

I nodded my head and let it go. She didn’t really want to talk to the man. At least not for a while. Maybe a year from now, she’ll actually call him.

“I really miss him,” Wayne said. “This is the kind of night he loved. The worse the weather was, the happier he got.”

Everybody smiled at that, and I was sure they were each bringing up their favorite Charlie memories again. Rebecca started to cry about then, and Wayne told her he’d walk her home. They both shook my hand and thanked me for coming all the way out there to talk to them.

“Tell his father I feel so bad,” Wayne said.

“Me, too,” Rebecca said, and that was about all she was able to say before they finally wished me a good night and headed out into the wind and the snow.

I put my beer bottle down on the kitchen table and was expecting to head out myself, but then Bradley started talking again.

“It wasn’t about her,” he said. “I hope you don’t think that.”

“How do you mean?”

“It wasn’t because Charlie and Rebecca broke up. He wasn’t really upset about that at all. In fact, he was kind of relieved when she got involved with Wayne.”

“Come on, Bradley,” RJ said.

“Come on, nothing.”

“I swear to God. Don’t even go there.”

“It’s all right,” I said. “Go on.”

“He knew they weren’t gonna work out,” Bradley said. “So I’m just saying. It’s not like he was all broken up about it or anything.”

RJ just looked at the ceiling and shook his head.

“You know why he was so upset,” Bradley said to him. “You were here. He talked to you more than anyone else.”

RJ raised his hands in surrender. “I’m not saying anything.”

“His father wanted Charlie to be a cop, just like him. When he switched to forestry, his father wasn’t happy. Like at all. Like he’d say, Charlie was giving up a real career doing something important to be a lumberjack or something. He had absolutely no idea what a forestry degree really means.”

I thought back to what Raz had said about the program. Trees, studying trees, he said. Doing things with trees.

“It really got to Charlie, is all I’m saying. He knew his father was totally disappointed with him. They had a really big fight about it.”

“I wouldn’t go that far,” RJ said.

“There’s no use sugarcoating it,” Bradley said. “That doesn’t do anybody any good now. We might as well tell the truth.”

“Don’t you understand?” RJ said. “Sometimes you don’t have to say anything at all. You need to learn that.”

“It’s the truth and you know it. Charlie was miserable because he thought he was letting his father down.”

RJ closed his eyes and put one hand against his forehead.

“I’m not saying he should have thought that,” Bradley said, running out of steam. “I’m not saying it was right. I’m just saying…”

Then he stopped. He had wheeled out the great weight and put it there in front of us. It was invisible yet heavy as cast iron and it would crush any man who would try to carry it.

Yet that’s what I had to do now. I had to strap that weight to my back and walk out into the cold night.

I shook the hands of each of those two young men and left them there. I knew it would be quiet there in the apartment for a long time to come. When I was outside I turned my collar up against the wind and I went back down the hill toward my hotel. The lights on the bridge were glowing. I didn’t feel like sitting in my hotel room yet so I found the loneliest bar on the street, the darkest place to sit and drink with as few people around as possible. No music, no laughter coming from young college kids with their whole lives ahead of them.

I sat at the rail and had my drink. I looked at the dark mirror behind the bottles and I asked that man on the other side of the glass what the hell he was going to do next.