Misery Bay

CHAPTER SEVEN

I drove home in the dark. The wind kicked up and covered the road with white sheets of snow for yards at a time, rocking my truck back and forth. When I finally got back to Paradise, the yellow light was flashing in the middle of town and the Glasgow Inn was still glowing in the darkness. Beyond that the whole town seemed deserted. Usually there’d be snowmobiles zipping all over the place, but when people downstate get the idea in their heads that we’re not getting enough snow, they just don’t come. A cruel irony as I put the plow down and pushed six inches of new snow off Jackie’s empty parking lot.

When I was done, I sat there with the truck idling and asked myself if I really needed to go inside. I didn’t feel like talking about what had happened, but I felt even less like going back to any empty cabin. So I turned off the ignition. Jackie was cleaning up the place and barely looked up when I came in.

“Where have you been?” he said. He poked at the fire with a long iron stick.

“To hell and back,” I said. “Although I’m not sure about the ‘back’ part.” I went behind the bar and grabbed a Molson from the bottom row in the cooler. Then I sat down in my usual chair by the fire.

There was a roar inside my head, louder than a jet engine. Louder than the wind howling away outside in the cold night. I closed my eyes and tried to quiet it but it only got louder until I couldn’t even imagine hearing anything else.

Three days went by. I could still see the blood on the floor every night when I closed my eyes, but the colors were fading and the scene was shifting and turning into something else entirely. A different floor, with different blood. Then another, until they all blended together. If there was anything like true justice in the universe, I’d be exempt from bloody floors for the rest of my life.

I called Agent Long on the second day and she said they were still chasing leads, which might have meant they were getting absolutely nowhere. There was no way to tell. I called her back the next day and this time she asked me point blank to explain why Chief Maven was such a psychotic jackass. Her exact words for him. I was an unlikely person to defend him, but I asked her to remember what had happened to a man who had once been his partner.

“I hear what you’re saying,” she said, “but he’s driving us absolutely crazy over here.”

“How so?” As if I had to ask.

“I thought he understood this was our case, but he’s been up and down the street, personally talking to every neighbor. Plus he’s got his men rounding up every surveillance camera in town.”

“Didn’t you guys think of that?”

There was a silence then, as she processed my little dig.

“We’ve done this a few times before,” she finally said. “I think we’ve got it all covered, thank you very much.”

“Do you have anything new since the last time I talked to you?”

“It’s still ongoing,” she said. Making me wonder, once again, if they had anything at all.

I thanked her all the same, and wished her the best of luck with Chief Maven. Then I called the Soo police station. I asked for the chief and the woman at the desk told me she’d leave a message for him. He didn’t call back.

I shrugged it off for the time being and went back to working on the last cabin with Vinnie. It had finally started snowing hard again, like Beboong, the Ojibwa winter spirit, was making up for lost time. I plowed my road. In the evenings I’d buy Vinnie dinner down at the Glasgow. Jackie was still in a bad mood, chasing away customers. Three days since the day I found Raz on Maven’s kitchen floor, and now everything was almost back to normal.

So why couldn’t I shake the feeling that I was missing something important?

It was a Friday morning. As soon as I woke up, I knew there was only one way to get to the bottom of this thing. Only one person who could help me see things in a different way. I took a hot shower and got dressed and headed out. The wind had died down and the sun was trying to come out. It was almost a nice day, but I knew not to fall for it. You think spring is on the way up here and end up with a broken heart. I grabbed some breakfast at the Glasgow, got back in the truck, and then headed east.

When I hit the Soo I drove over to the Custom Motor Shop on Three Mile Road. It was the last place Leon Prudell had worked and I was hoping he’d still be there. But the man at the desk told me Leon was no longer an employee. Judging by the empty parking lot, I could see why. It’s hard to keep a full staff in the winter when you’re not moving snowmobiles.

I drove down to his house by the airport in Rosedale. I was hoping I wouldn’t have to, but I didn’t see much choice. The house looked quiet when I got there. The kids were off at school, no doubt, and maybe his wife was out shopping or something. That was my hope. I parked my truck and went to the front door. The old tire swing was still hanging from the tree in the front yard. Now it was covered with as much snow as could balance on its rounded surface. I looked at the rope tied to the thick branch above the tire swing and I couldn’t help picturing a young man hanging there. Something that would probably always come to me now, whenever I saw a rope and a tree.

Eleanor answered the door. She was roughly the size of an NFL linebacker, and was probably just as strong. I had seen her lift Leon completely off the ground when he had two broken ankles, and Leon wasn’t exactly a ballerina himself.

“Alex,” she said, and then I saw the cloud pass over her face. It was the same as ever and this is exactly why I didn’t want to be here. The woman loved me, I was sure of that. But she hated to see my face at her door.

The lead story on Leon Prudell is that he grew up wanting to be a private eye. It’s the only thing he’s ever really wanted to do. We got tangled up, once upon a time, and then we sort of worked together and for a while there he even referred to me as his partner. He even had business cards made up. After that, when I made it clear that I wanted no part in the private investigator business, he opened up his own office in Sault Ste. Marie. That office is closed now, and Leon has held a number of jobs since then. Still, he’s never given up on that original dream.

Any time he sees me, that dream is rekindled-which wouldn’t be a problem if that dream wasn’t completely impractical and occasionally dangerous. In fact, if Eleanor really knew how close I had come to getting Leon killed, well… the woman is strong enough to kill me with her bare hands.

“I’m just stopping by to see Leon,” I said. “I haven’t seen him around in a while.”

“He’s not here. What do you really need him for?” She looked at me the way I used to look at drug buyers when they tried to explain why they just happened to be driving down a certain street.

“I just want to talk to him. I’m not dragging him into anything, I swear.”

She opened the door and held out her arms.

“Come here,” she said.

I took a breath and waded in for the hug. I saw stars as she squeezed me.

“It’s good to see you,” she said, “but you know I hate it when you get him into trouble. I end up worrying about both of you.”

“I told you, I’m not here for that. How’s the rest of the family, anyway? You look good.”

“Don’t try to butter me up, Alex. It won’t work.” But she was smiling as she said it.

“Seriously, Eleanor. Where’s he working these days?”

“He’s up at the movies. He works there a few days a week.”

“The movies? You mean, like an usher?”

“They don’t have ushers anymore, Alex. What do you think this is,

1948?”

“Well, okay, so he’s like a ticket-taker or something?”

“Something like that. Whatever they need him to do. It’s just a temporary thing. He’s got a few other jobs lined up. Real full-time stuff.”

“Good to hear. Okay. Well, maybe I’ll wander up there. See how he’s doing?”

She gave me the look again.

“Just to say hello,” I said. “I promise.”

She let me leave without another bear hug. So I was back in my truck with all of my ribs intact, heading back up to the Soo. I was feeling a little guilty. I mean, I hadn’t lied to her. I was only going to talk to Leon. Yet the reason I was going to talk to him was because once again I had hit a dead end, and he was the only person I could think of who’d be crazy enough to listen to me. And smart enough to maybe even help me see the answer.

I know most towns in America have a grand old theater that’s probably shut down or already turned into something else entirely. If you’re lucky, the theater in your town is being reclaimed and cleaned up and turned back into what it was a hundred years ago. In Sault Ste. Marie, that would be the Soo Theater, and yes, it is being restored to its former glory. In the meantime, if you want to see a movie you have to go to the one cineplex out on the main business loop, down the road from the Walmart. It’s got the big parking lot and the eight separate screens, and on a lonely weekday in April you can go sit and watch an afternoon matinee on one of the eight screens and be the only person watching.

Leon was standing at the snack bar when I walked in. A big man with untamable orange hair, you’d never miss him, even if he wasn’t wearing his trademark flannel. Today, he had an official-looking blue Cineplex shirt on that didn’t quite fit him, and he had his name printed on a gold badge. He was staring off into the middle distance when I walked up to the snack bar, so it took a moment for him to notice me.

“Alex! What the hell?”

“Good to see you, Leon.”

“What are you doing here? Are you seeing a movie? Can I get you some popcorn or something?”

“No thanks,” I said. “I actually just wanted to talk to you for a minute.”

“I don’t know. As you can see, I’m pretty swamped here.”

“Yeah, it’s a madhouse,” I said, looking around at the movie posters and the ugly carpeting and the velvet ropes. “But maybe you can break free for a minute.”

He came out from behind the counter and sat down at one of the little tables they had scattered around the place. He made a sound when he sat down, like an old man on his last legs. He rubbed his eyes and smiled when he caught me looking at him.

“It’s been a tough month,” he said. “I’m not selling sleds anymore.”

“I know. I went by there first. Then I went to your house.”

“My wife let you live, I see.”

“She did.”

“She loves you, you know.”

“As long as I’m not asking to borrow one of your guns.”

“I was hoping that’s why you were here today.”

“Nothing that exciting,” I said. “I just want to run something by you and get your opinion.”

“Okay, shoot.”

“You read about the murder at the chief’s house?”

“I sure did. Wait a minute, didn’t the paper say ‘an unidentified local man’ found the body? Don’t tell me.”

“You’re looking at the unidentified local man,” I said. “The victim was a U.S. marshal named Charles Razniewski Sr. He and Maven used to ride together for the Michigan State Police.”

“Okay, and?”

“His son committed suicide in January. And Raz-that’s his nickname-Raz hired me to go out to Houghton to find out everything I could about his state of mind that night.”

“Are you kidding me? That sounds impossible.”

“I told him to hire you, Leon. I really did.”

He waved it away. “Come on, like Ellie would let me go do something like that.”

“It wasn’t dangerous. It was just talking to people.”

“It still would have been me trying to be a PI again,” he said, looking away. “That would have been enough. But anyway, what’s the problem?”

“You mean besides coming back and finding the client dead on Chief Maven’s kitchen floor?”

“Besides that, yes. I assume there’s more.”

“That’s just it,” I said. “I don’t know what it is. It’s just a feeling I’ve had that I’ve somehow missed something.”

“Do you think there’s a connection between the suicide and the murder?”

“I don’t know. The FBI doesn’t think so. They think Raz was murdered because of some high-profile cases he’s been working on down in Detroit. He’s been a marshal down there for the past ten years.”

“I read that part in the paper, yes.”

I smiled and shook my head. “Do you normally memorize everything you read in the paper?”

“When it’s about a local murder, yes. But go on. You say the FBI doesn’t see a link?”

“Not that they’d talk about. They haven’t really said much to me at all.”

“When you went out there to look into the suicide,” he said, “did you find anything suspicious?”

“You mean to indicate it wasn’t a suicide at all? No, I didn’t. Not really.”

“Not really?”

“Well, I mean, I just got this feeling that something wasn’t quite right about it. I didn’t find anything concrete.”

“But your instincts told you something was wrong,” he said. “You should definitely listen to that.”

“That’s the thing. I’ve been wondering if maybe Raz himself had an instinct about it.”

Leon narrowed his eyes and leaned in close, like I was finally getting to the good stuff.

“I mean think about it,” I said. “Your son kills himself, right? It’s the worst thing that could ever happen. Obviously. But why try to find out more about it? It’s not going to fix anything.”

“Maybe he just wanted to know. So he didn’t have to wonder anymore.”

“That’s what he said. It made sense at the time, but ever since then, I don’t know. I’m just thinking maybe there was something else. Like maybe he himself knew that the idea just didn’t make any sense.”

“How could it ever make sense? For anyone?”

“Think about everyone you know,” I said. “Out of all those people, there are some that simply would not kill themselves. You know what I mean? Those people, if somebody told you… you just wouldn’t believe it. Am I right?”

“Whereas some people…” he said, leaning back in his chair. “You might still be shocked, but that doesn’t mean you wouldn’t ultimately believe it.”

“Exactly. Maybe that was part of why Raz couldn’t leave it alone.”

“Even if it was just a half-conscious thing, you mean. Interesting.”

“It’s just a gut feeling. I’m probably wrong.”

“I bet you’re not. So tell me what you found out when you went out there.”

“All right,” I said. “Here’s what happened…”

I gave him the same rundown I’d given to Agent Long. Everything I did, from the moment I met Raz to the moment I came back to town and found him dead on the floor. Leon sat absolutely still, watching my face as I talked and absorbing every single word. Even Agent Long, who presumably interviewed people almost every day, didn’t seem to be listening with half the attention that Leon was giving me.

When I was done, he thought about it for a while.

“The kid was drunk. Yet somehow he was able to string up a rope just right, stand on the back of his car when it was snowing, and it was probably zero degrees at that point, then he stepped off and hanged himself.”

“Correct.”

“I understand why you’d have a problem with that,” he said, “but it’s probably not impossible. Not if you really wanted to do it.”

“Not impossible, no. But it still bothers me.”

He thought about it some more.

“There might be something else,” he finally said. “Something you haven’t told me yet.”

“I told you everything. Why would I leave anything out?”

“Because you don’t think it’s important. Even though it might be exactly what you’re looking for.”

I threw up my hands.

“Tell me everything again,” he said. “But this time, don’t leave anything out. Tell me about every second. Everything you saw. Every word that was said, as best as you can remember.”

I let out a long breath.

“Okay,” I said. “Uh, let’s see. I started driving out there on Wednesday morning…”

“No, go back. Start with the first time you met your client.”

“That was the day before. I met him at Chief Maven’s office.”

I told him everything I could remember. I played it all back in my mind, trying to pick up every word he said. How he asked me to do this thing for him. Then, the next day, driving out to Houghton, making my detour to Misery Bay. Even the way I asked the old man at the diner why the place had gotten that name, and how he didn’t have a good answer. When I got to the place itself, Leon made me slow down and describe every detail. Where the tree was in relation to the parking lot. Where the lake was.

“There were no buildings in sight?” he asked. “No summer houses or anything?”

“Not that I could see. I mean, I knew there were a few up the road.”

“No trails leading to the parking lot? Just the road?”

“I think there might have been a snowmobile trail in the woods, but it didn’t look like it had been used recently.”

“You said there was fresh snowfall that day. Either way, that has nothing to do with what might have happened three months ago.”

“Granted. Good point.”

“Okay, so go on.”

I continued with my conversation with the undersheriff. Everything he told me about being the one who had to climb up the ladder to cut Charlie down, and his answers to all of my questions. The length of the rope. The way the car was discovered with the driver’s side door open, the key still in the ignition. The car out of gas and the battery dead.

I was about to move on to the interviews with the friends, but then I remembered what the undersheriff had told me about his own personal experience with suicide. When I was done with that, Leon stopped me.

“Tell me that part again,” he said. “Slow down even more and tell me everything.”

“He just said it seemed like a lot of suicides going on. There was this other kid who had killed himself, down in-where was it? Iron Mountain, I think he said. The son of somebody he knew, or worked with, or whatever. Then he told me about his own father-in-law, how he ran away one day and killed himself in his car.”

“His father-in-law-that wasn’t this winter, was it?”

“No, that was a while ago, I think. Some years ago.”

“Okay, so put that one aside for a minute. Tell me more about this other suicide. Think hard. What exactly did he say?”

I closed my eyes and put myself back in that office. The undersheriff sitting across from me, with that pained look on his face as he talked about young men killing themselves.

“It was definitely Iron Mountain,” I said. “This winter. I think he said like two weeks after Charlie hanged himself. Something about going back behind his barn and shooting himself in the head. Yeah, that was it. But then he went right into talking about his father-in-law.”

“Because that was the thing that was important in his own experience. That was the connection. But not for you, right? Not at all. For you, it’s just this one other suicide that happened to take place two weeks later. You said the kid’s father was what again?”

“Somebody he knew down in Iron Mountain,” I said. “Somebody who… no, wait, it was a sergeant. I remember that now. He said it was a sergeant’s son.”

“A sergeant, as in someone in the military? Or in the state police?”

“I got the feeling he was talking about another cop. But if he’s a sergeant, yeah. He couldn’t be another county guy. He didn’t say sheriff or deputy. He said sergeant.”

“So now you have two sons of state police officers, killing themselves within two weeks of each other.”

“But Raz was only a state guy for like two years. A long time ago.”

“Okay, but either way, it’s still two men in law enforcement, right? Could it just be a coincidence? Maybe. Maybe not.”

“Damn,” I said. “Of course. It was right there, but I just wasn’t seeing it. You’re amazing, Leon. Yet again.”

“I think you would have worked it out. Now that you see it, what are you going to do?”

“I guess I could try to find out more about this other suicide. Maybe give the undersheriff a call, although the FBI was pretty adamant about keeping this case to themselves. They wouldn’t even let Chief Maven anywhere near it.”

“You said they were investigating the murder of the father. Who says that has anything to do with the son? Besides, didn’t he pay you to look into it?”

“He never got the chance. Not that I would have taken any money from him.”

“But even now,” Leon said, “you could theoretically send a bill to his estate.”

“I’d never do that.”

“But you could.”

“What are you getting at?”

He waited patiently for it to come to me. The snow fell outside and the wind blew and the earth turned a few degrees and then I finally got it.

“He hired me to look into his son’s suicide,” I said. “If I feel like there are still unanswered questions…”

“Then you’re still on the case.”

“No. This is crazy. Come on.”

He leaned forward and put both hands flat on the table.

“You know I’m right,” he said, drawing out each word. “As long as you don’t have your answers yet, you are still on this case.”

I felt bad leaving him there. I could see in his eyes how much he missed working on a case. Any case at all. And it was obvious to me, more than ever, that he was way better at this than I would ever be. He didn’t deserve to be standing behind a snack bar, serving popcorn to teenagers. I couldn’t help wondering if my visit had made him feel even worse.

With that cheery thought in my head, I drove over to the other side of town and parked next to the City-County Building. I went inside and asked the receptionist if I could see the chief.

“He’s not here right now,” she said. “Can I take a message?”

“How about the FBI agents?” I said, remembering how well that message business worked the last time I called him. “Are they here?”

“They left for Detroit this morning. I think they were all done with their work up here.”

That surprised me a little bit. I mean, it’s not like I expected them to come back and fill me in on everything, but damn. Did they hit a big dead end up here? Or did they just get tired of the weather?

“Where’s the chief right now?” I asked. “Is there any way I can reach him?”

She looked both ways before lowering her voice. “I think he’s actually out on some kind of administrative leave. I haven’t seen him at all for two days straight.”

“The chief? Out on leave? Are you kidding me?”

“They just told me to take messages for him, and to refer anything important to the county. Which I’ve never done before.”

“That is definitely strange.” I thanked her and went back outside. There was only one other place I could think of going, so that’s exactly where I want. Down Easterday Avenue, past the college, to Summit Street. To Chief Maven’s house.

Three days had passed since the last time I had been there. The police cars were all gone now, of course. Even the crime scene tape had been taken down. You’d have no way of knowing anything unusual had happened inside the house.

I went to the front door and knocked. I was about to knock again when the door opened and I saw Chief Maven standing there holding a paint roller.

“What do you want?” he said.

“I left you a message. You never called me back.”

He shook his head and turned away from me. “Come on in.” He was wearing old jeans and a T-shirt speckled with paint. “Wipe your feet.”

I went inside and did as I was told. There were plastic drop cloths everywhere, and the unventilated smell of paint was almost overwhelming. It took me back to my days right after baseball, when I kept from starving by painting houses.

“I’m kind of busy here,” he said, his voice coming to me from the kitchen. “So make it quick.”

“Good to see you, too.”

“What was that?”

“Nothing,” I said, turning the corner. The kitchen had been virtually taken apart. The table and chairs were gone, and everything else that wasn’t bolted down had been removed. Beneath the paint smell I caught a strong undercurrent of bleach. There was a plastic tarp on the floor and from the bare wood along the edges I could tell he had ripped up all of the tiles.

The chief poured more cream-colored paint into his tray. It looked like he was about halfway done with his first coat.

“How’s your wife?” I said.

“She’s in Amsterdam.”

“Really?”

“My daughter’s been traveling around Europe since right after Christmas,” he said, rolling the paint on the wall. “Kind of a lifelong dream. When this happened here…”

He paused for just a half second to look down on the floor, at the exact spot where Raz breathed his last breath.

“When this happened, my wife took the chance to go over and spend some time with her.”

“That sounds like a good thing.” I tried to remember what I knew about Chief Maven’s daughter and came up with only one thing. The very first time I sat in his office, I saw the picture of a young girl on his desk and asked him if it had come with the frame.

“Do you know how much it costs to fly to Amsterdam at the last minute? Take a guess.”

“I have no idea.”

“Soo to Detroit. Detroit to New York. New York to Amsterdam. Twenty-three-hundred dollars.”

“That’s impressive.”

“It was worth every penny to get her out of this place. I don’t know how she’ll ever be able to live here again.”

“What about you?” I said. “It looks like you’ve been here nonstop. Do you think that’s a good idea?”

He looked up at me as he went to put more paint on his roller.

“Where the hell else am I going to go? They took away my badge, you know.”

“I hear you were driving those FBI agents a little crazy.”

“The FBI can kiss my ass. They can’t touch me. But the mayor, that little spineless weasel, he kinda suggested that maybe I’d be better off taking a personal leave of absence for a while.”

“That doesn’t sound like taking away your badge.”

“Don’t be an idiot. They forced me out. Like what the hell else am I supposed to do with myself? The job is all I know anymore.”

That much was true, I thought. It was hard to imagine him doing anything else.

I watched him paint. He accidentally got some wall paint on the white ceiling and spent the next five minutes trying to fix it. He was getting more and more aggravated and I knew he’d blow up at me if I stayed there. But for some reason I knew I couldn’t leave.

What he was doing… it was something I knew so well myself. He had already cleaned the place within an inch of its life and now he was painting, and if I left him there he’d probably start knocking down the walls. Anything to change the one thing that couldn’t be changed.

“I can’t believe I’m about to say this,” I said, “but I wonder if you’d like to help me keep my promise to Raz.”

He stopped painting. “What are you talking about?

“I’ll tell you the whole story, but first I need to use your phone.”

“For what? Who are you calling?”

“The undersheriff of Houghton County.”

An hour later, we were making our plans. We’d be leaving early the next morning and driving all the way out to Iron Mountain. A long trip with such an unlikely passenger, but we both knew it was something we needed to do. We had to see it with our own eyes, this place behind a barn in a forgotten corner of the Upper Peninsula. One more cold and lonely place where one more young man somehow decided to end his own life.

And we’re rolling…

… These are the Monster’s instruments. Pan slowly here.

… One man’s leather belt, size 38.

… One big metal spoon.

… One broom, minus the broom. Just the handle, I mean.

… Then this thing. I have no idea what this is.

… But it would probably hurt more than all the other things put together.

… If it was real.

… Good thing these are just movie props, eh?

And cut.