North of Nowhere

Chapter Twenty-three

We had our drinks. We had Margaret’s world-famous beef stew. I looked at each man, one by one-Jackie sitting there wearing some clothes Bennett had given him, the sleeves a good six inches too long. Jonathan, sitting next to his father, his left hand on Jackie’s back. Gill, who had come along to help his friend, without ever questioning us. Leon, his orange hair in complete disarray from the wind and the spray off the lake, still wearing his black windbreaker, sitting there with a weary smile on his face. My partner.

I couldn’t help feeling something for everybody there, even Bennett, the jackass who started this whole mess-sitting there with his head in bandages, telling Margaret all about the rescue, getting just about everything wrong. I could only imagine what the story would sound like a year from now. Bennett kept looking up at Ham, who was pacing around the room, still riding his adrenaline high. The look on Bennett’s face made me almost forgive him. Whatever was going through his mind when he started all this, none of that seemed to matter much now. Bottom line, Bennett did this for his son-his other son, Sean, the one who had gotten himself into so much trouble. It was a stupid, dangerous thing to do. But I didn’t have a son. Maybe there’s no way I’d really understand it unless I did.

The sun was going down when we finally left. I took Jackie and Jonathan home in my truck, with Jackie in the middle, falling asleep once again. We practically carried him up the back stairs, took Bennett’s oversized clothes off him, and put him in bed.

Jonathan and I went downstairs to the bar. We had another drink together.

“Tell me something,” I said. “Did Jackie ever tell you about his father?”

“Oh sure. My grandfather Eli. I never got to meet him, of course, but I’ve heard some of the stories. He had a million of ’em, I guess. Those years out on the north Atlantic, hunting U-boats.”

“He’s out there right now, huh? In that lake?”

“My father never told you any of this?”

“No,” I said.

“You should ask him about it.”

“I’ll do that.”

I watched him drain his glass. He looked so much like Jackie, on this night more than ever. At least to my eyes.

“What do you say?” he finally said. “Think he’d mind if we didn’t open for business tonight?”

“Just tell him it was my idea,” I said.

We kept the “Closed” sign on the door. Jonathan went up to his bed. I went home to mine.

I drove down to the end of my road, got out of the truck and looked at the ashes. I stood there in the dying light, trying to feel something, but I had nothing left. I went back to my cabin and crawled into bed. I could still feel the pitch and roll of the water as I fell asleep.

The phone rang. I sat up, my heart racing. For a moment, I was back on the boat, trying to find my gun. Why was it dark?

I found my bearings, took a breath, and looked at the clock. It was just after midnight. The phone rang again.

“McKnight, this is Chief Maven.”

“Chief?”

“I’m at Winston Vargas’s house. He’s dead. Get over here now.”

“Vargas is dead?”

“That’s what I said. Get up, get dressed, and get over here.”

“Why?”

“Because I want you to see him, first of all. And because I want to ask you some questions. I’ll see you in thirty minutes.”

He hung up.

I drove in the darkness, from Paradise to the Soo, the second night in a row I had made this trip. There were four Soo police cars in the Vargas’s driveway. I parked on the street, went up to the door, and rang the bell. A Soo officer opened the door. I told him Chief Maven had called me. He showed me in and had me wait in the living room.

I sat there for a few minutes. While I waited, I tried to work out just how I was supposed to feel about Winston Vargas. It was no surprise he was dead. And yes, he had brought it upon himself. This would have happened to him eventually, one way or another. But not tonight. Not if he hadn’t been out there on the water with us.

I could hear the camera snapping pictures in the next room. I could see the light of the flashbulbs on the hallway floor. Finally, Maven poked his head around the corner. He looked tired.

“Come here,” he said.

I got up and went to the other room. It was the entertainment room, the same room where everything had started. Vargas was lying face first on the carpet, not four feet from where he was lying the night of the robbery. But this time, he wasn’t getting up, at least not until the coroner got there and zipped him into a bag.

I’d seen men with the backs of their heads blown off. None of them were bald like Vargas. Somehow it made the whole thing that much more sickening. There was no hair to soak up any of the blood, or to hide any of the grim details, like where the bullet went in or how much of the skull was destroyed. I had to look away.

“I suppose we should go back to the station,” Maven said. “Frankly, I don’t have the energy right now. I’m just going to ask you straight out, right here. Do you know anything about this?”

“I don’t know who did this,” I said. Technically, it was the truth.

“Do you have any idea why Vargas would be planning on a long trip? He’s got two suitcases packed upstairs.”

“We don’t exactly hang out together, Chief. How would I know?”

“Do you know anything about Vargas’s boat? Why, for instance, there’d be thirty high-end appliances packed into the cabin?”

“He was obviously into something pretty shady, Chief. Sort of sheds light on what happened here, doesn’t it?”

He looked at me. “It’s hard to believe you never made detective. You’re a natural.”

“I’m not trying to be a smart-ass, Chief. I’m just saying-”

“Do you happen to know anything about two men named Marcus and Derrick Forsythe?”

I hesitated. If I denied it outright, it could come back to hang me. “I think I know who they are,” I said. “Somebody’s been threatening me, along with Bennett, Jackie, and Gill. They thought we had something to do with the robbery, that maybe there was more money involved, and that we had it.”

“Why would they think that?”

“Because you arrested three of us,” I said. “And I was guilty by association. It was all a mistake.”

“Caused by our mistake in making the arrests?”

“Chief, this is no joke. I’m sure they’re the ones who set my cabin on fire yesterday.”

“Yeah, well, you won’t have to worry about them anymore. We heard their boat washed ashore in Batchawana Bay a few hours ago. There was nobody aboard, just a lot of blood and about a hundred bullet holes.”

“So those are your three robbers,” I said. “These two Forsythe guys and this other guy, Danny Cox.”

“Uh-huh. It ties up pretty nicely, eh? All three robbers are dead.”

“And one of them,” I said, “I guess it had to be Cox-he was holding out on the other two. He set up Bennett, Jackie, and Gill just to cover himself.”

“So the DA should drop all the charges.”

“That’s up to him,” I said. “But I can’t imagine he’ll want to push this too hard.”

“No,” Maven said. “Knowing him, I don’t suppose he will.”

“Where’s Mrs. Vargas? And for that matter…” I looked around. Come to think of it, something else was missing. “Where’s the dog?”

“Mrs. Vargas is at the hospital,” he said. “She’s in shock. She saw the whole thing, apparently. She said two men walked right in, told her not to worry, they didn’t shoot women or dogs. They did him right here on the floor, one shot, and then they left. When we got here, the dog was practically foaming at the mouth. Damned little thing put up quite a fight when we tried to remove him.”

“So where is he now?”

“He’s in the garage. He just stopped barking a few minutes ago, must have run out of gas.”

“Can I see him?”

“What the hell for?”

“I just want to see him.”

“You go right ahead, McKnight. He’ll tear your face right off.”

I went through the kitchen, opened the door to the garage, and prepared myself for the attack. It never came.

“Miata,” I said. “Where are you?”

I turned the light on, saw Vargas’s Saab parked in one spot, his wife’s blue Miata in the other. I didn’t see the dog.

“Miata, come on out. I don’t need a sneak attack tonight.”

I walked around both cars. No sign of the dog. Finally, I got down on my hands and knees. The dog was under Vargas’s car. He was shivering.

“I know you’ve had a tough night,” I said. Hell, he’d seen his master’s head get blown off. “Just come here.”

When I reached for him, he bit me. I pulled my hand back, looked at the little drops of blood forming between my thumb and forefinger.

“You really got me,” I said. “Do you feel better now?”

I reached in again. This time he nipped the end of my ring finger.

“Miata, there’s something you should know about me. We’re actually a lot alike. If I know I’m right, I’ll fight anybody. You can bite me all you want, I’m not going to give up until I get you out of here. So give us both a break, huh?”

I reached for him again, gave him a little fake this way, then that way, and finally grabbed him by the collar. He was all teeth and claws when I picked him up and held him against my chest. I kept holding him tight while he fought me for a good five minutes. Then he gave up. When I took a step, he fought me some more. I held him. Five minutes later, I was back in the house with him.

“What are you doing with that dog?” Maven said. “Are you crazy?”

“Probably,” I said. “I wanna take him. Otherwise, he’ll just go to the pound, right?”

“We’d hold him until Mrs. Vargas was ready to claim him.”

“I don’t think she will,” I said. “If she does, just tell her to call me, okay?”

He shook his head. “Fine, McKnight. The two of you deserve each other.”

When I got to the truck, I expected Miata to put up another fight. Instead, he just curled up on the far corner of the front seat.

“I know how you feel,” I said. “I feel the same way. Tell you what, instead of you coming home with me, I’ve got an even better idea.”

I drove south to Rosedale. It was after one in the morning now, but I knew Leon was a night owl. I saw a couple of lights on inside the house when I pulled up. Miata let me pick him up this time. When Leon opened the door, he took one look at the dog and said, “Vargas is dead.”

“They got to him,” I said. “He had his bags packed.”

Leon shook his head. “You wanna come in?”

“No, that’s all right,” I said. “I couldn’t leave the dog there, so I was wondering if maybe your kids could look after him for a while.”

“You don’t want to?”

“We sorta got off on the wrong foot,” I said. “Besides, he’s too much dog for me.”

Leon took Miata, scratched his head, and said, “No problem, Alex. Between the four of us, we should be able to keep up with him.”

“I appreciate it.”

“Come on in, Alex. One drink.”

I went in and sat at his kitchen table, had a drink with him.

“I’m packing up the office tomorrow,” he said. “I’m giving up the private eye biz.”

“You don’t think you can make it?”

“I had one customer. Look what happened.”

“You saved Jackie, Leon. You came up with the whole thing.”

“Even more reason to retire,” he said. “Go out on top.”

“I can’t thank you enough,” I said.

“That’s what partners are for.”

We drank to that. I said good night to him. I left Leon with his family, and his new dog, and drove home alone.

It wouldn’t go away.

Everything else went back to normal. The charges were officially dropped. I spent most evenings having dinner at the Glasgow Inn, watching the Tigers on his television set. Jackie and I didn’t talk much about what had happened. One night, he asked me when I’d be ready to play poker again.

“I’m ready when you’re ready,” I said. “Just do me one favor.”

“What’s that?”

“Keep the game right here in the bar. We don’t play at some stranger’s house.”

“Typical,” he said. “You never want to go anywhere.”

That’s how I knew Jackie was getting over it. Every day, he was acting a little bit more like his old self again. Whether I liked it or not.

The summer passed. It got colder at night. The sunsets came earlier. They kept working on the golf course down in Brimley, but nobody was talking about major development. The new money hadn’t found us yet.

For now at least, our secret was still safe.

I worked on the last cabin every day, making runs to the dump with half-melted bed frames and blackened pipes, clearing away all the charred wood, getting the site ready. In another couple of weeks they’d deliver my load of white pine logs. I’d rebuild the cabin by hand, doing it the right way, the way my father had taught me back when I was eighteen years old. I’d use the original foundation, and my father’s stone chimney, and I’d rebuild the whole thing from the ground up, no matter how long it took me.

All that work, out in the sun, it should have cleared my head. It should have helped me get over it.

But it kept coming back to me, usually at night. Just as I closed my eyes, I’d be back on the boat. I’d see the same scene, played out over and over, hear the same words spoken.

Then one day, one of the last warm days of the summer, I was breaking up the one corner of the old cabin that hadn’t burned. I would use it for firewood. I had sharpened my ax, and was swinging it in the air, splitting the logs in half, and then into quarters.

Swing. Chunk. Swing. Chunk. Swing.

I stopped.

The ax hung in the air. I dropped it to the ground.

I stood there and thought about it, played it back again and again, just the one piece of it, one small loop out of the whole episode.

I got in my truck and drove.

Bennett was sitting at one of the tables when I walked in. Ham was behind the bar. I didn’t see Margaret anywhere.

“Alex!” Bennett said when he looked up at me. “How the hell are you? I’m glad you stopped in! Ham, pour the man a beer.”

I sat down. Ham brought the beer over. He put his hand on my shoulder as he put the beer down in front of me. “On the house,” he said.

“Damned straight,” Bennett said. “This man never pays for another drink. Not in this bar.”

I didn’t drink the beer.

“Tell me again,” I said. “How did he get the money out of the house?”

“What?”

“Your son, Sean. The one who took off with all the money. How did he get it out of the house?”

“We were assuming he had it under the bag-you know, those black plastic bags they were wearing.”

“Seven hundred thousand dollars,” I said. “Minus thirty thousand for his partners. He had all that money under that bag?”

“He must have, Alex. How else would he have gotten it out of the house?”

“Exactly,” I said. “How else?”

“Alex, what are you talking about? What’s the problem here?”

“I’m just wondering,” I said. “Maybe he did something else with all that money. Maybe he threw it out the window. It would explain why he broke the window in the first place.”

Bennett looked at me. He raised his hands in the air. “I don’t get it.”

“If he threw it out the window, somebody else must have picked it up.”

I looked over my shoulder. Ham was pouring another beer. He stopped.

“How did it work, Ham? Were you on the shoreline? Or on the river?”

“Hold on one minute,” Bennett said. “Surely you’re not accusing Ham. You can’t come in here and say that about my son, Alex. Not my good son. Not Ham.”

“It wasn’t just Sean and Ham, your good son,” I said. “It was you . You were in on this from the beginning, Bennett. And you know what the best part is? That little speech you gave me on the boat. Remember? ‘There’s no good money, Alex. It’s all bad. I hate money, Alex.’”

“Alex, you are so out of line right now. I know you helped us out, but…”

“When your friends got arrested, you kept lying about it,” I said. “When Jackie got fucking kidnapped, you kept lying about it.”

“All right, that’s enough. You’re gonna have to leave, Alex.”

“What are you gonna buy with that money?” I said. “A nice new SUV to drive around? An even bigger television?”

“Alex, out.”

“Don’t you want to know how I figured it out?”

Bennett sat there with his arms folded. He didn’t say a word.

“When we were on that boat, before Vargas’s boat got to us, I was telling Blondie to take the money. You remember that? I was saying, ‘Here, take it. Give us Jackie. Take the money and run before Isabella’s men get here.’ You were behind me saying, ‘Don’t be a fool, take the money.’ And I was just thinking, Bennett, shut up for God’s sake. I wasn’t really paying attention to what you were saying. It didn’t come to me until today, as a matter of fact. You told him there was seven hundred thousand dollars in the bag. You used that exact figure.”

“That’s how much we were talking about,” Bennett said. “You just said so yourself, when you asked me where Sean had put the money. You said seven hundred thousand dollars. That’s how much Vargas had in his safe.”

“You didn’t know that,” I said. “At the time, you had no idea. Or at least you shouldn’t have. First you told me there was only thirty thousand, and Sean got nothing. Remember? Then you told me there must have been more after all, and that Sean had disappeared. You never could have known how much money was in that safe, Bennett. Unless you were in on it yourself.”

I could hear Ham coming back out from behind the bar.

“How long has Jackie known you?” I said. “Fifty years? A half a century of being your best friend?”

This is what the whole summer had come down to. This summer of secrets. The biggest secret of all was what a bag full of money could make a man do.

“It’s all on you, Bennett. Everything we had to go through. Vargas dead, your son’s friend dead. Jackie almost dead. It’s all on you.”

Ham was right behind me. Bennett was standing up. They were both a hell of a lot bigger than I was.

I didn’t care.

It’s like I told the dog. If I know I’m right, I’ll fight anybody.

A few hours later, I stopped in at the Glasgow Inn. It was cold that night. It was cold and the wind was blowing hard enough to drive three-foot waves against the rocks. The sound was familiar to me. It came to me as soon as I turned off the truck and listened.

Summer was over, that’s what the sound said. No matter what the calendar said, the lake was turning the page to fall. For the last ten thousand years, the lake has always had its way.

When I walked in, I saw a nice fire going. It was a welcome sight. I sat down in one of the big, overstuffed chairs and put my feet up. Jackie took one look at me, then brought over an ice bag and a Canadian.

“Now what?” he said.

“My face is having a hell of a week,” I said. I held the ice bag over my left eye.

“You gonna tell me what happened?”

“Sit down.”

He sat in the other chair and put his feet up next to mine.

“First you gotta tell me something,” I said.

“What’s that?”

“You gotta tell me about your father.”

“Come on, Alex.”

“I’m serious. I want to hear it. Start at the beginning.”

“It’s a long story,” he said. He looked into the fire.

“My evening is free,” I said. “Tell me.”

So he did. While the wind blew outside, I sat by the fire and listened to the story of Elias Connery, how he came to Lake Superior when he was twenty years old, how he fell in love with a girl in a bar, and also with the lake itself. He went to war, he had a son, he came back to the lake, and now he was a part of it. And would be forever.

I didn’t want him to finish, because then it would be my turn. I’d have to tell him what had happened over at O’Dell’s place. After fifty years, he was about to lose his best friend. Meaning he’d be stuck with me now. Alex McKnight would be his best friend in the world.

Talk about a big job. I hoped I could handle it.

I sure as hell was gonna try.