The hunting wind

CHAPTER 14

It felt as if I had already logged a thousand miles that day, but back I went across the state as the sun went down, right through Grand Rapids, until I hit Lake Michigan. I turned north in Muskegon, running up M-31 to the outer edges of the Manistee National Forest. I passed a couple towns called Whitehall and Montague, the last real towns I’d see before heading to the shoreline. There was a sign inviting me to come see the world’s largest weather vane, but a man can only take so much excitement in one day. I took a little road called B-5 to a tiny place called Stony Lake, and then the road started calling itself Scenic Drive. It didn’t matter what they called the road, because you wouldn’t even be on it unless you knew where you were going. There were a few summer houses looking out over the water, then long stretches of road with nothing but pine trees. I had the bartender’s hand-drawn map on the seat next to me. I knew I was on the right road, and I was just starting to wonder if he had led me into the middle of nowhere as a joke, when I finally came to an intersection and the only traffic light I’d seen since leaving Montague, WELCOME TO ORCUS BEACH, the sign said. Below those words was the same picture I had seen on Chief Rudiger’s hat, with the cannon sitting on the mound of sand.

I drove through the town. It was dark. The only streetlights on the main road were mounted on wooden poles in front of the businesses-a gas station, an IGA market, a little video store. There were neighborhoods spreading out into the darkness on either side of the road, behind the businesses. From what little I could see, it looked like the bigger houses were on the west side of town, facing the water, or facing away from the town, depending on how you thought about it.

The town hall was on the west side of the street, attached to the fire department. I pulled into the lot and drove all around the place, thinking maybe I’d see a squad car. I didn’t. I stopped the truck and got out, went to the door in the back marked ORCUS BEACH POLICE DEPARTMENT. Looking through the glass door, I could see one desk with a police radio on it, a map on the wall, a bulletin board with a calendar stuck to it. There was nobody there. Maybe Chief Rudiger is on his way to Farmington, I thought. Maybe he’s following the hot lead I gave him about the shotgun.

Or maybe he was home reading the paper.

I got back in the truck and completed my tour of the place. The last streetlight in town burned high on its pole in the middle of an empty parking lot grown over with weeds. To the north, there was nothing but empty road leading into the night.

I turned around in the parking lot, my headlights sweeping across the building. It was a simple two-story rectangle, gray and silent, with thick glass block windows high on the walls overlooking the road. I remembered the county deputy saying something about a furniture factory closing. This must have been it.

I circled back into the center of town, back to the one gas station on the corner with the traffic light. It looked like there had been another station across the street, but that place was as empty as the factory. Even the pumps were gone.

I pulled in and gassed up for the second time that day. It was the old style of gas station, no roof over the pumps, no minimart to sell you beef jerky. Just a cash register inside, a shelfful of motor oil, and a rack of maps. The man came out and watched me as I pumped the gas. He was wearing overalls with STU written over the breast pocket in red script.

“Nice town you got here,” I said.

He looked out at the street like he needed to see for himself. “This town?”

“Have you seen Chief Rudiger?” I said.

“You looking for him?”

I gave myself a few seconds before answering him. The kind of day I was having, I didn’t want to start taking it out on innocent bystanders.

“Yeah,” I said. “I’m looking for him.”

“Haven’t seen him,” he said.

“Okay,” I said. I watched the numbers race by on the pump. I was about to set a new record for the most expensive tank of gas I’d ever put in the truck, thanks to the jacked-up price this guy was charging. I guess he had a corner on the market.

“Everybody in town gas up here?” I said.

“Of course,” he said, leaning on the pump. “Why not?”

Because you could buy a gallon of beer for less than what you’re charging for a gallon of gasoline. “Oh, I just figure you know everybody in town,” I said. I gave him a smile.

“Yeah, most of ’em,” he said. “I suppose.”

“I’m looking for a woman named Maria,” I said. “You know anybody in town named Maria?”

“Not off the top of my head,” he said.

“Okay, no problem.”

“In fact,” he said, “I’m pretty certain that there’s nobody in this entire town with that name.”

I finished up the gas, squeezing it up to the next dollar. “Fair enough,” I said, pulling out some cash for the man.

When he took it, he gave me a long look in the eye. “You said you were looking for the chief?” he said.

“I’m sure I’ll see him,” I said. “Eventually.”

“I could give him a message,” he said. “I mean, if you don’t want to wait around. He might not be back for a while. He goes away for days on end sometimes.”

“He should be back,” I said. “He’s working on a case. I understand you had a shooting here yesterday.”

“Oh, yeah,” he said. “Yeah, we did.”

“Must have everybody in town pretty shaken up,” I said. “I don’t imagine you get many shootings.”

“Not too often,” he said. He looked at the ground.

“Where can I get something to eat around here?” I said.

“There’s a real good place down in Whitehall.”

“That’s twenty miles away. There’s no place here in town?”

“Not really,” he said. “There’s no place to speak of here. Not for eating.”

“What about that place down there?” I said, nodding my head toward the only two-story building on the block. The sign over the door said ROCKY'S.

“Oh, Rocky’s,” he said. “That’s more of a bar really. If you want something to eat, you should go down to Whitehall.”

“Actually, I could use a bar right now.” I gave him a slap on the back. I couldn’t resist. “Thanks for the recommendation, Stu.”

He didn’t say anything else. He just watched me get into my truck. I drove half a block south and parked out on the street because the lot was so full. This was the place to be on a night in Orcus Beach, I guessed. Of course, like the gas station, you didn’t have much choice.

When I got out, I looked back up the street. Stu was still standing there by the pump, watching me. I gave him a wave. He didn’t wave back.

Rocky’s was a big wooden place, made up like a mountain chalet, though the nearest mountains were the Porcupines, a good three hundred miles away. There was a big plastic deer mounted right over the door, looking down at me. I stepped into the place, saw a lot of men in plaid flannel. Most of the women were in blue denim. I took a seat by the window. I could see the parking lot and the street, all the way down to the gas station. Stu wasn’t standing there anymore.

A waitress came over and gave me the first genuine smile I had seen all day. I ordered a beer and hoped she would move with all speed to get it. While she was doing that, I looked the place over. There was a big horseshoe-shaped bar attached to the far wall, and tables spread out haphazardly until you hit the pool table and dartboards in one corner and the big screen TV in the other. A Tiger game was on, but I couldn’t hear it over some horrible crap music coming from the jukebox. A kid who looked maybe fifteen years old was standing over the jukebox, picking out more horrible crap music to entertain everybody. One good reason to miss Jackie’s place.

The waitress brought over the beer and a glass. I ordered a cheeseburger and then poured the beer in the glass and drank half of it. It wasn’t bad, and Lord knows, I needed it, but it wasn’t Canadian. Another good reason to miss Jackie’s place.

I sat there for a while, waiting for the food to show up. I watched the game and tried to ignore the music. A heavy cloud of smoke hung in the air. It seemed like half the people in the place had cigarettes going at once. If there was a nonsmoking section, it must have been out in the parking lot.

The music stopped. For a few blissful seconds, there was nothing but the sound of people talking and laughing, and Ernie Harwell’s voice on the television set, calling the game. The Tigers were actually winning.

And then I saw her. She was sitting at the bar, on the farthest side of the horseshoe. She was alone, an empty bar stool on either side of her. She was smoking a cigarette and reading something on the bar in front of her.

I had seen Maria’s daughter. Randy was right. There was no mistaking the bloodlines. But even if I hadn’t…

Would I have known? Would I have taken one look at her and known that this was the woman Randy was looking for?

She looked up as the jukebox started again. I saw her face, the same face that Randy had seen thirty years before. Her hair was dark and pulled back over both ears. Her eyes were dark, as Randy had said, but there was something else about them-something slow and deliberate, something that Randy hadn’t been able to describe. You had to see it for yourself. The bartender said something to her and she smiled and then went back to her reading.

I watched her for a while. The door opened and a man came into the place. Stu, from the gas station. He looked around the room and spotted me, then looked away. He went and grabbed a man who was sitting at the bar. I would have bet anything this man was Rocky, the owner of the place. With his hand on Rocky’s back, Stu bent his head down and said something to him. Rocky looked up at him and then did a professional job of looking back at me without really looking.

I watched Rocky lean over the bar and say something to the bartender. Then I watched the bartender go over to the cash register, which happened to be a few feet away from Maria. He didn’t face her, but the way she looked up at him told me he was talking to her. She listened to him for a few seconds; then she looked over at my side of the room. When she caught my eye, she didn’t look away. She stared right at me for a long moment. I stared right back at her.

We didn’t get the chance to see who would blink first, because Rocky appeared in front of me. He was about my size and around my age, but he obviously spent a lot more time taking care of himself. There was an anchor tattooed on his left arm, faded with age. “You the one who ordered a cheeseburger?” he said.

“Nice place you got here,” I said.

“We’re out of cheese,” he said.

“Not a problem.”

“We’re out of hamburger, too.”

“What about the bun?” I said. “Are you out of buns?”

“We’ve got buns,” he said. “You can have a bun with catsup on it. Or maybe you’d better just hit the road and find another place to eat.”

“A place that isn’t out of cheese and hamburger,” I said.

“Exactly. That’s what I’d do if I were you.” The man folded his big arms and looked down at me. Over at the bar, I could see the bartender watching me. Stu kept watching me from the front door.

“I appreciate the information,” I said. “Let me finish my beer and I’ll be on my way.”

He held his ground like he was making up his mind about it, then slowly backed away from my table and went back to the bar. He sat himself on a bar stool, turning around so he could keep an eye on me. Stu gave me one last look, then went out the front door.

Five minutes passed. Maria sat on the far side of the bar, an odd little smile on her face. The bartender stayed right next to her. He wasn’t moving, no matter how many people wanted to order a drink. Rocky kept watching me. I kept sitting there, looking out the window into the night, wondering what the hell I was doing there and what I would do next. Getting in my truck and never coming back was beginning to feel like the right answer.

Before I could make up my mind, Rocky got up and went over to Maria. He bent down and said something to her. When she stood up, he offered her his arm. He walked her to the door and took her coat off a rack by the front register. As he helped her into it, khe looked at me and gave me another little smile.

I watched them through the window. In the dim light of the parking lot, I saw them walking to her car, a red Mustang convertible with the top up. Rocky held the door open for her. She got in and he closed the door. As she was pulling away, I took my little pad of paper out of my coat and wrote down the number on her license plate.

She drove out of the parking lot and turned left on the main road. Then I saw another car pull out behind her. It was a white Cadillac.

A white Cadillac.

Bells went off in my head. Where had I just heard about a white Cadillac?

I stood up and looked out the window. The license number. Could I see it from there? I read it to myself. SBV… Is that a V or a Y? Goddamn it all.

I wrote down the number, as best as I could make it out. I put a question mark over the V.

A white Cadillac. In the basement, Leopold had said something about a white Cadillac outside their house.

I threw a couple bills on the table and went to the front door. Rocky was just coming in. “What’s the hurry?” he said. “I thought you were going to finish your beer?”

“I’m all set, thanks,” I said.

“Let me take your check,” he said. He was blocking the door, and doing a damned good job of it.

“The money’s on the table,” I said.

“Let me get you your change, then.”

“Keep the change,” I said. “The service here is first-rate.”

“Very well,” he said. “Have a pleasant trip. Wherever you’re going.” He gave me one last look, like he wanted to make sure he’d remember my face. Then he stepped away and let me out the door.

When I got to my truck, something didn’t look right. I stood there looking at it from top to bottom. When I got to ground level, I saw my problem. Both tires were flat. I went over to the other side of the car. The other two tires were flat, too. I wasn’t going anywhere. I slammed my fist down on the hood.

When I was done counting to ten, I knelt down and looked at the tires. There didn’t seem to be any damage. Somebody had just let all the air out.

I got in the truck and rode it on the rims back to the gas station. When I got there, my man Stu was sitting there at his counter, reading the Grand Rapids Press. He was leaning back in his chair as if he had been sitting there for the last two hours. I stood in front of his counter, waiting for him to look up at me. He didn’t.

“I’ve got a little problem,” I said.

“Is that so?” he said, turning the page.

“I have four flat tires.”

“That is a problem,” he said.

“I guess I should be thankful he didn’t slash them,” I said. “He just let the air out.”

“It’s your lucky day,” he said.

I stood there watching him read his paper. I counted to ten again. “Where’s your air pump? I didn’t see one outside.”

“We’re out of air,” he said.

“Come again?”

“No air,” he said. “We’re fresh out.”

I started counting to ten again. I got to three and then tore the newspaper out of his hands. I balled it up and threw it away, and then I put both hands on the counter and leaned over him. “Listen, Stu,” I said, looking him in the eye. “I don’t know what’s going on here. Or who you think I am. Or what you think I’m doing here. Or why the hell you think you need to let the air out of my tires. Which is something a little twelve-year-old punk would do, by the way. I’d expect something more creative from somebody who works in a gas station.”

He didn’t say anything. He just looked at me.

“What’s next, Stu? You gonna soap my windows?”

A voice from behind me: “No, we’ll skip that one.” And then I heard the unmistakable sound of a somebody racking a shotgun. “We’ll go right to this.”

I turned around. Rocky was standing in the doorway, leveling a shotgun at my gut. His bartender was right behind him.

I swallowed. It was the second time that day somebody had pointed a shotgun at me. This time, it was a pump-action Remington with a short barrel, exactly like the riot gun I used to carry in the trunk of my squad car. And the man holding it obviously knew what he was doing.

This is what happened to Randy, I thought. This is what happens to any stranger in this town. They pull some kind of stunt to get you trapped into a corner like this, and then they shoot you.

“Will you please put the gun down,” I said. I watched his hands. I waited for the muscles to tense just before squeezing the trigger. It would be the last thing I’d ever see.

“Give me your pad of paper,” he said.

“What?”

“Harry saw you writing something on a pad when she drove away,” he said. “Give it to me.”

I slipped the pad out of my coat pocket and threw it to him. He caught it with one hand and gave it to Harry the bartender, who then thumbed through the pages. It didn’t take him long to get to the last page.

“It’s her plate number,” he said. “And another number.”

“Who’s that?” Rocky said. “Who’s the other number?”

“The guy who’s been following her,” I said. “In a white Cadillac. He’s the one you should be pointing the gun at.”

“Who are you?” he said. “What are you doing here?”

“I’m looking for Maria,” I said. “I just want to talk to her. About the man who was shot here yesterday.”

Rocky and Harry exchanged a quick look over that one. I was thinking of my next brilliant line when the squad car pulled up outside. There was no siren, no lights. Just Chief Rudiger opening the door and getting out slowly. Like he was just there to pump some gas.

“What’s going on, Rock?” he said.

Rocky pointed the gun down. “We’ve got a man threatening Stu here,” he said. “He was just about to physically assault him.”

Rudiger raised his eyebrows when he saw me. “Well, look who it is,” he said. “Why am I not surprised?”

“You know this man?” Rocky said.

“I do,” the chief said. “I’m gonna have a talk with him. Go on back to your place.”

“He’s all yours,” Rocky said.

When the two men had left, Stu started uncrumpling his newspaper. “Let’s go, McKnight,” Rudiger said. “Get in the car.”

“Where are we going?”

“You wanted to see my hard-ass cop routine, didn’t you?” he said. “I’m gonna show it to you.”

It was a short trip, maybe a quarter mile north on the main road to the town hall. I sat in the back of his squad car. It was one of the newer cars, with hard plastic seats in the back so a suspect had no place to hide anything. When we were parked behind the building, he opened the door for me and led me to the back door, the same door I’d looked through when I first got to town. He turned the light on, pulled a chair over in front of his desk, hard plastic like the backseat of the squad car. Then he went over to the other side of the desk and sat down. He took his hat off and put it on the desk, ORCUS BEACH, MICHIGAN, with the cannon in the sand.

He waited for me to sit down in front of him. When I did, he looked at me for a good minute without saying anything. I was amazed once again by how much hair the man had. Say what you want about this town, the chief had good hair.

“You’re not making me coffee this time,” I finally said.

“Why are you here?” he said.

“I came to see Maria.”

“Why were you threatening Stu?”

“I wasn’t threatening Stu,” I said. “And you can stop lying to me about Maria. I know she’s here. I saw her.”

He gave me a little smile. “If you say so, Mc-Knight.”

“Where did it happen?”

“The shooting?” he said.

“Yes, the shooting.”

“Why do you want to know that?”

“Why didn’t you turn this over to the county?” I said. “Or the state? This is a major crime.”

“I don’t need to turn it over to anybody,” he said. “This is my jurisdiction.”

“You’re the only full-time officer,” I said. “You told me that yourself. How many part-timers did you say you have?”

“Four,” he said. “You just met two of them.”

That stopped me. “Who?”

“Rocky and Harry,” he said.

“The men who were going to cut me in half with a shotgun.”

“Everybody’s a little jumpy around here today,” he said. “Don’t forget, we had a shooting yesterday.”

“Yeah? And where was Rocky at the time?”

“He didn’t shoot the man, McKnight. He was in his bar. Like every other night. Until he got the call…”

“What call?”

“Rocky was the one who answered the ‘shots fired’ call. He found Wilkins.”

“This keeps getting better and better,” I said.

“Let me ask you something,” he said. “You said you were a Detroit cop.”

“Yes.”

“How long?”

“Eight years.”

“Then what? You quit?”

“I got shot.”

“I’ve been shot,” he said. “I didn’t quit.”

“Some people never learn,” I said. “What’s your point?”

“My point is, I’ve been a cop my whole life,” he said. “I started out as a deputy down in Oakland County. Then I was a state trooper for over twenty years. And then I retired and came back home to Orcus Beach. They asked me to take over as chief of police. Even when the furniture plant closed and we lost half our population, the town council kept the police force. And me.”

“Don’t tell me,” I said. “Rocky and Harry are the town council, too.”

He let that one go. “My grandfather practically built this town himself,” he said. “I grew up here. I’ve lived all around the state, but I keep coming back. I know every single person who lives here right now. I’m sure they’ll bury me here someday.”

“Why are you telling me all this?” I said.

“Because I want you to understand, Mr. McKnight. I’m a lifetime cop, not somebody who wrote tickets for eight years and then became a private eye. This shooting happened in my town. It’s my case. I don’t want the county guys here. I don’t want the state guys here. And most of all, I don’t want you here. Am I making myself clear?”

“What if I have information you need?”

“Like what?”

“Like a white Cadillac,” I said. “The license plate is on the pad your… your officer took from me. I’m not sure if one of the letters is a V or a Y. You’ll have to run it both ways.”

“And what will this tell me?”

“The name of the guy who’s following her,” I said. “The same guy who was casing out her family’s house in Farmington. You did talk to her family, right?”

“We’ve been in contact,” he said. “I told you that at the hospital.”

“So you know about this man named Harwood?”

He tapped his fingers on his desk. “You say Rocky has this number?”

“Yes,” I said. “I’m not even going to ask you if I can have my pad back.”

“You’ve had a long day, Mr. McKnight. We should let you go home now.”

“I can’t go anywhere,” I said. “My tires are flat and the gas station is out of air.”

“We’ll see if we can find you some,” he said. “Then you can be on your way.”

“It’s a long drive home,” I said. “And I’ve been up since four this morning. I think I’ll grab a room for the night.”

“Won’t find one here,” he said. “Closest motel is in Whitehall. They’re probably full, though. Your best bet would be Grand Rapids.”

“So you’re all out of rooms, too,” I said. “April is your peak tourist season.”

He just looked at me. He almost smiled. “You’re a funny man,” he said. “Let’s go pump up your tires.”

He let me sit in the front seat this time on the ride back to the gas station. We passed a small motel called the Orcus Arms. It was a little six-room affair facing Lake Michigan. The chief caught me looking at it, and the empty parking lot in front. “It’s closed,” he said. “Doesn’t open until June.”

The sign in front of the motel was decorated with a big cannon in a mound of sand, just like on the chief’s hat. “What’s with this cannon, anyway?” I said.

“Goes back to the turn of the century,” he said. “When a ship got caught in a storm, it would try to get as close to the shore as it could. There’d be a crew of men here who would use the cannon to fire a rope out to the ship. They could fire that thing a good half mile if they aimed it right.”

I tried to picture it. It would take a hell of a shot to hit a boat that far away.

“Just goes to show you,” he said. “A gun doesn’t always kill you. Sometimes it saves you.”

With that thought ringing in my head, we pulled into the gas station. Stu managed to find some air to put in my tires. He pumped up my tires himself and then he stood next to the chief while I climbed into the cab. When I closed the door, the chief stepped closer and rapped a knuckle on my window. I rolled it down.

“Sleep well tonight, Mr. McKnight,” the chief said, “and then have a safe trip back home tomorrow morning. I hope you enjoyed your visit to Orcus Beach.”

There were a couple things I could have said to him, but I decided to keep my mouth shut. I turned the key and gunned the engine.

“Seriously, Mr. McKnight,” he said. “I know we’ve got some pretty extreme characters around here. You gotta understand-people in this town, they just have a habit of acting very protectively. You know what I mean? As a matter of fact, I’d say overall, you caught us on a good day. The next time, we might not be so friendly.”

I pulled away and left him standing there in the light of the gas station. He got smaller and smaller in my rearview mirror as I headed south, away from Orcus Beach and everyone who lived there.

“Good night, Chief,” I said as he faded out of sight. “I’ll be seeing you.” In my mind’s eye, I pictured the pad of paper and the license numbers I had written down. I recited the numbers to myself, just to make sure I remembered them. One for Maria. And the other for whoever was driving that white Cadillac.