Let It Burn (12 page)

Bateman hugged him. It was not something you were supposed to do in a case like this, but as soon as he did I could see it was the right play. The brother cried for a while, and then he stopped. He sat back down in the chair.

“Officer McKnight,” Bateman said to me, “I know you have work to do. I’m glad you got the chance to meet the family. The next time you see them, I hope it’ll be when we tell them we’ve made an arrest.”

“I’m sorry for your loss,” I said to everyone else in the room. One of those standard lines you say, but I couldn’t think of anything else.

Then I went back to the mug shots.

*   *   *

Franklin left for home eventually. I thanked him for everything he’d done that day.

“Just doing my job,” he said.

I kept looking through the mug shots. Detective Bateman came in a while later. His tie was loose. His eyes were red. It was the first time I’d ever seen him looking like something less than a human dynamo.

“I take it you don’t have an ID yet,” he said to me. He sat down in the chair Franklin had just vacated.

“I’m afraid not.”

“Then we need to get the sketch artist in here. Get this down on paper while it’s still fresh in your mind.”

“I can’t believe this guy hasn’t been in the system before,” I said, flipping through more pages. “He gave me a pretty stone-cold look on the other side of that fence. Like he was about to laugh in my face.”

“Jeans and a gray shirt. Nothing on the shirt? No logos or anything?”

“No. Plain gray. He did have an Oakland Raiders hat on.”

Bateman nodded. “That’s how you do it if you’re street smart. No markings, no weird hair. A hat you can throw away in a second. Just blend right in.”

“Are you telling me he’s so smart we’ve never had him in the system before?”

“That would be just our luck,” he said, rubbing his eyes.

“Why cut her up so bad?” I said, the scene at the station coming back to me, whether I wanted it to or not. I knew it would be there in my head forever.

“What do you mean? He wanted her dead.”

“This is way beyond wanting someone dead. This guy destroyed her.”

He thought about that one. “We’ll never know why he did that. Not until we catch him. Even then…”

“Any idea why Elana Paige was at the train station in the first place? That’s a long way from the college.”

“Her car was in the parking lot. The crime scene guys found a camera bag about ten feet from the body. Nice camera inside, but it was damaged when it hit the floor.”

“Why leave the nice camera if you’re already stealing her jewelry?”

“Too hard to carry, I guess. Or too obvious if you’re trying to blend into the crowd.”

“So she was a photographer, you’re saying.”

“Well, she was taking a photography course at Wayne State, at least. Maybe she figured she could get some great shots at the old train station.”

“I though you handled things well with the family,” I said. “The brother was about to go off.”

“You realize,” he said, “that you belong to me now. Until we catch this guy. I’ll clear it with your sergeant.”

“Anything I can do. Of course.”

He nodded. “I’ll let you keep looking. Let me know if you get a hit. I’m not going anywhere.”

Neither was I. Another hour passed. Maybe two. It was hard to tell at that point. I had gone through all of the mug shot books. I hadn’t found my man. They got the sketch artist in, and we worked out a sketch. Problem was, although I could still picture him exactly in my mind, the sketch came out looking like a young black man with high cheekbones and a short afro. In other words, like half the male population in the city.

We tried refining it, but in the end we had to send out what we had. Five foot ten, 170 pounds, muscular build. Jeans, gray shirt with a torn right sleeve, basketball shoes. Last seen fleeing north on Trumbull Avenue. We sent it to every precinct in the city, and to every neighboring suburb. We sent it to the Michigan State Police. We sent it to the FBI.

Elana Paige had now been dead for six hours.

*   *   *

It was going on eleven o’clock when I finally left the station. I had processed an official statement, describing everything I had seen and done. I had tried to eat some dinner. I had gone back over the mug shot books. Detective Bateman told me to go home, to get some rest, and to be back at the station early the next morning. We’d see if we picked up any hits on the bulletin overnight and then go from there.

“We’ll start working the neighborhoods,” he said. “Somebody saw this kid. I promise you that.”

“I hate the fact that he’ll sleep in his own bed tonight.”

“Let him sleep. Let him believe he got away. If he does, he won’t leave town. Or he won’t hide. Either way, we’ll get him.”

I said good night to the detective, and to all of the four-to-midnight-shifters I saw on the way out. They were almost done with their day. Mine had lasted fifteen hours.

I got in my car. I had an eight-year-old Chevy Celebrity back then. About all I could afford on a Detroit cop’s salary, with a wife who had quit her job to go back to school. I started driving down Woodward, to hit that freeway that would loop me back through the city and then west to Redford, but then I blew right by the on-ramp and cut over to Corktown. I drove by the stadium one more time. A dark gray monolith now. I drove up Trumbull, daring my man to be outside walking around in the night air, confident that he’d gotten away with his crime today. I slowed down whenever I saw someone. Usually two or three of them at a time, smoking cigarettes, drinking beer, staring back at me in my civilian car. I didn’t see the man I was looking for.

I got home at midnight. I lived in a little brick house on a block of little brick houses, in one of the original Detroit suburbs, now a working-class enclave for folks like me, who didn’t want to live in the city itself but didn’t have the money to move out to Livonia or Dearborn Heights.

I parked the car in the thin little driveway that ran between my house and the house next to me. I got out and took a breath. The dog was barking next door, just like every other time I came home.

I went inside, took off my clothes, and lay on the bed without turning the lights on. I could hear Jeannie breathing on the other side of the bed.

“I’m sorry,” I said. “I forgot to call you.”

She didn’t say anything for a while. I thought maybe she was asleep.

“I was worried,” she finally said. “You promised me you’d call if you were going to be late. You remember?”

“There was a murder. A woman who’s taking classes at Wayne State. Her name’s Elana Paige. Do you know her?”

“Doesn’t sound familiar, no.”

“She was taking a photography class.”

Another few moments of silence. The dog stopped barking.

“Who killed her?”

“Some kid. Seventeen, eighteen years old.”

“Did you catch him?”

“No. Not yet.”

That was the last thing I said before I closed my eyes. There was nothing else to say anyway.

In my dreams I was standing over the dead body again, but a strong wind was blowing through the building. Then I was chasing the young man in the jeans and gray shirt again. Chasing him and chasing him and never catching him, down a set of railroad tracks that went on forever.

CHAPTER NINE

I had left my cell phone in the truck, as usual. I picked it up as I drove away from Mrs. King’s house. I had a voice message from Sergeant Grimaldi. I pulled over and listened to it, then called him back. He answered on the first ring.

“What can I do for you?” the sergeant said. “You’re not back in Paradise already, are you?”

“No, I spent the night down here,” I said. “It was a long day, and I didn’t feel like driving five hours.”

“That sounds smart. So where are you now?”

“I’m just driving around the city a little more. I still can’t believe what I’ve been seeing.”

“Yeah, I know what you mean. It’s like postwar Berlin or something. Although, at least, they rebuilt Berlin. Detroit, I guess they’re just gonna let it rot.”

“Well, I hope not, but…”

“Alex, what’s on your mind?”

“Listen, this is going to sound a little crazy.”

“I can do crazy, believe me. Let me have it.”

“You said you called me and you called Detective Bateman, right? About Darryl King getting out?”

“I did.”

“How is the detective, anyway?”

“He’s not the man he was,” the sergeant said. “Put it that way. But I’m pretty sure he still sees himself as the star of his own personal prime-time crime drama. Even now that he’s retired.”

You didn’t spend enough time with him, I thought. You never saw the other side of Detective Bateman, when he turned off the charm and got down to real police work.

“Well, he was a character,” I said, figuring this wasn’t the time to be the detective’s publicist. “But do you think there’s any chance I could talk to him?”

“I’m sure he’d love to hear from you. You want his number?”

“I’d appreciate it.”

A moment of hesitation. “Why do you want to call him, anyway? Just to catch up? Or is there something else on your mind?”

“If you want to know the truth,” I said, “something’s been bothering me about that old case.”

“Yeah, see, I wasn’t even going to go there, but now that you mention it…”

“Wait,” I said, “how do you even know what I’m talking about?”

It was the same feeling of disorientation I’d felt at Mrs. King’s house. How come everybody thinks they know what’s going through my mind today, when I don’t even know myself?

“I know what’s bothering you, Alex, and I don’t blame you. That was a high-profile case, probably the biggest of the year. Bateman made a lot of hay out of it. You might even say it made his career.”

“I’m not following you.”

“Come on, you know exactly what I’m talking about. Bateman was all over the television after King was arrested. He even got that award, remember? But what did you get?”

“You know what I got.”

“Yeah, you and Franklin. I know. But that was a totally separate thing. You should have gotten a lot more credit for tracking down the man who butchered that woman.”

“Well, that’s not where I was going at all,” I said. “I honestly haven’t even thought about it that way, not once in all these years.”

“Then I’m sure I have no idea what you’re talking about, Alex. What exactly is bothering you?”

“Well, that’s the crazy part. I actually sorta stumbled upon Darryl King’s mother today, and—”

“Excuse me, what?”

“I was just driving by the house where we picked him up. I wanted to see it. She was sitting right there on the porch.”

I wasn’t about to tell him I went inside and had chocolate cake with the woman. That would be too unbelievable, even if it was the truth.

“That’s a new one,” he said. “I’m sure she was glad to see you. The man who helped put her son away.”

“She couldn’t have been nicer about it. And I don’t know, even last night … I was just thinking about the case, and I guess I just want Detective Bateman to fill in some gaps for me, help me to understand how that case got closed in the end. Because I wasn’t there to see it.”

“It got closed because he confessed. You know that.”

“I know. But I never got to see the tape. I never even read the transcript. So I guess I just want to know how it went, that’s all. Call it curiosity, after all these years.”

“It sounds like you’ve got something else on your mind,” he said. “More than just curiosity. But I can tell you, I
did
see the tape of the confession. It was airtight.”

“Okay, I appreciate you telling me that. That makes me feel better.”

“But you’re still going to call the detective, aren’t you.”

“I thought I might. Unless you think it’s a bad idea.”

“I suppose it might rattle his cage a little bit, you showing up after all these years, wanting to know how he closed out the case. But you know what? That sounds like a good enough reason right there. Hell, I wish I could be there myself.”

“You’re sounding just like the sergeant we all knew and loved.”

“Let me get you the number,” he said. I wrote it down as he read it off to me.

“Okay,” I said. “I got it. Thank you.”

“Let me know how it goes, all right? Let me know what shade of red his face turns when you ask him if it was a clean confession.”

“It’s a deal.”

“Oh, by the way,” he said. “I know I said he’s not the man he used to be, but you should know, he’s really had some health problems over the past few years. So don’t be surprised when you see him, is all I’m saying.”

“I appreciate the warning.”

“You take care of yourself, Alex. It was good seeing you again.”

I thanked him again and hung up. Then I sat there for a while on the side of that empty street. It was a clean confession, I told myself. The sergeant saw it himself, and he would know.

So why do I still have Mrs. King’s voice in my head, telling me her son was innocent?

I picked up the phone again and dialed Detective Bateman’s number.

*   *   *

A few minutes later, I was on the road, driving north. I took the Lodge Freeway out of the city. When I hit Eight Mile Road, the infamous northern border, I had a strange moment of regret and something almost like heartache. This city wasn’t a part of my life anymore. I lived over three hundred miles away. Yet it had meant something to me, once upon a time. I grew up rooting for its sports teams. I went to work here every day for eight years. I saw a thousand terrible things here back in the day, but I also saw what the people of Detroit were really made of. When people tell you this city essentially won the Second World War, it’s not crazy. Even back in the eighties, when things were really starting to fall apart, I still felt like the people who lived here could put the city back together. Now it felt like most everyone had given up on the place. I couldn’t even imagine what it would look like in another twenty years.

I was heading back to Paradise, but with a little detour in mind. When I had reached the retired Detective Arnie Bateman, after exchanging the standard pleasantries, he had told me that he lived “up north” now. “On the lake.” I was already wondering if he had ended up in Marquette, or maybe Eagle Harbor. That was the real “up north,” after all, and the real “on the lake.” But no, he lived on Houghton Lake, the inland lake right in the middle of the mitten. It was about halfway home for me. Hell, not more than a few minutes out of my way, so we ended up arranging to grab a bite to eat on his boat.