Let It Burn (13 page)

He would no doubt want to show me the lake, and I’d have to act like I was impressed. I’d have to resist the urge to tell him that
my
lake was a thousand feet deep and bigger than ten states.

It took me less than three hours to get there, through Saginaw and Bay City. I got off at the exit and worked my way around the southern shore to the town of Houghton Lake. There were plenty of lakeside motels, restaurants, bars, places to buy fishing tackle. There was a week left until Labor Day, so the place was still moderately busy.

I passed another Ash Street. The day winking at me, if you believe in that sort of thing. Soon after, I left the main road and found the marina. Another quarter mile up the shoreline, I found the address. I’m not sure what I was expecting. Maybe a big white Cape Cod with a sign up front bearing the house’s name,
BATEMAN’S BEACH HOUSE
or something like that, but I was surprised to see nothing but a mailbox with a number and his last name assembled with those reflective letter decals you buy at the hardware store. I turned down the driveway and pulled up next to a Jeep. The house was a simple log cabin, not much different from my own.

When I got out of the truck, the side door to the cabin opened, and out stepped a man I wouldn’t have recognized in any other context. I mean, I knew Sergeant Grimaldi gave me the heads-up, but the man I saw was at least fifty pounds heavier than the detective I remembered, and he was walking slowly, gripping a cane in his right hand. As he got closer, I could start to see that old face from the precinct, but there wasn’t one single bit of flash left to the man. He looked, honestly, like he was seventy years old.

If Sergeant Grimaldi had lost a step or two with age, then Detective Bateman had lost a whole staircase.

“Officer McKnight,” he said, looking me up and down. “I swear, you don’t look any different.”

I shook his hand. He still had some strength left, at least.

“I’m afraid I’m not moving around quite as well,” he said, looking down at his cane. “But they’re gonna give me a new hip soon, so I’ll be good as new. I told the doctor he should keep going, just turn everything bionic.”

“I could use some of that myself,” I said, rubbing my right shoulder.

His smile went away for a moment, as he made the connection. The reason my shoulder should need such attention when the rest of me seemed to be holding up just fine.

“Yeah,” he said. “How are you doing with that, anyway? I never really got to talk to you after … You know.”

“I don’t even think about it anymore.” Half a lie on my part.

“I heard they left one inside you. Was that just for a souvenir?”

“Something like that.”

The smile came back as he patted my other shoulder. “Come on,” he said. “Let’s have a little something on the lake.”

I followed him around the cabin, down to his dock.

“You live in Paradise now? Is that right?”

“I do.”

“Well, then, I know this lake is just a pond to you.”

Another surprise, from this man who once lived to one-up everyone around him. At least a hundred times a day.

“It’s a nice lake,” I said, looking out over the water. I could see maybe a dozen boats, not nearly as many as I would have thought. “You’ve got a nice quiet place here.”

“Hell, you should see this lake during the Bud Bash.”

“What’s that?”

“Every summer, they get thousands of people here, all these boats tied together in a big flotilla down the shoreline a bit. People drinking like crazy, just going insane.”

“Funny, we don’t get that in Paradise.”

“It’s enough to drive an ex-cop out of his mind, Alex. All those drunks driving their boats around. Then later on their cars when they’re going home. It’s a miracle they don’t have a dozen people killed every year.”

The final surprise came when we got to his dock. I would have guessed a sleek speedboat for good old Detective Bateman. Instead, I saw a big fat lazy pontoon boat, with deck chairs, a full roof, and a motor just big enough to move it along at two miles per hour.

“I know what you’re thinking,” he said. “This thing is just a floating gazebo. But on this lake, it’s perfect. I can anchor anywhere, throw a fishing line out, catch a few walleye, maybe take a little nap.”

“Nothing wrong with that.”

“Come on, I’ve got the cooler packed already.”

He opened up the little gate and stepped onto the deck. I followed him. The boat barely dipped as I stepped on board.

“Rock solid,” he said, sitting in the captain’s chair and pushing the electric starter. I untied the front end and we were off, backing out into the lake. When we were clear of the dock, he put it into forward and gunned it. A baby duck could have paddled faster.

We moved north for a while, Bateman pointing out resorts and bars on the western shore. Then he cut over by Houghton Point, and we started on a great loop that would keep us out here all afternoon. The sun was hot now, even with the awning over our heads.

“So why did you look up your old buddy Detective Bateman after all these years?” he finally said. “Let me guess. It has something to do with that call we both got from Sergeant Grimaldi.”

“Well, I did come down to have a drink with him. Your name came up once or twice.”

“I bet it did. Grimaldi never did like me that much.”

“I wouldn’t go that far. He just never got to know you like I did.”

Bateman looked at me. “We spent a lot of time together that month, didn’t we? I’m glad it all paid off in the end. Although now that he’s getting out…”

“Nothing we can do about that,” I said. “But the thing is, I never got the chance to see how that case was closed. With what happened to me…”

“The only thing that happened after you left was his plea and then his sentencing.”

“I never heard his confession.”

He looked at me again. “You didn’t see the tape?”

“No, I didn’t.”

“Too bad. It was my finest hour.”

He was smiling when he said it, but I knew he wasn’t completely joking. It was the biggest case of his career, for all the obvious reasons, spoken or unspoken. A photogenic white woman from Farmington Hills, stabbed two dozen times by a young black male. That same pretty face on the six o’clock news, and in the paper, every day for most of that month. The frustration building every day we couldn’t find our suspect. The pressure from every direction. Until finally we had our man and he was locked in a room with a homicide detective who did things his own way. If this was a television show, you might even say he played by his own rules. Of course, it wasn’t a television show, and the blood on the floor of that balcony was very much real.

“I’ve always wondered how it went down,” I said. “That call from the sergeant was sort of a reminder, I guess.”

Bateman nodded his head. Then he cut the engine. He got up, fished out the anchor, and threw it overboard.

“I take it we’re stopping?”

“Good a place as any,” he said. “It’s only fifteen feet deep here. Most of the lake’s about that. I’m guessing Lake Superior gets a little deeper.”

“Just a little.”

“Interest you in a cold beer?”

“You could twist my arm.”

He opened up the cooler and pulled out two bottles of Sierra Nevada. Not bad if a Canadian isn’t available, especially in the summer.

“I’ve got some sandwiches in here, too.”

The only thing I had eaten that day was the slice of Mrs. King’s chocolate cake, so I was ready for a real lunch. We sat there and had our ham and cheese sandwiches while the other boats on the lake zoomed right by us.

“Okay,” he said, when he was done eating and was wiping his hands on his napkin. “You want to know how I got that confession.”

“If you don’t mind telling me.”

He smiled. “You know how much I hate talking about myself, but I’ll see what I can do.”

I took another hit on my beer, squinting at the sunlight reflected off the water. I ended up closing my eyes, all the better to listen to him, and to bring back that summer and the case that would bind the two of us together forever.

“So we’ve got this kid,” he said. “Remember how we were thinking he was seventeen, eighteen years old? And he turns out to be sixteen?”

“I remember.”

“Sixteen on paper, but he was already a hard case. That day we finally caught him, when he just stood there in the doorway with a dozen cops all aiming their guns at him? The way he didn’t even blink?”

I thought back to that day. That strange, almost anticlimactic arrest, after everything we’d gone through to get there.

“It wasn’t my first confession,” he said. “You know that was sorta my thing.”

“So I had heard, yes.”

“The secret is approaching each suspect on their own terms. Everybody’s different. Everybody’s got their own story. Something that might work on one person will get you nowhere with the next one. So you can’t go in already married to one strategy. You gotta react to the situation and you gotta be
quick.
”

He gave an ironic grimace of pain as he resettled his bad hip on the chair. The man’s last quick day must have felt like a distant memory.

“So remember, the clock is ticking here, right? We got the kid in the room. His mother’s there with him, because that’s the law. Darryl’s not saying a word, but Mama’s telling everybody to let them go because her little boy ain’t done nothing.”

Having just spent time with Mrs. King, I knew she was a hell of a lot more articulate than that, but I let him go on.

“I know we’re running out of time before we have to charge him or let him walk. I think you’d already gone home at that point, right?”

“Sergeant Grimaldi told me to go home, yes. He didn’t think there’d be anything else to see.”

“That’s right,” Bateman said. I could tell he was happy to hear it put this way. Like fourth and long from your own one-yard line, just a few seconds left on the clock. So everybody’s already on their way out of the stadium.

“So I finally go in the room,” he said. “I sit down in front of him. His mother starts talking, but I tune her out. It’s just me and Darryl. I don’t try to get real close to him like I might to some guys. Get right in his face or anything. I just sit back and I don’t say anything for a while. He’s looking right back at me. I had to remind myself he was only sixteen years old.”

Another boat roared by. He took a sip of his beer and gave the boat a quick glance. Then he was back to that day in the interview room.

“Finally, I just say to him, ‘You think you’re a man already, don’t you.’ He gives me a look, doesn’t say anything. I say, ‘Some people might look at you and say you’re nothing but a little punk gangbanger, not even seventeen years old yet. Think you’re so bad and everything.’ Notice I’m not saying that I think that. I’m just saying some people. That was the important part. Make it all indirect, you know?”

I nodded, even though I wasn’t quite sure what he was getting at.

“I say, ‘I’ll tell you what a real man does. A real man stands up and admits when he’s done something wrong. A real man tells the truth, no matter what. While a little punk gangbanger, on the other hand, you know what he does? He runs away crying like a little girl.’ Which started to get his attention, I could tell. And then I say, ‘So how come you ran away like a little girl, Darryl?’ I don’t even give him time to answer. I just say, ‘You’re not even that fast, you know that? That cop who was chasing you, that old white guy? He used to play baseball. He was a catcher. You know how slow catchers are, right? That’s who was chasing you, and he almost caught you.’”

He stopped and put his hand up to me.

“No disrespect, Alex. It was all part of the story I was building.”

“I got it. Go on.”

“I say to him, I say, ‘Look, we’ve got you on this, Darryl. We’ve got a cop who’ll take the stand and testify that he saw you on the scene. Not just some Joe Schmoe from Hamtramck, Darryl. A cop who’ll sit there in his shiny uniform and tell everybody how it went down. If that’s not enough, we’ve got your fingerprints on the bracelet. You understand what that means, don’t you? We could take this whole thing to trial right now, and I’m pretty sure we could get anything we want.’ Which was a bit of a stretch, I realize. But you know how it works. Then I say, ‘Here’s your chance, Darryl. To stand up like a man and to make this a whole lot easier for everybody. If you do that, I’ll make sure it gets taken into account.’ This kid’s just sitting there. His mother’s telling him not to say anything, but I can tell he’s thinking it over. Me, I keep ignoring her, so maybe
he’ll
ignore her, you see what I mean? And I just ask him flat out, I say, ‘Come on, Darryl. Are you a man or not?’”

He paused for effect. Then he took another sip of his beer.

“That was the first time he spoke,” he said. “He sits up in his chair and he says, ‘I’m a man. Don’t forget it.’ So at this point, some guys would think they’ve got him on the hook, right? Yeah, you’re a man, that means you’re gonna tell me the truth now. Let’s have it. And then they get a big lie. So instead of that, I just had this gut instinct that I should keep pushing it. You wanna know why? It was something you said to me.”

“Me?”

“Yeah, when you were telling me how you were chasing him down those tracks, and he finally got under that fence, and he’s standing there on the other side. You said that as soon as he knew he had you beat, he just stood there and looked at you. Ice cold, you said. Like he was daring you to shoot him. Knowing that you wouldn’t. You remember that?”

“I do.”

“That’s all I needed to know about this kid. He ran, but he didn’t
want
to run. The second he didn’t have to run anymore, it was like he was pretending he never ran at all. So I say to him, ‘I don’t believe you, Darryl. I don’t believe you’re a real man. Because you ran down those tracks like a little girl, and you even threw that diamond bracelet away. You probably left a trail of piss all the way down the tracks, too. I don’t know, because we didn’t actually test for that. We didn’t run the forensics test for a little girl running away and pissing herself.’ I could tell I was getting to him. It honestly felt like he wanted to get out of his chair and start something. Which I would have been ready for, believe me. But instead he just says, ‘I’m a man, and if there’s something I need to do, I do it.’ Those were his exact words.”