Misery Bay (10 page)

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?”