Misery Bay (13 page)

“We didn’t know that,” I said. “I’m sorry.”

I didn’t know what else to say. We could have kept on saying we were sorry for a thousand years and it wouldn’t have helped her one little bit.

“He liked lemon cake. I was going to make him a lemon cake for his birthday.”

She stopped talking for a while. We sat there, one on each side of her. All of us staring at the floor. Then finally she sat up straight and smoothed out her hair.

“Brandon was very much into his guns,” she said, her eyes suddenly more alert, her voice more animated. “I wasn’t so sure what to think about this, but Donald felt that it would be a healthy activity for him. Something to get him outside and away from the television set. There’s a big sand pit behind the barn. If you go out there you won’t be able to see much now with the snow, but you’ll see where Brandon had put some wooden posts along the edge there, in front of the incline. It was very safe that way. Because he could shoot all he wanted to and none of the bullets could ever go anywhere.”

She seemed to lose steam there for a moment.

“It was very safe,” she said. “Very safe.”

I was sure we were about to lose her again, but then she snapped right back.

“On the day it happened, he went outside with two of his guns. Two pistols. I’m sorry, I don’t know what kind they were. What exact caliber or anything like that. All I know is that one was a revolver and one was an automatic. Or a semiautomatic, I think he said. I don’t know the difference. Anyway, he went behind the barn to shoot at his cans. I was in here doing the dishes and listening to the shots going off. In the wintertime, it doesn’t seem to be so loud. The snow absorbs some of the sound, I guess. He was shooting and shooting, just like always, but then I didn’t hear the sound anymore. I was waiting for him to come inside, but he never did, so I went out to see if he was still out there and there he was, lying in the snow.”

She stopped again and this time she drummed her fingers together. I looked at Maven and he looked back at me and we both knew there was no way we’d be leaving this place without trying to get her some help. All this time alone in this house, right next to that barn we could see from our chairs, right out that kitchen window. It wasn’t good for her to be here.

“We had a service for him up at the church right up there on H Street. We don’t have more than a dozen streets in town so why they used letters to name them, I can’t even imagine. But that’s neither here nor there.”

“Mrs. Steele…” I said.

“He’s buried out in that place on Old U.S. 141. That’s just a number, but it used to be the highway so I guess you can understand it.”

“Is there somebody we can call for you?” Maven said. “I’m not sure you want to be here all by yourself, do you?”

“No. No, I don’t want to be alone. That’s what I wanted to ask you to do for me.”

“This is the favor you were talking about,” I said. “On the phone, you said you had a favor you wanted to ask us.”

“My husband. I want you to bring my husband back. Will you do that for me, please?”

“I don’t think you mentioned where he is. If you tell us, I’m sure we can—”

“He’s across the river. At his girlfriend’s house.”

“Mrs. Steele,” Maven said, shooting me another look, “this sounds like it might be a bad situation all the way around. God knows you’ve got enough to deal with already.”

“Just go talk to him. Man-to-man. Tell him this is where he belongs. I know it’s not easy, but we have to face it. Tell him I’ll let him go forever if he just comes back and helps me get through this. That’s all I want him to do. Is that so much? Just be a man and come back until we can find some way to—”

She started waving her arms around, and the tears started coming down her face.

“Tell you what,” Maven said. “Let’s call his post and get one of the troopers to come down here. Then we can go find your husband.”

“No. No trooper. I want my husband.”

“I’m just saying, for the time being…”

“Did you hear what I said? I said I don’t want a trooper in this house. Or anybody else from his little circle of boys up there. All I want is my husband here in this house, where he belongs. Okay?”

“Maybe somebody else? Just for now? A neighbor?”

“
Bring him home!
” she half yelled, half sobbed. “
Do you hear me?
”

“Okay, okay,” he said, reaching out to touch her arm. “We’ll bring him home. Just tell us where he is.”

“Her name’s Donna. She works at the Starlight, across the border in Niagara. That’s where you’ll find him.”

“Okay. We’ll go drag him back here if we have to put him in handcuffs.”

I was about to say something, but Maven stood up then and I didn’t get the chance to speak until we were outside.

“You made a pretty big promise,” I said. “What if we can’t find him?”

“You heard her. He’s at the Starlight.”

“If he doesn’t want to come back, what do you plan on doing?”

“Between the two of us I’m sure we’ll be able to convince him.”

“Somebody should stay here,” I said. “She shouldn’t be alone.”

“She’s been alone for days. What she needs is her husband to be a man and to come back home, just like she said.”

Okay, I thought, so now we’re apparently going to go across a state line and kidnap a sergeant. Not the plan I would have expected from a chief of police, but maybe all those years at the bottom of the totem pole had taught him how to get things done his own way.

“Just give me one minute first,” I said. Instead of going to the truck, I made a detour toward the barn, fighting my way through the deep snow.

“Where are you going?”

“I want to see it.”

Maven followed in my tracks as I made my way around the barn to the shooting gallery behind it. We both stood there for a while, listening to the wind. It was buried in snow, just like Mrs. Steele had said, but I could see the five wooden posts in the ground, and the way the land rose just behind them.

I got a little taste of that same feeling as I was standing there. That same sense of foreboding I had felt at Misery Bay.

Of course, I had come here already knowing what had happened.

“This is the place,” Maven said. “God damn.”

“He must have been standing right around here,” I said, stepping back to the side of the barn. There was a single window there, with a ledge wide enough to hold a gun or two.

“He had two guns,” Maven said, putting his hand on the ledge. “So if he leaves one right here, he can fire with the other.”

“I wonder if he was wearing earmuffs.”

“Be stupid not to. Your ears would be ringing for days if you didn’t.”

“If he was just turning eighteen, stupid isn’t out of the question,” I said. “But either way, it would have been easy to sneak up on him.”

“What are you saying?”

“I’m just going through all the possibilities. If you came up on one side of the barn…”

I walked over a few steps to the corner and looked back at the scene.

“This side,” I said. “If he was right-handed, I mean. From this side, he wouldn’t see you coming.”

“It’s possible. He was already shooting, so one extra gunshot wouldn’t have been noticed. You take the other gun and put it against his head.”

“Exactly.” I stood there and watched the whole thing happening in my head. A few steps, grab the gun. Boom.

“This is why you stopped up there on the road. To show me how easy it would be to watch this place, so you’d know when the kid was back here shooting.”

“Right again.”

“But there’s no way to really know this for sure, McKnight. If there was nobody else here to see it happen…”

“I know. It’s still just an idea.”

“So what do we do now?”

“We go find Sergeant Steele.”

*   *   *

The road to Wisconsin took us over a big dam on the Menominee River and the water was rushing through the gates. The town of Niagara was right there on the southern banks of the river, but of course it was a long way from Niagara Falls, so I couldn’t tell you how it got its name. The one thing I did learn pretty quickly is that Niagara badly needed a Glasgow Inn. We drove past four different bars before we came to the Starlight, and if I had been an actual customer looking for a nice place to have a drink, I would have kept on driving.

We knew it was bad as soon as we walked in. It was too dark, the tables were too close together, and the jukebox was too loud, even on a Thursday afternoon in the middle of April. We went up to the rail, and on any other day I would have just wondered what the hell were they thinking of in this town, and how could anybody spend more than five minutes in this place without killing somebody, and don’t even get me started on calling the place the Starlight with a straight face, not to mention the business about Niagara itself. But today we had more important questions to ask.

“We’re looking for Donna,” I said. “Actually, we’re looking for Sergeant Steele. Are either of them here?”

“Who’s asking?” the man said. He was all sideburns and bad attitude. Yet one more reason not to drink here.

“We’re friends of Sergeant Steele’s wife,” I said.

“Haven’t seen him.” As he was about to turn his back to us, Maven stepped out and flashed his badge.

“We’d appreciate it if you could tell us where they might be,” Maven said. “You think you could manage that?”

Maven didn’t keep the badge out for long, and it was too damned dark to see it, anyway. But it did the trick.

“Honestly, guys. I haven’t seen either of them in a couple days. If you want to go check her house…”

“That’s a great idea. If you could just write down an address for us.”

“No need. Just go down the main road, about seven or eight miles, until you get to Pembine. Her house is number 1490, on the right.”

“That’s very helpful, sir. We appreciate your time.”

We left the place and got back in the truck.

“I didn’t know you could use that badge in a different state,” I said as we pulled out onto the road. “You’re really full of surprises today.”

“You’re starting to rub off on me, McKnight. I’m not sure that’s such a good thing.”

We headed south down the main highway until we saw the little sign letting us know we had hit Pembine. We started watching the numbers go by, 1460, 1470, 1480, until we found the mailbox with the 1490 on it. It was another long driveway with a lot of snow on it, but this time I didn’t bother putting my plow down.

“They’ve been camped out here for a while,” Maven said as we came to the house. We could see the sergeant’s Michigan State Police car parked next to a beat-up old Cadillac. “There are no tracks at all.”

The house was small. It was really more like a cottage that you’d only call a house if you happened to live there year-round. There was a screen door on the side porch and we could see where the snow had blown in and covered the wooden floor. I knocked on the door a few times, but nobody answered.

“I think I see a light on,” Maven said. “They’ve got to be here. Both cars are here.”

“Hello!” I said. “Sergeant Steele!”

I knocked on the porch door again, and then I opened it and went inside the porch to the next door. The whole place needed about a hundred hours of sanding and then two or three coats of good paint.

“Donna! Sergeant Steele!”

Maven came up beside me and looked through the window next to the door. I don’t know which came first, him seeing the two bodies on the floor or me noticing that the door was slightly ajar and pushing it open. The smell came out, riding on the warmer air from inside the house. It washed over me, turning my stomach inside out.

We had found Sergeant Steele, just like we had promised, but we sure as hell wouldn’t be bringing him back home.

Maven got on his cell phone and called 911. I went outside and stood there with my hands on my knees, trying hard not to throw up.

“They’re on their way,” he said after he hung up. “Are you all right?”

I shook my head. I wasn’t ready to stand up.

“Two sons and two fathers now,” he said. “Plus one girlfriend. McKnight, I think we’ve got something terrible going on here.”

And we’re rolling …

… Things are getting a little dark here. We need a bright shot to shift the mood.

… This is the Mackinac Bridge, gleaming in the sunlight.

… Some bouncy travelogue music would be great here. Don’t you think?

… Here’s the bridge. Here’s the way out. Here’s all the hope, right here on this one thin ribbon of pavement.

… Five miles long. Too far to run. Unless you’re the fastest man on earth.

… Even then, they’ll catch you. They always catch you.