Misery Bay (32 page)

I thought about calling Agent Long a few times, but whenever I picked up the phone I thought about how many miles there were between us. I wanted to see her again, but I knew it wouldn’t be an easy arrangement for either of us.

The sun came back. The thermometer actually hit fifty for one brief day. Vinnie helped me do some of the remaining exterior trim work on the last cabin. Then it snowed another eight inches.

Things felt almost normal again, and I thought I might finally be ready to face that first cabin. Just go in, clean it out, reclaim it, banish all the bad memories of what had happened there. You do that and only the good memories will remain. At least that’s what I was telling myself. I set a date and I promised myself that was the day I was going to do it.

It was time to get my life back.

*   *   *

Before that day could even begin, I got another one of those early-morning phone calls. The sky outside was still cold and dark and the sound of the phone ringing was like a jagged edge of a knife. I stumbled out of bed and answered it.

It was Agent Long. Sometime during the night, Olivia Maven had apparently ingested a lethal dose of the tranquilizer Pentobarbital. She was in the hospital, and Chief Maven was on his way down to see her. She had eventually thrown up much of the Pentobarbital, after it had been in her system for some unknown period of time. There was a chance this might have saved her life. But as of that moment, things did not look good.

I hung up the phone and closed my eyes.

Either Clyde C. Wiley was back from the dead, I thought, or else it was never him to begin with. Whoever the killer was, he was back at it. Or rather, he had never really stopped. He had just been waiting.

And we’re rolling …

… Finally!

… I thought we’d never get this thing off the ground again.

… I still don’t know where my film is. It better show up soon or there’ll be hell to pay.

… On top of that, no edit bay for the time being. I even had to make my own developing tank!

… And Olivia was away for so long, I wasn’t sure if she’d ever come back home.

… Just drink this and lie right back down. Act a little scared.

… Perfect. You took your time showing up, but at least you nailed the performance.

… It’s good to be back in motion again, even with all the problems. Like they say, the show must go on.

And cut.

PART THREE

CHAPTER NINETEEN

I called Chief Maven’s cell phone. It rang a few times, just long enough for me to question whether this was the right thing to do. He had enough on his mind, God knows. But before I could hang up, I heard his voice on the other end.

“What is it?”

“Chief, is that you?”

He didn’t say anything. I could hear his engine racing. He was in his car, of course, on his way down to Lansing.

“Chief, are you driving? Please be careful.”

“I can’t talk now. I can’t even—”

He broke off, swearing at another driver.

“Chief, it won’t do you any good if you get killed on the way down there.”

“What do you want, McKnight?”

“How is she? Do you have any other news yet?”

“No, I don’t. I’ll see when I get there.”

“Do you want me to come down?”

More swearing on his end as he passed another vehicle. I don’t know if he had a squad car with lights, or if he was driving his regular unmarked car.

“Chief, do you want me to come down there?”

“Ingham Hospital. In Lansing. I gotta go.”

The line went dead. I hurried up and got dressed. Then I headed out to my truck and gunned it.

*   *   *

I couldn’t go quite as fast as Chief Maven, and of course he already had a head start on me. I drove over the Mackinac Bridge again, into the Lower Peninsula. Straight south on I-75, just like my trip to Bad Axe, only this time I branched off at Grayling and headed straight for Lansing. I had left at about five in the morning, and I figured it would take me about four hours to get there. I stopped for gas and coffee and got right back on the road. When I got near Lansing I stopped again to ask for directions to the hospital. It was just after nine when I finally got there.

I went to the main reception desk and had a few minutes of tense wrangling with the woman about where Olivia Maven was and whether I could go anywhere near her. In the end, I called the chief on his cell phone again and he told me to come up to the Critical Care unit.

When I stepped out of the elevator, there was a nurse at the main station who didn’t want me to go any farther, as only immediate family members were allowed in the unit. That’s when Chief Maven came out of one of the rooms and flashed his badge at her. He didn’t technically have any authority to do that, but it seemed to work, at least for the moment. He gave me a quick nod and I followed him over to a small waiting area.

“How’s she doing?” I said.

“Better than a few hours ago.”

His voice was tight. He wouldn’t look at me. He wouldn’t stand still.

“Why did I let her come back?” he said. “Will you tell me that, please?”

“The case was solved, Chief. It was over. How were you supposed to know this would happen?” I didn’t know what else to tell him. I knew that whatever I said, it wouldn’t help one little bit.

“For as long as I live,” he said, “I will never forgive myself for being such an idiot. I don’t care what anybody else says. It was up to me to look after her and I completely, totally failed.”

He grabbed a magazine off the little table and threw it at the window. The nurse looked up from her station and was about to say something. Wisely, she decided against it.

“I understand what those other guys went through now,” he said. “This is what it’s like to see your child … just, I mean…”

He picked up another magazine. I grabbed him by the shoulders and sat him down. “Chief, tell me what happened.”

He pushed me away from him, but he stayed in the seat.

“My wife was there, McKnight. She was in the guest room downstairs when he came in. He must have come in through the front door and walked right by her door. Gone upstairs, into Olivia’s bedroom.”

He started rocking back and forth as he went on.

“He went in there and … and I don’t even know what happened next. Somehow he woke her up and got her to drink a glass of water with all these pills in it. Pentobarbital. You know what that is, right?”

“A tranquilizer.”

“An old one. It’s been around forever. It’s what Marilyn Monroe took when she…” He stopped talking. He kept rocking back and forth in his chair.

“Chief, your wife didn’t hear anything?”

“No. No, she takes her hearing aid out, and she just didn’t…”

“So what’s the prognosis right now, Chief? You said she’s doing better?”

“Yeah, that’s what they’re saying. You want to know why? Because he made a mistake. It’s the oldest trick in the book, right? You wait for them to make a mistake.”

“What do you mean? What kind of mistake?”

“When you’re going to kill yourself by taking a lot of tranquilizers or sleeping pills or whatever else, you know what you usually have to do first? If you really want to make sure it works? You take an antiemetic.”

“
Anti
emetic, so you mean you don’t—”

“So you don’t throw it all back up, yes. That was his mistake, McKnight. He didn’t realize that my poor Olivia’s always had a nervous stomach. It probably didn’t stay down for more than a few minutes. By that time, he must have been gone.”

“What are they saying now?”

“They’re still saying she could have some liver damage. It’s too early to tell.”

“Is she awake? Have you talked to her?”

“No, not yet. They said she’ll be out for a while. Probably all day.”

“But when you do … she should be able to tell us what happened, right?”

“Yes. You would think so. She should be able to tell us. I don’t know.”

He leaned all the way back in his chair, finally coming to rest for one second at least. He put two fingers from each hand on his temples and closed his eyes.

“But until she does that,” I said, “we have no idea exactly what happened, right?”

“What are you getting at?” He opened his eyes. “Are you suggesting she might have really tried to kill herself?”

“No, Chief.”

“Because if that’s what you’re saying—”

“All I’m saying is that we don’t have any idea who to look for. That’s all I meant.”

“Whoever it is,” he said, “he must be rattled now. After making a mistake like that…”

“What are you thinking? This has to be somebody who was close to Wiley, right?”

“Probably. The film was in his basement. Which reminds me…”

“What?”

“Two agents were just here a minute ago,” Maven said. “Not Long and Fleury, two other guys from Detroit. They went out to Bad Axe as soon as they found out about this. You know what they found?”

“What?”

“Somebody broke into that house on the lake. The feds had it all locked up tight, because they were still processing stuff. But sometime between yesterday evening and this morning, somebody got in, went down to the basement, and turned the whole place inside out.”

“Looking for the film,” I said. “Gotta be, right?”

“You would think. But whoever it was, he didn’t find it.”

“So what about Connie and Sean? Did the agents talk to them?”

“Naturally. Neither of them was alone last night. They both seem to have airtight alibis.”

“They
seem
to?”

“Yeah, and neither of them has any idea who could have broken into the house. Of course, I’m getting all of this secondhand.”

“We’ve been down this road before,” I said.

“Last time around, secondhand wasn’t good enough for you, you mean. So you ran off to see for yourself.”

“Pretty stupid thing to do. As usual.”

He nodded slowly. “The kind of thing I’m always yelling at you for.”

“You stay here with your daughter,” I said. “I’ll call you as soon as I can.”

*   *   *

Bad Axe was about two hours away from Lansing. I took the expressway due east through Flint, but then I had to cut north on a smaller two-lane highway, all the way north into the thumb. So the last hour was hard driving.

When I finally hit Bad Axe, I knew exactly where to go. I parked in the lot next to the theater and went across the street. I pressed on the buzzer next to the Grindstone Productions plate, but nobody answered. I pressed again and took a peek through the window. It was dark inside. I rapped on the window a few times, then I turned and left. I went across to the theater and tried the door. It was locked. Not a big surprise. It wasn’t even noon yet. I knocked on the door, but nobody answered.

Okay, think, I said to myself as I walked back to the truck. Where do I try next?

I played back my last trip down here and realized I knew exactly where Sean lived, at least. I had followed him home to his apartment that first night. It wasn’t far from the theater, just a few blocks away from that motel I stayed in. I pulled out and retraced the route.

When I got to his building, I didn’t see his green Corvette anywhere. Another swing and a miss, I thought. Not a good start. I got out and went to the front door, gave it a quick knock just for the hell of it. I was surprised when the door opened. A young woman stood there looking out at me. She looked vaguely familiar.

“Is Sean here?”

She shook her head. She was clearly upset about something.

“My name’s Alex,” I said. “Are you okay?”

She shook her head again.

“Can I come in and talk to you? It’ll only take a minute, I promise.”

She backed away from the door. She still hadn’t said a word.

“Where have I seen you before?” I said. Then it came to me. “Wait a minute, you were the girl in the sandwich shop. Behind the counter, that first day I came in. I didn’t realize you and Sean were…” I wasn’t quite sure which word to pick, but it didn’t seem to matter. She was looking down at the floor now and was obviously not listening to me at all.

“You weren’t there in the shop the next day,” I said, “when I sat down with Sean.”

I leaned in closer to get her attention.