Ice Run (6 page)

The city police department shares the same building with the county, which puts Chief Maven somewhere near the bottom of the totem pole, below the sheriff, who owns the jail and the best part of the building, the state police, who have their own barracks down the road, and the feds, who run the Soo locks and control the border. That’s half the reason why he’s always so happy.

The other half is that he genuinely doesn’t like me. We had this sort of chemical reaction to each other the first time we met, and we never found a way to get past it. Hell, for all I knew, he was a great guy, and under different circumstances, we would have even been friends.

But I wouldn’t have bet on it.

I went inside, stomped the snow off my boots, and told the woman at the desk that I wanted to leave something for Chief Maven.

“Is he expecting you?” she asked.

“No, no,” I said. “I just wanted to give him this hat. It belonged to the man who was found dead in the snow this morning.”

“Oh my,” she said. She looked at the hat like she wouldn’t have touched it for a thousand dollars.

“I was thinking he could return it to the man’s family. That’s all.”

“I’m going to call him.”

“No, please, that’s not necessary.” I knew what would happen if she called him. He’d tell her to make me wait out here, and then sometime around spring he’d actually come out to see me. I’d played this game with him before.

“I’m sure he’ll want to speak to you,” she said, the phone already in her hand.

“I’ll just drop it off at his office,” I said. “I know where it is.”

“Sir, you can’t just go back there …”

But I was already gone. I went down the hallway and saw that his door was open. When I poked my head in, he was on the phone. No doubt the receptionist had called to warn him I was on my way.

“Hello, Chief,” I said.

“McKnight,” he said, slamming down the phone. “What the hell are you doing here?”

“I just wanted to give you something.”

“The waiting area’s out in the lobby. And what the hell did you do to your hair?”

I went in and sat down on the plastic guest chair. As always, his office was nothing more than a windowless box, with gray concrete walls and not much to hide them. One bulletin board. A calendar. It all went perfectly with Maven himself, with his drill sergeant haircut and his weather-beaten face that never changed.

“I’ve got snow up to my ass,” he said. “Half the town I can’t even get to. I got a poor old man found frozen stiff in a snowbank. Now you show up.”

“It’s good to see you, too.”

“Just knock it off, McKnight. What do you want from me?”

“It’s about Simon Grant.”

He looked at me. “What about him?”

“I saw him last night,” I said. “At the Ojibway Hotel.”

“Yeah, so?”

“You see this hat?” I said, holding it up.

“What about it?”

“It belonged to Mr. Grant.”

“What, is he a friend of yours?”

“As far as I know, I never met him before last night.”

“So how come you have his hat?”

“He left it for me,” I said. “Right before he went out and froze to death.”

Maven thought about that one. “Okay, start at the beginning,” he said. “What were you doing at the hotel? Having dinner?”

“Yes,” I said. “Then staying the night.”

“Staying the night? With who?”

“That’s none of your business, Chief.”

“Now I understand the dye job,” he said. “McKnight, could you get any more ridiculous?”

“Do you want to hear the rest of the story or not?”

“Go ahead.”

I ran through the rest of it for him. It was the third time I had told it that day, but it still didn’t make any sense to me.

“So let me get this straight,” he said when I was done. “You’ve never seen this man before, ever?”

“No.”

“You’re sure about that.”

“Yes.”

“And when you see this hat lying there on the floor outside the room, you go downstairs and chase this eighty-two-year-old man into the snow?”

“I didn’t chase him into the snow. I was just looking for him.”

“So you could … what?”

“So I could ask him what the hell he was talking about. Why he thought he knew who I was.”

Maven closed his eyes. “You were involved in, let me think, the last three homicides in this city? No, four. Now we’ve got this poor old man who freezes to death in the snow. Even with that, you’ve got to show up holding the man’s hat.”

“Chief, I don’t know why he did this. Okay? I’ve got no idea.”

“Maybe my wife is right,” he said. “Maybe it’s time to retire. Move to Florida.”

“I hear it’s nice this time of year.”

“Just give me the hat.”

I looked down at it. For some strange reason, I didn’t want to give it up. It felt like the hat itself was a message I still hadn’t figured out yet. But hell, at least Leon had taken those pictures.

“You’ll give this to his family?” I said.

“Of course.”

“Can you have them give me a call? I’d like to talk to them.”

“Why do you want to talk to them?”

“I just want to figure out why he thought he knew me.”

“Oh no you don’t,” he said. “McKnight, if I find out you’re bothering these people, I swear to God … Don’t you think they’re going through enough?”

“I’m not going to bother anybody.”

“You’re damned right you’re not gonna. If I find out you’re harassing this family while they’re burying this poor man—”

“Chief, please. Give me some credit.”

“I’ll give you my boot up your ass,” he said. “I’ve seen you do this before, remember? I know you. Please, McKnight, just go home and forget all about this, will you? Go dye your hair some more. I can still see some gray.”

“It’s been a pleasure,” I said, getting to my feet. “As always.”

“Promise me, McKnight.” He stayed behind his desk. “Promise me for once in your life you’ll leave something alone.”

I raised my hands. “There’s nothing to talk about, Chief. An old man is confused, he thinks he recognizes someone, he goes out in the cold, and he dies. It’s just an unfortunate accident.”

“So you’re going right back to Paradise?”

“I’m on my way.”

I caught one final glimpse of his face as I shut the door behind me. He didn’t look like a man who believed me.

There were snowflakes in the air when I got back outside. For once it felt good to breathe in the cold air. I started up my truck and headed straight for home.

There was just one little stop to make on the way.

I had already avoided eating lunch there. The last thing I wanted to do was sit in that dining room and remember the night before. But now as I headed back across town, I couldn’t pass the Ojibway Hotel without stopping for one quick visit.

There was a different woman behind the desk. I asked her if I could see the manager. She told me I was looking at her. I introduced myself, and asked her if she had been around the previous night.

“I just got back into town today,” she said. “I picked a great time to leave, eh?”

“Did you know Mr. Grant?”

“Not very well, no. But I know he’s lived in this town forever. He used to come in here a few years ago and have dinner.”

“A few years ago, you say?”

“Yes. To tell you the truth, I wasn’t even sure if he was around anymore. I hadn’t seen him in so long. When I found out he was here last night…”

“I was here, too,” I said. “I’m wondering if I can talk to somebody about what happened. The woman who was on the desk, is she going to be around today?”

“No, not until tomorrow.”

“What about the doorman? The kid who was out there shoveling the snow?”

“No,” she said. I could tell she was starting to wonder why I was asking all these questions. “He’s not here.”

“Do you know when he’ll be working again?”

“I’m sorry. I don’t understand. Were you here with Mr. Grant last night?”

“No,” I said. “But I talked to him. Sort of. The doorman, he was here all day, and I know he saw Mr. Grant sitting in the lobby. I bet you he talked to him a lot more than I did. What was that kid’s name again?”

She didn’t bite. “Look, I really can’t…”

“I understand,” I said, taking out my wallet. What the hell, I thought. I still had some of these old business cards, the ones Leon had made up. God knows I wasn’t actually in the game anymore, but she didn’t have to know that. “But I’d really like to ask him a few questions.”

She took the card from me and looked at it. Prudell-McKnight Investigations, with the two guns pointed at each other. “You’re a private investigator?”

“I’m just trying to help out.”

Help out what? I didn’t know what I was talking about now. But somehow it seemed to be working.

“His name is Chris Woolsey,” she said. “To tell you the truth, I’m a little worried about him. He’s supposed to be here today.”

“Chris Woolsey,” I said. At that moment I wished I always carried a pad of paper like Leon. “He never showed up for work today?”

“No, he didn’t.”

“You know, when I came back down here last night, I didn’t see him anywhere. I assumed he was out looking for Mr. Grant.”

“The poor kid is probably traumatized.”

“I’d like to check up on him,” I said. “Would you happen to have an address and phone number?”

“Oh, now, I don’t know …”

“I just want to ask him a few questions, ma’am. It’s important.”

She looked at my card again, then let out a long breath and did a quick run through a Rolodex. “He goes to Lake State,” she said. “He’s a senior, I think. This is the address and phone number I have for him. I think it’s still current, but you know how it is when you’re in college.”

“Yes,” I said. “Thank you. I appreciate it.”

She wrote down the number and gave it to me. I thanked her again and left.

When I was back in the truck, I thought about calling on the cell phone, then decided I might have better luck just going over there. Lake Superior State University, or Lake State for short, was just south of downtown, right next to I-75. As I drove back down to Easterday, it occurred to me that I was seeing pretty much every inch of Sault Ste. Marie, Michigan, in one day. I thought about Roy Maven sitting in his office in the City County Building, and what he would have said at that moment if he knew I was still in town.

Easterday Avenue cuts right through the heart of the university grounds. Lake State’s a fairly big school, bigger than anything else east of Marquette. If you grew up around here, and you wanted to stay close to home, it was the only game in town. Although when kids graduated from Lake State, more often than not they left the Upper Peninsula altogether. It’s just the way things were. And the reason behind the old joke that the U.P.’s biggest export was its children.

I followed the street numbers past the student housing and the ice arena. Hockey was the only big-time sport at this school. I remembered the Lakers winning the national championship a couple of years back. The marquee out front announced that the University of Michigan would be visiting that night.

I finally found the apartment building I was looking for, another couple of blocks down the street. With all the snow piled up everywhere, I couldn’t find a place to park, so finally I pulled into the alley next to the building. I heard the music playing inside as I knocked on the door marked 4, and then a young man opened the door with money in his hand.

“You’re not the pizza guy,” he said.

“Is Chris here?”

“No, I haven’t seen him today. He’s probably over at his parents’ house.”

“Can you tell me where that is?”

He stood there in the doorway for a long moment, looking all of fourteen years old in his sweatpants and his T-shirt. He had his long hair pulled up on top of his head and bunched together with a rubber band, and he was obviously trying to grow some kind of goatee on his chin. It wasn’t working out so well.

“Who are you?” he finally said.

I dug out another card. “I’m a private investigator,” I said. “It’s no big deal. I just wanted to ask Chris a couple of questions.”

“Is he in trouble?”

“No, not at all.”

“That means yes.”

“No. It means no. I just want to—”

“Look, I’ll give him your card when I see him, okay? Then he can call you if he wants.”

I was about to press him, but then I figured the hell with it. I wasn’t going to stand there and argue with this kid. “All right,” I said. “Just give him the card.”

“I’ll do that, man. I said I’ll give it to him.”

“Thank you,” I said. “Have a nice—”

He slammed the door before I could finish. Okay, I thought. There’s a nice young man. The future of America. Nice hair, too, sticking up like a damned flowerpot. When I got back to the truck, the pizza guy was there waiting behind me, and not looking too happy about it. I went to his driver’s side window and apologized for being in the way. Then I gave him a twenty for the pizza and told him to keep the change. That seemed to make up for it. He drove away, I put the pizza on the seat next to me, and then I backed out of the alley.

It was getting late in the afternoon and the pizza smelled pretty good, so I had a slice while I drove back down Easterday. I stopped at a gas station by the highway and looked through the phone book next to the pay phone. There was one Woolsey listed, down on Twenty-fourth Avenue. Just for the hell of it, I looked up Grant and found a dozen listings, all over the city and out into the county. No telling who might have been a relative.

I’ll wait and see what Leon comes up with, I thought. For now, I’ll just go see if these Woolseys are Chris’s parents.

I drove down to the southern edge of town, past Sanderson Field, one of the two old air command centers that had been turned into commercial airports. I followed the numbers on the mailboxes as they got smaller, until finally I found what I was looking for. It was a raised ranch sitting all alone in a wide open field, the snowdrifts climbing to the windows on one side. The driveway was covered by the drifts as well, with a serpentine set of tracks barely visible, where someone had fishtailed all over the place on their way to the garage. I put my plow down and pushed the snow off as I went. In this part of the world, it’s the kind of thing you do for your neighbor, or even a stranger. You do it without even thinking about it.

I came up to the garage and pushed the snow to the side, then I got out of the truck and went to the front door. The walkway wasn’t shoveled. When I rang the doorbell, nobody answered. I rang one more time. Just as I was about to turn around and leave, the inner door opened. I saw her face through the thick glass of the storm door, this woman with red eyes and a handkerchief pressed to her mouth. She was forty years old, maybe forty-five, and she was wearing a bathrobe.

“I’m sorry to bother you,” I said.

She just looked at me.

“Are you Mrs. Woolsey?” I had to speak up to be heard through the glass. She was making no move to open the storm door.

She nodded her head.

“Is Chris here? His roommate said he might be.”

“Who are you?”

“My name is Alex McKnight. I just want to ask him something.”

She looked back in the house for a moment. “Ask him something about what?”

“He was working at the Ojibway Hotel last night,” I said. “I just want to ask him a couple of questions about something that happened there.”

She closed her eyes.

“He’s not in any trouble, ma’am. Believe me. I just want to ask him if he—”

She slammed the door shut. That was two doors in one afternoon. And it made me wonder. I just wanted to ask this kid if he knew anything about the old man, but maybe I had stumbled onto something more significant. Either that or my chemically altered hair was scaring everybody.

I took out one more business card. “Chris,” I wrote on the back, “please call me. I was at the hotel last night, and I just want to ask you if you know anything about Mr. Grant. That’s all! Thank you. Alex.”

I wedged the card into the doorjamb and left, slogging my way through the deep snow on the walkway and nearly killing myself on a hidden patch of ice. I got in the truck and plowed my way back down the driveway. What the hell, I thought. Maybe a little good deed will help.

I had a couple more slices of pizza on my way back home. There were thick clouds in the sky, and it was already getting dark. Somewhere in the world it was warm, and the sun stayed out for hours at a time. But I was here on the long straight road back to Paradise, thankful that the county trucks had thrown down some sand. Even more thankful that I’d be giving Natalie Reynaud a call when I got home.

I ran the plow down my road and back. When I got inside, I saw the light blinking on my answering machine. It was a quick message from Leon, asking me to call him when I got in. So I did.

“I found out a few things about your man Mr. Grant,” he said.

“Leon, I hope you didn’t spend too much time on this.”

“Not at all,” he said. “It occurred to me, this is going to hit the newspaper tomorrow, so I just called my friend over at the
Sault Evening News.”

“Yeah? What did he tell you?”

“Just some basic stuff for right now. Simon Grant was eighty-two years old, he was born in the Soo and lived in the area his whole life. Two sons, one daughter. He had a hundred different jobs, from shoeshine boy to union representative. He worked on the old railroad docks for a long time, right on the river.”

“Yeah, the woman at the hotel told me she thought he’d lived around here for a long time. He used to come into the hotel fairly often, it sounds like, but then he stopped a few years ago.”

“He might have been in some kind of senior care,” Leon said. “Maybe he sneaked out and went back to one of his old familiar places.”

“That makes sense,” I said. “That would explain why they hadn’t seen him for a while. There was one weird thing, though …”

“What’s that?”

“I thought the doorman at the hotel might be able to help me out. So I tried to find him. He seems to have disappeared.”

“What?”

I gave him the whole rundown. Chris Woolsey not showing up for work today, going to his apartment, and then his parents’ place.

“That’s a little strange,” Leon said. “It might not be a coincidence.”

“Well, I left a card at both places. Maybe he’ll call me.”

“You know, Alex, for a man who has no interest in being a private eye, it sure sounds like you’re acting like one.”

“I just want to know what happened,” I said. “If I don’t try to find out, it’ll just keep bothering me, why this man would go to all that trouble, thinking that he knew me. Wouldn’t you be doing the same thing?”

“I’d be all over it, yes.”

I couldn’t help smiling. “Yeah, I have no doubt about that.”

“My friend at the paper said he’s working on the obit this evening, so he may have some more information. If he calls me, I’ll call you.”

“You can stop, Leon. You don’t have to do any more.”

“It’s no big deal, Alex. I’ll let you know what he says.”

“All right,” I said. “Thank you.”

“What are partners for?” It was an old line I had heard before, back when it meant something. It almost made me wish it still did.

When I was done with Leon, I called Natalie. Her answering machine picked up before she finally got on the line herself.

“Sorry,” she said. “I was going through the stuff in the basement.”

“You’ve got a lot down there.”

“A whole lifetime’s worth. It’s gonna take me a long time to go through it all.”

“Just let me know if you want help. My rates are cheap.”

She didn’t say anything.

“What’s the matter, Natalie?”

“It’s just too much sometimes. That’s all.”

“Okay,” I said. “I can imagine.”

“I’m sorry, so what did you do today?”

“I gave the hat to Chief Maven. Then I wandered over to the hotel.” I gave her the same rundown I had given Leon—Chris Woolsey disappearing, and me trying to find him.

“Maybe he’s just a little freaked out, Alex. This man was in the lobby all day, and then suddenly he’s dead.”

“I hear what you’re saying. It’s just kinda strange. And the way his mother looked today …”

“You went to his mother’s house?”

“I just wanted to talk to him. I wanted to make sure he’s all right, too.”

“I don’t know, Alex.”

“Well, anyway, Leon will let me know if he finds out anything else.”

“Who’s Leon again?”

“My sort of ex-partner, remember? He’s the one who found out your address.”

There was a silence on the line.

“Okay, that sounds a little weird,” I said. “What I mean is, when I decided to contact you, Leon helped me do that. That’s all.”