North of Nowhere (13 page)

“I’m downstate,” I said. “What’s going on?”

“Downstate? Where?”

“Just outside of Petoskey,” I said. “Are you gonna tell me what’s going on or not?”

“How soon can you be here?”

“A couple of hours,” I said. “About one o’clock.”

“Make it twelve-forty-five, McKnight. I’ll be waiting for you at War Memorial.”

It took a few seconds for that to sink in. “Chief, what the hell happened?” I said. “Why do you need me at the hospital?”

“Go downstairs to the coroner’s office,” he said. “You’re the only man who got a good look at those guys…. We want to see if you recognize this one.”

“One of the gunmen? He’s dead?”

“No, McKnight, we just thought he’d be more comfortable waiting down here in the morgue.”

“Take it easy, Chief. I’ll be there as soon as I can.”

I hung up and punched the accelerator. Whoever was behind this, it looked like the stakes had just gotten a lot higher.

War Memorial Hospital is right in the middle of the Soo’s business district, a few blocks south of the river, a few blocks west of Leon’s office. I got there a few minutes before one o’clock, and walked into the outpatient waiting room. Maven was sitting there, looking at a magazine. Aside from him, the chairs were empty. He didn’t smile when he saw me.

“The hell took you so long?” he said, standing up. He threw the magazine back on the pile.

“I was going seventy,” I said. “I don’t have a siren I can flip on like you do.”

“Let’s go,” he said. I followed him to the elevator.

“Were you waiting here the whole time?”

“Of course not. You think I have time to sit in a waiting room for two hours? I went to the office. I just got back here five minutes ago.”

“Then why are you reaming me out for taking so long?”

“Who’s reaming you out, McKnight?” he said. He pushed the down button. “You’ve always been way too sensitive.”

I just shook my head, got in the elevator with him, and rode down to the basement.

“When’s the last time you were in a morgue?” he said.

“Nineteen eighty-four.”

“The last year you were a cop?”

“Yes,” I said.

“Long time ago.”

“I don’t imagine they’ve changed much.”

The elevator stopped. The door opened. Maven led me down a long hallway. When he opened the door to the morgue, I smelled the antiseptic, felt the touch of cold air on my skin. Maven was right—it
had
been a long time. But it was all coming back to me.

The coroner was sitting at his desk when we came in. He stood up to shake my hand. He was a round little man, and his white lab coat somehow made him look more like a pastry chef than a coroner. “Mr. McKnight,” he said. “I’m Dr. Pietrowski, the Chippewa County coroner. We appreciate you coming in.”

I looked at Maven. “My pleasure,” I said.

“He’s in this room,” the coroner said, showing me to the far door. “Are you prepared to look at him?”

“I’ll give it my best shot.”

“Are you uncomfortable with this?”

“No, I’m just not sure that I’ll be able to recognize him.”

He nodded. “Let’s see what happens.”

I followed him through the door, Maven behind me. There was a steel table in the center of the room. The body on top of the table was completely covered by a white sheet. The fluorescent lights hummed above us.

The coroner pulled on latex gloves, then drew back the sheet, folding it neatly across the dead man’s shoulders. The face was so white it was almost blue. The eyes were half open. The mouth was half open. I took a step closer.

“Is this one of them?” Maven said.

I tried to replay the night in my head, looking down at the lifeless face, trying to make some kind of connection. It was impossible.

“I only really saw the two men who stayed downstairs with us,” I said. “One was very fair-skinned, with blond hair and blond eyebrows. That’s the one who sounded Canadian to me. This man obviously isn’t him. The other man was heavier…How much did this man weigh?”

The coroner picked up a clipboard. “Two hundred twenty-five pounds,” he said. “That’s minus a few liters of blood.”

I nodded. It sounded about right. “How tall is he?”

“Five eleven.”

“He was wearing a mask,” I said. “A surgical mask, and a cap, too.”

The coroner went to his work table. “Like these?” he said, holding up a green mask and cap.

“Yes.”

He looked at Maven for a moment, then stepped over behind the dead man’s head. He slipped the cap over the man’s dark hair, then draped the mask over his mouth. “Does this help?”

I looked down at him. I took a deep breath, tried to put myself back on the floor at Vargas’s house. The men were walking around. The dog was barking. “He does look familiar now,” I said. “I think this may be the other man who was downstairs. I can’t be a hundred percent certain.”

“There was something in the report about the shoes,” Maven said behind me. “Would you recognize the shoes?”

“If he was wearing the same shoes, yes, I might.”

The coroner went back to his work table, opened up a black plastic bag and pulled out a pair of old athletic shoes. He brought them over to me. “Take a good look,” he said. “But please don’t touch them.”

They were old, beat-up shoes, once white, now a dingy gray. Two blue stripes ran diagonally on each side. “These look like the shoes he was wearing,” I said.

The coroner went back to put the shoes away. I looked down at the dead man, still wearing the cap and mask. “What happened to him?” I said.

“He was shot in the back,” the coroner said. “Two slugs from a forty-five. One passed through the upper abdomen, the other was stopped by the sternum.”

“How long has he been dead?”

“Approximately four days.”

“Four days. That would be…” I thought about it. “That would be the night of the robbery, after they drove away. Where did you find him?”

The coroner just looked at me while he pulled off his gloves. “You’ll have to ask the chief about that.”

“Let’s go,” Maven said. “We’re done here.”

“I did my part,” I said. “Tell me what happened.”

“I’m going upstairs,” Maven said. “You can stay down here if you want.”

The coroner just shrugged when I looked at him. I followed Maven back through the office, down the hall to the elevator. We stood there waiting for it.

“Where did you find him?” I said.

“Right on top of the blood.”

“What’s his name?”

“You don’t need to know that.”

“It’s public information,” I said. “It’ll be in the paper tomorrow.”

“Not necessarily. We might withhold it for a few days.”

“What’s the big secret?”

“If I were to bring Mr. Connery down here, or Mr. O’Dell or Mr. LaMarche, do you think any of them would recognize him?”

“I doubt it,” I said. “I don’t think anybody else got a good look at him.”

“That’s assuming they didn’t know who he was already.”

“Yeah, that’s assuming.”

“If his name happened to be Danny Cox, would that mean anything to you?”

“Is that his name?”

“I’m just asking, if it
was
…”

“I’ve never heard that name before,” I said.

“That’s your answer? Just like that? You didn’t even take a minute to think about it.”

“I don’t have to think about it. I don’t know the name.”

“Most guys, they’d say, ‘Hmm…Let me think. Danny Cox…Danny Cox…Nope, never heard of him.’”

“I’ll think some more if it’ll make you feel better.”

“Never mind.” He looked up at the numbers above the elevator. Without looking at me, he said, “What were you doing downstate, anyway?”

“I had an appointment.”

“I probably don’t even want to know, do I…”

The elevator opened. We got in.

“I know two of the thieves drove away in a car with a Canadian license plate,” I said. “Have you traced it yet? I don’t think American private investigators can call Canada for that information.”

“First of all, how did you come to know anything about a Canadian license plate?” he said. “Second of all, you’re not a PI anymore, remember?”

“I came out of retirement,” I said. “You obviously need a little help, Chief. You’re letting your personal bias get in the way here. You should be out looking for the person who’s really behind all this.”

“Let me guess,” he said. “The appointment you had this morning…”

“Kendrick Heiden,” I said. “I don’t think he was involved, if you want my opinion.”

“You know how much I value your opinion, McKnight. Who’s next on your list?”

“Douglas Swanson.”

“He wasn’t there that night.”

“Yeah, I know.”

Maven rubbed his eyes. “I’m getting a headache.”

“Tell me who owns that car,” I said. “I’m going to find out anyway.”

“Go right ahead. Knock yourself out.”

“If it was a real lead, you wouldn’t say that. It must have been a stolen car. Or a stolen plate, at least. Am I right?”

The door opened on the ground floor. Maven stepped out and walked quickly to the front door. In the sunshine I felt like I was a million miles away from the cold light of the morgue. “I got things to do,” he said.

“So do I,” I said.

He stopped and turned to face me. “You know what? You think you’re helping out your friends? Let me tell you something. The district attorney had a deal on the table. The first one of those guys who flipped was gonna have the conspiracy charge dropped. It was gonna be a class A receiving stolen goods, probation and no jail time. But now we’ve got a dead body on the ground. He was shot in the back, McKnight, and left in the woods so a couple of little kids could find him this morning. You think I’m in any kind of mood to hear you tell me I need help on this case? And that you’re the one who’s gonna help me?”

“Maven, it’s real simple. You’re dead wrong. You’re looking at the wrong men.”

“Because you just know in your heart that they’re innocent.”

“Something like that.”

“I’m the one with the personal bias,” he said. “Think about it.” Then he walked away.

I drove back over to August Street to check out Swanson’s office again. I hadn’t asked Leon what kind of car Swanson drove, so I didn’t know what to look for. It didn’t matter. There was only one car in his lot, so I figured it had to be his secretary’s. It was a Toyota Camry, which sure didn’t seem like a lawyer’s car to me.

I put the truck in the public lot by the Locks Park, and thought about taking a peek in the courthouse. It occurred to me that I wasn’t even sure if I’d remember what Swanson looked like. Trying to ask around in the courthouse didn’t seem like the right way to go about it. So I grabbed some lunch in the Ojibway Hotel dining room, sitting right by the windows so I could watch a couple of freighters pass through the locks. It was another beautiful July day. There were lots of people out there enjoying themselves in the sun, people on vacation from their jobs and all of their troubles. Or so it seemed. Me, I was fresh out of the morgue, and I had enough troubles now to last me until Labor Day. I could have dropped every single one of them. They weren’t my troubles to begin with. I could have forgotten the whole thing and gone back to being a hermit.

Somehow I didn’t think I would be doing that.

I caught up with the news while I was waiting for my lunch. The
Soo Evening News
crime writer was having the time of his life following the “Masked Gunmen” story. He spent half of page one describing the morning arrests of two Soo residents and a tavern owner in Paradise. Somewhere around the second column he finally mentioned that the three men arrested were apparently not the masked gunmen themselves, but merely suspected accomplices. Chief Maven of the Soo police was still hoping that anyone with information on the case would contact him immediately.

As much fun as the writer was having with this story, I couldn’t imagine what he’d do when he found out one of the gunmen was found shot in the back. I folded the paper in half, put it on the table next to mine, and didn’t look at it again.

I drove back down to Swanson’s office. There were no new cars in the lot. I pulled up to a meter, a half block down the street, and thought about what to do next. If I were a real PI like Leon, I thought, I’d wait here until he showed up. He had to stop in at the office
some
time today. I looked at my watch again. It was just past two. “Goddamn it all,” I said out loud. “I do not feel like sitting here for the next three hours.” But I didn’t know what else to do. Swanson was my main man at that point, and everything that had happened that day had made me even more determined to talk to him. Hell, who else was there?

I got out of the truck, went down the street to the little book store, and bought every magazine that looked half interesting. There were about a half-dozen true-crime paperbacks for sale—I was ashamed to admit I had already read every single one of them. I settled on an international spy thriller, and another book about a storm at sea. With a few candy bars and a bottle of water in the bag, I was ready for the rest of the afternoon.

I sat there in the truck for two hours, going out once to the bathroom because I would be damned if I’d piss in a plastic bottle. Cars came and went down the street, none of them turning into Swanson’s lot. The sun moved across the sky until a long shadow from the buildings finally covered me. This is what a real private investigator does, I thought to myself more than once. I really, really hate it.

At five o’clock, the secretary came out the front door and locked it behind her. She looked too young to be so skillfully unpleasant on the telephone. She got into the Camry and drove away, leaving me sitting there alone in my truck.

“Okay,” I said. “You didn’t check in at the office. So now let’s see if you check in at home.”

After looking at my map, I drove up the hill by the Lake State campus and found the address Leon had given me. The house looked like a French Colonial, assuming I knew what the hell that was. I parked on the street and then rang the doorbell, even though I didn’t see any cars in the garage. Nobody answered the door.

I moved the truck a couple of houses away, facing his driveway. Time to wait some more. Then a horrible thought came to me. Maybe Swanson was spending the afternoon with Vargas’s wife somewhere. They could have been at Vargas’s house even. Hell, for all I knew, he was banging her on the floor of her custom kitchen at that very moment.

I didn’t have long to think about it, as a dark blue Acura pulled in the driveway. A woman got out. On the way in the front door, she opened the mailbox and took out the contents. Mrs. Swanson.

When I got out of the truck, my legs were as tight as piano wire from sitting in my truck so long. I went to the front door.

The woman who answered was about my age, maybe a few years older. She had dark hair just turning to gray, big brown eyes behind a pair of rimless glasses. She smiled and said hello, and asked if she could help me. I instantly felt sick to my stomach. This was a woman who didn’t know her husband was screwing one of his clients.

“Is Dougie home yet?” I said.

“Dougie?” she said. “I haven’t heard anybody call him that in years.”

“We’re old friends,” I said, picking right up on that one. “I was in the neighborhood, thought I’d stop by. He’s still in practice, right?”

“Yes, he is. He’s at the office right now, but he should be home in a few minutes. Would you like to come in and wait for him? I’m sorry, I didn’t catch your name.”

“Alex,” I said. “Alex McKnight.”

I spent the next half hour sitting in her kitchen. It was a nice kitchen but nothing like a Vargas custom job. Mrs. Swanson cut me a piece of the best homemade carrot cake I’d ever tasted, and even asked me if I’d like a beer. We talked about my cabins, how my father had built them himself, and how he had worked for Ford Motors for thirty years. Her father had worked for General Motors. Every minute I spent with her, I hated her husband a little bit more. By the time he got home, I was ready to hit him right in the mouth.

I waited in the kitchen while she went out to meet him in the living room. “Douglas,” I heard her say, “there’s a man here waiting for you. His name is Alex McKnight.”

Swanson appeared around the corner. He was vaguely familiar—mid-fifties, in good shape for a man who worked behind a desk most of the day, and of course the silver hair any good lawyer in his fifties had to have. I had seen him around town a few times, and I was pretty sure I had been introduced to him once, but I was quite sure I had never seen him as angry as he was at that moment. “What the hell are you doing in my house?” he said.

“I’m eating your wife’s carrot cake,” I said. “Having a nice conversation.”

“You’ve got three seconds to get out of here before I call the police.”

“Honey, what’s the matter?” his wife said.

“Your husband’s a real kidder,” I said. “He always does this to me, every time he sees me. In fact, tell him about that time in college, Dougie.”

“I’m counting,” he said, picking up the phone. “One.”

“Dougie was in this hotel room,” I said. She looked at me with wide eyes, and then at her husband, and then back at me. “There’s a knock on the door. He opens it and it’s room service.”

“Two,” he said. “I’m dialing.”

“The waiter has a big tray with a bottle of champagne on it. Dougie says, ‘I didn’t order any champagne.’ The waiter says, ‘Compliments of the house, sir.’ And then the waiter loses his grip on the tray and wouldn’t you know it, he dumps the whole thing right on Dougie’s head.”

Swanson stopped dialing. Either he forgot what comes after two, or I was getting to him.

“What do you say, Dougie? You want me to tell your wife the rest of the story?”

“What do you want?” he said. “Why did you come here?”

“We need to have a little chat.” I said. “Is there someplace we can go?”

“In here,” he said. He opened a pair of glass doors. There was an antique desk in the room, and enough law books to fill two entire walls.

“I want to thank you, ma’am,” I said to Mrs. Swanson. “I apologize if I upset you.”

She just shook her head. She didn’t say a word. As soon as I stepped into his office, Swanson shut the doors tight.

I sat down on the guest chair. Swanson kept standing by the doors, his back to me, like he was deciding what to do next.

“You call my office,” he said, finally turning around. “You harass my secretary. You come to my
house
and threaten me in front of my wife.”

“I didn’t threaten you.”

“That little story about the champagne bottle, what was that?”

“Just an amusing anecdote.”

“What do you want?” he said. “If you want money, you can just forget it. I will not be blackmailed.”

“Who said anything about blackmail? I just want to ask you a couple of questions.”

“Cut the crap, McKnight. I know who you are. I know why you’re here. I’m telling you one more time. You will get nothing from me. Not one dime.”

“Will you sit down for a minute? You’ve got the wrong idea. I’m not here for money.”

He looked at me for a long moment, the way a man looks at someone he thinks may be demented. Then he slowly sat himself down in the chair behind his desk. “What is this about?” he said. “I know you’re Leon Prudell’s partner. And I know he’s been following Mrs. Vargas around the last few weeks.”

“I’m not his partner anymore,” I said. “I’ve got nothing to do with that…. How did you know he’s been following her around, anyway?”

“Come on, like she’s not going to notice this big clown with orange hair following her everywhere? I knew he had to be a private investigator, and since there’s only one PI firm in town, it wasn’t hard to figure out who Vargas had hired to watch her. The listing I saw said ‘Prudell-McKnight Investigations.’”

“Old listing,” I said. “I’m out of that now.”

“So it’s just him doing this? Following her around like some sort of lowlife stalker?”

“I think you can rest easy,” I said. “I don’t think Leon ever got the money shot he was trying for. You know, the one of you with your pants around your ankles.”

“Could this possibly be any less your business, McKnight? My relationship with my wife? Or whatever might be happening between Mrs. Vargas and myself?”

“Aside from feeling bad for your wife, I don’t care. I don’t even want to think about it.”

“Then why the hell are you here? I swear to God, I was sure you were going to put the squeeze on me, try to work both sides against the middle. Believe me, I’ve heard about private investigators pulling this scam. Some people will do anything for a little easy money.”

“I’m here because I was the lucky guy who took your place at the poker game,” I said. “I’m here because I want some answers.”

“What kind of answers could I possibly give you? I don’t know anything about it.”

“One of the gunmen turned up dead this morning.”

I watched him carefully. He narrowed his eyes, as if honestly confused. “One of the men who broke into Win Vargas’s house?”

“Yes.”

He shook his head. If he was acting, he was doing a good job of it. But then, that’s what lawyers do. That’s why lawyers were put on this earth. “I don’t understand,” he said. “What does this have to do with me?”

“Somebody set up Jackie, Bennett, and Gill,” I said. “I’m trying to find out who.”

“I knew they were arrested yesterday,” he said. “What makes you think they were set up?”

“Are these your friends or not? Do you really think they were involved in this?”

“All three are friendly acquaintances,” he said. “Men I play cards with once in a while. I’ve seen enough to never be surprised by what people will do, McKnight. Especially when money is involved.”

“Let’s talk about that money,” I said. “You’ll agree with me that whoever put this together had to know about the money in Vargas’s safe?”

“That makes sense.”

“Vargas claims he only mentioned the money in the safe once, at a poker game two months ago. Not even his wife knew about it.”

“Therefore you assume,” he said, “that one of the men present at that poker game must be responsible for the robbery.”

“Yes.”

“And that the same man must also be responsible for this frame-up you think these three innocent men are presently caught up in.”

“You’re doing beautifully,” I said. “Keep going.”

“And that if it was
not
in fact Jackie, Bennett, or Gill, it must have been either Kenny or myself. The two of us being the only other men who knew about the safe.”

“I don’t think it was Kenny,” I said.

“It wasn’t Kenny.”

“Kendrick, actually.”

“Kendrick. It wasn’t Kendrick.”

“You’re almost home,” I said. “One more step.”

He threw his hands up. “You’ve got one man left,” he said. “Swanson must have done it.”

“Did you?”

“I’m not under oath here.”

“Just tell me,” I said. “Did you do it?”

“No,” he said. “I didn’t. Why would I?”

“You said it yourself. People will do anything for a little money.”

“I said
easy
money. There’s a big difference. It’s only easy if you know you can get away with it.”

“I didn’t see you get arrested yesterday,” I said. “So far, you’re getting away with it just fine.”

“Let me ask you something. Let’s assume I set this up. You didn’t see
me
there, did you? I must have hired three men to break into his house.”

“Apparently, yes.”

“These three men, aren’t they entitled to some of the money?”

“Yes,” I said. “I’m sure they are.”

“How much money are we talking about? What did it say in the paper? Five thousand dollars?”

“That’s what Vargas told the police. You and I both know it was more.”

“Certainly. So let’s say it was what, fifty thousand dollars? A hundred thousand dollars? Let’s say it was a million dollars. A cool million in cash. That’s a pretty good haul, wouldn’t you say? I’m gonna hire three men to go in with guns to steal a million dollars, and then have them deliver it to me. Which of course they’ll do, because even though they’ve just ripped off a million dollars, they’re men of honor and they’re gonna stand by their promise to me. But now what do you think their cut should be? You think they’ll let me have a full share of it? Even though all I did was tell them about the safe, and then sit here in my easy chair while they committed armed robbery? Sure, let’s say they cut me in for a full quarter. Now I’ve got a quarter-million dollars. I’ve risked my entire legal career, which by the way will probably gross between five and ten million more dollars before I retire. I’ve risked going to prison for what, twenty or thirty years? Everything I own, every person in this world I care about…I’ve risked it all for two hundred fifty thousand dollars. Is this the way you see it, Mr. McKnight? Is this what you think really happened?”