Starvation Lake (26 page)

The heel of Soupy’s stick caught Boynton just under the right eye. Soupy swung it like a baseball bat, following through as Boynton cried out once and crumpled. Soupy raised his stick again and brought it down like an ax on the side of Boynton’s head. Boynton was wearing a helmet, but again I heard the crack of wood on bone.

“Soupy!” I screamed. I dropped my stick and gloves and rushed to grab him before he swung his stick again. I had a fistful of his jersey when someone tackled us from behind. In an instant, other Land Sharks and Chowder Heads were piling on, screaming and cursing. A whistle was blowing. I heard someone saying, “Oh my God, call an ambulance, call an ambulance.” Somebody was punching me in the back, but I hung tight to Soupy, my mask pressed against the back of his neck. He was muttering to himself, “Leo, they fucking killed Leo. I’ll kill you, motherfucker, I’ll kill you.”

The refs peeled us apart. Somebody pulled me away, and Loob and Wilf grabbed Soupy by his arms and he let them. “That’s all, Soup, settle down,” Loob said. Boynton lay motionless on his side. A scarlet smear streaked the ice where he’d slid after falling. One of his teammates crouched next to him and removed his helmet. The side of his face was covered in blood.

“Fuck him,” Soupy said. “I hope he fucking dies.”

A ref stepped in front of him. “Game’s over,” he said. “Sharks win by forfeit.” Soupy didn’t care. He looked at me. “Happy now?”

I had no idea what he meant. D’Alessio reappeared. He showed Soupy a pair of handcuffs. “Easy way or hard, Soup?”

Soupy held his hands out impassively. As D’Alessio cuffed him, Soupy looked down at the unconscious Boynton. “Guess it ain’t a fucking game, is it?”

Two paramedics rushed through the front door of the rink, followed by two sheriff’s deputies and Sheriff Aho. But why would Dingus come for a lousy assault and battery? It wasn’t the first time a skater had gone a little crazy. Then a light like a car’s headlamp went on just over his shoulder, and I saw a bearded guy in a hooded green parka shouldering a TV camera pointed at Dingus. Walking beside him and speaking into a microphone was Tawny Jane Reese. A TV crew for a stick fight? I looked at Boynton. He still wasn’t moving.

Dingus walked out onto the ice and knelt next to Boynton, shaking his head. He looked up at Soupy. “You guys never grow up, do you?” he said.

Tawny Jane minced onto the ice, trying to keep her balance while she spoke into her microphone. Her cameraman aimed at Teddy as the paramedics secured him to a stretcher and hauled him out.

Dingus stood and walked over to Soupy and me. Tawny Jane and the cameraman followed. Dingus motioned to D’Alessio. “One minute, Deputy.” They stepped aside and talked. Dingus turned to Tawny Jane and said, “Give us a minute.” The camera light went out. Tawny Jane whispered something into the ear of the cameraman. She seemed excited.

D’Alessio moved back behind Soupy. He put one hand on the cuffs and one on Soupy’s shoulder. Dingus pointed at Tawny Jane and the cameraman. He stepped in front of Soupy. The camera light went on again. Tawny Jane stepped closer and stuck her microphone out for what Dingus was about to say.

Soupy spoke first, though. “Leo, Dingus?”

Dingus held Soupy’s gaze for a second, then he said, “Alden Campbell, you are under arrest for first-degree murder in the March 1988 death of John David Blackburn.”

“Fucking-ay,” Soupy said.

I had to lean on my stick to keep from falling over. I looked at Soupy. I wanted him to tell me this was all bullshit. His expression didn’t change. It was as if he expected this.

“Get him out of here,” Dingus said.

Tawny Jane narrated while the cameraman backpedaled in front of Dingus and D’Alessio walking Soupy off the ice.

I skated up behind them. “Dingus,” I said. “What about Leo?”

“They fucking killed him,” Soupy shouted.

Dingus stopped and turned to me. His face did not contradict what Soupy had said. “Later,” he said.

I followed Tawny Jane to the edge of the rink. She was telling her microphone: “…bleak chapter in the history of this down-on-its-luck resort town, here in the place named for the man who, we’re now being told, did not die in a snowmobile accident ten years ago but was, shockingly, murdered. Among the spicier ingredients in this torrid potboiler of a tale: A beloved coach, a disgruntled former player, and a twenty-two-caliber bullet. Channel Eight’s exclusive coverage…”

   The damp hair around my ears froze as I stepped out of my truck in the parking lot of the Pine County sheriff’s Department. I remembered the time Soupy and I had a playful hockey fight on the rink in his backyard. My hair had frozen to my helmet and, when Soupy tore the helmet off, some of my hair came with it. Soupy thought it was hilarious.

Now he was inside somewhere, in an interrogation room or a jail cell. And something terrible had happened to Leo.

The glassed-in sheriff’s department lobby glowed with fluorescent light. Inside, Joanie spotted me approaching and hurried out.

“Are you OK?” she said.

“What’s going on?”

“Dingus is supposed to be out in a few minutes.”

“We better get in there.”

“Wait.” She put a hand against my chest. “Are you all right to cover this?”

Of course I wasn’t. But what was I going to do? “I’m fine.”

“Do you really think Campbell killed Blackburn?”

I hesitated just long enough that one of her eyebrows crept higher. I couldn’t imagine what Soupy’s motive would be, but I’d been surprised by so many things in the last few days that I wasn’t sure what to think. I’d always thought of Soupy as gentle. He’d never been one for the rough stuff in hockey. Then came the sneak attack on Boynton.

“No,” I said.

“Well,” Joanie said, “I’m sorry about your friends. And I’m sorry about getting scooped. I’ve got to wait a whole damn day to catch up.”

No doubt Tawny Jane’s report was already on the air. At that hour, maybe twenty people were watching. “Forget it,” I said.

“I come in tonight and she’s like, ‘Oh, this must be terrible for you, your stories today were so great,’ and I’m like, you little slut.”

“Just lock down your sources in the department now so we don’t have Tawny Jane attached to Dingus when the rest of this plays out,” I said. “Also, in case he has another press conference—”

“Yeah, yeah, I got it.”

“Hey, guys,” came a voice. We turned to see Skip Catledge leaning out the door. “Sheriff’ll be out in a minute.”

   When Dingus emerged, his brown tie was still tied and clasped and he moved with purpose I had never seen in him before. He raised his hands as the four of us—Tawny Jane, the cameraman, Joanie, and me—stepped toward him.

“Before you start asking questions, this is not a press conference,” he said. “Kill that, please.” He pointed at the cameraman, who lowered his camera. “Rather than have you sit in my lobby all night, I’m going to tell you a couple of things and then you’re all going home. Understood? No notes, Miss McCarthy. And no interruptions. This is totally off the record, just for your planning and information. There’ll be plenty on the record tomorrow.”

“As you know, we have in custody Alden Campbell. Most people around here know him as Soupy. He will be arraigned tomorrow at two p.m. before Judge Gallagher on a charge of murder, first degree, as well as assault and battery related to the incident during the hockey game this evening.”

“Sheriff?” It was Joanie.

Dingus looked at her in disbelief. “Miss, I’m giving you a second chance here. It will also be your last.”

“Sorry.”

“This is my investigation, OK?
My
investigation.” He waited for that to sink in. “We believe the murder did in fact occur on the same night as the snowmobile accident in which Mr. Blackburn previously was believed to have died. Again, I’m not going to go into a lot of detail. Suffice it to say that we believe the accident itself was fraudulent, and we’re attempting now to determine the location of Mr. Blackburn’s remains. As you know, there is no statute of limitations on murder.”

The word “fraudulent” shivered through me like a fever chill. I thought of my mother and the floor that wasn’t wet, and of Leo running. “In a related matter,” Dingus said, “we attempted this evening to apprehend an individual who we believe had material knowledge of the events in question. That individual had fled the local area and was located by the Michigan state police on U.S. One Thirty-one about thirty-five miles south of the Mackinac Bridge. He resisted attempts to apprehend him peacefully. An unfortunate incident occurred, which we continue to investigate. We hope to have more for you on that tomorrow.”

Of course it was Leo.

Dingus held up a finger. “That’s all for now, but I will allow one question.” He looked directly at Joanie and said, “Ms. Reese?”

Joanie frowned at the floor. Tawny Jane stepped forward. Her hair was tangled in a maroon scrunchy at the back of her head.

“Sheriff,” she said, “do you have any idea of motive?”

Dingus pursed his lips. “We might.”

“Can you say what?”

“I’m sorry. That’s two questions.”

“Sheriff—”

“Don’t make the same mistake Miss McCarthy made, Ms. Reese,” Dingus said. “OK, I’d like you all to clear out now—except you.”

He meant me.

   I waited in Dingus’s office in the same angle-iron chair I’d sat in a few days before. In my mind I scoured the Zam shed for any clue that I’d been there that morning. Had the cops dusted for fingerprints? I remembered the pieces of paper with the strange lettering I’d taken from Leo’s file cabinet. They were still in my coat pocket. What if this were some sort of interrogation? What if they searched me?

Dingus came in. He sat on the edge of his desk facing me and folded his thick arms across his chest. “We’ve got to talk,” he said, “but first you need to know what happened to Leo Redpath. Off the record. You were supposed to be his friend. But you didn’t do him any favors.”

“What does that mean?”

“It’s a tragedy, really. An unnecessary tragedy. We had questioned Redpath in this matter. Apparently he got scared for some reason, which is unfortunate because we didn’t regard him as a suspect, at least not for long.”

“Why did you—”

“Quiet,” Dingus said. It was sometimes hard to take Dingus seriously because of that singsong Scandinavian accent of his. Not now, though. “Late last night, we got an anonymous tip that Redpath knew more about this incident than he’d let on in the original investigation. This person suggested maybe the original incident didn’t happen the way everybody thought it did.”

“Who was this tipster?” I said. I thought I knew: Teddy Boynton, after all of his snooping around between Darlene and Joanie.

“Doesn’t matter,” Dingus said. “As I said, Redpath was a suspect, but only briefly. After we heard from this caller, we definitely wanted to speak with Redpath again. But when we went to see him this morning, we found his room at the rink empty. We put out an APB. Two state police cruisers caught up with him. They had the squawk box going, trying to get him out of his car, and he reaches into his glove box.”

My stomach dropped. “Jesus, Dingus. They shot him?”

Dingus leaned forward until his face was just a few inches from mine. “No, Gus,” he said. “The wound was self-inflicted. Redpath had a pistol in his glove box. He discharged it into the side of his head above the right ear.”

“Oh my God,” I said. A prickle of heat ran across my shoulders and up my neck. An image flashed in my mind of the first time I’d seen Leo, standing at the wheel of Ethel, circling the ice, and then of one of the last times I’d seen him, leaned in close to my face as he sewed the stitches into my jaw. “What the hell is going on around here?”

“I wanted to ask you that, Gus, because you know what?” Now he reached up and grabbed my coat collar in his beefy hand and yanked me up off the chair. “I think you had something to do with this.”

“What? Take your hands off me.”

He tightened his grip. “I ought to strangle that little redhead. Somehow she spooked Redpath.”

“Bullshit. He wouldn’t even talk to her.”

“He didn’t have to talk to her. He just had to hear her questions. She asked him something that spooked him. We’d already talked to him. He didn’t run. She goes to see him, he runs. I want to know what she asked him, Gus.”

“I wish I knew, Sheriff.”

Dingus swung me away from the chair and slammed me against the wall. “This man is dead,” he growled. “I have to contact his family, whoever and wherever they are, and we’re out a material witness in a murder case. All because your little reporter is sticking her nose in places it shouldn’t ought to go. What did she ask him, Gus?”

“I don’t know, Dingus, and I wouldn’t have to tell you anyway. She was doing her job. Or are you just worried about getting reelected?”

I knew that was a mistake the second it left my lips. He hammered me against the wall again and pushed in close enough that I could smell his Tiparillo breath, see the tiny yellowed teeth hidden by his handlebar. I thought he might punch me. “This is not about a goddamn election,” he said. “It’s about a murder investigation. It’s not your job to conduct murder investigations. It’s not your job to embarrass me in front of the public when I’m trying to do
my
job.”

“And you didn’t embarrass us with those bullshit leaks about our stories being ‘premature’? And then the TV chick gets a front-row seat for the arrest? Have hot lips D’Alessio take a cold shower, will you?”

He dropped me and stepped back and pointed a finger at me. “You know the meaning of ‘is’?” he said. “Until I say something
is
—like a murder—then it
isn’t,
understand? Or maybe you’d like to learn more about the case from Channel Eight. You guys are always talking about the public’s right to know. Don’t you think the public has a right to know what you know?”

“We know squat, Dingus. From what I can tell, Leo’s obviously the one who killed Blackburn. He was there that night. He lied about it. He ran, and then he killed himself. But you have Soupy in jail.”