I went to the Glasgow Inn for lunch the next day. I wanted to see how Jackie was doing. I wanted to show him, too, that I wasn’t going to go right back into my hermit routine.
When I opened the door, he wasn’t there. I couldn’t remember the last time that had happened. When you go into the Glasgow, Jackie is there. That’s just the way it is. Instead his son was behind the bar. Jonathan Junior, usually just Jonathan, or when he’s in trouble, just Junior-he was a little squirt like his father, with the same salt-and-pepper color hair, just a little more of it. Behind his glasses, Jonathan’s eyes were as blue as his mother’s, a woman who I had seen exactly once in my life, the day her son graduated from Michigan Tech over in Houghton. He went down to work for a computer company in North Carolina, meaning to leave the Upper Peninsula winters long behind him. He was back in two years.
“Where’s your father?” I said, sitting on a stool.
“He’s upstairs in bed now. Finally. He was up all night.”
“I don’t get it,” I said. “I dropped him off here a little after one.”
“I know, I heard him come in,” he said. “When I came down here this morning, though, he was sitting over there. He had a fire going in the fireplace all night, and I guess he was just sitting there looking at it.”
“Did he tell you what happened over at Vargas’s house?”
“He gave me the quick version,” he said. “It sure put him in a weird mood, which I can understand, I guess. Still…”
“What is it?”
“He actually hugged me this morning, and told me he loved me and he was proud of me.”
I couldn’t help smiling. “If I had a son,” I said, “after last night I would have done the same damned thing.”
“All right,” he said. “Whatever you say. If you think him sleeping at noon is okay, then I won’t worry about it.”
“He’ll be himself by tomorrow,” I said. “God help us.”
I had my lunch, and caught up with Jackie’s son. The man himself never came downstairs. When I got back to my cabin, the message light was blinking on my answering machine. I pressed the play button.
“Alex McKnight,” the voice said, as warm and soothing as a belt sander. “This is Roy Maven. I’d appreciate it if you could stop by today.”
That was it. I wasn’t surprised. I knew he’d find me eventually. With a full stomach and not a hell of a lot to do that day, I figured why not, might as well get it over with. I fired up the truck and headed to the Soo.
I didn’t feel like taking Lakeshore Drive again, didn’t feel like seeing the machines working on the golf course, or the old railroad car that had put such strange thoughts in my head. I took the main roads, M-123 to M-28, a straight line east through Raco and Strongs and then north on I-75 to the Soo. The City-County building is on the east side of town, just past the locks and not that far from Vargas’s house on the river. I didn’t feel like seeing that house again, certainly not the very next day.
I parked behind the City-County building, back by the entrance to the jail and the little twelve-foot-square cage that serves as the outdoor grounds. There’s one picnic table in there, and on this day two men were sitting on top of it, one lighting a cigarette off the end of the other’s.
I told the receptionist at the desk that I was there to see Chief Maven. She led me to the little waiting area outside his office. It’s a place I knew well enough, having spent some time there on a couple of memorable occasions. Chief Maven and I had taken an instant chemical dislike to each other, and it had gone downhill ever since. I remembered reading about Prometheus, and how the gods punished him for giving fire to mortals by chaining him to a rock where a raven would come every day for eternity to pluck out his liver. For me, this would be my ultimate punishment, to sit outside Chief Roy Maven’s office every day, waiting to go inside to see the man himself.
Today, he didn’t keep me waiting. No sooner had I sat down when the door opened and he stuck his head out. “Alex,” he said. “Come in.”
I followed him into the office and sat down in front of his desk, trying to remember if he had ever called me by my first name before. His office hadn’t changed. It was still four walls of concrete. Maven hadn’t changed, either. He had the drill sergeant haircut, the weather-beaten face. He was yet another tough old bird, like Jackie, like Bennett O’Dell. It was a sort of natural selection at work. Men in their sixties who lived up here year-round had to be as hard as granite. If they weren’t, they either died of heart attacks shoveling snow, or just gave up and moved to Florida.
“I appreciate you stopping by,” he said. He looked down at the police report in his lap. “I understand from my men that it was a pretty tense situation you were in last night. I’m glad nobody was harmed.”
“Okay,” I said. “Me too.”
“The owner of the residence, Winston Vargas, he invited you to play poker? Are you a friend of his?”
“I had never even met him before. He really didn’t invite me, but Jackie is one of the regular players, and they needed a sixth.”
“Three men broke in around eleven o’clock, it says here. All with handguns. Glocks, according to you. One of them took Mr. Vargas upstairs, the other two stayed downstairs with the other five players. It looks like you got as much of a description of those two as would be possible under the circumstances. It’s fortunate you were there, Alex. Your training as a police officer came in pretty handy.”
“Anything to help, Chief. You know me.”
He let that one go without even blinking. “Breaking and entering, armed robbery, vandalism. It sounds like they were pretty cool about it. Like it was all business.”
“I’d say so. You have any suspects in mind?”
“Not at this point. We sent a copy of this over the bridge today, based on your judgment that one of the perps sounded Canadian.”
“What was the grand total, anyway?”
“Grand total?”
“You know,” I said. “What they stole, what they destroyed.”
“Mr. Vargas says he had just under five thousand dollars in the safe. Says he likes to pick up hundred-dollar bills at work. I guess he’s got an appliance store down in Petoskey. Custom kitchens, that sort of thing. When he sees a hundred in the drawer, he says he puts a hundred of his own money in, takes the bill, puts it in the safe. He’s got a five-year anniversary with his wife coming up, his second marriage, I presume. Says he was going to give her five thousand dollars in hundreds, tell her to go buy whatever she wanted.”
“Five thousand dollars,” I said. “That’s not big a score, for all the effort they put into it.”
“Good point,” he said. “The vandalism hurt him a lot more. All that stuff he was collecting. And the telescope. Just about all of it they threw into the river. It doesn’t make any sense. What do you make of it, Alex? Do you have any theories?”
“Do I have any theories? Chief, if you’re setting me up for something, I’d appreciate it if you could cut to the chase.”
“I’m not setting you up for anything. Why would I be setting you up?”
“It’s either that or you’ve been taken over by aliens,” I said. “If I go to your house, I’ll find pods in your basement, right?”
“Alex…”
“In fact, that’s why you weren’t there last night. Your detective said you were out of town. Little did he know.”
“You want to know where I was last night, Alex? I’ll tell you. I was on my way back from a retreat down on Mackinac Island. My wife and I went together. You want to know why?”
“This is even scarier than the alien thing,” I said. “It’s starting to sound like you’re talking to me like one human being to another. But go ahead.”
“It’s really a couple of different things that all happened at the same time,” he said. “First thing was, my doctor told me I was killing myself. I mean, literally killing myself. High cholesterol, high stress, no exercise. I was a coronary waiting to happen. Second thing was my wife tells me one day, she says, Roy, we’ve been married almost forty years now, and I’ve never had the nerve to tell you this until now. You’re bringing your job home with you every night, and I’m sick of it. You either quit the job, or you talk to somebody about how to handle it better, or you find yourself a new wife. I’m not going to watch you kill yourself.”
He stopped. I just sat there. I couldn’t think of a single thing to say to him.
“The third thing,” he said, “was my oldest daughter told me I was going to be a grandfather. She’s due in…” He looked behind him at a calendar sitting on a credenza. “Ten weeks, Alex. I’m gonna be a grampa.”
“Congratulations,” I said, finally finding a word.
“So this retreat, it was just something my wife and I did. There was a lot of New Age mumbo-jumbo they were talking about. I didn’t have much use for most of it. But one thing they said made sense. You want to hear it?”
“Why not?”
“They said that in life there are all sorts of things you have no control over. The only thing you can control is your reaction to those things. It’s a pretty simple idea, but I don’t know, it just hit me. All this stuff I get upset about every day, I can’t stop it from happening, no matter how hard I try. But I can choose how to react to it.”
“Okay…”
“This is a perfect example,” he said. “In fact, maybe it’s a little test. You know, somebody upstairs seeing how I’d do. Here I come back from vacation and I’ve got three men breaking into one of the most expensive houses in town. They’re holding six men at gunpoint, breaking into a safe, destroying the man’s valuables. I look at the list of people who were in the house, and who do I see? Alex McKnight! What do you think my reaction’s gonna be?”
“I don’t know,” I said. “But it wouldn’t be pretty.”
“That’s how it would have been,” he said. “That’s how the old Chief Maven would have reacted. But not now, Alex. Not now. In fact, it’s a good thing you were there. Look at this report! You’re the only one who gave us any kind of physical description. For all I know, you were the only guy there who kept his cool and showed everyone else how to get through it. If you weren’t there, it might have all turned out pretty badly. I’m glad you were there, Alex. I really am.”
“If all this is true,” I said. “And I’m still not sure I can believe it. But if it’s true…”
“Yes?”
“Then I guess I’m surprised, Chief. Surprised and even a little impressed.”
He raised his hands, sat back in his chair. If he had wished me a good day right then and sent me on my way, I might have left the place fully convinced he was a new man.
But he didn’t do that.
“Besides…” he said. He picked up a pen and twirled it in his right hand, looking down at the report again. “Even though you seem to show up every time there’s a major crime in my town, look at how well it turned out this time.”
“How do you mean?”
“Nobody was killed,” he said. “Nobody was abducted. I’m not out looking for anybody. I’m not dragging the lake for bodies. And the best part of all…”
He looked up at me. He was smiling.
“The best part of all,” he said, “is that you won’t even be involved this time. I won’t be seeing you every time I turn around. I won’t be hearing your name every time I pick up the phone. Because you…”
He put the pen between his two palms and rubbed it back and forth, like he was a Boy Scout starting a fire.
“…are not…”
He kept rubbing and smiling.
“…a private investigator…”
I couldn’t decide which was more annoying.
“…anymore. Am I right?”
“Yes,” I said. “You’re right.”
“This man Vargas,” he said. “You don’t work for him.”
“No.”
“You never will work for him.”
“I’m sure I won’t.”
“You’ll never work for anybody again. Not as a private investigator, anyway. Not in my town.”
“Are we about done, Chief?”
“I saw your old partner last month,” he said. “Leon what’s-his-face. I was getting some lunch and I saw him on Ashmun Street. He actually has an office there now?”
“I wouldn’t know.”
“No, I guess you wouldn’t. I asked about you, and he said you weren’t his partner anymore. Said you never wanted to have anything to do with private investigation ever again. Said you hadn’t even talked to him in quite a while. I gotta tell you, Alex, I sensed some hurt feelings there.”
“I appreciate the insight,” I said. “Are we done now?”
“I think we are. I think that covers it. Thank you for your help on this case. And if I’m ever out in Paradise, I’ll buy you a beer.”
Maybe I should have left right then. But I couldn’t resist.
“You know, Chief,” I said, “I’m only getting this secondhand, but I do believe that Vargas has a private investigator working for him.”
He just looked at me. He stopped rubbing the pen between his hands. He stopped smiling.
“But as much as Vargas wants to find out who did this to him, I’m sure he’d never ask his man to get in your way. I’m sure he’ll only be trying to help you. And if you think I’m helpful, wait ’til you see what this man can do.”
“Who?” he said. “Not…”
“The only private eye in town,” I said, “now that I’m gone. His last name is Prudell, by the way. Leon Prudell. You should remember that, because I think you’re going to be hearing from him. A lot.”
I heard the pen break just before I closed the door.