The Mackinac Incident

by Len McDougall

  “Okay,” Aziz said, “the van’s ready. Let’s get our coveralls on.”

  Grigovich reached into his satchel and shook out his own pair of coveralls. They were laundered, but spattered with paint, and looked as if they’d been worn frequently. After she’d had the JACKSONVILLE PAINTING patches made and sewn onto them, Brenda Waukonigon had spattered the coveralls with assorted colors of paint. Then she’d dragged them several miles down a dirt road while they were tied to the bumper of a pickup truck.

  When Grigovich was dressed and ready, Aziz appraised his appearance. He turned him completely around by the shoulders while he looked for any hint that might suggest he was anything but another one of the workers employed to maintain the bridge. Grigovich looked perfect, right down to his worn hiking boots and roughened hands.

  “Okay,” Aziz said, putting on his hard hat, “now you look me over.”

  Grigovich obliged. He looked Aziz over head to toe with a critical eye, and, likewise, saw nothing that would indicate he was anything but another bridge worker.

  “You look perfect to me, Phillipe,” Grigovich said truthfully.

  Aziz looked at his wristwatch: 6:32 AM. The sun had fully risen over the water of Lake Huron when he cautiously opened the door to the parking lot and peered outside. As he’d banked on, no one else at the motel seemed to be moving so early in the morning. They grabbed their black nylon satchels and walked briskly to the van. The van’s panel door sounded extraordinarily loud as it slid open. He and Grigovich threw their bags inside, and then closed the door with a bang that made them both jump nervously.

  Aziz was driving. Grigovich was unconsciously fingering the butt of the Desert Eagle pistol that was tucked into the waistband of his trousers under his coveralls. He kept watch in the rearview mirrors as Aziz wended his way through the streets of the small city toward the on-ramp of the bridge. He was gratified to see that no one seemed to pay any attention to them. Still, Grigovich felt a hard knot growing in the pit of his stomach as they drew closer to the objective.

  Aziz was excited, too, but it was almost sexual for him. Nothing turned him on more than the thought of hurting someone. He loved the feeling of being the master over others, and this mission gave him mastery over thousands of the people he hated. It was a delicious feeling to him.

  The speed limit on the Mackinac Bridge was posted by a lighted sign. It was different for different types of vehicles, and it changed for different types of weather conditions. A few vehicles had already gone over the bridge’s waist-high iron rail—it was never made public, but authorities knew that at least some of them hadn’t been accidental. They’d been outright suicides.

  Also kept secret from the public were the numerous “jumpers,” who’d simply stopped their vehicles in the middle of the bridge, and then jumped over the railing. Their bodies were traveling at nearly two hundred miles an hour when they impacted the surface of the water. At that speed, surface tension made the water seem like concrete, and the effects on a human body were the same. Like a fat bug against the windshield of a car, the abdomen split, and internal organs burst outward with such force that they ripped through clothing.

  The incidence of people who drove or jumped to certain death from the height of the Mackinac Bridge was kept strictly confidential. Medical and police personnel were restricted from even commenting about them in private. Some claimed that the press was being controlled through legal threats to keep quiet about such suicides, thereby protecting the claim that the Mackinac Bridge was the safest five miles of interstate in the nation. Journalists who didn’t abide by the unwritten law of silence found themselves living under a microscope until they moved away, or their careers were ruined.

  Jumpers were the reason that no one, save bridge authority and maintenance personnel, was allowed on the bridge on foot. Absolutely no hitchhiking. No one without a vehicle could reach either side, except on Labor Day. Security was high then, with even a complement of National Guard troops on scene, and all eyes were on the civilian pedestrians, and especially on the governor’s party.

  There was a small boat in the water below the bridge any time there were maintenance workers afoot on the structure, ostensibly for safety, even though it was common knowledge that anyone who fell from the bridge would die. The boat was, in fact, there to get bodies out of the water immediately, before someone took photos of them. Aziz counted on the people in that boat seeing him and Grigovich when they planted their bombs. In fact, he relished the thought that the boat crew would look right at their executioners from a quarter-mile away, and watch them attach their bombs, without ever realizing what the two men were actually doing.

  The day was calm and sunny, with a relatively gentle wind of just fifteen miles per hour. The programmable light sign, just past the on-ramp, cautioned motorists to reduce speed from the posted seventy miles per hour to forty-five—the normal speed limit for optimal driving conditions on the bridge. Aziz drove to the center of the span and parked in the outside lane behind a row of welding company trucks. He left plenty of room between the van and the next vehicle, so he wouldn’t be blocked in when he and Grigovich were ready to leave.

  They stepped from the van. When they opened their doors, they were assaulted by the din of giant diesel compressors and generators, and the loud, constant hissing of pressurized air. They donned their hard hats, and each of them tucked a clipboard under his arm. They strode officially along the midsection of the bridge, pretending to discuss its construction as they pointed to different components.

  They’d been walking back and forth along the bridge for fifteen minutes when Grigovich said, close so that only Aziz could hear, “Christ, doesn’t anyone even notice us?”

  As if on cue, a black bridge authority pickup truck with a lighted sign in its box pulled up to them. A uniformed officer rolled down his window and asked in a voice loud enough to penetrate the noise, “You guys here to paint the bridge?”

  “Yeah,” Aziz shouted back with a slight southern drawl, “we’re from Jacksonville Painting. We’re here to do an estimate of how much it would cost to prime the underside of the bridge with our patented new polymer paint.”

  “I didn’t receive any notification that you fellas were coming today.” The officer yelled, running a forefinger down his own clipboard.

  “We weren’t supposed to be here until next week,” Aziz yelled back. “But with Labor Day and all, our bosses want to get in their bid before the holiday weekend. You probably haven’t heard anything about it because they’re being real secretive about this new primer our boys have developed.”

  Aziz handed him a business card printed with JACKSONVILLE PAINTING, COMMERCIAL AND INDUSTRIAL PAINTING and a logo of a paint can and paintbrush. Printed at the bottom was a Jacksonville, Florida telephone number. If the officer called the number, he’d hear an answering machine message for Jacksonville Painting, followed by an apology that all office employees were off enjoying the holiday weekend. He’d never know that the telephone and answering machine were in a derelict warehouse, in an abandoned industrial park.

  “Okay, let me check this out.” The bridge cop shouted.

  “Officer, we’d really like to get this estimate done and then get the hell out of here and start our holiday weekend. Would you have any objection to us gettin’ started right away?”

  The officer looked at them skeptically. His eyes took in the coveralls and hardhats, the tool belts and clipboards, the worn look that traveling through the woods had given them—even their boots. their boots. He’d worked this mostly idyllic bridge patrol job for six Labor Days in a row, and despite the increased security—maybe because of it—nothing more exciting than a few walkers fainting had ever occurred during the Bridge Walk. Besides, why on earth would two men pretend to be working here when they weren’t?

  “Yeah, okay,” the man in the truck said, “you can get started.”

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  THE INTERROGATION

  Colyer awoke ly
ing on his back on the bed, fully clothed, and in exactly the same position in which he’d fallen asleep. Wow, he must’ve really been tired. He looked at his wristwatch. It was one-thirty in the afternoon. He’d slept for about six hours. That was about the length of time he normally slept. He didn’t feel particularly well-rested—in fact, his leg and back muscles were a little sore from trying to keep up with Shannon Elliot in the Lake Superior State Forest yesterday. So were his feet. He really needed a good pair of hiking boots if he were going to be doing that sort of thing.

  He felt a need to go to the bathroom. While he was seated on the toilet, he ran his tongue over his front teeth. They felt furry. Then he noticed that his armpits stank, and he felt gritty and covered with grime. He needed a shower.

  He turned on the water. While he was stripping off his clothes, he looked into the mirror—the first time he’d looked at his reflection in two days. The man who stared back at him looked different. His face and forearms were scratched in several places. There were bruises on his shins. Itchy mosquito bumps dotted every portion of his body. He was smeared with dirt almost everywhere his skin had been exposed. There was dirt packed under his fingernails, and his face looked grimy and oily in the mirror. He certainly didn’t look like a member of the nation’s top police agency.

  The hot water felt good. He couldn’t believe how sore and itchy he was. The freaking mosquitoes had virtually feasted on his body out there. Shannon Elliot hadn’t seemed to be more than mildly annoyed. He’d seen people like that before, people who seemed to enjoy some sort of natural immunity, but he didn’t know how they did it. Even with a bottle of DEET insect repellent in his pocket, Shannon Elliot seemed to have been less bothered by bloodthirsty insects than he was.

  He scrubbed the dirt off his skin with a threadbare washcloth, unable to resist scratching at some of the mosquito bites, even though everyone from his mother to his doctor had always advised against scratching. He wished he’d bought some of that no-itch stuff he’d seen in stores. He ran his palm around his chin, feeling the salt-and-pepper stubble that had sprung up there since yesterday. He remembered when his beard used to be dark brown.

  After a good shit, shower, and shave, Colyer felt better. He changed into his spare set of clothes, and he felt even better. He stood in front of the bathroom mirror, as he tightened a dark-blue necktie with broad, red diagonal stripes, and decided that he looked like a proper FBI agent again. He stepped back and admired the image of himself in the mirror. He could stand to lose maybe ten pounds, sure, but not bad for a middle-aged man in any profession.

  He had no desire to deal with the curious desk clerk again, so he left the room key in the doorknob lock, and left. As he started his car, he saw the venetian blinds of the office window part ever so slightly, as someone at the desk watched him. He pulled out onto the highway with a wry smile. It was probably driving the locals crazy, trying to figure out who he was, but it was only a matter of time before they found out about the murders at Betsy River.

  Now that Colyer had gotten a few hours of sleep, he was thinking clearly again. The submarine last week, the murders at the river, the carjacking, the guy left half-naked on the highway—all of these had to be tied together somehow. Just how they were tied together he didn’t know yet, but he’d start with questioning McBraden.

  A telephone call to the jail confirmed that McBraden was there, and was being kept in solitary confinement. The judge had set bond immediately, and his father had tried to spring him, but Lieutenant Perkins had interceded. As Colyer had told him to do, Perkins had informed the judge that the younger McBraden was being held on federal charges, and that any bail she set would be superseded by a federal custody order. The old sheriff had blustered and threatened, but the judge knew better than to overstep her authority, and Timmons McBraden had remained in jail. That type of good-old-boy club was why the FBI had placed an office here in the first place.

  Before he drove back to Sault Sainte Marie, he stopped at Glenn Hueker’s house to ask him and his wife a few questions about the carjacking. Mrs. Hueker didn’t have much to say, but her husband was a veteran of the Vietnam conflict, retired from Chrysler in Detroit, and he had a lot to say. He’d moved back to the tiny community of Hulbert, about thirty miles southwest of Paradise, after his retirement a decade ago. He’d been born there, and had moved back there, he said, because this kind of shit wasn’t supposed to happen in the UP. He was angry, and he wanted Colyer to know it. He gave a detailed description of the carjacker, and it sure sounded as if the man had been Rod Elliot.

  What Hueker didn’t divulge was that there had been an unregistered, 32-caliber Colt automatic in the glove box of the Santa Fe—Hueker’s wife had let that little bit of pertinent information slip. Hueker, of course, didn’t want to incriminate himself to a federal agent, but his wife had prudently—and responsibly, Colyer thought—worried that an unrecorded handgun, in the possession of a man who was clearly of a criminal bent, might come back to haunt them, legally and morally.

  Colyer was glad to have that information, because he wanted to know what kind of armament Elliot might have in his possession. But he wasn’t about to get in an uproar over an unregistered handgun. It hadn’t been required to register handguns with the federal government until 1968, when liberal politicians, in a knee-jerk reaction to the assassination of Robert Kennedy, had circumvented the Second Amendment in the name of national security. Congress had required all American citizens to register their handguns, which, until then, could be bought by mail, and, of course, most gun owners had flatly refused. The result, in Colyer’s opinion, was that the politicians had made an entire generation into felons with the stroke of a pen, and created a black market for guns that existed to this day. There were politically minded agents in the FBI who might have arrested this war veteran on federal felony possession charges, but Colyer wasn’t one of them. He had bigger fish to fry, in any case.

  After leaving the Huekers, he drove to the jail in Sault Saint Marie, where he requested to speak with Timmons McBraden. The undersheriff came to the Booking Room to meet him. Colyer had never had occasion to meet the short, chubby, and abrasively self-important man before, and he didn’t like him right away.

  “I’m Undersheriff Emil Borden,” he said, extending his hand. Colyer accepted the handshake reluctantly.

  “I’m here to speak with Timmons McBraden,” Colyer told him.

  “I’m sorry,” the undersheriff smiled, “but you can’t talk to him without having an attorney present. He hasn’t been able to afford one himself, and we’re waiting for the judge to assign a public defender. It’ll be a couple of days before that happens, I figure. The court docket is full right now.”

  Yeah, Colyer thought, and in a couple of days you’ll have found some excuse to move him to another holding facility. He was getting a little fed up with these back-slapping, good ol’ boys acting like he was a bastard cousin who’d be best kept in a closet. He’d better establish his position with this self-important little man right away.

  Colyer leaned close to Borden, so that he wouldn’t be overheard by the several turnkey deputies who were trying very hard to eavesdrop.

  “Listen you cocksucker, you’re impeding a federal investigation, and if I have to call in agents to move McBraden to Guantanamo Bay, I’ll make certain that you go with him in belly chains for interfering in a case that bears on national security. Now take me to his cell.”

  Borden’s eyes grew wide in astonishment. No one talked to him like that in his jail, not in his county. He opened his mouth to rebuke this fat-mouthed federal agent, and then clamped it shut so abruptly that his teeth clicked. He saw something in Colyer’s eyes that said he wasn’t just making an idle threat.

  “Follow me,” Borden said, taking a ring of heavy brass keys from a clip on his belt.

  Colyer followed him down a hall past the jail’s Control Room, past the curious eyes of several deputies. He stopped at a welded, steel door with a square-foot pane of ha
lf-inch tempered glass mounted in its center. Borden opened the door, using one of the big brass keys on his ring, and led Colyer down a long hallway to a row of single-prisoner cells with sliding doors made from steel bars.

  McBraden was reclining on a steel rack atop two jail mattresses—prisoners typically got one. He was munching from a bag of Doritos, while he listened to a small radio. On the floor next to him were a Coca-Cola and a bottle of antihistamine lotion for his bug bites. Colyer grunted and looked sidewise at Borden. None of these things were allowed to ordinary prisoners.

  “Thank you, Undersheriff Borden. I’ll call out when I’m ready to leave.”

  “I should stay here with the prisoner. . . .”

  “I’ll call you when I’m ready to leave, Undersheriff.”

  Borden got the message. McBraden’s eyes flickered with fear for a moment, when the undersheriff turned and walked out the door, leaving him alone with this plainclothes cop, who apparently had no special consideration for the fact that he was the son of Sheriff Emeritus McBraden.

  “Mr. McBraden, I’m Special Agent Colyer of the Federal Bureau of Investigation. I’m here to ask you a few questions.” Without giving any indication that he did, Colyer noted that there was a video camera mounted up high on the wall behind him. Everything he said was being watched and recorded by the deputies in the control room.