Ice Run am-6

by Steve Hamilton

  “Are you going to tell me what’s going on?” he said. He started chopping up an onion.

  “What do you mean?”

  “Every once in a while, I gotta make a point of dragging it out of you. I mean, look at your face. You look like the east end of a westbound horse.”

  “I thought I told you what happened. There was a disagreement at a funeral.”

  “Alex, come on. We both know what’s going on here. Now, I know I’ve never met this woman. What’s her name? Natalie?”

  “I’m sorry,” I said. “We just haven’t had the chance to come by yet.” I thought about the night before, driving past the Glasgow, and me wishing we were stopping there to spend the evening by the fire. “She’s only been here in town twice, and-”

  He put his hand up to stop me. “Never mind that, Alex. I don’t care. I’m just saying, you’ve got this habit of taking on other people’s problems. For a friend especially, you’d do anything. I’ve seen it.”

  He stopped and put his knife down.

  “Hell, Alex, you did it for me.”

  “I think you’re exaggerating.”

  “I’m not,” he said. “I’m not even going to argue about it. I know the way you are. You know it, too.”

  “So what am I supposed to say, Jackie?”

  “Just tell me what’s really going on with this woman,” he said. “This Natalie, what’s her story?”

  “You really want to know?”

  “Start talking.”

  I leaned back against the door frame, thinking about it for a second. Then I began. I described my first trip to her house, the awkward beginning of it all, and then the ups and downs over the next few visits. Then the night in the hotel room, the old man, the hat on the floor. All the while he kept working on my omelet, chopping up the mushrooms and the ham, grating the cheddar cheese. He put everything in a shallow skillet and cooked it, somehow making it turn into an omelet instead of a half-burned mess of eggs and whatever else, which was what always happened when I tried to do it myself at home.

  I told him about the picture we had found in her basement, the visit to Mrs. DeMarco’s house, then finally everything I knew about her mother.

  “That sounds familiar,” he said. “Are you sure that’s not my ex-wife you’re talking about?”

  “Not unless you’re Natalie’s real father. Instead of Pierre Trudeau.”

  “Seriously, Alex. Everything you’re saying about Natalie… It just gives me a really bad feeling.”

  We went back out to the bar. I sat on one of the stools and had my omelet while he stood on the other side. He wasn’t moving until I heard everything he had to say.

  “I’ve never even seen the woman,” he said. “But I can tell, just from what you’re saying. She’s what, in her late thirties now? Never been married, you say? Hasn’t even been in a relationship in a long time?”

  “Neither have I, Jackie.”

  “All this stuff about her mother? How many people do you know who haven’t spoken to their mother in five years?”

  I shook my head.

  “She’s got some problems, Alex. Some big problems, going back a long, long way. Sounds like her whole life has been cockeyed. What’s that old saying? Never sleep with someone who has more problems than you do?”

  “So you’re saying what, I shouldn’t be with her? Is that what you’re saying?”

  “No, Alex. Not that you’d listen to me, even if I was saying that.”

  “Then what is it, Jackie? What do you want me to do?”

  “I just want you to think about what you’re doing,” he said. He leaned in closer to me. “Like I was saying, I know what you’ll do for a friend. Okay? I know what you’ll put yourself through, just to help somebody out. I wouldn’t change that about you, Alex. It’s one of the things I admire about you.”

  “Jackie, you’re making me blush. You just can’t tell with all the bruises.”

  “Knock it off. I’m being serious here. If you’ll go that far to help out a friend…” He held his hands out in front of him, about two feet apart, like a man telling a fish story. “Then how much farther will you go for a woman you really care about?”

  “Jackie-”

  “I’m scared to death for you, Alex. I really am.”

  He left me sitting there, with those words hanging in the air. After everything I had been through, in all the time he had known me, Jackie Connery had never said something like that to me before.

  I finished eating. Then I took out my cell phone and called Natalie. The machine picked up again. Nobody home.

  I was starting to get a little scared myself.

  Chapter Twelve

  The cold air hit me again as soon as I stepped outside. I hurried to the truck, slammed the door shut, and got the heater going.

  “Okay, now what?” I said out loud. I didn’t want to start panicking. It wasn’t time to drive over to her house yet. If she wasn’t home, that wouldn’t do any good anyway. I knew her mother lived in Batchawana Bay… But no, how bad would that look? Me showing up on her mother’s doorstep, asking to see Natalie, like I was her date for the prom. Apologizing for tracking her down, telling her I was worried about her.

  You’re driving yourself crazy, I thought. You’re imagining the worst, based on nothing.

  I didn’t want to go back and sit around in my cabin, so I pulled out of the lot and headed toward Sault Ste. Marie. On the way, I called Leon at work. The man who picked up didn’t sound too thrilled to be acting as his secretary. When he came on, I asked him who had answered the phone.

  “Oh, that’s just Harlow.”

  “Is he your boss?”

  “Yeah, sort of.”

  “He didn’t sound real happy, Leon. I don’t want to mess up your job.”

  “Ah, who cares, Alex. It’s not what I want to be doing, anyway.”

  There was an uneasy silence then. We both knew what his dream job would have been.

  “How ’bout I buy you lunch again?” I said.

  “You on your way in? Sure.”

  “I’ll stop by,” I said. With the omelet still in my stomach, I wasn’t even slightly hungry, but I needed to see Leon. I needed to be around somebody who believed in good information as the solution to every problem. A half hour later, I picked him up at the motor shop and took him across town. I parked outside the Ojibway Hotel.

  “You really want to eat here?”

  “It’s still the nicest place in town,” I said. “Maybe eating here will make me think of something.”

  “Whatever you say, Alex. Are we gonna have a seance, too?”

  “If you weren’t doing me so many favors, I’d bust you one,” I said. We got out of the truck and suffered the cold air for twenty seconds, then we were inside. My young friend the doorman was nowhere in sight.

  There was a new woman at the front desk. And of course there was no old man sitting in the lobby, tipping his hat to me. Everything felt different about the place, like nothing bad had ever happened there. We sat down in the dining room. In the daylight, the view out the big windows was blinding white in all directions. We sat one table from where Natalie and I had been that night. How many days ago had that been?

  “You say there was a bar here,” I said. “Right here where this dining room is now?”

  “A long time ago,” Leon said. “Maybe twenty, twenty-five years.”

  “It’s hard to imagine.”

  “Things were different back then. If you can picture all those men stationed up here at the air bases. Thousands of them. One minute you’re in Texas or California-next thing you know, you’re in Sault Ste. Marie, Michigan. It’s twenty below zero and there’s snow up to your ass. If it’s December, it’s dark eighteen hours a day. I tell ya, Alex. This place…”

  He looked out the window, like he was conjuring the whole scene in his mind.

  “I was just a kid, remember, but even so, I’d hear people talking about it. Places that would be open all night long. Wom
en who’d come up here just to keep the men company. That’s what my father called it. Keeping the men company.”

  “And you’re telling me they actually arrested the chief of police back then?”

  “The state troopers did. Walked right into his office and put the cuffs on him. Turns out he was being well compensated to ignore certain things.”

  “Could Simon Grant have been involved in this?”

  “Since I last saw you guys, I asked my man at the Evening News to run Simon Grant’s name. There were a lot of hits, because Grant was involved in the dockworkers’ union.”

  “That’s a rough line of work.”

  “Naturally. There was nothing about him ever being in big trouble, though. Or even getting arrested.”

  “Anything more on Jean Reynaud?”

  “Nothing,” Leon said. “But then the man didn’t live here.”

  “You know, his best friend back then was a man named Albert DeMarco. He was married to Natalie’s mother for a while, too.”

  “Albert DeMarco.” He took out his pad of paper and wrote down the name.

  “I didn’t bring him up when we saw you before,” I said. “He’s not a good person to talk about when Natalie’s around.”

  “Some bad history?”

  “He wasn’t her stepfather for very long, but it was…” I wasn’t sure what to say about it.

  “If you’re going where I think you’re going, you don’t have to say it.”

  “I gotta tell you something, Leon. Every time I think about it, I want to kill this guy. I want to dig him up out of his grave and kill him all over again.”

  “I hear you, believe me. But listen, my guy knows someone across the river, works at the Sault Star. I’ll see if he can find anything.”

  “Thanks, Leon. I appreciate it.”

  “It’s my pleasure,” he said. “How’s Natalie doing, anyway?”

  That was the question of the day, so I had to give him the quick rundown, just as I had done for Jackie. I didn’t get the same sermon from him, but I could tell he was just as concerned about me.

  “Everything will be okay,” I told him. “As soon as she gets back home, I’m sure she’ll tell me all about it.”

  We had our lunch and then I took him back to work. I tried her number again. There was still no answer. I checked my answering machine. Nothing.

  There was only one place to go next. I drove up to the City County Building, with a new appreciation for Chief Roy Maven. Say what you want about the man-the state police have never broken down his door to put handcuffs on him.

  The receptionist was sitting in the middle of the lobby, with doors on either side of her that kept opening again and again. The poor woman was trapped in a wind tunnel. She had her coat on, and those gloves with no fingers so she could work the phones. I asked her if Chief Maven was around. She told me to have a seat.

  “Please tell him that Alex McKnight and Natalie Reynaud are here to see him,” I said.

  She looked on both sides of me, like she was wondering if I had brought an imaginary friend with me.

  “Trust me,” I said. “Just tell him that.”

  Nine seconds later, Chief Maven appeared in the lobby.

  “Where’s Ms. Reynaud?” he said, looking around.

  “She had to run out for a minute,” I said. “We can start without her.”

  He gave me a look like he knew he’d been had. “Yeah, let’s not wait,” he said. “Come on back.”

  He led me to his office.

  “Where’s the comfortable chair you brought in for Natalie?” I said. “You should go get it. She could be here any minute.”

  “Cut the crap, McKnight. Just sit down and tell me what you want.”

  I sat in the cheap plastic Alex McKnight memorial guest chair. “I’m just wondering,” I said, “if you had a chance to find the old police report on the murder.”

  “Because I’ve got nothing better to do.”

  “No, because we asked you, and because it’s important.”

  He rolled his eyes, then opened one of his desk drawers. “I was going to call you today,” he said. “I’ve got it right here.”

  He pulled out a faded blue file folder and put it on his desk.

  “I gotta tell you, though. There’s not much to it.”

  He started showing me all of the materials, beginning with the crime scene photos. The colors were a little washed out after almost thirty-plus years of storage, but there hadn’t been much to see in the first place-just a man lying facedown on the ground, a great dark stain on the back of his head and down the back of his overcoat. In one shot I could see a couple of inches of snow under the body, and in another a larger mound of snow running along the side of him. It looked like he had been shot on a shoveled sidewalk. At that moment I was glad Natalie wasn’t here with me to see it.

  “The autopsy’s here,” Maven said. “No surprises. Gunshot to the back of the head, time of death around midnight, probably a little after.”

  “Witnesses?”

  He shook his head. “No, it’s all here in this report. Henderson interviewed everyone working at the hotel that night, and as many of the partygoers as he could track down. It’s midnight on New Year’s Eve, so everybody’s drinking and making a lot of noise. If you think about it, it’s the perfect time to kill somebody.”

  “So what else is in here?”

  “Just some more interviews. He went over to Canada to speak to Mr. Reynaud’s family.”

  “Really? Can I see those?”

  “They’re a little sketchy,” he said, sliding several sheets of paper over to me. “Henderson wasn’t exactly Tolstoy when it came to his interview reports. I did find out, though, that he’s living in Tampa now. I even have a phone number if you want to talk to him.”

  “Are you kidding me?” I took the piece of notepad paper from him. It had Mac Henderson’s name and a phone number with a 727 area code.

  “Tell him hello from me,” Maven said. “It’s been a long time.”

  “I don’t get this,” I said. “Why are you being so cooperative?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “All this stuff. The old file. The original detective’s phone number.”

  “Why wouldn’t I try to help out?” he said. “I’m here to serve the public.”

  “If it was just me and not Natalie, I wonder…”

  “I’m offended, McKnight.”

  “What about Simon Grant? As long as you’re being such a mensch, can we find out anything about him?”

  Maven ran his hand through his hair. “You’ve got to remember, McKnight, Simon Grant was an old union man, going back a long way. He was president of the dockworkers’ union for seven years, in fact. This was back in the sixties and seventies.”

  “When Sault Ste. Marie was Sin Central.”

  “I wouldn’t go around saying that,” Maven said. “Like I told you before, people around here like to keep that stuff in the past.”

  “Okay, fine. Just tell me what kind of trouble he got into.”

  “He really didn’t. At least not on the record. He was a material witness to a number of cases back then-menacing, assault, a couple of smuggling cases. The line of work he was in, you almost have to run into that sort of thing.”

  “Is that all you can tell me?”

  Maven put his hands up. “It’s a long time ago,” he said. “The man is dead. There’s not much more you’re gonna find out now.”

  “We’ll see about that.”

  “McKnight, you’re keeping your promise to me, right? You’re staying away from the Grant brothers?”

  “So far, yes.”

  “McKnight, I swear to God…”

  “Thank you, Chief,” I said as I stood up. I looked him in the eye. “I mean that. Thank you.”

  “Stay away from them,” he said, standing up himself. “Do you hear me?”

  “I hear you,” I said. “Loud and clear.”

  I kept hearing him, all the
way down the hall, until I walked out the lobby door into the cold air.

  When I had the heater going enough to use my hands, I dialed Mac Henderson’s number on my cell phone. It rang a few times, then a woman answered. I asked for Mac. She asked me to hold for a moment. A few seconds passed. Then I heard a male voice on the line. It was a deep voice. It didn’t sound like that of an old man. I introduced myself, told him that Roy Maven had given me his number.

  “Roy Maven!” the man said. “How is that old bird doing? I haven’t heard from him in ten years.”

  “He’s just fine,” I said. “As mellow as ever.”

  That got the man laughing. “Roy was a real live wire back in the day,” he said. “I don’t imagine that’s changed much.”

  “I’m sorry to bother you, sir, but I was wondering if you’d be willing to discuss an old case.”

  “I’ve been off the job for almost twenty years now, but go ahead.”

  “The man’s name was Jean Reynaud-”

  “Murdered outside the Ojibway Hotel. Shot in the back of the head.”

  “Okay, I guess you remember.”

  “I’ll tell you why, Mr. McKnight. In twenty-seven years on the police force, I might have seen, I don’t know, maybe seven or eight murders? Were you living up there back in the seventies?”

  “No,” I said, “but I know things were a lot different then.”

  “Yeah, different is one word for it. But I tell you, even with all that other stuff going on, we never had many murders in town. That’s not counting the lake, of course. Old Superior, she’d kill a half-dozen men every year. I’m sure she still does.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Anyway, what did I say, seven murders? Maybe eight? Every single one of them I solved except one.”

  “Jean Reynaud.”

  “Exactly. I got absolutely nowhere with that one. No weapon recovered. No witnesses. The victim has no apparent ties to anyone in the area at all. I mean, absolutely nothing. Really no physical evidence at all, aside from a. 45 caliber slug that went right through the back of the poor man’s head and out through his face. Aside from that, we didn’t have a thing to go on.”