Die a Stranger: An Alex McKnight Novel

by Steve Hamilton

So I wasn’t sure what to expect as were rolling down that same road. Police cars? A burned-out, still-smoking building? But as I came up to the driveway, everything looked calm and quiet.

  “This is their house,” Buck said.

  “Yeah, I know. I told you we were here before. That’s how we got Vinnie’s truck over to the shop.”

  “So why are we stopping here? If his truck is in Cadillac…”

  “Yeah, this might not be a great idea,” Lou said.

  Vinnie had his head back against the seat. His eyes were closed.

  “I can’t just drive by,” I said. “I have to see.”

  I pulled into the driveway. As we broke into the clearing, we saw the house. The same vehicles were parked inside, plus one more. A beat-up old clunker that looked like something Buck would drive. This must have belonged to Sugarpie and Dumpling. I remembered Jo Kaiser telling them she would pick up their car in Charlevoix. Now it was here, parked in front of their house, and I wondered if maybe I should turn the car right around and get the hell out of here.

  But Lou was already out his door. He had the gun ready. I put the car in Park and followed behind him. He went to the front door of the house. It was closed tight. I took a look through the window, into the kitchen. Some of the cupboard doors were still off the hinges, but most of the mess on the floor had been cleaned up. I drew back and did a quick scan of everything I could see from where I was standing.

  “They really came back,” I said. “If they had any sense, they’d be five hundred miles away by now.”

  “If they came back,” Lou said, “then where are they?”

  We heard the noise from around the corner. Lou broke first, but I caught up to him and was the first man to find Buck standing at the door to the barn. I stood there looking at the same horrible sight, and a few seconds later Lou and Vinnie had the misfortune of showing up behind us. We’d all surely see it in our nightmares, for the rest of our lives. Harry and Josephine Kaiser, both strung up and hanging from the rafters of the barn, their feet just inches from the ground. The ropes around their chests, cinched under their armpits, holding them aloft without choking them. Giving Corvo the chance to take his time with them.

  They’d been here for hours. The blood had stopped draining from their bodies. One of the chickens lay dead on the ground. I didn’t see any of the others.

  I pulled Buck away from the door. Vinnie followed us, but Lou stayed behind.

  “Let’s get the hell out of here!” I called to him. “Right now.”

  He stood there looking through the doorway for a few more seconds. Then he caught up to us as we all got back into the vehicle.

  “This is who we’re dealing with,” he said as I whipped the car around and headed back down the driveway. “This is the kind of thing these guys do.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  Nobody said anything for a while. I made myself stick to the speed limit. Buck was holding on to his knees, leaning forward like he was about to throw up.

  “That would have been us,” Vinnie said from the backseat. It was the first time he had spoken since we’d left Charlevoix. “Both of us.”

  “There’s no such thing as ‘would have,’” I said. “It didn’t happen. That’s all that matters. You’re safe now. We’re all safe.”

  Not quite true, I thought. But I still wasn’t ready to drop that on him.

  When we hit Cadillac, I found the same auto-glass shop again. Vinnie’s truck was out in the parking lot, its windshield fully restored. Lou went in to talk to the man while I stayed outside with my cell phone. I called Janet Long and she answered on the first ring.

  “Alex, I was trying to call you back yesterday. What happened?”

  There was a joke there about being tied up, but I wasn’t about to say it.

  “I’ve got something to tell you,” I said. “You have to listen very carefully. I’m going to give you an address just outside of Cadillac. There are two dead bodies in the barn. A man and a woman.”

  “Alex, stop right there. You need to go to the local police immediately.”

  “We’re on our way back to the UP right now, and that’s the first place we’ll go, I promise. You just need to send somebody over there now.”

  “What the hell is going on up there? There were two dead men found in Sault Ste. Marie just a couple of days ago. Are we talking about the same perpetrator?”

  “The same perp,” I said, smiling grimly at the cop talk. “It’s a man out of Chicago named Corvo, if you want to know the truth. Although I don’t imagine you could tie it to him just yet.”

  “What was that name?”

  “Corvo. You know who I’m talking about?”

  There was a silence on the line.

  “Alex, you have to go to the police right this second,” she said. “The nearest station you can find. You may be in some serious danger.”

  You don’t know the half of it, I thought, and then that’s when I had to make my choice. I flashed back on what Mr. White had said to me. If you try to set up Corvo, he’ll smell it from a mile away. Then every family member of every man involved, every single one of them, dies in a river of blood.

  “You’re the only person I can trust with this,” I said. “So let me ask you a question. If you’re putting together a case on Corvo—”

  “I didn’t say that. I just said you—”

  “Needed to go to a station right away because I might be in big danger. I got that part, okay? I heard you. Obviously you wouldn’t be saying that if you didn’t know about this guy. And you wouldn’t know about this guy unless he was on your radar. Look, I’m not asking you to tell me any secrets. Just give me a general idea here. Are you close to moving on him?”

  Another silence.

  “Janet, are you there?”

  “I’m here.”

  “There’s a good chance I’ll be seeing him again. Soon. I need to know if there’s any chance of you putting him away. Like maybe even with my help.”

  “This is insane,” she said. “You cannot be involved in this.”

  “Too late. I’m already involved.”

  I heard her let out a long breath. “I need to go talk to somebody, Alex. I’ll call you back as soon as I can, all right?”

  “Okay. I’ll be here. Thank you.”

  I ended the call, just in time to see Lou coming out of the glass shop. I figured that meant we were ready to go, but he stopped me and waved over Vinnie and Buck.

  “I have something to ask,” he said, “from all three of you. When we get back up north, I know the police are going to be asking a lot of questions. I know Alex said we should tell the truth. But in my case, I’m afraid that even the truth might get me into a lot of trouble.”

  “It was all justified,” I said. “It was self-defense.”

  “Let me finish, Alex. If the police start asking me questions and they find out who I really am, I’m going to have a big problem. I’m a convicted felon, remember? I’m technically still on parole?”

  “There’s no ‘technically’ about it,” I said. “You’re either on parole or you’re not.”

  “Okay, I’m on parole. If they find out back in Nevada that I’m mixed up in this? Never mind if anything I did was justified or not, it’s gonna hang me up for a long time just trying to explain what happened. As you can imagine, I’m not accustomed to getting any breaks when it comes to the police.”

  Vinnie shook his head and for a second I thought he was going to turn and walk away. But he stayed put and kept staring at the ground.

  “I hope Alex will agree I’ve been good to have around this week. If I get sent back to Nevada today, I lose any ability to keep helping you.”

  “I’m getting a headache again,” Vinnie said. “Can we get going now?”

  “I’ll drive the rental car,” Lou said. “You guys go with Alex in Vinnie’s truck. All I’m asking is that you guys leave me out of the story. Okay? That’s all I’m asking.”

  “Fine,” Vinnie said. �
��You weren’t here. I can live with that.”

  “He helped save our lives today,” Buck said. “Come on, give the man a break.”

  “It’s okay,” Lou said to Buck. “We still need some time to sort things out.”

  Vinnie and Buck got into the truck. It was a tight fit sitting three across, but we’d been through a lot worse. I gave Lou a nod and told him I’d see him back in Paradise.

  Vinnie sat in the middle. I could see him trying to focus, until he finally gave up and closed his eyes. I didn’t want to disturb him. Let the man rest, I thought.

  I looked at my watch. About twenty-four hours had passed since I’d been given my little assignment. We were halfway to the deadline and I still hadn’t told them that Corvo considered them both walking dead men.

  *

  Buck didn’t seem too happy about it, but I drove right to the Bay Mills Tribal Police Station. I figured we might as well get right into the fun part of the day. Chief Benally made us all wait in the lobby while he called in a detective from the Michigan State Police post in the Soo. Some of this reached beyond Chippewa County, after all. I recognized the man who showed up. I knew him well enough to nod hello to, anyway. Chief Benally and the detective took Buck into the interview room first. Then Vinnie. Then it was my turn.

  I told them everything I knew from direct experience. I didn’t speculate about anything else. Like how willingly or unwillingly Buck became involved in the first place. I gave short, direct answers and told them what had happened. Except for the parts involving Lou. I didn’t say one word about being taken to the swamp, or what happened when we got there. My story was that the Kaisers left me alone in the house, taking their two lackeys with them, and then I went to find Vinnie and Buck in the boat.

  I also left out my entire conversation with Corvo. I was still waiting to hear back from Janet. I knew she was my one last hope to get any real help.

  Then it was Vinnie’s turn again. Then Buck’s again.

  It wasn’t clear for a while whether Buck or possibly even Vinnie would be taken into immediate custody. In the end, Vinnie was allowed to leave. The chief said we shouldn’t bother waiting for Buck. Even if he was released that day, he lived just down the road, so he could walk home.

  So I drove Vinnie back to Paradise. He put his head back, yet again, and closed his eyes.

  “Your father saved my life yesterday,” I said to him. “So really, he saved all of our lives.”

  “I know that.”

  “I’m not trying to tell you how you should feel about him. But you should try to talk to him.”

  He didn’t answer.

  “Let me ask you one thing,” I said. “That night Buck called you, why did you go out to get him?”

  “I had to. He’s my cousin.”

  “The first night you ever got drunk, in your entire life, is the night you drove to Newberry. That’s what you’re telling me?”

  He looked over at me.

  “I’m just saying, if you had hit somebody, you would have gone away. Just like your father.”

  “So I’m no better? Is that your point?”

  “No. My point is that you had a good reason, so yeah, maybe there was more to the story than just another drunk Indian. If you had a chance to explain yourself, maybe somebody else could understand it.”

  I let that one hang for a while. Finally, he opened the door, but then stopped before he got out.

  “Tell me the truth,” he said. “We’re not done with this guy yet, are we?”

  “Who, Corvo?”

  He waited for me to keep talking. He wasn’t going anywhere until I did.

  “No, we’re not done with him,” I said. “You get some rest and I’ll meet you down at the Glasgow for dinner, okay? We can talk about it then.”

  He didn’t move.

  “I promise. Get some rest and I’ll see you down there.”

  He got out of the truck. Before I could back out, he came over to the driver’s side. I rolled down my window.

  “Thanks for everything,” he said. “I’m not sure I even said that yet.”

  “It’s okay. I figure we’re about even now.”

  He put a hand on my arm for a second. Then he let me go.

  *

  It was a couple of hours later, after a shower, a change of clothes, some new bandages, and four aspirin. My landline-phone rang. It was Janet.

  “Alex, are you there? I tried your cell earlier…”

  “I live on the edge of the world, remember? Cell phones are always a crapshoot up here.”

  “You need to come down here and talk to us,” she said. “Right away. Even if you get here late.”

  “What, in Detroit?”

  “Yes. Do not initiate any further contact with Corvo. Just get down here and—”

  “Janet, are you guys close to moving on Corvo, or not?”

  “We’ll talk about that down here.”

  “Tell me now. Do you have a case or do you not have a case?”

  “We have pieces,” she said. “Okay? We don’t have enough to move on yet. In fact, if you really want to know the truth, we’re not even close. If you have something to give us, it might help…”

  “Yeah, it’ll help all right. Look, I know how it works. It takes months to put together a RICO case. Sometimes years.”

  “Alex, what do you have for us? You have to tell me.”

  “I have talk,” I said. I closed my eyes and rubbed my forehead, feeling suddenly very alone. “I have a bunch of words between three men sitting in a boat, in the middle of Lake Michigan. That’s what I have.”

  “Okay, then. I can’t wait to hear about it. You’re coming down, right?”

  There was a knock on the door.

  “Yes,” I said. “It’ll be good to see you again. I should have come down by now, taken you to dinner like I promised.”

  “Alex—”

  “I have to go. Somebody’s at the door.”

  “Do not hang up, God damn it.”

  “I’ll come down, Janet. Not tonight. But soon, okay? It’s good talking to you.”

  I hung up the phone and unplugged it from the wall. Then I answered the door. It was Lou. He had obviously gone back to the other cabin for a shower and some clean clothes himself. Between the two of us, we looked almost like regular humans.

  “Is Vinnie in his cabin?” he said.

  “He is. He said he’d meet us down at the Glasgow a little later.”

  I could tell he was about to say something about how we were supposed to be watching him closely for any signs of PCS, but he let it go. If I knew Vinnie at all, I knew he’d want a few hours to himself.

  “Alex, what’s going on? Who were you talking to?”

  “My friend in Detroit,” I said. “I thought maybe she could help us.”

  “I thought you weren’t supposed to contact anybody. Wasn’t that one of the things they made very clear to you?”

  “Look, I’m an ex-cop,” I said. “I had it drilled into my head, all those years. Call for backup. Do things by the book. But you know what? I’m just realizing tonight … even if I still had a badge and a gun, I don’t know if I’d even believe in the book anymore.”

  Lou stood there in my cabin, his wet hair slicked back, looking tough and old at the same time, like he’d seen everything there is to see in life, most of it bad. He listened carefully to every word.

  “The rules are all gone now,” I said. “They’ve been torn up. People do things that would have seemed unimaginable just a few years ago. I mean, when those guys told me that they’d kill everybody … not just us but every family member they could find … Meaning your family, Lou. All of them. When they said that, I believed them. I know they weren’t just talking. I know it. I saw their eyes when they told me what would happen. You understand what I’m saying?”

  He nodded slowly.

  “But still, I figured I had to try, you know? Just take one chance to get somebody else on our side. ”

  “T
here’s nobody,” he said. “Not for something like this. I could have told you.”

  “We can’t run, either. Not forever. So yeah, that leaves one choice. We go down there and we take it to ’em.”

  “I’m with you,” he said. “But it’s just you and me, right? We leave Vinnie out of this?”

  “I think he has the right to know what’s going on.”

  “No, Alex. We can tell him afterwards. I’d like to keep Buck out of it, too. Maybe for different reasons. I mean, we’ve already seen how he functions under pressure.”

  “I hear what you’re saying, but come on, we don’t have much time left. Tomorrow’s the deadline.”

  “We’ll have time. How ’bout we all have a meeting over breakfast? See who’s really up for it?”

  “I’m just thinking, if Vinnie’s feeling better tonight…”

  “You gotta promise me,” Lou said. “He gets one more night to recover. No talking about this until tomorrow morning.”

  “Okay, I promise.”

  “Thank you,” he said, grabbing my shoulder. “We’ve got a deal. But right now, I think I need a drink.”

  *

  The sun had gone down on another tough day. At least I knew that Vinnie was in his cabin as I drove by. That was one thing that was right in the world. Lou and I drove down to the Glasgow in his rental car and sat at the bar. Jackie broke out the cold Molsons for both of us from my personal fridge. A Tigers game was on the television over the bar, the sound turned low. It was cold outside tonight. Legitimately cold. Logs burned and crackled in the fireplace.

  “I can see why you like this place,” Lou said to me. “I think I’d be here every night myself.”

  “For the love of God,” Jackie said, bringing the beers over and looking at the bandages on my face, “what the hell happened to you?”

  I didn’t want to get into it. I just asked the man for a plate of his beef stew and hoped he’d let me be for the rest of the night.

  Vinnie came in a little while later. He could have chosen to sit next to Lou or next to me. He chose the stool next to me.

  “At least you did come down,” Lou said. He was staring at the label on his beer bottle and he didn’t so much as glance in Vinnie’s direction. “Even if you’re not going to talk to me.”