The Midnight Plan of the Repo Man

by W. Bruce Cameron

  “Maybe he owed Burby a favor.”

  “Oh come on, Ruddy.”

  I thought about it. “Actually I have no idea,” I admitted. “But it’s pretty clear to me that this isn’t the first time those two have kissed.”

  “Thanks.”

  “Well sorry, but you’ve been gone for eight years, Alan, what did you expect?”

  “It’s just not an easy thing to hear.”

  “Sorry.”

  “It’s been sort of a rough day, you know?”

  “Yeah, okay,” I apologized. “You’re right.”

  “Ruddy?”

  I turned. Katie was looking at me curiously.

  “Who are you talking to?”

  “Oh…” I laughed, then trailed off weakly. Her eyes were still red and swollen.

  “Can you … I’d like to leave. I rode here with Mom and Nathan, but I don’t want to be here anymore.”

  “Sure, yes, of course.” We walked to my truck and I held the door open for her. “Where do you want to go?”

  I wound up heading north on M66, toward Charlevoix. After a minute or so I flicked on the headlights to keep the highway ahead illuminated. Katie stared out the window.

  “We should hold her,” Alan said, not thinking very clearly. There was no “we,” and while yes, her father should hold her, there was no reason to feel like that would be welcome from me. If anything, Katie seemed hostile and cold.

  “That was horrible,” she said distantly, squeezing the armrest.

  “It must have been very hard,” I responded sympathetically.

  Her eyes flashed at me. “I’m sorry, but sometimes my mother just makes me sick. When Dad … when he was first missing, Nathan would come over with everybody else, all the neighbors and her friends, but then he’d stay long after they all left. One time I saw him pulling out of the driveway in the morning.” Her lips twisted bitterly. “I think it started before Dad was even gone. Them, I mean. Nathan and Mom.”

  I breathed deeply, feeling like a piece of the puzzle had slipped into place with an audible click.

  “I knew she was probably seeing somebody,” Alan grumbled. “There were a lot of clues.”

  “She married him like two weeks after the whole divorce thing was finalized.”

  Ah. Something our funeral director friend had neglected to mention to us. No wonder he reacted so strongly when I showed up claiming to be a cousin from Wisconsin.

  “Tell her it’s okay, that sometimes marriages fail and that her mother is no more to blame than I am,” Alan instructed.

  I would not tell her that. “So he’s the owner of the funeral home?”

  Katie nodded moodily.

  “I was wondering … didn’t the cemetery used to be somewhere else? I mean, how do you move a cemetery?”

  “Oh, right. It sold to a company that manufactures some kind of plastic pipe thing. They dug up each body and moved it to the new spot. I remember Nathan telling my mom he got ten thousand dollars a corpse, like bragging about it.” She turned in her seat to look at me. “Do you think I’m being a bitch?”

  “What?” I asked, startled.

  “Nathan’s been very nice to me. He wanted to adopt me but I said no way as long as there was a possibility my dad was still alive. He tries, he really does. Do you think I punish him because he’s not my dad? That’s what my mother says. She says I’ve been punishing both of them.” Katie stared at me. I considered my response.

  “Of course she’s not a bitch. Oh, Kathy,” Alan moaned.

  “I think,” I answered slowly, “that you lost your dad at a very critical time. That you were no longer a child and had developed a social life of your own and didn’t depend on him for day-to-day decisions.” I pictured myself at that age. “You were pretty independent, but then when he was gone you felt abandoned, and as the years went on, you weren’t getting along with your mother and you sometimes were angry at your father for leaving, and now you feel really bad because it turns out he was murdered.” I thought about what Alan had told me. “He would have done anything to be there for you, but somebody shot him and buried him in the woods.”

  Her eyes brimmed with tears. “It’s been the defining event of my life,” she whispered. Inside, Alan was crying again.

  I nodded. “Sometimes that happens to us, way before we’re ready, a moment that changes everything. Life will be going along, like normal, and then one day without warning you find out that nothing will ever be the same.” I stared sightlessly out the windshield, remembering the day it happened to me.

  “What about you?” she asked softly, as if reading my thoughts. Her eyes searched mine.

  “What do you mean?”

  “What happened? Why were you in prison?”

  As luck would have it, she couldn’t have picked a better time to ask the question—I could show her. I slowed, pulled a quick U-turn, and headed back to Ironton, Michigan, population twenty-eight, the place where I ruined at least two lives. The scene of the crime.

  There probably wouldn’t even be a town called Ironton except that it was there that the long arm of Lake Charlevoix was at its most narrow, a few hundred yards across. The county operated a car ferry that shuttled back and forth across this choke. To reach the ferry when traveling south on M66, cars veered off onto a gentle curve to the left. I did this now, putting on my blinker. A trip of less than the length of a football field and there you were at the water’s edge. At night, people sometimes made the mistake of going down the ramp to the ferry, thinking they were still on the highway. During my trial, my attorney handed the judge pictures of the pavement, showing all the dark tire marks from people frantically braking their speed after realizing they’d made the wrong turn. The problem was that while the error I made was mundane, the consequences were anything but.

  I drove the short distance to the bottom of the ramp and stopped, my headlights illuminating the thin steel barrier erected to keep people from driving into the channel. The ferry was over on the other side, away from us, just as it had been that night. Katie was watching me intently.

  “Her name was Lisa Marie Walker. At the trial, they made a big deal over her age. She was seventeen,” I began, looking out at the gray water. “But that night, it never came up. I mean, I was only twenty-one myself, and it wasn’t like they made it sound. I wasn’t planning to … I’d just met the girl, that’s all.” I shook my head. “Well anyway, it was bad enough. We had too much to drink to be driving around, but she wanted to make a beer run to Charlevoix, the 7-Eleven. So I took her. I came down here, down M66 I mean, on the way home.” I sighed. “When I got here, to the ferry road, I must have just drifted down it. You can see how it could happen, the highway sort of bends to the right, but headlights don’t bend, they go straight, and for a second it looks like this is the highway.”

  Katie nodded, gazing at the road.

  I shrugged. “I honestly don’t recall. They said I was going fifty miles an hour.” I gave her a sad smile. “By all rights, I should have spun out, but I’ve always had good reflexes and managed to make the turn. There were some people smoking weed in a van parked right over there, and the witnesses said my brake lights never lit up. They rebuilt the approach after my accident, but back then the barrier was like a drawbridge, a wooden gate that laid flat when the ferry was on this side. It was tilted like a ski jump and I just ran right on into it.”

  Katie’s mouth opened in horror.

  “I sailed out into the water a good twenty feet, the people in the van said.”

  “My God,” Alan breathed.

  Katie heaved a deep sigh, almost a shudder. She looked out the front windshield into the water, picturing it. Then she turned back to me. “She died.”

  “Yes,” I agreed. “She did die. She was actually in the backseat at that point. I had a blanket back there and she wasn’t feeling too good and wanted to lie down. Well, anyway, I don’t know if it is good or bad that she didn’t see what happened. The water rushing in, the car sinki
ng so fast. I got out, and she didn’t. They found her body five days later. It washed ashore in Boyne City.”

  We were silent for more than a minute, staring out at the lake, and then Katie turned to me. “What happened to you? Were you hurt?”

  “Me? Not bad. I was lucky. I was wearing my seat belt.” I closed my eyes and remembered waking up in the hospital, my parents looking down at me anxiously. “They didn’t tell me about Lisa Marie Walker until the next day, and then my first words were, ‘Who?’ The full impact of it all took a while to sink in, but my dad already understood, and his eyes were dark and unreadable as he looked at me and saw an end to my scholarship, an end to my career, no NFL, no glory, no millions.”

  Lucky. Except there were an awful lot of days when I wished I had stayed in the car.

  “So you were convicted of murder?” I could hear the doubt in her voice. Up here the long, empty roads and equally long and empty winter nights brought a lot of teenagers and their cars together with alcohol, so maybe it did seem an extreme penalty for something that happened all the time. But I’d seen the pictures of Lisa Marie. Her parents were there in the back of the courtroom, and when it was my turn to speak I stood up and told the judge it was my fault and I deserved what was coming to me. My mother cried bitterly when the judge sent me to the penitentiary but my father’s small nod at least put things right between the two of us.

  “Vehicular homicide, yeah.” We sat and watched the ferry chugging back across, carrying a single automobile as its cargo.

  “You don’t talk about this much,” Katie speculated.

  “No.”

  Our eyes met. “Ever? You ever talk about it?” she probed. I shook my head mutely.

  She reached out and seized my hand. We watched the car trundle off the ferry and drive past us up into the dark. The ferry captain inquisitively pointed at my truck and I shook my head, so he went inside his tiny cabin, a miniscule television bathing his face in flickering light while he waited for another passenger.

  Katie sighed again. “See, I was working in Detroit. For an insurance company, as a facilities coordinator? But I guess I’m just not the big city type. I hated having to keep my car doors locked all the time and how the same people I worked with would go to the bar on Fridays and the married men would hit on me. I missed my mom. Then we had a merger and they offered me three months’ salary to leave, so I did. In the summer I do a couple of jobs on the side—I teach lifesaving at the Y, and I lifeguard at the public beach in the summers, but I’m just a receptionist now.” She glanced at me to see if the repo man had known he was keeping such low company.

  “Well, I steal cars for a living, though for glamour I’m a bouncer in a bar.”

  “That wasn’t my first time there. The place with the bear, I mean. I’ve been there a few times with my girlfriends over the years.”

  “Great, my daughter hangs out in biker bars,” Alan observed glumly.

  “It’s not a biker bar,” I responded.

  Katie blinked. “I know … did you think I was a biker?”

  “God, no!” I blurted. I felt my face heat up—I sounded like a complete idiot. “Uh, I don’t think so.”

  “Don’t think what?”

  “Don’t think you’ve been to the Black Bear. I mean, I think I would have noticed you, someone like you.”

  Alan made an exasperated sound.

  “I remember when I saw you in East Jordan, in the rain…” My voice trailed off. I could feel something like poetry steering my thoughts but nothing articulate was coming out of my mouth.

  She unconsciously began twirling her hair, sadness creeping into her expression. “Oh, Ruddy, I’m…”

  I wanted to tell her to wait, don’t say it, don’t slam the door on any possibilities yet, but before I could open my mouth the interior of the pickup came ablaze with light. I squinted behind me, where a spotlight was obliterating everything with white glare. Someone had pulled up and parked behind me without me noticing.

  “Step out of the vehicle, please,” an electronically magnified voice boomed.

  Katie held up her hand to block the spotlight, squinting. “What is it?”

  A single blaring note from a police siren made us both jump. “You, the driver. Step out of the vehicle.”

  “You’d better wait here,” I muttered. I wonder if my presence at the Lottner funeral had driven Strickland over the edge, though it didn’t sound like his voice.

  “We weren’t doing anything,” Alan observed indignantly as I warily stood up out of the truck.

  “Place your hands on the vehicle and spread your feet behind you,” I was instructed. I knew the drill; I’d done it before. I assumed the position and heard a jangle as a uniformed cop approached me out of the light. I grunted as he pressed into me, a meaty hand gripping my wrist and twisting my arm around my back.

  “Hey, take it easy,” I complained, keeping all resistance out of my body.

  “Shut it. What are you doing here?”

  “Dwight!” Katie was out of the truck and staring at us, her lips pressed together.

  “Katie. Get over to my car and get in,” Timms ordered in clipped tones.

  “Oh, that’s going to work real well with her,” Alan observed.

  Katie set her jaw. “What are you talking about? What are you doing?” she demanded.

  “I’m taking you home,” he told her. “Your mother called; she said you left without telling anyone where you were going.”

  “So? I don’t have to tell my mother anything. Let him go!” she snapped.

  “What do you think you are doing here, asswipe?” Timms breathed at me, pushing my wrist higher.

  “What do I think? I think I’m going to break your jaw,” I responded thoughtfully.

  “Are we in a position to be saying something like that, Ruddy?” Alan asked urgently.

  “Dwight. Let. Go,” Katie grated through clenched teeth, yanking on his arm. He dropped my wrist and I whirled, squaring off at him. He took a step back, his hand gripping his baton.

  “Let’s go, killer,” he mocked.

  “How about you take off your uniform so I don’t get your blood all over it,” I answered.

  “Stop it!” Katie cried. “What are you doing?”

  Since neither of us were sure to whom she was speaking, we didn’t reply, though both of us lowered our guard, letting the tension go out of our postures. She pointed a finger at the deputy. “Dwight. Give me a minute.”

  He frowned. “Katie, your whole family has been very worried—”

  “I said give me a minute!”

  He thought about it, then retreated to his patrol car. Katie blew out a puff of exasperated air as she watched him settle into the front seat, then turned to me.

  “Look, I’m sorry…,” I started to say.

  She held up a hand. “No, stop, don’t say anything.”

  “It’s just, I got a little angry—”

  “No, no, it’s not that.” Her eyes flared at me. “I shouldn’t be here, you know? This was stupid.”

  “But why?” I asked, trying to keep the anguish out of my voice. I could hear what was coming as clearly as if she’d already spoken.

  “Because, that’s why. It would be wrong. It would be.” She shook her head. “Don’t call or anything anymore, okay?”

  This was more than a little unfair—hadn’t she called me? But I didn’t protest.

  “I have to go.” She turned away from me and got into the passenger seat next to Dwight. He stared at me darkly as he backed the vehicle away.

  “And so you just let my daughter drive off with Deputy Dumbbell,” Alan announced.

  I started my truck and headed home. “Well, what was I supposed to do?” I snapped in irritation. “You heard her.”

  “Why didn’t you tell her the obvious? That moron isn’t the right man for her.”

  “And I am?” I challenged.

  Alan let that one sit there for a few minutes. “Well look, don’t be offended,
Ruddy, but my daughter has a college education. I think she can do better than…” He trailed off.

  “Than a repo man from Kalkaska, Michigan,” I finished for him.

  “I was going to say bar bouncer.”

  “You were going to say ex-con.”

  “Okay, yes, that is what I was going to say.”

  I stared moodily out at the road. “I don’t even remember,” I said after a long time. “That’s what really gets to me. I don’t remember turning down that ferry ramp. We stopped to buy some beer in Charlevoix and when I got back to the car she’d passed out under the blanket—she was just a dark lump in the backseat; I didn’t even see her. She never said another word to me. And that’s all I remember until I’m in the water, sinking fast. It’s like the whole thing is a story, told to me by somebody else. None of it seems real. What happened to you out in the woods, I can remember that, as clear as if I’d been there. But not the worst night of my own life. Nothing about that.”

  Alan was thoughtful as I drove. “You’ve been saying you had your dream about me the night there was a big storm. Lots of wind. Might have been the night the big tree blew over.”

  I grunted acknowledgment.

  “One of the last normal thoughts I had before Wexler and Burby came at me with the shovel was that I was going to return that ring I’d found. But I forgot all about it until the sheriff showed it to you.”

  “Me too.”

  “Your ring. Yours.”

  “I know. But I don’t know what it means.”

  “Yeah,” Alan said after about ten minutes. “I don’t know what it means, either.”

  Jimmy was still awake when I came in the door, flipping channels with a bored expression on his face. He gave a guilty start. “Oh hey, sorry about my dishes.” He gestured at the table. “I know you like it neat, I just didn’t get to them.”

  “That’s okay, you do enough around here.” I pulled a bottle of beer out of the refrigerator and sat down heavily on the couch. I kicked my shoes off and one of them left a smudge where it thudded against the wall. Jake didn’t even twitch at the noise.