Misery Bay: An Alex McKnight Novel

by Steve Hamilton

  “I vaguely remember the title,” I said.

  “He was kind of a maniac back then, even for Hollywood. He got busted a few times for possession, got in a big fight on a movie set, ended up getting thrown out of town for a while. He did some low-budget horror movies, until he finally worked himself back into television. Whenever some crime show needed somebody to play a psycho tough guy, they’d give him a call. He’s got real wild eyes, long hair, tattoos, arms like a body builder. I’m sure you’ve seen him a million times.”

  “Honestly, no. I don’t own a television.”

  She looked at me for a moment like she was trying to decide what planet I’d come from.

  “You really don’t watch TV,” she said.

  “If there’s an important game on, I’ll catch it at Jackie’s place. That’s about it.”

  “Okay, whatever. Point is, Mr. Wiley’s had a long and colorful relationship with law enforcement, going all the way back to before he even went to Hollywood. He grew up here in Michigan, down in Bad Axe.”

  “‘The Bad Boy of Bad Axe,’” Maven said. “I remember when he got arrested.”

  “He was in his sixties at the time of this arrest,” Agent Long said. “Now he’s seventy-two.”

  “But you say Steele and Haggerty popped him?”

  “Flying down I-75. Apparently, he had assaulted somebody and a tip was called in. They were waiting for him at the bridge, ended up chasing him all the way down to Indian River, until they finally ran him off the road. Then he got into it with both troopers.”

  “So what happened to him?”

  She picked up another sheet of paper.

  “Besides the assault, there was a gun in the car. Traces of cocaine, a few bottles of pills. Tack on the eluding, obstruction, another assault or two on the officers, and just for good measure, he was on probation back in California and wasn’t supposed to leave the state. So with the violation and the prior offenses, he ended up getting fifteen. Did seven and a half. During that first year his daughter killed herself. It was hard to track that down because she had a different last name, but we found her.”

  “How did she do it?”

  “She cut open both wrists,” Agent Long said, then she drew an imaginary line down the length of her forearm. “She even knew to do it the long way to bleed out faster. There was no chance of saving her.”

  “So what do you think, Chief? This Wiley made it a few miles downstate at least. Any chance you were involved?”

  “I told you, I recognized the name right away,” Maven said. “But if anybody assisted on that arrest, it would have been out of the Mackinaw City post, or maybe Gaylord. And hell, if it was me helping to bust a celebrity, I’d certainly remember it.”

  “Not to mention he’s kind of old now to be killing people,” Agent Long said. “And according to the logs, neither Razniewski nor Maven had any activity that day at all. It just says ‘Admin.’”

  “What does that mean?”

  “It means running around doing nonsense,” Maven said. “We were at the Lansing post, remember, so every once in a while we got to go run errands for the governor.”

  “Didn’t he have a regular attachment for that?”

  “The governor had four state guys on a permanent assignment, yes, but you know how it is. There’s always somebody from the mansion who needs a ride somewhere, or something stupid like that. You can guess who usually got picked for that exciting duty.”

  “So maybe you guys were close to the arrest that day,” I said, “while you were running an errand. Isn’t that possible?”

  “If we were in on that arrest, it would be in our daily logs, believe me. And I told you, I’d remember it, anyway.”

  “All right, all right,” I said. “So I guess that’s strike two. Who’s the third candidate?”

  “Here’s where it takes a little different turn,” she said. “Candidate number three, a man named Kenny Fraser, was actually a city police officer in St. Ignace. He was charged with a number of aggravated assaults, apparently committed while on duty, and as you can imagine, it would have been tough for one of the other officers in town to arrest him. I mean, the whole force couldn’t have been more than a half dozen officers, right? So they called in the state police to make the arrest. You can guess who did that.”

  “Steele and Haggerty.”

  “Apparently, Fraser made quite a scene about it. I’m told he even swore to both Steele and Haggerty that they’d pay for breaking the cop code. No matter how long it takes, this guy’s yelling as they’re taking him away, he’ll get even. At least that’s what the guys at the St. Ignace post are saying. We found one sergeant this morning who’s been around long enough to remember it.”

  “What kind of assaults are we talking about?”

  “We don’t have that information yet. The sergeant can’t quite recall. But if you think about it, a former cop knows how to use a gun, knows how to access information about other cops…”

  “What about it, Chief?”

  “It’s ringing a faint bell,” Maven said. “But again, I might have just heard about this guy through other channels.”

  “The suicide?”

  “His son, the same day his father got arrested. Sixteen years old. Hanged himself in the garage.”

  “A hanging,” I said. “Just like our first suicide.”

  “On the day of this arrest, it looks like Maven and Razniewski were riding separately. Maven’s log shows activity south of Lansing, Razniewski’s north of Lansing.”

  “That sounds promising. How far north?”

  “There’s nothing logged north of St. Johns, but there’s a fair amount of time not accounted for. It doesn’t look like Trooper Razniewski was a ticket-writing machine, if you catch my drift.”

  “I told you guys,” Maven said, “he hated that part of the job.”

  “Okay, so maybe he ended up having some contact with this guy Fraser.”

  “We don’t know that yet. We’re still tracking all this down.”

  “We’ve got a line on Parizi,” Agent Fleury said as he hung up the phone. “We’ve already got a man heading out to talk to Wiley. The ex-cop, Fraser, is still an unknown.”

  “What about Dr. Sizemore?” Long said. “Is he on his way up?”

  “He’ll be here in about two hours.”

  “Who’s Dr. Sizemore?” I said. Whoever he was, he must have hit the road pretty damned early in the morning to be two hours away by now.

  “He’s our psych man in Detroit. He’s going to try hypnotizing Chief Maven to see if we can help him remember any possible connections.”

  “You’re actually going to try hypnosis?”

  “Why not?”

  I looked over at Chief Maven, who was sitting there with his usual unhappy troll face, or rather an even more unhappy version than usual on account of everything that was happening around him. If I knew anything about the chief, I knew that he liked to be in complete control of things, which would probably make him the worst possible subject in the history of hypnosis.

  “I know,” she said, apparently understanding exactly what I was thinking. “But we have to try.”

  “All I can say is good luck, then.”

  “I’m not sure what else we should do right now,” Agent Fleury said. “We’ll wait to hear what happens with those three candidates. When Dr. Sizemore gets here, we’ll need a quiet room with absolutely no interruptions. Alex, we’ll have to ask you to leave at that point. The doctor and Chief Maven will need to be alone.”

  “No problem,” I said. “I understand.”

  He looked like he was about to say something else to me. He gave Agent Long a quick look and then he turned away. Of course, I knew all too well that they were continuing to break the rules every day, having me here in these meetings. I had done my part and by all rights I should have been debriefed and shown the door. I knew Chief Maven still wanted me here, as strange as that would have seemed to me just a few days ago. Would that be enoug
h? Maybe this was mostly Agent Long’s doing. Either way, I knew it could end at any second.

  “Let me look at those files again,” Maven said. “Maybe I’ll remember something on my own, before the stupid goddamned headshrinker gets here.”

  This poor Dr. Sizemore, I thought. He has no idea what he’s about to run into.

  * * *

  Many hours later, when the sun was long gone and the temperature had dropped back toward zero, I was sitting in front of the fire at the Glasgow, a Molson in hand, but my only beer of the night. I was thinking about Haggerty again, sitting alone in his cabin, his life in ruins around him. All his tears cried out and nothing left at all.

  That’s when the door opened up and the cold air came blasting in. Chief Maven came over and joined me in front of the fire. He didn’t sit down. He kept standing and he was looking into the fire and warming himself.

  “How did the hypnotism go?” I said.

  “He should have tried to hypnotize a cinder block instead. That might have worked a little better.”

  “Some people don’t hypnotize well.”

  “Some people have actual working memories, too.”

  “This isn’t about your memory, Chief. It was at least ten years ago.”

  “I came face-to-face with a killer, McKnight, and I can’t even remember him.”

  “Sit down.”

  He did, but he left his coat on.

  “What happened with your three candidates? Did the agents find out any more information?”

  “Yes, they did.”

  I waited a beat. But he didn’t continue.

  “Chief, what did they find?”

  “Parizi’s living in Flint. He’s the guy who got busted with all the stuff in his car. He’s on parole now for another bust, and apparently his parole officer can vouch for his whereabouts.”

  “His parole officer doesn’t live with him.”

  “No, but he sees him often enough. If you do the math on him getting all the way up here and back, it just doesn’t work.”

  “Okay, what about the actor? What was his name?”

  “Clyde C. Wiley? Our seventy-two-year-old actor? He’s living in Bad Axe again. I guess he’s been working on a film, except he’s actually the director this time. Which means, apparently, that he’s working almost around the clock. He’s got people around him at all times, and there’s just no way he could have slipped away for more than a few hours at a time.”

  “The third man?”

  “Fraser, the ex-cop.”

  I waited again.

  “The ex-cop,” I said. “What happened with him?”

  “He did his time. Finally got out of prison about a year ago.”

  “Okay, that’s perfect. Then what?”

  “Then nothing. He’s dead. He moved to Florida and died in a car accident, about six months ago.”

  “They’re sure it was him?”

  “Yes.” He still hadn’t looked at me. “They’re sure. He’s in the ground.”

  I put my head back and closed my eyes.

  “All this running around,” he said, “and it comes to nothing. We’re right back where we started.”

  “We’ll keep looking.”

  “Yeah. I know.”

  I could hear the defeat in his voice. Something I never expected to hear. Of all the things you could say about this man, good or bad, I would never, ever expect him to give up on anything.

  “You need a drink,” I said.

  Maven didn’t answer me. He kept staring into the fire while outside in the cold dark night the snow began to fall.

  A hundred and fifty miles to the west of us, Lieutenant Dean Haggerty sat in his own chair, with no fire to warm him. At the head of his long driveway, through the blanketed trees, a lonely state trooper sat in his idling patrol car with the heat turned up as the falling snow melted on his hood.

  None of us knew it at that moment, but there was one other person sitting in another vehicle, either down the road or on another road entirely but within walking distance of the house. Staying awake, staying warm, and waiting for the right time to move.

  And we’re rolling …

  … Slow approach to the barn. Nice and easy.

  … Look at that light. Is that perfect or what?

  … The camera loves the snow, you gotta admit.

  … Careful now. Don’t rush the shot.

  … Close to the wall. Let the camera feel it. That’s right.

  … Hello, young Brandon! Mind if I borrow this for a second?

  … Boom, just like that. Oh, that’s beautiful. Look at that.

  … Bravo, young sir. That’s how you do it. That’s how you own a scene, people.

  … Stay on his face. Drink it in. That is so goddamned perfect.

  And cut.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  I got the call at 4:30 in the morning. The fire in the woodstove had gone out and it was cold enough to see my own breath as I stumbled out of bed. I knew the call would not bring good news. No call at 4:30 in the morning is ever good news.

  It was Maven who called me. Lieutenant Haggerty had been killed by a single gunshot, sometime between 3:00 and 4:00. The trooper did not hear the gunshot, although there was some question as to how well he’d hear a gunshot a good one hundred yards away, through snow-covered trees, with his windows shut and the engine running.

  My first thought was obvious. Yes, he’s done it. The killer has struck again. My second thought was, if only Haggerty had let the trooper stay closer to his house. My third thought was, I’m glad I’m not that particular trooper right now.

  “The agents are meeting at seven o’clock,” Maven said.

  “I’ll be there.”

  “This is going to get ugly today.”

  “I know.”

  * * *

  I pulled into the Soo post parking lot at 6:45. The sun hadn’t come up yet. It was ten degrees and the air smelled like snow. I walked inside and I could feel the unnatural silence in the place right away. The interview room was empty. I went in and sat down. A trooper I didn’t know walked by and gave me a quick look. It wasn’t friendly.

  Maven came in a few minutes later. He nodded to me as he took his coat off. Then he went back out into the office to get a cup of coffee. Actually, he brought back two cups. He put one down in front of me and sat down.

  “Thanks,” I said.

  He nodded again. He still hadn’t said a word. I wasn’t about to make him talk until he was ready.

  Seven o’clock came and went. Then 7:15. It was almost 7:30 when the agents finally showed up. They came in shivering, each of them carrying folders thick with paper. It took them another minute to take their coats off and get settled with their own cups of coffee. They both looked tired as hell.

  “First priority,” Agent Long said. “Chief Maven, if we truly understand what’s going on here, you could be next on the list. Or rather, your daughter could be.”

  “I know that.”

  “We need to ensure her safety.”

  “She’s in Amsterdam, staying with a friend. My wife is over there, too. They’ll stay there until it’s safe to come home.”

  “Okay, good,” Agent Long said, nodding. “But until we know who this person is … I mean, we don’t know what kind of resources he may have. For all we know, he could go all the way to Amsterdam to find her.”

  “He wouldn’t know how to find her. She’s staying in a private residence there, and there are only four people in the world who know about it. My daughter and her friend, my wife and myself.”

  “I’m just saying, if we wanted to contact the authorities in the Netherlands, we could arrange to—”

  “You brought up the possibility that it might have been an ex-cop doing this.”

  “You mean Fraser? But we established that he’s dead.”

  “It’s still something to be aware of,” Maven said. “Think about it. What if it was another cop? An old trooper even, somebody we used to work with?” />
  “Don’t let those guys outside hear you saying that,” Agent Fleury said.

  “My point is, I don’t want anybody to know where she is. Even you guys. As soon as you tell somebody else, you don’t have any control over it.”

  “This is the FBI you’re talking about,” Fleury said. “If there’s one thing we’re good at—”

  “That’s debatable.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “Guys,” Agent Long said. “Can we stay on the same team here?”

  “There is another avenue we might want to think about,” Fleury said. “If Maven’s daughter did come home and was willing to help us set a trap for this guy…”

  “Agent, let me stop you right there and ask you a question,” Maven said. “Do you have a daughter?”

  “No, I don’t.”

  “I didn’t think so.”

  “I’m talking hypothetically,” Fleury said. “It would be a very carefully controlled situation.”

  “Next topic.”

  Fleury held his gaze for a long moment. Then he shook his head and opened the folder in front of him.

  “Actually, before we get to this,” he said, “there’s one more thing we have to talk about. We have some other agents on their way up here right now. If the weather stays clear, they should be here by noon. Special Agent Kozak will be among them. He’ll be taking over the lead on this investigation, and we’ll probably be moving to another location.”

  “Why would you do that?” Maven said. “This is where all of the records are.”

  “As long as we have access to the computer, we can get to them from anywhere. The real problem is just a matter of space. We’re going to have a half dozen people working on this until we have a resolution.”

  “Okay. Whatever.”

  “What this also means,” Fleury said, looking at me now, “is that our arrangements are going to have to change. Special Agent Kozak is fully aware of the assistance you’ve been giving us, Mr. McKnight, but when he gets here I’m quite sure he won’t understand why you’re still sitting in on our meetings.”