Blood Is the Sky: An Alex McKnight Mystery (Alex McKnight Mysteries)

by Steve Hamilton

“So do I,” Vinnie said. His voice was even, his eyes clear. There was a supernatural calm all over him, and it was scaring the hell out of me.

  “So talk,” the man said. “Tell me what you know about this. You gotta know something. You were up there, weren’t you? Were you involved in this? Was this something you and your Indian brother did?”

  “No,” Vinnie said. “We didn’t. And you can stop talking like that. If you want to kill us, go ahead. After what we’ve been through, I don’t even care anymore. Go ahead and put a bullet in my head if you want, but stop talking about my brother that way.”

  That threw him a little bit. His eyes got wider, and I was sure he was about to do something stupid. It was a good time to speak up.

  “We found him,” I said. “We found your brother.”

  He looked over the truck bed at me. “Where?”

  “Out in the woods. Where Gannon had buried him, along with the others.”

  He took a few hard breaths. Everything else was still, all around us. “You found Red?”

  “That man you’re holding on to, you see the bandages on his face?”

  “Yeah?”

  “Gannon shot him. He blew part of his ear right off.”

  He looked closer. “Okay. Then what?”

  If I was gonna do this, I had to sell it all the way. It seemed like our only way out. “You wanna know what this man did to Gannon? You wanna hear what this man did to the man who killed your brother?”

  “Yes, I wanna hear it.”

  “He took a long, heavy stick,” I said, “and he sharpened it. I distracted Gannon, so Vinnie could sneak up behind him. We didn’t have any other weapons. You understand what I’m saying? All we had were sticks.”

  “Go on.”

  “While Gannon was shooting at me, Vinnie came up behind him and ran that stick right through his back. If he had gotten him in the heart, he would have died almost immediately, but that’s not the way it happened.”

  “How did it go?” he said. “Tell me.”

  “The stick must have gone through his lung. The blood was such a bright color. He was pumping that blood right out of his lungs, all over the ground.”

  “How long did it take him to die?”

  “A long time,” I said. “He was bleeding on that ground for a long, long time.”

  “Were his eyes open? Did he say anything to you?”

  “His eyes were open. He tried to say something, but he couldn’t. He was drowning in his own blood. He was choking on it.”

  There were tears in the man’s eyes. “You’re telling me this man killed the man who killed my brother.”

  “Yes,” I said. “He ran a stick through his chest and he died a horrible, painful death. That’s what this man did.”

  “This man right here.” He pulled the gun away from his head.

  “He did it for his brother,” I said. “And for your brother. And the other men. And me. He saved my life.”

  The man let go of Vinnie. He bent over and put his hands on his knees, the gun pointing at the ground. He took a few wet breaths through his nose and shook his head. “Is that it?” he said. “Is that all there is? What was this guy’s name again?”

  “Gannon. Hank Gannon.”

  “He did all this by himself?”

  “We don’t know that,” I said. I figured, what the hell, go ahead and push your luck. “Maybe you can help us figure it out.”

  The man stood up straight and looked me in the eye. “What do you mean?”

  “We’re just wondering. If somebody else was involved, maybe it was one of the other men in the hunting party. Or at least somebody else that you’d know about.”

  He thought hard. He looked past me, at the big man standing behind me. “What do you think, Jay? Who could it be?”

  I sneaked a look at him. He was standing there with both hands on his gun. He was looking at the ground. “I’m just thinking,” he said.

  “What?”

  “You know.”

  “No, man. Are you serious?”

  “What are we talking about?” I said.

  The sudden look on his face told me I was pushing it a little too far.

  “Never mind,” I said. “We just want some answers. As much as you do.”

  “Well, don’t you worry about it,” he said. “If we find out there’s somebody else still walking around, we’ll make that person pay. Believe me, we’ll turn them fucking inside out.”

  He stood there for a long time, breathing hard and shaking his head. The big guy crossed his arms and looked around at the trees. I wasn’t sure what to do. Ask them if we could go? Invite them down to the Glasgow for a drink?

  “I was supposed to be up there,” he finally said. “Those guys never go hunting without me. Until this time.”

  It made sense. That’s why there were five men instead of six.

  “I should have been there,” he said. “I should be in the ground with Red.”

  The big man looked at the sky and shook his head.

  “I hope you guys understand why we’re here,” he said. He put the gun back in his coat. “I’ve been going a little crazy ever since I found out. I just have to do something about it, you know what I mean?”

  “Yes,” I said. “I understand.”

  “We drove all the way up there,” he said. “And then all the way home. And then when we heard … . Fuck, we drove all the way here. We waited around for you. This is some kind of little shit town you got here.”

  He looked down at Vinnie’s feet. “What’s with the slippers?”

  “It’s a long story,” I said.

  “Yeah, well, we got some things to do now. We gotta go talk to some people. Let’s get out of here, Jay …”

  They went back to their car.

  “Hey,” he said, standing in the glare of the headlights. His voice caught as he asked us his final questions. “Is it true what they said? Did my brother really get set on fire up there?”

  “Yes,” I said. “They were burned.”

  He stood there for a long moment, looking up at the sky.

  The big guy spoke up again. “They were burned, Dal.”

  “Yeah, I heard the man.”

  “I’m just saying—”

  “That’s enough. Let’s go.”

  They got in the car and drove it around the truck. Their wheels spun as they edged off the road into the heavy grass. For a moment I thought we’d end up standing in the mud in our hospital slippers, trying to push them out. That would clinch the evening, right there. But then the wheels found purchase and they were free. I watched the glowing taillights as they turned right onto the main road and were gone.

  “Are you all right?” I said.

  Vinnie stood there holding on to the side of the truck. “Yeah, I’m just fine,” he said. “That was actually a good warm-up.”

  “How’s that?”

  “Tomorrow will be worse,” he said. “That’s when I’ve got to face my family.”

  Chapter Twenty-One

  When I woke up, it was snowing. It was a light October flurry, nothing to get the snowplow out for. The clock said 12:34. I did the math and figured I’d been sleeping for about fourteen hours. It didn’t feel like nearly enough.

  My feet hurt when I put them on the cold floor. But I could walk a little better. I wasn’t ready for the decathlon, but at least I could start getting around again. I took a long hot shower, shaved six days of beard off my face, and got myself dressed. I put on clean white socks and very carefully stepped into a pair of old shoes.

  As I fired up the truck, it felt strange not having Vinnie sitting there next to me. When I drove down my road, I noticed that his truck was gone. He must have been over at his mother’s house. For a second I thought I should go over there myself, but then something told me I should leave them alone for one day, at least. I hoped it wasn’t just me being afraid to face Mrs. LeBlanc.

  I went down to the Glasgow Inn. Jackie looked me over like I was the walking
dead and made me a cheese omelet with five eggs. He served it to me with a cold Canadian as I put my feet up by the fire. If he had asked me for everything I owned, I would have given it to him right then.

  “I’ve already heard the basics,” he said as he sat down next to me. “Hell, it was on the front page of the Soo Evening News. Are you gonna tell me the rest?”

  I spent the next hour going through the whole story for him. It felt good to tell him, like maybe I was almost ready to let go of it. Almost. When I was done, he got me another Canadian and I fell asleep in front of the fire.

  When I went back home, I still didn’t see Vinnie’s truck in his driveway, but there was a note from him pinned on my door. “Service for Tom,” it read. “1:00 tomorrow. See you there.”

  I drove down to the end of my road. The blue tarp was still tied tight over the walls we had started. The center post we had stuck in there was doing its job, letting the light snowfall glide off to the ground.

  I can’t believe it, I said to myself. I actually started building this cabin. In October. That’s how crazy I was.

  I checked the other cabins on my way back. Two were still occupied, the other two empty. In both cases, the men had left while I was up in Canada. And in both cases, the cabins were spotless and money had been left in envelopes. Bow hunters, I thought. God bless them.

  There was a message on my machine when I got back to my cabin. The two men from the FBI were checking up on me, wanted to make sure I was back in the country. I called the number they left, and told them I was here in Michigan and not planning on going anywhere. That seemed to satisfy them for the time being. They knew where to find me if they had any more questions. I tried to ask the man a few questions of my own. He told me they were working hard on the case but didn’t have anything to say about it yet.

  I went back down to the Glasgow for dinner that evening. I ate sitting by the fire again, and as I sat there feeling a hell of a lot better than the day before, I couldn’t help thinking about it. Again. Five men dead, a vehicle moved several miles. Somebody else had to help Gannon do this. But who?

  And those men from last night, the big man, Jay, and Red’s brother—what was his name? I replayed the whole scene in my mind. Dal, he called him—the man with the look in his eyes like he’d be capable of anything. And the way they were talking. I tried to remember it, word for word.

  What?

  You know.

  No, man. Are you serious?

  These men knew something. At least they had an idea. If anyone could lead us to the answers, it was these two men.

  So rest up, Vinnie. We’ve got some work to do.

  I went to bed early that night, and slept in again the next morning. I almost felt human. I was able to put shoes on my feet without incident, and I could even walk around a little bit without feeling like I was ninety years old. I put on my old black suit, spent a few minutes tying my tie, and then drove down past Vinnie’s house. He wasn’t there, so I headed over to the reservation. There were a lot of cars at the Cultural Center, so I knew I was in the right place.

  When I went inside, I saw that everyone had gathered in the main hall. There had to be two hundred people there. They were all dressed nicely, but nobody was in black. The room itself was simple, with a high ceiling and drawings of animals and mountains and trees, along with the Bay Mills crest of four feathers. A great fireplace stood in the center of the room. The fire was going strong, and the sweet smell of burning tobacco hung in the air.

  Vinnie came to me and took my right hand. His face was still taped up. “Alex,” he said. “You look a lot better.”

  “So do you,” I said, although it felt like a lie. He still looked totally worn out, even worse now than before, like something had been taken from inside him.

  He took me to his mother, the moment I had been dreading all along. But she took my face in both hands and kissed me. “Thank you,” she said. Her face was red with grief. “Thank you for everything you’ve done.”

  I didn’t have any words for her. I took her hands and held them.

  “You’re my son now,” she said. “I hope you know that. You are my son.”

  I shook hands with the rest of Vinnie’s family, losing count around thirty. I couldn’t help noticing there was no coffin in the room, and then it hit me. Tom’s body was probably still up in Canada, in some forensics lab. I wondered how they could be having his funeral without him. Then I found out. A traditional Ojibwa funeral lasts for days. You go, you spend time with the family, you offer tobacco in the fireplace, you eat, you go home. And then you come back the next day.

  A man stood up to speak. The room went silent as he talked about the Path of Life, and what a man must do to live in peace, and how when a man’s time on this earth is over, he must follow the setting sun to the west, crossing over the Path of Souls to the Land of Souls. It made me think of Mrs. LeBlanc and what she had said about Tom’s Ojibwa name—how being named for the western sky was a bad omen. It turned out she was right.

  I ate with the family, sitting at the long table with cousins and aunts and uncles all around me. I wondered if me being there was painful for them. It must have made them think about what had happened to Tom. The flames burned in the fireplace as we sat there together.

  After the dinner I said goodbye to Vinnie and his family. Vinnie followed me outside into the cold night air and stood there breathing it in with me. “I appreciate you coming,” he said.

  “Least I could do, Vinnie.”

  “You don’t have to spend the whole time over here, but I’m sure my mother would appreciate it if you stopped by again.”

  “I will,” I said. “And we’ve got some other things to talk about.”

  He looked at me. “I can’t even think right now, Alex. Give me some time, okay?”

  “Okay.” Then I said good night and went home to bed.

  When I stopped in at Jackie’s the next morning, he asked me where I had been the night before. I told him about the funeral, how it would go on for days. He told me to wait while he went upstairs to put his suit on. He put a sign on the front door, reading GONE TO A FUNERAL, and then he went with me and met all of Vinnie’s family.

  Some people stood up after dinner and told stories about Tom, about all the funny things he had done, about all the times he had gone out of his way to help somebody. Vinnie stood up toward the end and tried to say something. He started to tell a story about the first fishing trip he and Tom had gone on, when they were little kids. Vinnie couldn’t bring himself to stick the hook through the worm, so Tom had told him to stop acting like a chimook, which is Ojibwa slang for a white man. That got a laugh, but Vinnie couldn’t continue the story. He sat down next to his mother and she rubbed his back.

  When Jackie and I were about to leave, Vinnie came to us and thanked us for coming.

  “You don’t look so good,” I said. I had been wanting to talk to him about the men from Detroit, but now that I saw him I knew it would have to wait.

  “I can’t sleep,” he said. “Every time I close my eyes, I see the same thing.” He didn’t have to tell me what.

  That was the second day of the funeral.

  On the third day, I came around dinnertime again. I heard some more stories about Tom. Vinnie didn’t try to speak this time. I was walking almost normally now, and feeling like I had most of my energy back.

  Vinnie looked even worse than the day before. I didn’t try to talk to him at all. I went home, wondering what in the world I could do for him.

  Maskwa was right. His spirit was sick. Even I could see it now.

  That was the third day.

  On the fourth day, Vinnie collapsed. I picked him up off the floor, with some help from his cousins. We sat him down, fanned him, and tried to make him drink some water. Like a prizefighter, he tried to shake us off and get back on his feet.

  “I’m all right,” he said. “Come on, guys. I just blacked out for a second. I’m all right.”

  He wo
uldn’t go home. I offered to take him there myself and stay with him. But he refused. I went home by myself.

  On the fifth day, Tom’s remains finally arrived from Canada. The last day of the funeral moved from the Cultural Center over to the Blessed Kateri Tekakwitha, a Catholic church located right on the reservation, between the two casinos. They did a Catholic funeral mass and then drove Tom’s coffin up to the top of Mission Hill. It was a cold day, as gray as only a Michigan October day can get. They buried Tom in the reservation’s graveyard, facing west.

  When they were done, Vinnie went off by himself and looked out over the cliff. I went and joined him and looked down at the scene below—at Spectacle Lake and the new golf course, at all the pine and birch trees and Waishkey Bay and beyond that the heart of Lake Superior. There was a wooden shelter there on the overlook, with a couple of benches underneath. I had heard this was a party spot for young men on the reservation, but I didn’t see any trash lying around. Someone had taken some yellow paint and carefully written a message on the shelter. PLEASE RESPECT THE LAND. THE SPIRITS OF OUR ANCESTORS LIVE HERE.

  “It’s a nice view up here,” I said. “It’s a good place to end up.” I felt stupid as soon as I said it, but Vinnie turned to me and gave me a weak smile.

  “It’s a good place,” he said.

  “Your mother told me I’m her son now,” I said. “Does that mean we’re brothers?”

  “Of course it does.”

  “I never got to ask you,” I said. “What does that word mean? The one you called me at the lodge?”

  “I don’t remember that.”

  “When we first got there, and we were stuck in the mud. You said my Ojibwa name would be Madasomething.”

  “Oh, now I remember. Madawayash.”

  “That’s it. What does it mean?”

  “Well, you have to remember what we were going through at the time.”

  “Yeah, yeah,” I said. “Just tell me.”

  “It means ‘chattering wind.’”

  “Good thing you’re my brother now or I’d have to smack you.”

  “If you’re my brother, that means you have to come to the sweat with me.”

  “A sweat? Is that part of the funeral?”