Let It Burn

by Steve Hamilton

  I went around to the back of the cabin. There was a raised deck where the ground sloped away from the house, and there were sliding glass doors on either side of a central fireplace made of stone. I put my face against the glass. I couldn’t see anything inside.

  He’s in the shower, I thought. He can’t hear me knocking. He can’t hear his phone. I’ll wait two more minutes and knock again.

  I sat down on one of the patio chairs and looked out at the lake. I couldn’t imagine living here and looking out at that calm, flat water every day. Not after living on a lake that sees twenty-foot waves and higher, every fall.

  Of course, it would be suicide to take the detective’s pontoon boat out on Lake Superior, so to each his own.

  I got up and rapped on the window a few times. I made that glass rattle. No way he couldn’t hear that.

  Then it occurred to me to actually try sliding open the glass door.

  I pushed the door open, hearing it grind on the tracks. It needed some oil. I was reminding myself to suggest that to Detective Bateman.

  Then I stopped dead.

  In the deepest, reptile part of my brain, I knew something was terribly wrong. It was probably just the smell in the air. That’s the thing that plugs right into that part of your brain, after all—but it invades every other sense, and all of a sudden you feel like the air itself looks wrong. It feels wrong against your skin. And even though the house was silent, the silence itself seemed to be spiked with one single high note of wrongness.

  “Detective,” I said. “Are you there?”

  I walked through the cabin. There were stairs leading up to a loft. There were books piled on the coffee table. I went toward the side door and found the short hallway that led to a bathroom on one side and a half-closed door on the other. Probably the bedroom.

  I put my hand on the door and slowly pushed it open.

  The detective was lying in his bed. He was tangled in the covers. The fabric was soaked through with blood. His face was destroyed. Utterly destroyed beyond recognition. His head was caved in like a goddamned pumpkin.

  I looked away. I made myself breathe.

  I looked one more time. At the obscenity of what had happened to this man. There was a pipe on the floor, next to the bed. A heavy steel pipe, maybe two and a half feet long. It was covered with blood, and in the blood there were clumps of hair and other material I didn’t want to think about.

  I had spoken to this man the night before. Just a matter of hours before this moment. My voice may have been the last he ever heard.

  Unless whoever killed him had something to say to him before swinging this pipe.

  Unless whoever killed him had a special message for him, something he’d been preparing in his mind for years.

  Because you know exactly who did this, I thought. He got out last night. He came here.

  You know who did this.

  I had to close my eyes again. I had to stand there and command the room to stop spinning. Then, when I could finally open my eyes, I took my phone out of my pocket and dialed 911.

  *

  I had been through this routine before. It’s a testament to my willingness to go looking for trouble, or to my bad luck, or to something, I don’t even know what, that I’d had a lot of prior experiences with reporting homicides, even now that I wasn’t carrying a badge anymore. I stayed on the line with the 911 operator. While I waited, I told her that they needed to go find Darryl King, very recently released from prison, living with his mother on Ash Street in Detroit. It felt strange to be dropping the dime on him now, after everything that had happened in the past few days to lead me here. But they had to start with him. They had to.

  There was a Michigan State Police post right in Houghton Lake, just minutes away from where I was standing. I had passed it on the way here. So I figured they’d be responding. I had gone outside to get a better cell signal, and to get away from the air in that cabin. I waited by my truck, leaning against it, knowing that I was already on my way to a very long day.

  The cruiser pulled into the driveway. One of the boxy old “Blue Goose” cars with the single red flasher on top. Two troopers hopped out and came right over to me. Both of them had freshly buzzed heads under their trooper hats. I hung up the phone and told them where they could find the dead detective. One of the troopers went inside while the other kept an eye on me. He went back to his car and talked to someone on his radio. I knew there’d be more troopers coming down the driveway soon. Eventually there’d be a state homicide detective on the scene. That might take a while, because he might have to come over from one of the other posts. A homicide detective who would investigate the homicide of a retired homicide detective.

  The trooper who went inside came out. He wasn’t looking so happy with his career choice.

  I kept waiting, just standing there by my truck, feeling the morning sun on my face. When the detective finally got there, he came up to me first. As he shook my hand, he introduced himself as Detective Gruley. Then he asked me politely to stay put while he went inside. When he came back out, he started asking me the basic questions. Name, address, phone number. He looked me in the eye as I answered, like listening to every word was the most important thing in the world to him.

  “So tell me what happened,” he said. “Start at the beginning.”

  I gave him the rundown. My background first, then the current timeline from the moment I had heard Darryl King was getting out of prison to my discovery of Detective Bateman’s body.

  He listened intently, writing down only the occasional word in his notepad. When I was done, he stood there nodding to himself. Then he took a step closer to me.

  “Let me get this straight,” he said in a low voice. “The two of you were going down to Detroit this morning to confront the man you put away for murder, back when you were both on active duty?”

  “We weren’t going to confront him,” I said. “We were going to ask him if he really did it. Seeing as how we’ve both developed some doubts about his confession.”

  Gruley kept nodding. “Did he know you were coming down to ask him this?”

  “No, he didn’t.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “I’m positive. I mean, I know I didn’t say anything to him. I’ve had no communication with him at all.”

  “Since back in the day, you mean. When you arrested him.”

  “The detective made the actual arrest. But yes. No contact since then.”

  “So it would seem,” Gruley said, “that Mr. King had already made plans for his first day out of prison, independent of this little mission of yours.”

  “I guess it looks that way,” I said. “May I ask if you’ve located him yet? I gave his name and address to the 911 operator.”

  “No, I don’t think he’s been located yet. Detroit PD is helping us out on that one.”

  I might have caught just a hint of the patented Michigan State Police superiority complex as he said that. Like this part of the operation is out of our hands, so God only knows if it’ll get done correctly.

  “This is a former Detroit cop we’re talking about,” I said. “I’m sure they’ll be all over it.”

  “I’m sure they will be, yes.”

  “Look, Detective, I know this whole thing sounds crazy. For it to turn out this way … I still can’t believe this happened.”

  “You see the irony,” he said. “You thought maybe this man was innocent of murder, yet he ends up killing someone within hours of getting out.”

  “If it was him.”

  “If it was him, yes. By the way, you see where he might logically take this next, right?”

  I looked at the detective. My stomach hurt and I was starting to feel a little light-headed.

  “You were also closely involved with his conviction,” the detective said. “Surely you must understand the stakes here.”

  I put my hand out to the hood of my truck.

  “Mr. McKnight, are you okay?”

  “Ye
s,” I said. “It’s been a rough morning.”

  “No doubt. But I hope you understand what I’m trying to tell you. If this man made a list of people to get back at, the minute he got out of prison … Well, yours may be the second name on his list.”

  Yeah, no kidding, I thought. I never would have made that connection on my own.

  “You don’t look so good,” he said. “I think we should get you out of the sun. Get you some water.”

  He took me over to his car and opened up the passenger’s-side door. He started the car and turned the air on. Then he pulled out a bottle of water from a cooler in the backseat. I took a long drink and started to feel better.

  “You never get used to seeing something like that,” he said. “I don’t know how the crime scene guys do it.”

  “I never did get those guys. They were a breed apart.”

  “When you’re up to it, I’d like to take you back to the post and get an official statement.”

  I took one more drink and felt the cold air from the dashboard vent on my face.

  “Ready when you are,” I said, “but I’m not sure this story is going to look any more sane on paper.”

  *

  I spent a good part of the day there. I knew I would. You get into a police station, or a state police post, or any law enforcement building in the world probably, and time stands still. Sometimes they make you wait for a reason. To soften you up, to let you stew in your own guilt, whatever mind games they feel will help their cause. Other times it’s just a matter of them doing things their own way, one slow step at a time. They’ll apologize at every turn, tell you you’ll be on your way in just a few more minutes. But then the wheels keep grinding away, as slow as the hour hand on the clock.

  I sat in their interview room. I answered some more questions. I wrote out my statement. I sat some more. I had some coffee. I declined the offer of lunch, because I couldn’t stand even the thought of eating. I had some more coffee. It was late afternoon by the time Detective Gruley finally drove me back to my truck. By that time, the crime scene unit had descended upon Detective Bateman’s property. I took one more look around the place, including the pontoon boat docked on the lake. Then I left.

  I had Detective Gruley’s card in my pocket, with his cell phone number and a polite request to let him know if I was going to leave the state. To be available for more questions, and yes, I knew the drill.

  When I was almost back to the freeway, I pulled the truck over in a gas station and just sat there for a while with my eyes closed. Then I picked up my cell phone and called Leon. As soon as he answered, I let him have it.

  “He’s dead,” I said. “Detective Bateman was murdered.”

  “Alex, slow down and tell me what happened.”

  I took a breath and gave him the whole story. When I was done, there was a long silence on the line. I thought the call might have dropped.

  “Leon, are you there?”

  “I want you to listen to me very carefully,” he said. “You really need to hear this.”

  “What is it?”

  “Are you listening?”

  “I’m listening. What is it?”

  “This was not your fault.”

  “I know that.”

  “Like hell you do. I know exactly what you’re thinking right now, and you need to stop. Because it’s going to drive you insane. If this was Darryl King getting revenge, then he was plotting this for years. For years, Alex. It was set in motion long before you even started thinking about this case again. No matter what you did or didn’t do or were planning on doing today, it wouldn’t have mattered. This thing happened, and it had nothing to do with you.”

  “Okay,” I said. “I hear what you’re saying.”

  “I take that back. It does have something to do with you. Because you might be next. In fact, King could be on his way up to Paradise right now.”

  “Or in Paradise,” I said, looking at my watch. “He’d have had plenty of time to get up there. Hell, if I hadn’t left this morning, I could already be dead by now.”

  “I’m about to get off work. Let me go over and just check out your place. I’ll give Jackie and Vinnie a heads-up, too.”

  “Okay, but be careful.”

  “I will, don’t worry. I might take my Ruger, though. Just don’t tell my wife.”

  “I promise,” I said. “And thank you.”

  “What are you going to do now?”

  I looked out at the road. The entrance to the freeway had two arrows. One for I-75 North, and the bridge to the Upper Peninsula. Another for I-75 South, and Detroit.

  “I have absolutely no idea what to do next,” I said. Then my phone made a beeping noise I’d hardly ever heard it make before. I looked at the little screen. There was another call coming in.

  “Somebody’s calling me,” I said, reading the caller ID. A 313 area code. “I should take this.”

  I ended the call with Leon and answered a call from the last person in the world I would have expected.

  Darryl King’s mother.

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  It took me a moment to remember. I had given Mrs. King my card, on that surreal afternoon I’d sat with her in her living room, eating her chocolate cake. Now, as I answered her call, I could barely make sense of what she was saying. All I could make out was that Darryl was gone, after just one night in the house, and the police had been tearing the place apart and asking ridiculous questions. I told her to sit tight, that I’d be there in less than three hours. A crazy thing to do on a day that had already gotten turned upside down. But what else was I going to say to her?

  While I was driving down I-75, I gave Sergeant Grimaldi a call, just to let him know what had happened. Then I called Janet to do the same. They were both shocked. They were both worried about me. They both wanted to know what I was going to do next. I didn’t tell either one of them the truth.

  I stopped for some gas. I hit a drive-through just so I’d have something in my stomach. I kept driving. Two and a half hours later, I crossed under Eight Mile Road. I was back in Detroit.

  I cut over to the west side of town. I went to Ash Street. I parked the truck in front of that house. I sat there for a moment to get my bearings and to shake out the sound of the road from my ears. Then I got out and looked at the house. I could see where the weeds had all been trampled down by the police officers’ boots. The trail circled the house, and there were dirty footprints on the sidewalk.

  Okay, I thought, so they were here looking for him. They probably turned this place upside down. But why aren’t they still here now? If they don’t have him in custody yet, surely somebody’s keeping an eye on the place.

  That made me remember, of course. My own time watching this very house, all those years ago. Even with some of the houses gone, and the weeds grown up, there was still probably one prime spot for surreptitious surveillance, as they call it. I stepped back from the far side of my truck and looked down the street. Sure enough, there was the vehicle, right in that same spot on the other side of the fence, in the parking lot behind that apartment complex. It was a green minivan, not the panel truck we had used back in the day. I thought I spotted a little lens flash, probably from binoculars. I almost waved to him, whoever the lucky sap was who had drawn this duty, but I thought better of it.

  I went up on the leaning front porch and was about to knock on the screen door. Then I looked inside and saw Mrs. King kneeling on the floor, her head on the seat of her chair.

  I opened the door and went to her. “Mrs. King,” I said. “Are you all right?”

  She looked up at me. Her face was wet.

  “Oh, thank God, you came, Mr. McKnight. Thank you so much.”

  “Do you need help? Here, let me help you to your feet.”

  “It’s okay, I was just praying.”

  She let me help her to a sitting position on her chair. I took the other chair.

  “It was so good to have him home,” she said, wringing a handkerchief
in her hands. “But it all went wrong so quickly. He didn’t even have one piece of his cake yet.”

  “Tell me what happened. Tell me everything.”

  She wiped her face, then took a moment to compose her gray hair.

  “I waited all day for him,” she said. “I thought he’d be out in the morning, but by the time he did all his processing and such, it was nearly dinnertime when I finally got to see him. He looked so…”

  She stopped and worked at her handkerchief again.

  “He looked so tired, I guess. So used up by all those years in prison. He was so happy to be out, but I could tell he was feeling a little lost, too. Which I guess is understandable. All these years and suddenly you’re standing outside that prison, with no idea what you’re going to do with the rest of your life. Anyway, I had my sister’s car. I don’t drive that much anymore, but I still have a license. So I went to get him, and after all that waiting, I finally got to bring him home.”

  “Did he say anything? About what he was going to do?”

  “No, he didn’t. Not at all. He didn’t say much of anything. He apologized, said he was still just taking it all in, trying to get his feet under him. He wasn’t very hungry. He had a little dinner, but like I said, he didn’t even have any cake. He said he’d have some today.”

  “Okay…”

  “He sat with me for a while, then when it got dark, I asked him if he was going to go to bed. Up in his old room, just like old times. I thought he must have been pretty tired after the big day, but he said he wanted to go out for a little bit. I got kinda upset about that, because I know he’s on parole, for one thing, and they have all sorts of rules about where you can go and how late you can stay out at night. Then he asked me if he could borrow my sister’s car for a little bit, and I got really upset. Because I knew he still has to go down and get his license. But he insisted on going out. He just said, ‘I gotta do it, Mama. I’ve been cooped up all these years. I just gotta get some air in my lungs and move around a little bit.’ So eventually I just let him take the car for a while, as long as he promised to come right back.”

  She stopped again. She smoothed the fabric of her dress over her knees.