Blood Is the Sky: An Alex McKnight Mystery (5 page)

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Authors: Steve Hamilton

Tags: #Mystery, #Thriller, #Suspense, #Adult

BOOK: Blood Is the Sky: An Alex McKnight Mystery
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“Which kind of explains why they didn’t bring any moose back with them,” Helen said. “Not that they’d listen to that.”
“You got that right,” he said. “They came back dirty and tired, and pissed off at everything. And I told them, I said, you didn’t even see the back end of a moose the whole time you were up there, eh?”
“No matter what they said,” Vinnie said, “my brother did not work for Albright. I mean, just for the few days maybe. That’s what he might have meant.”
“I told you,” he said. “We got this Indian fellow—”
“I know, you’ve got your own Indian. I’m telling you, Albright was just trying to get around your little rule, okay? He brought his own Indian with him. My brother.”
The man looked at Vinnie, like he was really seeing him for the first time. It was something I’d witnessed before, many times. Some people look at Vinnie and see an Indian right away, like those idiots in the bar in Wawa. Others don’t see the Indian in him until he points it out.
“He did look like you,” Gannon said. “God damn.”
“He never came back home,” I said. “That’s why we’re here. He should have been home four days ago.”
Gannon looked at Helen and then shook his head. “I’m sorry, I don’t know anything about that. I flew them back out and they left. And fast. Lord knows they had nothing to load except the gear they were carrying. They were all driving this big SUV thing.”
“A Chevy Suburban,” Vinnie said.
“Yeah, a black one. Looked brand-new. They all piled in and left. Like I said, they were out of here by noon. Plenty of time to get back to Michigan the same day. If they didn’t feel like driving all the way back to Detroit, I suppose they would have spent the night somewhere.”
“My brother lives in the U.P. They would have dropped him off that night.”
“Yeah, they would have. Like you say, that same night.”
“He never came home,” Vinnie said.
Gannon threw up his hands. “I don’t know what to say. Although, come to think of it—”
“What?”
“Oh, I’m just trying to remember. On their way out, this Albright clown was saying something about how they didn’t get their moose, and they were in no hurry to get back home. So maybe they’d have to go have some fun somewhere else.”
“Like where?”
“He didn’t say. I was just assuming he meant they’d hit some casinos or some clubs or something. I didn’t think much of it at the time.”
“Do you have a phone number for this Albright?” I said. “Or an address?”
“He paid with a Visa number,” Helen said, “so I don’t have a check. I’m not sure he ever gave me an address.”
“You’ve got to have his address,” I said. “That’s just normal business practice, isn’t it?”
She looked at me, and then at Gannon. “I’m not sure we even qualify as a business right now.”
“I’m sorry,” I said. “I didn’t mean to criticize. We’re just trying to find out what happened to Tom—” I caught myself. “Uh, Tom’s brother.” Real smooth, Alex.
She shook her head and looked through another pile of papers. Finally, she came up with a three-by-five card. “Here’s his phone number.” She read off the same cell phone number Vinnie already had.
“You don’t have anything else?” I said. “Not even another number in case of emergency?”
“Just this one,” she said.
Vinnie ran one hand through his hair. “What do we do now, Alex?”
“I don’t know,” I said. “Let me think.”
Gannon stood there watching us. Helen was staring at the floor. It seemed ridiculous that we’d drive all the way up here and then leave so quickly.
“We’d appreciate any other help you can give us,” I said to them. “Do you have any idea where they might have gone, if not straight home?”
“Well,” Gannon said. “I know what their first stop was gonna be. They ran out of beer their last night on the lake. Just one more thing they were complaining about.”
“They were all drinking beer?” Vinnie said.
“Sure seemed to be. All five of them arrived pretty well lubricated, I remember that. Happens when you get Americans up here drinking Canadian beer the whole way.”
“Are you positive they were all drinking?” Vinnie said. From the sound of his voice, he was already resigned to it.
“I know how many cases of beer we flew in with,” he said, “and how many empties we brought back.”
Vinnie seemed to lose his steam right about then. There didn’t seem to be much left to say, so I thanked them for their time, and asked the man if he could help get my truck back on the road.
“You go on outside,” he said. “I’ll take care of these guys and then we’ll go pull you out of the mud.”
Vinnie didn’t say a word as we went back down the rickety front steps and walked by the other hunting party. They were all standing around the butcher shed, these unshaven men with filthy sweatshirts and unwashed hair.
Four days ago, another group of men came back looking the same way and then disappeared off the face of the earth.
Or at least Tom did.
And two other men came up here looking for Albright. We were a day behind them.
As Vinnie and I walked up to the vehicles, I turned to look back at the lake. I saw a man standing on the dock, a man I hadn’t seen when we first came down. He was young, and had the kind of dark features that left no doubt in your mind. He was an Indian.
“That must be the guide,” I said to Vinnie.
He turned, and squinted in the last light of the day reflected off the water. “Where?”
“Right there,” I said. But as I looked again, the dock was empty.
The sun was going down when we left. It was a short ride in Gannon’s jeep, not enough time to have a real conversation. But Gannon had something to say to us. “This is it, guys,” he said. “We’re done with the lodge business. It just doesn’t make sense anymore. Less and less hunters, and the good hunters aren’t passing it down to their sons anymore. It’s just drunken jackasses now.”
He let that one hang for a moment.
“Not to say that about your brother, you understand. The more I think about it, yeah, maybe he did stick out, eh? Maybe he wasn’t a jackass like those other guys.”
“Just tell me one more time,” I said. “You brought them back Saturday, around noon, and then they drove away.”
“Kicked up some mud on their way out,” he said. “They were moving.”
“And you have no idea where they might have gone, if not straight home.”
“No sir, I really don’t. I’m sorry.”
That was about it. A few seconds later we got to my truck. Gannon backed up his jeep to it, looped a chain around my trailer hitch, and had me out with one pull. It was obviously something he’d done before.
I thanked him. He left. We got in the truck and got the hell out of there. Vinnie didn’t say anything. He kept working his hands together into fists, then letting go.
“What do you want to do?” I said. I was heading back to 631. Unless he had some other idea, I assumed I’d just be pointing us south and heading home.
“I don’t know,” he said.
“Who do you think those other men were? The ones looking for Albright.”
“No idea. Somebody else who was expecting them home a few days ago.”
“That had to be them at the bar in Wawa,” I said. “The guys who broke that joker’s nose.”
“We’re on the same trail,” Vinnie said. “And anybody coming up here pretty much has to stop in Wawa. It’s not such a big coincidence.”
“We’ll keep trying Albright’s number,” I said. “When we get home, maybe we can find out his address.”
He didn’t say anything.
“Using his cell phone number, I mean. There’s got to be a way. Hell, if you want, we can even go down there.”
“All the way down to Detroit?”
“It’s eight hours back to the Soo,” I said. “What’s another six hours?”
He shook his head. “I can’t believe he was drinking.”
“You don’t know that for sure.”
“Of course he was. Those men were in that cabin for what, seven days? With how many cases of beer?”
“If it was you,” I said, “would you drink any of it?”
He looked at me.
“I’m serious,” I said. “Would you?”
“I haven’t touched alcohol in eight and a half years,” Vinnie said. “You know that.”
“How long has it been for Tom?”
He thought about it. “Maybe six months.”
“But he was trying.”
“I’ve been on hunts,” Vinnie said. “Just like this one. I know how to deal with it.”
“So maybe Tom did, too.”
Vinnie shook his head again. “If he was drinking, all bets are off, Alex. There’s no reason for us to even be up here looking for him.”
“Come on, Vinnie.”
“I’m serious.”
“I never actually went to a meeting myself,” I said. “But I know how it goes. You don’t drink for the rest of the day. And then the next day, you do it all over again. If you fail, you just start over. You do the best you can.”
“Yeah, that’s how it works. You know the drill.”
“Don’t take it out on me, Vinnie. Okay? I’m just saying, maybe he’s not as strong as you. Maybe he’s gonna fall down a few times.”
“I sent him into the woods for a week with a bunch of beer-drinking white men, and a stack of bottles about ten feet high. That’s what I did for him.”
I didn’t say anything. The headlights hit the sign for 631. I took the right turn.
“I can’t go home,” he said.
“Why? You think your whole family is gonna hold you responsible for him?”
“Look at everything I did leading up to this,” he said. “Letting him pretend to be me, violating his parole, sending him up here with strangers—”
“All right, it doesn’t look good on paper,” I said. “I’ll grant you that.”
“Don’t mince words,” he said. “Tell me straight. If it was your relative, and I did this to him, you’d be ready to shoot me.”
“I would wonder what you were thinking.”
“Yeah. You’d wonder.”
I was tired. I didn’t feel like arguing. “We should stop on the way back,” I said. “Spend the night somewhere.”
“I told you, I can’t go back home.”
“Vinnie—”
“I can’t face them.”
That was enough for me. I slammed on the brakes, just about sending him through the windshield. “Listen,” I said, as he fell back into his seat. “I’ve had enough of this, all right? You want me to tell you it was a stupid thing to do? Okay, I’ll say it. It was stupid. It was damned stupid. It was the stupidest thing I’ve ever seen you do. And yeah, everybody in your family is gonna be pissed off at you. And yeah, I would be, too. Okay? Have we settled that now?”
He rubbed the back of his neck. “Yes, we’ve settled that.”
“Okay, then.”
I put the truck back on the road and drove. Vinnie didn’t say anything for another hour, until we hit Hornepayne. There was no train this time, so the whole town flashed right by us like an idle thought. There was nothing but open road again, and the headlights against the trees. Finally, he cleared his throat. “Don’t you want to know why?”
“Why what?”
“Why I let Tom come up here?”
“You told me,” I said. “You thought you were helping him. You thought he could use the money.”
“No, that’s not why.”
“So tell me.”
He settled back in his seat, looked out into the night. “About a month ago,” he said, “I was coming home from the casino. It was like ten o’clock at night. I stopped by my mother’s house, but it didn’t look like anybody was home. I mean, the cars were all gone. The place was dark.
So I figured, okay, they’re all over at the healing center in Garden River or something. I’m about to back out of the driveway, and I notice that the porch light isn’t on. Which is the first weird thing. The second weird thing is that there’s a light on in the house. Believe me, when my mother leaves the house, she turns every light off, except the one on the porch. And God help you if you mess that up.”
“I believe it.”
“I went inside to see what was going on. At the very least, I figured maybe somebody else had left the house after she had. I was thinking I’d be saving somebody a lot of abuse if I turned that light off in the house and turned the porch light on. But when I got inside, I thought I heard something from one of the back rooms. I called out, you know, ‘Hey, anybody home?’ Nobody answered. But then another noise. It was dark, and hell, it had been a long day, so maybe my imagination got the best of me. I was thinking maybe it was a burglar back there, so I grabbed a fireplace poker, just like in the movies. I go down the hallway real slow, holding that poker, listening for somebody. And then I see there’s a light on in the bathroom.”
He stopped for a moment, took a deep breath.
“So I called out again,” he went on. “‘Hey, who’s there?’ Nobody answered. So I went up to the door and I opened it.”
He stopped again. There was nothing but the sound of the tires on the road, and the cold air whistling by.
“Who was it?” I said.
“It was Tom. He had stayed home, all by himself. You wanna know why?”
I didn’t even try to answer.
“He stayed home so he could hang himself with an extension cord in the shower.”
I kept driving. I waited for him to start talking again.
“His face was blue, Alex,” he finally said. “It was actually blue. A minute later and he would have been dead. I grabbed him and tried to lift him in the air. And he started fighting me, kicking me all over. It was just … I was so mad, Alex. It’s almost funny looking back on it. I wasn’t mad that he was trying to kill himself. I was mad that he was doing it in the bathroom. That was my first thought. This is the bathroom my uncles worked so hard on. Putting in all that new tile and the sink and the bathtub and the separate shower stall. And they’re all gonna come home in a little while and find your dead stinking body hanging there.”
He rubbed one hand over his face and through his hair.
“In the bathroom, Alex. God damn it. If you’re gonna kill yourself, you go up to the old graveyard on Mission Hill. You know what I mean? You say hello to your ancestors and then you jump off the cliff. Just walk right out into the sky. That’s how you kill yourself.”
“So what happened?” I said.
“Well, at that point I’m fighting him, trying to get him down, and the stupid shower rod breaks. We both go falling in the shower and I just about crack my head open. The extension cord was coming loose and he’s getting his breath back. He’s trying to yell at me, and trying to punch me. I could have killed him right there. I could have strangled him with my bare hands. Which was kinda weird, I guess, after I stopped him from killing himself. But finally he gives up fighting me and he’s just lying there, half in the shower and half out. He starts crying. I sat there with him for, what, maybe thirty minutes, just sitting there watching him cry. I finally asked him, ‘Why, Tom? Why were you gonna do that?’ And he says, ‘This is the only way out. It’s either go back to prison, or this.’”
“Okay,” I said, after another long silence. “So how
does that end up with you sending him up here?”
“You’ve got to understand, the only jobs he’s ever had aside from leading hunts were either washing dishes or cleaning toilets. He can’t even work at the casino, now that he has a record. It’s just more of the same. Hell, I’d be going crazy, too.”
“You wouldn’t try to kill yourself.”
“Who knows, Alex? Who really knows? If I had to stay in that house, with everybody looking at me all the time like I was a criminal.”
“So what then?”
“I told him just to hold on, you know? Just give me some time to help him. And then when this thing came along. Three thousand dollars for a week of hunting. Only problem was, it was in Canada. There’s no way they would have let him leave the country.”
“Vinnie, I know it’s good money, but—”
“It’s more than that. Don’t you get it? You know why he loves doing hunts so much? Same reason I do. It sounds kinda stupid, but going out on a hunt makes you remember who you are. I mean, most of the time, you’re just hanging out with your own people, you know, doing regular stuff, sitting around or going to work, whatever. Then you go out in the woods with a bunch of white guys and all of a sudden they’re treating you like you’re fucking Geronimo. Like you’re this amazing, wild Indian shaman who can hear messages in the wind and talk to the animals and learn their secrets. At first, you think, okay, these white guys are totally into some kind of cartoon character they saw on television. But then you realize, shit, they’re right. I
am
different. My ancestors, they
did
know all this stuff. And I’m still a part of it. You know what I mean?”
“Yeah, I get it. So you decided—”
“He needed this, Alex. He really needed this. Otherwise—”
I shook my head.
“It was either that or let him kill himself,” Vinnie said. “That was my choice. If I hadn’t let him go, he’d be dead. No doubt about it.”
I slowed down to let a string of deer run across the empty road. We watched five of them go by, white tails flashing in the headlights. I waited another few seconds. There’s always one more.
Then it came. The sixth deer, smaller than the rest. It jumped into the brush, following the rest of its family.
“What would you have done?” he said.
“I’d have to think about it,” I said.
“You of all people should understand.”
“How do you mean?”
“You’ve been there.”
I looked over at him. “Excuse me?”
“It’s like my mother said, you carry around so much pain, and you won’t let anybody else help you carry it. She says you have such a lonely heart, it’s hard to even look at you.”
“All right,” I said, “can we leave me and my lonely heart out of this? I think I’m doing a lot better now, anyway.”
“She says you need a woman.”
“Your mother sees all this in me? How about Tom? How come she didn’t see it in her own son?”
I regretted it as soon as I said it, but Vinnie just laughed. “Your own family,” he said. “That’s different.”
We both seemed to want to leave it alone for a while, so another hour passed as we made our way down to White River.

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