Dead of Winter (25 page)

“Leave it!” she said. She was holding a hand over her eyes. It was shaking.

“Zoe,” he said, taking a step toward her.

She turned abruptly. “Get out of here,” she said.

“Zoe, let’s talk —”

“Get out!” she yelled. She snatched his sweatshirt from the floor and threw it at him. “Get out!” She went stiffly to the windows, holding herself as she stared out at the snow.

Louis watched her for a moment then slowly went back out into the living room. He dressed quickly, stopping at the door to pull on his running shoes. He paused, his hand on the doorknob, listening. He could hear nothing from the other room. Finally, he opened the door and stepped out into the cold.

It was snowing hard. He could barely make out the lake down below and the lights of the town far beyond. He took a few steps off the cabin’s porch and down the hill then stopped. He turned to look back at the cabin. His chest, the entire inside of his body, felt hollow, as though everything had been scooped out. It burned, almost like when he had been shot.

He had fucked it up.

“Goddamn it,” he whispered. Then louder. “Goddamn it!”

He swung and slammed his hand into a tree.

Louis pushed open the door of the emergency room and paused, holding up his right hand to examine the gauze wrapping. What an ass he was, ramming his fist into a tree. The pain had kept him up most of the night — that and the memory of Zoe’s face. Finally, at five-thirty he had gotten up, dressed and walked to the hospital. Just a sprain, the doctor had told him, don’t use it for a couple of days.

He glanced at his watch. Seven-fifteen. Now what? He pulled up the collar of his jacket and started toward the station. There was nowhere else to go.

How could he have been so stupid? He should have told her the truth that first night. He should have been different with her than he had been with other women. Different because
she
was different,
this
was different. Even though they had known each other only a few weeks he felt this relationship was special, that it had the hope of going somewhere. But not now. He had blown it big time.

He turned the corner onto Main Street. The town was just starting to come to life. A couple of shop owners were out shoveling walks. The lights were on in Moe Cohick’s bakery, the smell of fresh bread wafting out on the cold air. What day was it? He wasn’t even sure. Worse, he didn’t care.

Deep in self-pity, he didn’t hear someone calling his name. Finally, it penetrated his funk and he turned. A rusty brown Honda Civic slid up to the curb. The passenger window rolled down and a pink face peered out. “Hey, you need a lift?”

Louis stared at the guy dumbly.

“Delp,” the man said. “Doug Delp. Reporter,
Argus?”

Louis turned and trudged on.

The Civic followed slowly. “Where you heading?” Delp called.

Louis didn’t turn around.

“Officer? Officer Kincaid? Hey, we should talk,”

“Nothing to talk about, man,” Louis shot back over his shoulder without stopping. The last thing he needed now was some punk reporter gnawing on his ear.

“How about Duane Lacey?”

Louis stopped and stared at Delp, who had leaned over to look out the passenger window.

“What do you know about Lacey?” Louis said.

“Just what I hear,” Delp said, nodding toward the police scanner mounted to his dashboard.

“Get lost,” Louis said, turning away.

“I heard you let him go. That true?” Delp said.

Louis came back to the car. He pointed a finger into the open window. “Stay out of my face, Delp,” he said.

Delp put up his gloved hands. “Hey, just doing my job, just following up. Always a good idea, following up.”

Louis started walking again.

“I found these clips about Lacey,” Delp called out.

Louis turned. Delp was holding a manila envelope out the window.

“Strange, isn’t it?” Delp said. “Why would my newspaper have a file full of old articles about some dirtbag from the U.P.?”

Louis came forward. “Let me see that.”

Delp pulled the file back quickly. “Quid pro quo.”

“What?”

Delp smiled and opened the door. “You show me yours, I’ll show you mine. Come on. I’ll buy you breakfast. You look like you need it.”

Five minutes later, they were seated in a booth in the back corner of Dot’s. Louis waited until Delp had ordered breakfast and the waitress had left.

“What did you do to your hand?” Delp asked.

“Nothing,” Louis said, putting his hand below the table. “Now what do you have on Lacey?”

Delp smiled and held up the envelope. “This is hot, man, it’s so fucking hot.”

It took all of Louis’s patience not to reach over and snatch the envelope. “Show me,” Louis said.

Delp leveled his brown eyes from beneath the brim of his Lions cap. “First tell me why you let Lacey go,” he said.

“I can’t share the details of an ongoing investigation.”

“Bullshit.”

The waitress appeared with two steaming mugs. Louis dumped in a stream of sugar and awkwardly picked up the spoon with his bandaged hand to stir it in.

“That much sugar’s bad for you,” Delp said.

Louis set down the spoon. “Look, are you going to show me what you have or do I have to go over to that rag of yours and pull this myself?”

“You can’t. Closed ‘til tomorrow,” Delp said with a smile. “But I can save you a lot of time. It’s all in this envelope.”

Louis took a drink of coffee. “What do you want from me?”

“Just information.”

“I can’t tell you anything without clearance.”

“I know that. I just want to be in on everything you get.” Delp’s smile faded. “Because when this comes out, the big papers are going to be on this like stink on shit and I want it first.”

Louis studied the young reporter. What did it matter? The kid was an idiot and Lacey wasn’t a suspect anymore.

“Why’d you let Lacey go?” Delp pressed.

“Because he was in prison at the time of the murders.”

Delp frowned. “Man, that doesn’t figure.”

“What do you mean?” Louis asked.

Delp sifted through the clips and held one out. Louis patted his shirt and let out a sigh. He had left his glasses at work. “Just tell me,” he said impatiently.

“Duane Lacey had good reason to be pissed at you guys,” he said.

“Why?”

“You killed two of his kids,” Delp said.

Louis stared at him. “What?”

“Well, not you. You weren’t here.”

“Where?”

“Right here in Loon Lake. Nineteen seventy-nine.”

“What do you mean, ‘killed two of his kids’?”

“It’s right here, man.”

Louis took the clipping. He couldn’t make out the small print of the story but the headline made him pull in a breath.

TEENS KILLED IN LOON LAKE RAID

There were two thumbnail black-and-white photos of the kids, probably high school yearbook pictures. Louis squinted to make out their features. Jesus, one was a girl.

“What happened?” Louis asked.

“The kids broke into a tourist cabin up on the north end,” Delp said. “At least one of them was wanted by the cops for gang stuff and they tracked them to the cabin. The cops called them out but the kids had guns and fired back. Cops threw in gas but two of the three kids were killed.”

“Two?”

“Yeah. The twins. The youngest survived.”

Louis took a slow drink of coffee, thinking of the letter from Lacey’s son at Red Oak. “How’d you find out about Lacey?”

“Well, I wasn’t working here then but when I heard Lacey’s name on the scanner yesterday, I mentioned it to my editor and he kind of vaguely remembered hearing the name before. So I ran it through the morgue and came up with all those clips.”

“Can I have this?” Louis asked.

Delp pushed the envelope across the table. “Go ahead. There are plenty of copies.”

“I’ll need to talk to the reporter.”

“Can’t. He croaked last winter. Heart attack. Guess that’s what twenty years covering cops will do to you.”

Louis was staring at the photographs of the Lacey twins.

“Too many guns, that’s what I think,” Delp said, shaking his head. “People here love their guns. Kids here get rifles when they lose their baby teeth.”

Louis looked at Delp. “You’re not from here, are you?”

“Hell no,” Delp said. “I’m from Detroit and I’m just trying to get back there as fast as I can.”

Louis stood up and pulled on his jacket, picking up the envelope.

“So, what you going to do about Lacey?” Delp asked.

Louis didn’t answer as he started for the door.

“Hey! You let me know!” Delp called out.

Louis hurried back to the station. In the locker room, he quickly changed into his uniform and went right to the files. He tugged at the drawer labeled NOVEMBER 1979. It was locked. He would have to wait for Dale.

He went to his desk, taking the envelope Delp had given him. He spotted his glasses, hanging from the pencil holder where Ollie had left them. He put them on and opened the folder.

There were four articles. The longest was the one he had seen in Dot’s with the headline and two photographs.

BY ARNOLD ROGERS

Argus
Staff Writer

LOON LAKE —Two teenagers were killed and a third taken into custody after a routine raid on a tourist cabin by city police here Wednesday.John Andrew “Johnny” Lacey, 16, and Angela Lee Lacey, 16, of 476 Manetta Dr., were shot by police after the teenagers fired on the officers who had tracked them to a remote cabin on north Loon Lake, owned by David and Glenda Eden
of Dearborn, Michigan Police had been searching for the teens who were believed to be involved in a gang terrorizing tourists in the resort town.

It is believed the teens were using the cabin as a hideout. According to Chief Brian Gibralter, officers ordered the teens to surrender and after firing tear gas into the cabin, the teens opened fire on the five officers outside. Chief Gibralter said that John Lacey ran from the cabin and was killed during a scuffle with Officer Jesse Harrison, when Harrison’s gun accidentally discharged. Lacey’s sister, Angela, was shot and killed when she fired on the officers.

Cole Lacey, 12, was found hiding in a closet and was taken into custody. John Lacey, according to Chief Gibralter, was the suspected leader of a teenage gang centered in Oscoda County that has been responsible for a series of burglaries of tourist cabins in the area. Police are investigating whether the gang was also involved in the robbery of a convenience store July 24. During the robbery, the store clerk, Denise Lawicki, 22,was beaten.

The outcome of this episode is very distressing for all involved,”said Chief Gibralter.“The deaths of the two young people were tragic and unfortunate. There will be an review of the incident to assess that the officers involved acted within normal procedure. However, all evidence points to the fact that these men had reason to fear for their lives and acted out of self-defense.”

Helen Lacey, the mother of the three teenagers, refused to speak with this reporter.

Louis set the article down. No mention of dear old Dad. He went through the remaining three articles. One was a follow-up that offered no new information. The second was a short story saying the “internal investigation” revealed no wrong doing on the part of the Loon Lake officers. The fourth article was an overwrought feature on teenage gangs, pegged to the Lacey kids. The headline was WHEN GOOD KIDS GO BAD. It was filled with stock quotes from psychologists and juvenile authorities speculating on the sources of teen violence. But the reporter had taken the trouble to track down Duane Lacey and ended her story with the neat coda: “For the Lacey children, the seeds of violence were sown in the home. Their father, Duane Lacey, is currently incarcerated in Marquette State Prison, serving the seventh year of his fifteen-year sentence for assault with a deadly weapon.”

Louis felt a tightening in his chest. Christ, why had no one told him about this? Gibralter had directed him to go through the case files but why in the hell hadn’t he thought of Duane Lacey as a potential suspect? And Jesse…he had been at the raid. Why didn’t he say anything?

Louis read again the last paragraph of the feature story. All right, it said Lacey was in prison. So had the fax from the department of corrections. But the fax could have been wrong. He knew prison records were routinely screwed up, especially computer records, which were often inputted by clerk convicts.