Misery Bay (16 page)

“You’re the one who brought it up,” Maven said. “Now start talking.”

“Jim,” Coleman said, putting up both hands to calm everybody down. “This might be important. Please tell us what you heard about Haggerty’s daughter.”

He worked it over for a moment, then he started talking.

“All right, if you really need to know. This was like two weeks ago now. Up at Northern, in the university housing. Haggerty’s daughter was like an associate professor or something. She didn’t come to class and when they finally opened up her apartment, she was dead. Apparently, there were some … unusual circumstances in terms of the way she died.”

“Unusual how?” Maven said.

“I didn’t get the details. I just heard it wasn’t as simple as a young woman dying of a heart attack. Whatever happened, it may have been self-inflicted, that’s all I know. I think the guys at the Marquette post have been so tight-lipped about it in deference to Lieutenant Haggerty. Just out of respect, I mean. He was a very popular guy up there.”

“You say this happened two weeks ago?”

“Yes,” Fusilli said. “And that’s all I know. You want anything else, you’re gonna have to talk to the guys in Marquette.”

He walked away from us. Maven sat there looking like somebody had just slapped him in the face.

“Where is Haggerty now?” I said. “I mean, is he—”

“I don’t know,” Coleman said. “I would assume he’s still up in Marquette, but I guess I don’t know that for sure. I haven’t heard anything about him since he retired. Until this.”

“Do me one favor,” Maven said. “Can you look him up in your records there? See where he’s been on the police force?”

Coleman went back to his keyboard and his mouse and started going through the database.

“He started out in St. Ignace,” he said. “He was a trooper on the road for what—seven years, I guess, until he transferred to forensics. He was probably taking a lot of extra classes at night or something, because I know that’s pretty heavy stuff.”

“St. Ignace,” Maven said. “Where did we just see that?”

Coleman hit a few more keys.

“Right here,” he said. “Sergeant Steele was also stationed in St. Ignace. In fact…”

He sat back in his chair and looked at us, one by one. The words and the numbers and the dates glowed on the screen and for the first time the whole thing was coming together before our eyes. It wasn’t just a gut feeling anymore. We had a hard connection now and I knew everything was about to change. I felt a sick cold wave rising from the bottom of my throat.

“They were there at the same time,” Coleman said. “For seven years, it looks like. Steele and Haggerty were riding out of the same post for seven years.”

And we’re rolling …

… This is going to be a tricky shot, but let’s try it.

… Get as close as you can to the blade of this knife.

… Yes, even closer. I want to feel like I’m riding the edge.

… Stay in focus, as much as you can. That’s it.

… Feel that metal? Feel it on your skin? That’s how I want it to feel.

… We’ll need the right sound mix here. A musical note, off-key. Grating and painful, until you’re begging it to stop.

… All the way up the edge. To the very point. That’s right.

… This will come across on film. This feeling. I know it.

And cut.

CHAPTER TEN

Nobody said anything for a long time. As Sergeant Coleman sat there looking back and forth between us, the other state policemen kept walking by, grabbing their coffee and heading outside to their cars, like it was just another normal day.

“We have to talk to this guy Haggerty,” I said. “I mean, don’t we? Do we have any choice?”

“He just lost his daughter two weeks ago. How the hell is he going to be able to talk to
anybody
?”

“We have to find him. If we don’t, he may be next.”

“It’s time to fill me in here,” Sergeant Coleman said. “What the hell’s going on?”

“Do you know anybody up in the Marquette lab?” I said. “We have to get to this man. Even if he’s retired, you must be able to find him, right?”

“Probably,” the sergeant said. “But come on, guys. Give me the rest of the story.”

Maven and I looked at each other.

“This is going to sound crazy,” Maven said, “so promise me you’ll hear us out before you say anything.”

“Uh, okay,” he said, not looking too certain about his ability to keep that promise.

“It all starts with a suicide,” Maven said. “Another kid. A son of another former state cop. Out in Misery Bay.”

*   *   *

An hour later, we were outside the Soo post, shivering in the cold and wondering what the hell to do next. Sergeant Coleman had told us he’d call the Marquette lab and get back to us as soon as he could. But first, he had to figure out a tactful way to tell whoever answered the phone that he needed to contact a former lieutenant who was certainly just beginning to grieve his dead daughter.

“How long do you think we’ll have to wait?” I said to Maven.

He shrugged his shoulders. Then he leaned over to shelter his cigarette while he tried to light it.

“You can’t do this again,” I said.

“Do what?”

“Go running off without me.”

He looked up at me, his cigarette still unlit.

“You have to trust me,” I said. “We’re both into this now.”

“That line you gave the FBI about this still being your case. I know you were just trying to cover for us. You really don’t have to do this anymore.”

“I told you, we’re both in this. Okay?”

He got the cigarette going at last, then stood up and blew a thin plume into the cold air.

“Those agents aren’t going to be happy if we keep sticking our noses in their business.”

“I don’t consider this to be their business,” I said. “I don’t think they even believe there’s any connection here.”

“You know we have to tell them. This new thing with Haggerty … it might change their mind.”

“So you’re saying what, give this to them and then go home?”

“I’m saying give this to them and see what they can do with it. But the hell with going home.”

He gave me a nod and told me to follow him in my truck.

“Where are we going?” I said.

“It’s our turn to go ruin
their
day.”

*   *   *

I followed Maven across town, all the way north to the frozen St. Marys River. There on Portage Street sat the one and only three-star hotel in Sault Ste. Marie. The Ojibway. As I parked in the lot, I couldn’t help running through my own personal history with the place. I had come here a million years ago to spend the night with Natalie and to find out if we could make a future together. If I really wanted to break it down, I could probably trace back to this very building and find my last real happiness here, before it all went to hell. But that was something I didn’t have the heart to think about. No, better to just go find the FBI agents who were camping out here so we could share our new horrible secret.

Agent Long was coming out of the business center as we stepped into the lobby. She had glasses on now, and she was holding several pages that had obviously just come off the hotel printer.

“What are you guys doing here?” She couldn’t help but flinch as the blast of cold air made it to her side of the room.

“We need to talk to you and your partner,” Maven said, stomping off the snow from his boots. “Why don’t you get him down here?”

She pulled out her cell phone, hit a speed-dial number and then made the customary cell-phone face as she watched the call trying valiantly to go through. When it finally bounced its way to a tower that was probably across the river in Canada and back to her partner’s cell phone upstairs, she told him to come down to the lobby as soon as he could. A month later, I knew she’d see the bill and wonder why it cost five bucks to make a call inside the very same building when she could have just picked up the house phone, but today that was the least of our problems. The elevator door opened and Agent Fleury stepped out, looking seriously unhappy to see us.

“What’s this about?” he said. “Didn’t we set things straight enough at the station?”

“No,” Maven said. “Not straight enough at all. Let’s go sit down somewhere.”

We went into the dining room. The Freighters, they called the place. Yet more memories I could have dwelled on if I wanted to. There were a handful of people having a late lunch, so Maven asked for a quiet table on the far side of the room. As we sat down, we could see the frozen locks from the big windows. It made me remember standing up there on the observation deck with Raz, listening to him talk about his son. It was the last time I saw him alive.

“We have a conference call in ten minutes,” Agent Fleury said, waving the waitress away without even glancing at her. “Make this quick.”

“You’d better call and postpone it,” Maven said. “You need to hear about a new development in this case.”

Agent Long looked at the ceiling and shook her head while Agent Fleury’s face went through several shades of red.

“I thought we had reached an understanding,” he finally said.

“Just get over yourself and listen to me,” Maven said. “We talked to one of the sergeants over at the state police post here in town and we believe we’ve found another suicide that appears to be connected.”

“Why were you talking to the state police?”

“The sergeant and I go way back. Besides, I didn’t exactly see you rushing over there to do the legwork, so give it a rest.”

“You’re out of line,” Fleury said.

“Everybody take it easy,” Agent Long said. “Chief, tell us what you found.”

He laid it all out for them. The apparent suicide of the young woman in Marquette, now the latest of three. Her father a retired lieutenant from the state lab. Most importantly, the one vital link between Sergeant Steele and Lieutenant Haggerty—their seven years together at the St. Ignace post.

“I still don’t see how this ties in with our man Razniewski,” she said. “He never worked up there, did he?”

“No, he didn’t,” Maven said. “But at first we were thinking maybe he ran into them in the past few years, after he became a marshal. I’m sure he doesn’t work with Michigan state cops all the time, but maybe once in a while, right? Even that far north?”

“It’s possible.”

“Yeah, but the time frame doesn’t work as well that way. If you go back ten to twelve years,
that’s
when Steele and Haggerty were still together in St. Ignace. And
that’s
when Raz was a state cop, too. You’ve got all three men in the same job at the same time, even if it was only for a couple of years.”

“But you were on the job, too,” Agent Fleury said. “Am I right? How come you’re not involved in this yet?”

I thought Maven had already stared this agent down as hard as a man can be stared down, but I was wrong. Maven had one more gear left and he used it now.

“First of all,” he said, slowly, “yes, I was on the job at the same time. But as far as I can remember, I never ran into Steele or Haggerty. And I have a good memory. Second, who’s to say I’m
not
involved? Whoever’s doing this … if it really is one person doing this…”

“Then he may have you next on his list? Is that what you’re suggesting?”

“Haggerty’s the one I’m worried about. According to the pattern, he’d be next. And soon.”

“But then what? After that? Does he move on to you?”

Maven let that one hang for a moment. “I don’t know,” he finally said. “It’s possible.”

“So this person who’s doing what, let’s go through the MO. He finds these old state cops from back in the day, and the first thing he does is make that person’s son or daughter commit suicide? Is that what you’re suggesting?”

“That’s the worst possible thing you could do to somebody.” I hadn’t said a word yet and I figured it was about time. “Think about it. It’s even worse than killing somebody straight out. Kill their child first.”

“But make it look like suicide.”

“Yes,” I said. “Exactly. Make it look like suicide.”

“Do you know how hard it is to
really
do that? To kill somebody and to fool everybody into thinking the person killed himself? Or herself?”

“I understand,” I said, “but it might not be so hard to miss if you’re not looking for it.”

“I don’t know, I’m still skeptical.”