The Hunting Wind: An Alex McKnight Mystery (18 page)

I didn’t have anything to say to that. Not that he would have heard it. He gave me a “Good day” and hung up.

“Well, this is going beautifully,” I said to the wall. “It was such a brilliant idea. If I had a brain in my head, I’d stop right now.”

I looked at the youngest son’s name on the list. If I was going to keep doing this, I wanted to save him for last. I dialed the daughter’s number at the restaurant again. This time, I got a real voice.

“Can I speak to Annette Wilkins?” I said.

“This is she.”

“My name is Alex McKnight,” I said. “I’m calling about your father.”

Click. And then a dial tone.

Okay, so much for the daughter, I thought. This is getting better and better. I’ll go for the last one while I’m hot.

There was nothing on the sheet but his name and number, but I remembered Randy telling me that Terry was a freshman at UC-Santa Barbara. I didn’t know what to believe anymore, but I assumed that’s where I was calling him. When the phone was picked up, I heard a lot of noise and music in the background. It certainly sounded like a college dorm to me.

“Hello,” I said. “I’m looking for Terry Wilkins.”

“Hold on.”

There was just the music for a while; then finally the phone was picked up again.

“Hello?”

‘Terry, my name is Alex McKnight,” I said. “I’m calling about your father.”

A long pause. “What about him?”

“Look, I’ve already talked to your mother and your brother,” I said. “And your sister just hung up on me. I know nobody wants to hear about him. But I’m an old friend of his from the minor leagues.”

“You played baseball with my father?”

“Yes,” I said. “I was his catcher. He told me that you’re a catcher, too. He said you can really hit the ball.”

“I don’t know how he’d know that,” he said. “He hasn’t seen me play in like seven years.”

“Wait a minute—”

“Yeah, the last time was before he went to Folsom. Gotta be seven years ago, back when I was in Little League. I haven’t even seen him since then.”

“He talked about watching you play ball there on the college team,” I said. “He said you were good behind the plate, like I used to be. That you could really drive the ball. For God’s sake, Terry, are you sure he hasn’t seen you play at all?”

“If he saw me, he did it without me knowing about it.”

I didn’t know what to say. Was he lying about that even? About his own kids?

“I’m sorry, Terry. I just felt like I should call you and talk to you. All I’ve done is make your whole family unhappy today.”

“It’s all right,” he said. “I don’t mind. Did you see him today?”

“Yeah, I saw him. He’s not conscious now, so . . . I don’t know what’s gonna happen, Terry.”

He didn’t say anything.

“Wait a minute,” I said. “UCLA. You were playing a game against UCLA, he told me. When I dropped him off at the airport, he mentioned the game. That would have been . . .” I thought about it. “Saturday. The game would have been Saturday.”

“Yeah, we did have a game against UCLA on Saturday,” he said. “But I didn’t end up playing myself.”

“But you did have a game,” I said. “He was right about that.”

“Yeah, I guess he was. Whatever that means.”

“Well, for what it’s worth, he kept talking about how proud he is that you’re his son and you’re a catcher like I was.”

A long silence.

‘Terry? Are you still there?”

“Yeah, I’m here. I just, um . . . Thanks for calling, okay? I gotta go.”

“Okay, Terry. Good-bye.”

I sat there tapping the receiver against my hand a few times; then I banged it back in place and stood up. When I went back out into the bar, the woman finally looked at me. She was close enough to the hallway to have been listening to my end of the phone calls, and apparently I was more interesting than her soap opera.

I sat at the bar and had one more beer while I thought about what to do next. There was no point in seeing Randy again. I had nothing to say to Chief Rudiger. He was probably back home in Orcus Beach already, investigating the shooting.

Hell, like he was going to lose any sleep over it. A California con man comes to his little town to make a score and gets a shotgun necktie instead. The chief will work hard on that case until he finds the shooter or until dinner time, whichever comes first.

Which leaves what? Me trying to figure out what happened? The chief was right. He got what he deserved.

And yet . . .

Something. I don’t know what.

Was he really just using me to find her? So he could run a scam on her? After all these years?

You heard about his record, Alex. You heard what his family said. His own family. Randy looked you in the eye and lied to you. It’s that simple.

So why don’t I believe it? Why does my gut tell me it wasn’t all lies?

Because your gut is wrong. You think you know him better than his own family? Just because you caught him for one season in 1971?

You can’t lie to me, Randy.
That’s what I said to him. Before I knew better.
I can see right through you.

It’s crazy. It’s completely insane. Just leave it alone.

“Hey, barkeep,” I said. “You got a good map of the county?”

“Somewhere I do,” he said, looking up from the sink. “Where you looking to go?”

“Little town called Orcus Beach. You know it?”

“Not much up there,” he said. “But I’ll tell you how to get there if you want.”

“I’d appreciate it.”

“Here, I’ll draw you a map. You going up there right now?”

“In a little while,” I said. “First I gotta go have my fortune told.”

It’s a little over two hours from Grand Rapids to Farmington. On a day when you’ve been up since before dawn, it feels like a hard two hours. I found the house on Romney Street, the same house where Randy and I had been handcuffed in the basement and shown both barrels of a shotgun. It didn’t look any different than the first time I had seen it. It was still the same brand-new split-level ranch in a neighborhood of brand-new split-level ranches. But I knew I would never forget it.

It was after four o’clock when I got there. The driveway was empty. No little red car, and no truck with ladders on it, which meant no Delilah and no Leopold. I didn’t know if Anthony had a car, or if he drove around in his father’s truck, or if he just stayed home all day lifting weights. No matter what, I was sure that Madame Valeska, or whatever the hell her real name was, probably didn’t get out much, not if she had to lug around that tank of oxygen.

When I knocked on the door, I got none of the above. An old man wrestled the door open, trying very hard to get out of its way without falling over. He had a wooden cane in his left hand, but he wasn’t leaning on it. When he finally had the inside door open, he stood there and looked at me. He must have been a tall man at one time, maybe twenty years ago.
Now he was stooped over and a good six inches shorter.

“Hello!” I said. “Is anyone else here?”

He just stood there behind the storm door.

“Anybody?” I said. “I need to speak to somebody. I’m a friend of the family.”

He cocked his head. The man couldn’t hear a word I was saying through the glass. So I opened it.

“Hello!” I said.

He tried to grab the door handle. “What are you doing?”

“I need to speak to somebody,” I said. “Is Leopold here? Or his mother?”

“Close that door!” he said.

“Excuse me, sir,” I said, stepping into the house. I had just enough room to edge by him without knocking him over.

“You can’t come in here!” he said. “Who are you?”

“Sir, please take it easy. My name is Alex. I need to know who’s home right now.”

“Nobody!” he said. “It’s just me! And you have to get out!”

“Where’s Leopold?” I said. “Is he out on a painting job?”

“You can’t be in here!” he said. “Out with you! Out!”

“Sir, where is Leopold?”

“I’m going to call him right now!” he said. “I’m going to tell him you’re in his house!”

“Good. Please do that. I need to talk to him.”

“You can’t just walk into his house like this!”

“Sir, will you please relax and go call him?”

“I’m going to call him right now!”

“Listen, I’ll wait right here,” I said. “You go call him.”

“You get outside!” he said. “You can wait outside for him!”

“This will be much more comfortable in here,” I said. “Now please, go call Leopold.”

“I will,” he said. And then he finally started moving away from the door. He shuffled through the living room, into the dining room, where Randy and I had sat a few days before. The old man grabbed a hold of the wall when he reached it and took a hard right toward the kitchen. “Just walking right into the house,” he said to himself. “Like he owns the place. Walking right in.”

When was around the corner, I opened up the hall closet and looked inside. There were coats and umbrellas and everything else you’d expect to see in a hall closet, but no shotgun.

I took a few more steps into the living room, looking for a gun cabinet. I could hear the old man still talking to himself in the kitchen. The way he was racing to the phone, he’d get there within the hour.

I took a peek in the dining room. Nobody keeps a shotgun in the dining room, but I had to look anyway. The old man caught sight of me from the kitchen and let me have it. “What the hell is wrong with you? Where are you going?”

“Don’t mind me,” I said. “Just making myself at home.”

“You get out of here right now!” he said. “I’m warning you!” He was holding the phone and shaking it at me.

“Did you call Leopold yet?” I said.

“I’m going to! Right now! You just wait until he gets here! What that man is going to do to you!”

I shook my head and looked down the hallway to my left. There were four doors in the hallway. One of them was closed. As I walked toward it, I started to hear a hissing sound.

“Don’t you dare go down there!” the old man said behind me. “Do you hear me? That’s her room, goddamn you!”

“Make the call,” I said.

“Do not disturb that woman! I swear to God, you’ll be sorry! She’ll give you the evil eye and you’ll have festering boils all over your body!”

That one stopped me long enough to roll my eyes. Then I gently knocked on the door.

“Festering boils!” he said. “I’m warning you!”

I knocked again, a little louder.

“Come in,” she said. When I opened the door, I saw Madame Valeska sitting in a rocking chair next to her bed. The clear tube ran from the hissing oxygen tank to her nose, just as it had when I saw her the week before. The same smell of medicine and menthol hung in the air around her. There was a lace blanket wrapped around her legs, and a book resting on her lap.

“You’re not going to give me festering boils, are you?” I said.

“I had a feeling I’d be seeing you again,” she said.

“I’m sorry to intrude.”

“It sounds like you’ve got poor William in a state,” she said. “I hope he doesn’t have a heart attack out there.”

“He’s calling your son,” I said.

“William comes over to sit with me during the day,” she said. “He’s very protective.”

“I’d just like to ask you a couple questions,” I said. “If you don’t mind.”

“Come closer,” she said. “Let me see your hands.”

I stepped into the room. It felt twenty degrees hotter than the rest of the house. The other chair, the chair William must have used when he was sitting with her, was a big old recliner on the other side of the room. I didn’t feel like dragging it over to her, so I went to her and stood in front of her with my hands out. It felt awkward looking down at her, so I went down into a catcher’s crouch. My legs didn’t like that one bit, never mind that I had spent a few years of my life doing this a couple hundred times a day.

When I was at eye level, she took my hands in her own. They were the hands of an old woman, made crooked by ninety years of use, but I could feel in them a surprising strength. “Now what is so important that you have to come into my house and make William so upset?”

“You remember Randy, the man who was here with me?”

“The baseball player,” she said. “Are you right-handed?”

“Yes,” I said.

“Your left hand shows your ancestry,” she said. “It’s what’s given to you at birth. Your right hand shows your present nature, and what the future may hold.” She took my right hand and traced the lines with a bent finger.

“He was shot last night,” I said.

“I am sorry to hear that,” she said. “He is alive, no? I would hear it in your voice if he had been killed.”

“Yes, he’s alive.”

She nodded her head. She still did not look up from my hands. “You have lived a very hard life,” she said.

“I was a catcher,” I said. “That’s why my hands are so beat-up.”

She looked up at me for an instant. “That’s not what I’m looking at,” she said. “Your fate line is ragged. It shows much misfortune.”

“He was shot in a small town called Orcus Beach,” I said. “Does the name mean anything to you?”

“No,” she said. “Your fingers are well separated. You are a very independent person. But your last finger is set very low, which means you’ve had to work very hard.”

I watched her white head as she held my hand. The oxygen tank hissed in the corner.

“Do you see how your first finger is bending toward your middle finger? That means you are a very persistent man. Very stubborn. And this separation between your head line and your life line, it means you need to work very hard on controlling your temper.”

“Orcus Beach,” I said. “That’s where Maria is, isn’t she?”

She looked up at me. “If that’s true, it’s news to me.” She looked me right in the eye as she said it. If she was lying, she was damned good at it.

“Ma’am, there’s a shotgun in this house,” I said. “Do you know where it is?”

A step behind me, and then a voice from the doorway. “You mean
this
shotgun?” It was William, back
from his phone call, pointing the shotgun directly at my head.

“What are you doing?” I said, trying to keep my voice level. “Put the gun down.”