On the way back to the motel, I listened to the music broadcast by the public station at UMD: Jane Olivor’s cover of “I’m Always Chasing Rainbows.” According to the missing person’s form I had worked with over the past few weeks, it was Alison’s favorite song. I listened to it carefully. It was peculiar, knowing so much about a stranger. I couldn’t have named Cynthia’s favorite song if my life depended on it.
When I returned to the motel, the owner said that a woman had called for me, a woman with an “underage voice” who promised she would call back. I swear to God he winked at me.
I had showered and changed—happy to know I was wearing clean underwear in case I had an accident—when the owner put Cynthia’s return call through to me. I greeted her as “counselor” in case he lingered on the line.
I was so pleased by the sound of Cynthia’s voice that I didn’t say anything after I said hello; I just wanted to listen. Was she the someone?
Cynthia said it had been a tough day, that her caseload was heavier than usual, that she was considering bringing a few more freelance attorneys on board to assist her. But she was sure she could find time for us—assuming I didn’t spend the rest of my life in northern Wisconsin.
“I’ll be home soon,” I predicted.
After a moment of silence, Cynthia said, “Irene Brown and Raymond Fleck were in the paper this morning.”
“Were they?”
“The Dakota County grand jury refused to return an indictment, and the county attorney was forced to release them. According to the paper, Irene and Raymond are leaving Minnesota. The paper said they’re getting married and moving to Oregon.”
“Happy trails,” I said.
“You’re off the hook.”
“With them, maybe.”
“How’s Alison?”
“Still critical, last I heard.”
“That’s too bad.”
“Yeah,” I said. Then just to change the subject—I didn’t want to speak of Alison anymore—I asked, “What’s your favorite song?”
“My favorite song?”
“Yeah.”
“I don’t know.”
“Think,” I urged her.
“I … probably … I don’t know, ‘Misty,’ I guess.”
“‘Misty’? Really? The old Erroll Garner tune?” I was expecting something by Jewel or Melissa Etheridge, somebody like that.
“No, no,” Cynthia repeated. “Not Errol Garner. The song Johnny Mathis sings.”
“Yeah, he covered it,” I said. “Garner wrote it. The music, anyway.”
“Why do you ask?”
“It’s just something I thought I should know.”
Deputy Loushine was not surprised by anything I told him concerning Jimmy Johannson.
“The sadistic sonuvabitch never drew an honest breath in his life,” he told me.
“He lied about not knowing Thilgen,” I said. “The question is, Does he have a reason for lying, or is he just doing it out of habit?”
Loushine cursed. He had information that would bring Johannson to heel—Thilgen’s canceled checks—but he couldn’t use them because some big-shot private detective didn’t know shit one about the rules of evidence.
“Hang it up for tonight,” I told the deputy. “We’ll get a fresh start in the morning.”
I could hear him yawn.
“Meet me for breakfast,” he said, naming a café in Saginau. “Seven-thirty,” he added.
“I’ll be there,” I promised without complaining how much I hate getting up that early in the morning.
My next call was to Duluth General Hospital. After a brief give-and-take, the switchboard operator directed me to the Intensive Care Unit. The nurse who answered the phone wanted to know how I was related to the patient before she would release any information. I couldn’t bring myself to lie and pretend I was a member of Michael’s family or that I was even a close personal friend. Instead, I lied and said I was Kreel County Sheriff’s Deputy Gary Loushine. The nurse put me on hold while she checked her charts. When she returned, her voice had changed considerably. It was now low and rough and filled with exhaustion. And male.
“Gary,” the voice said. “Is there something new?”
“Um, sorry, Sheriff,” I said; I nearly hung up when I heard his voice. “It’s not Loushine. It’s Holland Taylor.”
“Goddammit, Taylor,” Orman muttered.
“I’m sorry, Sheriff,” I told him quickly. “I just wanted to find out how … Michael is doing”
“She’s still in a coma,” Orman told me.
“I’m sorry,” I repeated.
A moment of silence passed between us before the sheriff asked, “You really care about her, don’t you?”
“Yes,” I surprised myself by answering. I’d spent weeks examining every aspect of her life, so of course I cared about her—at least that’s how I justified my feelings to myself. “I only met her that one time, but it feels like I’ve known her all my life,” I added.
“I feel the same way,” the sheriff admitted. Then he said, “I don’t want you calling here again.”
I promised I wouldn’t and hung up.
My next call was to Hunter Truman, whose reaction was surprisingly subdued as I told him that the Kreel County Sheriff’s Department was giving me carte blanche in finding out who had shot Alison and why. I guess he had been looking forward to the lawsuit.
He asked how Alison was. I told him she was in a coma. His reaction surprised me again. Instead of being concerned for her well-being, he wanted to know if Duluth General Hospital—and the rest of the world—knew that she was, in fact, Mrs. Alison Donnerbauer Emerton and not Michael Bettich.
“I think they’re catching on,” I told him.
“Well, I guess it doesn’t matter,” he told me.
The Forks was located northwest of Kreel County at the intersection of two blacktops and three snowmobile trails. It was a flat, sprawling, ornate complex wholly out of place in the Northland; it had started small but had expanded every which way, until it could now boast 23 blackjack tables, 262 slot machines, and 36 bingo tables. It was simple enough to find. I just followed the bright glow in the sky—the casino had twin searchlights mounted in its parking lot, scanning the heavens for gamblers. I wondered if the Three Wise Men had felt the same way when they followed their celestial beacon to the King of Kings. Probably not.
Along with gambling paraphernalia, The Forks housed a restaurant where you could get a drink but only if you also ordered food. The waitress, who was white, told me it was “a tribal thing.” The Ojibwa had suffered enough alcohol abuse in their history without promoting it themselves. I passed on the buffet. Buffets are for old people who need to see the food they’re ordering—my grandfather told me so. Instead, I asked the waitress what was good and went with her recommendation of prime rib. That’s when I discovered that The Forks served no Minnesota beers: no Pig’s Eye, no Landmark, no Summit Ale. I brought the obvious prejudice to her attention, and she reminded me with only a hint of impatience that I could drive to the Minnesota border in an hour if I kicked it. I settled for a Beck’s.
The restaurant was elevated about eight feet and looked out over a handsomely carved railing to the gambling area. Like the protesters at the church in Deer Lake, I can’t bring myself to call it “gaming.” Watch the intense, humorless faces of the people sitting at the tables or perched in front of the slots, and then tell me it’s a game.
Still, I’m fairly ambivalent about casino gambling. It’s not something I like to do. For one thing the odds are appalling; you’re six times more likely to catch malaria than you are to win the big jackpot on a typical three-wheel slot machine. For another, I believe we have only so much luck in our lives, and I’m loathe to squander it playing twenty-one. But, then, I’m a fully insured, independent contractor who likes his job and has a couple of hundred thousand dollars tucked away in various IRAs. Most people aren’t as fortunate. When they buy a lottery ticket or pump a quarter into a slot, they’re buying something that their lives don’t already give them: hope. Hope that lightning will strike, and they’ll become independently wealthy and won’t have to work that demeaning job anymore or put up with that terrible boss or go another year without a decent home or car or whatever. They’re buying a tiny chance on a kind of Reader’s Digest sweepstakes dream that they’ll gain complete control of their lives and live happily ever after. And who am I to ridicule their fantasy and the short-term pleasure that pursuing it brings them?