I went back to my cabin, wishing that I could sleep for the next week straight. That brought me back to Corvo’s deadline and guaranteed I’d be lying awake for at least a few hours, staring at the ceiling.
Around ten thirty, my cell phone rang. It took me a moment to find it in the filthy pants I had taken off and thrown on the floor of the bathroom. I finally wrestled it free and answered it.
“Janet, is that you?”
“No, it’s Lou. I need some help.”
“What are you talking about? Where are you?”
“I’m in Sault Ste. Marie. In the jail. You gotta come get me out.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
The City-County Building in Sault Ste. Marie, perhaps the ugliest building in the entire Upper Peninsula, is where you find the county holding cells, along with the county sheriff’s office and the Sault Ste. Marie Police Department. It’s all in that one gray rectangle on Court Street. They talk about renovating the place, or moving out the city police, or a dozen other things, but they never talk about actually knocking it down with bulldozers, which is what they should have done a long time ago.
It was getting close to midnight when I walked through the door. In this city there are few people working at midnight, unless they happen to be serving alcohol on Portage Street. I walked over to the desk and rang the little bell. A county deputy came out and I asked him if I could see someone in the holding cell. He told me I should come back the following morning.
“I really need to see him,” I said. “I’d appreciate it.”
“And you really need to come back tomorrow morning,” he said. “I know we’ve got a few gentlemen down there right now. They all need to settle down and dry out a little, if you know what I mean. We’ll sort them out in the morning.”
I wasn’t sure what to try next, but that’s when I saw Chief Roy Maven walking past the front door. He must have come out a side entrance, and he was probably on his way to his car now after a long night in the office. Something special must have kept him here. I didn’t care what, I was just happy to see him.
An incredible statement to make, I realize. After a full week of dealing with law enforcement officials at every level, from that state trooper I talked to out at the airport, to my friend and maybe now former friend Janet Long, the FBI agent in Detroit, to Chief Benally of the Bay Mills Tribal Police, here at last was the man with whom I had the longest history. Chief Roy Maven of the Sault Ste. Marie Police Department, known affectionately around here as the Human Buzz Saw, known unaffectionately by a number of other words, some of which correspond to parts of the male anatomy. We’d taken an instant chemical dislike to each other, the very first time we met, and things had gone downhill fast from there.
Then, finally, we got to work on something together. Something terrible. It’s funny how going through something like that with another person will make you see him differently. I wouldn’t exactly call us best friends now. But we had made our peace.
“Chief!” I yelled as I went out the door. “Wait up a minute!”
He turned and looked around with all the good humor you’d expect from a man who’d just worked about eight hours of overtime. “McKnight? What the hell’s going on?”
“I’ve got a friend in one of the holding cells. I need to get him out.”
“I don’t have anybody down there right now. I can’t help you.”
He shares the cells with the county. He pretty much shares everything with the county, and he usually doesn’t get the best of any of it. His office, for instance, somehow doesn’t have a window.
“It’s not one of yours,” I said. “It’s county. Some guys got picked up at the Cozy. Out in Brimley.”
“I know where the Cozy is, McKnight. I was drinking there when you were still a beat cop in Detroit. And thank you for answering your own question. You have to talk to the county guys.”
“They say I have to wait until morning. I was hoping you could just let me go see him, at least. Find out what happened. That’s all I’m asking.”
He was standing there with the door to his car open. Just a few minutes away from a late dinner and a bed. He looked up at the sky, shaking his head like somebody up there owed him an explanation.
“Why did you move up here?” he said to me. “Seriously, why?”
“Just a few minutes,” I said. “I’d really appreciate it.”
He owed me, that was the thing I wasn’t saying. He owed me and he knew it, and I knew it, and that’s why he finally slammed his door shut and led me back into the building. A few minutes later, the master door to the holding cells was opened and I was let inside.
“Five minutes,” he said to me. “Knock on the door when you’re done. The deputy will let you out. I’m going home now.”
“Thanks, Chief.”
His response to that was the dull clang of the jailhouse door closing. I walked down the line of cells and found the last two occupied.
There were five men in all, and whoever split them up obviously didn’t understand the history. The three men in the one cell were all old-timers from the rez, more faces that I vaguely recognized, either from events at Vinnie’s mother’s house or from just seeing them walking down the road. If it was winter, they were sure to be so underdressed you’d wonder how they didn’t freeze to death.
These were men who grew up on the rez, who remembered how it was before the casinos came. These were men who knew Lou LeBlanc from way back when. They all knew about Lou being banned from the rez forever. They were all there to answer the call when he came back, thirty years later.
In the second cell sat Lou and his old nemesis, Henry Carrick. Henry was sitting against the back wall. Lou was up front by the bars. They both had scraped-up faces that would look much worse by the next morning.
I stood in between the two cells, so I could see them all at once. “Aren’t you guys a little old for this?”
The three men on my left started laughing. Henry and Lou just sat there like they were made of stone. I went down to the end of the cell closest to him and knelt down on the floor.
“Okay, so what happened?” I said. “Or is it already pretty obvious?”
“I stopped in at the Cozy,” Lou said. “My old pal Henry over here, he was sitting at the bar. He told me I had to leave. I tried to point out to him that I wasn’t actually on the reservation, but that didn’t seem to matter. He made some calls and next thing you know he’s got three of his buddies and they’re all trying to start something with me. I figured I’d already given Vinnie enough free shots tonight. So yeah, this time I fought back. When the owner of the Cozy couldn’t get us to take it outside, he called 911 and that’s how we ended up here.”
“Did the Bay Mills cops bring you?”
“No, there was a regular county car down the road. I tried to explain to them that I was just defending myself. I might have gotten a little belligerent at that point.”
“Lou, did you hit a cop?”
“No, I didn’t. I swear. I was just trying to make them understand. But they didn’t want to hear it. They just called another car and they brought us all down here.”
He dabbed at the corner of his eye and looked at the trace of blood on his fingers.
“So it sounds like you need to spend the night,” I said. “That’s pretty standard around here. They don’t have enough manpower to do much else after hours unless they absolutely have to.”
“I can’t do that.”
“I think you’ve done a lot worse,” I said. “A night in the county jail, you can do that standing on your head.”
“You don’t understand. They took down our names before they dumped us down here, but they didn’t really process us. You know what I mean?”