“What happened?” I looked past him at the runway. There was a small Cessna at one end. One truck with big off-road tires, one SUV, then all of the police cars. I saw two different tarps covering two different things shaped like human bodies, and from the way the cops were buzzing around it looked like there were more down the runway.
“We’re real busy here,” he said. “You’re gonna have to read about it in the paper.”
“I’m looking for a friend of mine, Sergeant. I just need to know he’s not here. Then I can sleep tonight.”
“What’s your friend’s name?”
“His name is Vinnie LeBlanc. I can’t imagine why he’d be here at the airport, but I haven’t seen him today and-”
“Vinnie LeBlanc.” I could tell he was filing away the name. “Is he Bay Mills?”
“Yeah. Why?”
“I just figured. Lots of LeBlancs over there. You say he’s missing today?”
“I wouldn’t say missing. I just can’t find him.”
“Well, we’ve got five dead bodies in here. I don’t think any of them are your man, but-”
“Five dead bodies? What the hell happened?”
He hesitated for a moment, looked behind him at the scene, then took a step closer to me. “All right,” he said. “Quick version, it looks like a drug delivery gone bad. That plane over there is Canadian registered, and it’s stuffed to the rafters with bags of marijuana. Like more than I’ve seen in my whole life. Two men were probably waiting for the plane, another two men showed up. They handcuffed the first two men, then shot them in the head.”
“Okay, that’s two dead. How did it get to five?”
“The pilot had a gun, apparently. After he landed, he must have seen he was in trouble. It looks like everybody started shooting at the same time. One of them was crawling back to one of the vehicles and almost made it.”
“A night delivery,” I said. “They find an airfield out in the middle of nowhere. The plane comes in low and turns on the runway lights automatically.”
“How come you know so much about it?”
“It was in the paper. Last month, remember? Downstate somewhere.”
“Yeah, I remember,” he said. “The state police down there think it probably happened a dozen times until that one went bad. Now we’ve got this one. Right here in Newberry? Why’d they pick this place?”
“If they’re looking for the middle of nowhere, I think this qualifies.”
“Just what we need,” he said, shaking his head. “But as far as your friend goes… I mean, we don’t have any IDs yet.”
“I’m sure he’s not in there,” I said. “He doesn’t even smoke the stuff.”
“You don’t have to smoke it to sell it.”
“Seriously. I can promise you, Sergeant. Unless you’ve got a black Ram truck in there, and an Indian with long hair down his back.”
“No, that much I can tell you. We don’t have that.”
“All right then,” I said. “I’ll let you get back to it. Thanks for taking the time. I feel a lot better now.”
“No problem, Mr. McKnight. Good luck finding your friend. I’m sure he’ll show up somewhere today.”
“I’m sure he will.” As I walked away, I looked back through the fence. One airplane. Five dead men on the ground. Nothing to do with Vinnie. Obviously.
But I still didn’t know where he was.
Jackie was waiting at the door for me when I got back to the Glasgow. “You were supposed to call me,” he said.
“Sorry. I don’t think my cell phone would have worked out there, anyway.”
“What did you find out? Was it an accident?”
“No, some kind of drug deal gone bad at the airport.”
“At the Newberry airport? That one little runway that gets like one plane a day.”
“It can happen anywhere,” I said. “Especially when you’re this close to a border.”
“That kind of stuff happens down in Arizona,” he said. “Not in Michigan.”
“You’d be surprised.”
“Yeah, whatever. As long as it wasn’t Vinnie getting flattened by a truck or something.”
“It wasn’t,” I said. “So you know what? I think we’re both being a little ridiculous. Vinnie’s an adult. He went somewhere to do something and when he’s done he’ll come back. Hell, if we didn’t know he was having the first hangover of his life, we wouldn’t have even thought twice about it. Am I right?”
“Well, everything he’s been through this week, too.”
“Of course. But how many times has he taken off for a few days? He never tells us where he’s going. He shouldn’t have to.”
Jackie thought about it. “Well, no. But-”
“But what? What else are we supposed to do? When he comes back home, we’ll smack him a few times and ask him where the hell he went. Until then, we’ve both got work to do.”
He had to agree with me. Maybe not one hundred percent. But then I wasn’t one hundred percent sold on the idea myself.
We didn’t talk about Vinnie anymore that day. I delivered my fans and my water and did a few fixes on the cabins and eventually ended up back at the Glasgow for dinner. It was me and Jackie. Still no Vinnie.
When it was dark, I finally went home. As I drove by his cabin, I could see that it was still empty.
“Sorry,” I said out loud. “I gotta do this, Vinnie.”
I stopped the truck, got out, and went to his front door. I knew it would be unlocked, like always, like why would you ever lock your door when you live out here in the woods? I opened the door and went inside. When I flipped on the light, I saw the broken glass all over the floor. It crunched under my feet as I made my way to the back of the cabin. I couldn’t breathe. I imagined him lying on the floor in the bathroom, or in his bedroom, or anywhere. Everything coming together in one instant. The simple reason why he never went to work, why nobody had seen him.
But no. The place was empty. I started breathing again. Then I got the broom out and swept up the broken glass.
The rest of the cabin was immaculate, as always. It made no sense that he’d drop a glass or a vase or whatever the hell this was, and then leave it.
“What the hell?” I said. “How did this happen? Were you that drunk? Even so, you’d clean it up the next morning, right? Who leaves broken glass on the floor?”
The answer came right back at me. Somebody in a hurry, that’s who. Somebody rushing out the door.
When the place was cleaned up, I turned off the light and closed the door behind me. I left the door unlocked, because that’s what Vinnie would be expecting when he finally came home.
I stayed up late that night. I wasn’t exactly waiting for him, but I know I would have heard his truck coming up that road.
I never did.
CHAPTER FIVE
The next morning, Jackie didn’t even bother asking me. He could see it on my face. I had a quick breakfast and then I headed out into the day. Sometime during the night it had come to me, that I would get up the next morning and go out and find him. So that’s what I did.
I looked for Vinnie’s black truck wherever I went, starting at the northwest end of the reservation. When I got to the casino, I took a minute to look through the employees’ section of the parking lot. No black truck there, but then I walked through the whole inside of the place anyway.
I drove by Vinnie’s mother’s house. The unofficial command center for the whole rez and yet now it was strangely empty. I parked and looked inside her garage window, picturing the truck there and Vinnie inside the house, maybe looking through old pictures or something. But I didn’t see either.
I knew what I had to do next, but I was already dreading it. I stalled for a few minutes by driving by Buck’s house. He was one of Vinnie’s many second or third or whatever the hell cousins, and a frequent sweat host. The lights were on in the house and there was a beat-up old car in the driveway and an all-terrain vehicle parked in the grass, but when I knocked on the door there was no answer. That’s when I noticed the steam coming from the sweat lodge. I walked around to the entrance. Buck had taken branches and formed them into a semicircle, then he’d taken every old blanket and towel he could find on the entire reservation and stacked them all over the top. There was a small fire pit inside and when he poured water over the hot stones the entire room would fill up with steam. I’d been in it more than once myself, and I knew Vinnie had done his sweat sometime this past week. Sitting in there while Buck put the healing medicines on the stones and feeling the steam fill up his lungs.