“After Novak killed that guard during the Days of Rage, he didn’t run to Port Martin by accident. Some of the kids in his little commie cell at Michigan State were from here. He figured they’d be home for the holidays, and would help him get out of the country. But when he got picked up, the first thing Max did was offer to rat out his friends to the FBI to buy himself a better deal.”
“A real sweetheart,” Puck observed.
“Novak was a piece of shit,” Sheriff Doyle spat. “But the others... Hell, they were just college kids dabbling in radical politics. And they were from some of the finest families in this town. They had nothing to do with that bombing and didn’t deserve to have their lives destroyed by that psycho. So the sheriff talked to their parents and arranged for a... ransom.”
“Took a bribe, you mean,” Puck snorted.
“Old Tom needed the money to keep his deputies quiet. He knew they’d probably lose their jobs over it and he was right. So they faked the tunnel long enough to take pictures, then filled it in again. Everybody assumed Max’s pals in the SDS or the Weathermen broke him out. A decade or so later, those same kids had businesses and families of their own, and became the new pillars of the community. And it wasn’t long before they fired Tom Kowalski, the guy who’d saved their collective young asses.”
“Or so Sheriff Kowalski told you,” Sara said carefully. “How do you know that it’s true?”
“I don’t,” Doyle admitted. “But I do know that Tom Kowalski wouldn’t murder a kid. He was too good a man for that. Too good a cop.”
“He wasn’t so hot at guarding prisoners,” Shea said, “and he had good reason to lie. You said it yourself, there’s no statute of limitations on murder, including Novak’s, if he was killed back then.”
“But he wasn’t! Novak spoke at a press conference in Toronto later that spring. That was months after the escape.”
“And he was wearing a ski mask,” Sara pointed out. “It could have been anyone.”
“The FBI identified his voice.”
“Or claimed they did,” Puck said. “It was still J. Edgar Hoover’s FBI back then. Given what we’ve already uncovered, are you willing to take their word for it?”
“Maybe not,” Doyle conceded. “The problem is, you haven’t turned up any actual evidence of anything, except that the famous Christmas Break didn’t happen the way people said it did.”
“What do you intend to do about this?” Sara demanded.
“I don’t know, Sara. This thing’s been lying there all these years, like a hot power line downed by a storm. It destroyed Tom Kowalski and maybe Novak, too. I’m not going to blow my career over a forty-year-old jailbreak.”
“You can’t just ignore this,” Sara said.
“No, but I can pass the buck.” Taking a pad from his desk drawer, Doyle jotted a few quick notes, then slid the pad across his desk to Sara.
“I’ve been against this memorial from the start, Sara. If I open a new investigation, the council will think it’s political no matter what I say. Old Tom told me the names of the kids who were involved at the time. Take a look at it.” Sara picked up the notepad, glanced at it, and paled.
“My God, Marty, this is a who’s who of Port Martin. Half the country-club set.”
“Now you see my problem. If I start questioning these people about a wild story I heard from a drunk, they’ll get my ass fired in a New York minute. They might talk to you, though, off the record. Tell ’em you’re doing research for the restoration.”
“But most of them are my friends, Marty. You can’t expect me to question them, then report back to you.”
“What you decide to tell me is completely up to you. To be honest, if I never hear another word about Red Max and the Days of Rage, it’ll be too soon. But if you uncover evidence of a crime, or any indication of where Novak might be now, it’s your civic duty to tell me about it. Are we clear?”
“Crystal,” Puck said. “You’re asking us to do your job for you.”
“Maybe I am,” Doyle admitted. “But if I were you, I’d walk extra soft, Pops. Because if Red Max really was murdered back then, you may be talking to the people who took him out.”
“He’s right,” Shea said, as they rode down in the elevator. “Maybe you should just step away from this.”
“And do what?” Sara demanded. “Shut down the project? Or worse, build a monument to a damned lie? Not a chance, guys. Nineteen Sixty-Nine Main Street is my concept and I’ve put two years of my life into it. One way or another, I want the truth now.”
“Then you ain’t looking for it alone,” Puck said positively. “They didn’t call ’em the Days of Rage for nothin’. We dug this mess up for you, we’ll help you put it to rest. Who’s first on the list the sheriff gave you?”
Glancing at the slip of paper, Sara smiled in spite of herself. “Dawn Stanton, the town librarian. Trust me, guys, she’s not dangerous.”
Perhaps not, but Red Max Novak was still a touchy subject. When Sara told Mrs. Stanton why they’d come, she ushered them into her private office, a glassed-in, second-story cubicle with an overview of the book stacks below and the big lake glistening in the distance.
“How much do you already know?” the librarian asked absently, staring out over the lake, whitecaps breaking in the afternoon sun. She was a handsome woman, crowding sixty but well preserved, a matronly blond earth-mother in a flowered granny dress and Birkenstocks.
“We only know that you were... involved somehow,” Sara said carefully. “Anything you tell us will be off the record, Dawn. The memorial is going to attract a lot of attention, I just want to avoid surprises.”
“Then you picked the wrong subject,” Dawn said drily. “Max Novak was full of surprises. Not all of them pleasant. He cut quite a romantic figure on campus back then, the romantic revolutionary, and we... hooked up, as kids say today.”
“You were lovers?” Shea asked.
“Love’s too strong a term to describe what we had. Hot pants would be more accurate. Max was a beautiful boy with a terrific body, but he was also a complete egomaniac. A charming, irrepressible ham. When he was arrested, he told the police he knew he had the right to remain silent, but he didn’t have the ability.” She shook her head, smiling, remembering. “Those were wild times and he was one wild boy.”
“Have you ever heard from him?” Puck asked.
“Never. But that’s not surprising, I wasn’t all that important to him.”
“You were his girlfriend,” Sara noted.
“Things were different back then,” Mrs. Stanton said. “The hippie movement was in full flower-power. Girls would bang any boy with long hair five minutes after meeting them. That’s what revolution meant to most of us — sex, drugs, and rock ’n’ roll. We thought we could change the world, bring on the Age of Aquarius. And we did, eventually.
“Most of the things we were fighting for — ending the war, ending the draft, women’s rights, gay rights, ecology — are all part of the mainstream now. Thankfully, without the bloody revolt Red Max was preaching. But the world changed us, too. We got older, had kids of our own, and presto, we turned into our parents. Straight citizens with families and jobs and mortgages. And if Red Max Novak walked through that door this instant, I might not know him.”
“So you have no idea what happened to him afterward?”
Dawn hesitated, clearly deciding how much to tell them. “I know that his escape was a setup, if that’s what you’re asking, Sara. My father and some of his friends put up the money, but afterward, he and my brother Joel had a terrible fight about it.”
“About the jailbreak?”
“Partly that, I think. After my father arranged to pay off Sheriff Kowalski, he came to Joel for help. But something went wrong.”