“I think I see what you’re saying. But that still doesn’t explain why he went along with it. Even if you were leading him.”
“Well, that’s what I’m going to find out. I’m going to go down and ask him myself. Tomorrow.”
“Are you serious?”
“It’s the only way I can know for sure. You want to come with me?”
“Again… are you serious?”
“We can ask him together. Maybe it would be a good idea, too, just in case he’s got some… you know, anger that he might not be able to control. I’m not exactly the physical specimen I once was, if I have to defend myself.”
“Did you contact him? Does he know you’ve got this in mind?”
“Nope. I figure it’s better to just go down there. Let him have tonight to get settled. Then knock on his door in the morning. ‘Did you do it, Darryl? If not, why did you confess to it?’ Maybe we’ll get a genuine, spontaneous answer if he doesn’t have time to prepare for it.”
“You’re really going to do this.”
“Hell, yes. I think you want to, too. Am I wrong?”
I thought about it for all of a second and a half. “No,” I said. “You’re not wrong. How about I come down in the morning and pick you up? You said you’re not great on driving these days.”
“That would be fantastic. It’ll be just like old times.”
“Yeah, something like that,” I said. “Listen, can I ask you about something else? I was talking to an FBI agent today, and-”
“Oh God, so you already know.”
“About the other cases?”
“It was a few years later, yes. They contacted me and said they were looking at the Paige case, on account of certain similarities. Same kind of knife, all women, all stabbed approximately two dozen times. No other evidence on the scene, so the killer was being careful. It all makes sense now, looking back at it, but I’m afraid at the time I was less than accommodating.”
“As I recall, nobody had much love for the FBI back then.”
“Then or ever. But I should have at least looked at it, right? I couldn’t take one day out of my life to go down there and work with them?”
I wasn’t sure how to answer that. Or if I should even try.
“If I find out there was really a connection…” he said. “Hell, how will I ever forgive myself for being such an idiot?”
“Well, let’s just find out first,” I said. “Don’t forget, I was part of this case, too.”
“I tell you one thing, this’ll be a big shock to the brother and the husband.”
“Wait, do you still stay in touch with them?”
“I talk to them all the time. Both Ryan Grayson and Tanner Paige. I’ve even had them up to the lake. Took them out on the boat.”
“Really?” I had a hard time picturing it.
“Sure, why not?”
“What about Elana’s parents?”
“Oh, they both died a while ago,” he said. “One right after the other. That kind of grief is a heavy load. But yeah, Ryan got married, had a couple of kids. If you remember, he had a lot of anger toward his brother-in-law.”
“I remember.”
“He’s got over that, I’m happy to say. He knows it was misplaced.”
“You must have talked to them this past week,” I said, “when they found out about Darryl King’s release?”
“A few times, yes. It really got to them. Sort of brought it all back, you know? Just thinking about your sister’s murderer walking around free. Or your wife’s murderer.”
“They’re not going to do anything stupid, are they?”
“I’d like to think they both have the sense not to. But if this new angle is true… I mean, that puts it all in a different place, doesn’t it? I’m not sure it’s better, but at least they don’t have to think about Darryl King walking around in the sunshine on a nice summer day.”
“I don’t think that’s better.”
“No, you’re right. If this is the same guy, he’s been walking around all this time. Nobody’s even touched him yet.”
“Well, the FBI’s still on this,” I said. “Now they know about this new possibility, at least.”
“I kept copies of the old files, you know. I’ve been going over them all day, looking for what I might have missed. In fact, you should work with me on this, Alex. It’ll be just like old times, you know? Except maybe we’ll get it right this time.”
“Okay, one thing at a time. Let’s start with talking to Darryl King, like you said.”
“All right, fair enough. We’ll do that.”
“I’ll see you in the morning, Arnie. Try to get some sleep.”
“Yeah, sure. You, too.”
Of course, we both knew that would be impossible. I was ready to hit the road right then, drive all night if I had to. I didn’t want to wait for the daylight.
I didn’t want to wait to finally hear our answer from Darryl King himself.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
It was my second trip down to the Lower Peninsula in a week. The first time I’d been on my way down to have a drink with my old sergeant and dinner with Janet. The trip had turned into something else, of course. Now I was heading back down that same road, once again crossing the Mackinac Bridge just as the sun was coming up. Once again it felt like I was leaving a world of stark simplicity and entering another world where I had grown up and become a baseball player and later a cop. Where in one hot summer I had seen the horror of a murdered woman, just days before seeing my own partner die as I lay bleeding on the floor next to him. This world was always there waiting for me, this world of my past on the other side of that bridge. No matter how hard the wind blew off the lake, I would never stop hearing its call.
I made the Houghton Lake exit by eight o’clock in the morning. I drove around the lake to the detective’s cabin, down that same driveway. I pulled in behind his Jeep and got out.
I knocked on the door. Nothing. But then I knew he wasn’t exactly jumping over the furniture to answer the door. I knocked again.
After a full minute, I took out my cell phone and dialed his number. It rang a few times and went to voice mail. I called the number again, but this time I put my head against his door. I could just barely hear the faintest ringtone from somewhere inside.
I knocked on the door again, really banging on it. Then I tried turning the knob. It was locked.
I went around to the back of the cabin. There was a raised deck where the ground sloped away from the house, and there were sliding glass doors on either side of a central fireplace made of stone. I put my face against the glass. I couldn’t see anything inside.
He’s in the shower, I thought. He can’t hear me knocking. He can’t hear his phone. I’ll wait two more minutes and knock again.
I sat down on one of the patio chairs and looked out at the lake. I couldn’t imagine living here and looking out at that calm, flat water every day. Not after living on a lake that sees twenty-foot waves and higher, every fall.
Of course, it would be suicide to take the detective’s pontoon boat out on Lake Superior, so to each his own.
I got up and rapped on the window a few times. I made that glass rattle. No way he couldn’t hear that.
Then it occurred to me to actually try sliding open the glass door.
I pushed the door open, hearing it grind on the tracks. It needed some oil. I was reminding myself to suggest that to Detective Bateman.
Then I stopped dead.
In the deepest, reptile part of my brain, I knew something was terribly wrong. It was probably just the smell in the air. That’s the thing that plugs right into that part of your brain, after all-but it invades every other sense, and all of a sudden you feel like the air itself looks wrong. It feels wrong against your skin. And even though the house was silent, the silence itself seemed to be spiked with one single high note of wrongness.
“Detective,” I said. “Are you there?”
I walked through the cabin. There were stairs leading up to a loft. There were books piled on the coffee table. I went toward the side door and found the short hallway that led to a bathroom on one side and a half-closed door on the other. Probably the bedroom.