I put my hand on the door and slowly pushed it open.
The detective was lying in his bed. He was tangled in the covers. The fabric was soaked through with blood. His face was destroyed. Utterly destroyed beyond recognition. His head was caved in like a goddamned pumpkin.
I looked away. I made myself breathe.
I looked one more time. At the obscenity of what had happened to this man. There was a pipe on the floor, next to the bed. A heavy steel pipe, maybe two and a half feet long. It was covered with blood, and in the blood there were clumps of hair and other material I didn’t want to think about.
I had spoken to this man the night before. Just a matter of hours before this moment. My voice may have been the last he ever heard.
Unless whoever killed him had something to say to him before swinging this pipe.
Unless whoever killed him had a special message for him, something he’d been preparing in his mind for years.
Because you know exactly who did this, I thought. He got out last night. He came here.
You know who did this.
I had to close my eyes again. I had to stand there and command the room to stop spinning. Then, when I could finally open my eyes, I took my phone out of my pocket and dialed 911.
I had been through this routine before. It’s a testament to my willingness to go looking for trouble, or to my bad luck, or to something, I don’t even know what, that I’d had a lot of prior experiences with reporting homicides, even now that I wasn’t carrying a badge anymore. I stayed on the line with the 911 operator. While I waited, I told her that they needed to go find Darryl King, very recently released from prison, living with his mother on Ash Street in Detroit. It felt strange to be dropping the dime on him now, after everything that had happened in the past few days to lead me here. But they had to start with him. They had to.
There was a Michigan State Police post right in Houghton Lake, just minutes away from where I was standing. I had passed it on the way here. So I figured they’d be responding. I had gone outside to get a better cell signal, and to get away from the air in that cabin. I waited by my truck, leaning against it, knowing that I was already on my way to a very long day.
The cruiser pulled into the driveway. One of the boxy old “Blue Goose” cars with the single red flasher on top. Two troopers hopped out and came right over to me. Both of them had freshly buzzed heads under their trooper hats. I hung up the phone and told them where they could find the dead detective. One of the troopers went inside while the other kept an eye on me. He went back to his car and talked to someone on his radio. I knew there’d be more troopers coming down the driveway soon. Eventually there’d be a state homicide detective on the scene. That might take a while, because he might have to come over from one of the other posts. A homicide detective who would investigate the homicide of a retired homicide detective.
The trooper who went inside came out. He wasn’t looking so happy with his career choice.
I kept waiting, just standing there by my truck, feeling the morning sun on my face. When the detective finally got there, he came up to me first. As he shook my hand, he introduced himself as Detective Gruley. Then he asked me politely to stay put while he went inside. When he came back out, he started asking me the basic questions. Name, address, phone number. He looked me in the eye as I answered, like listening to every word was the most important thing in the world to him.
“So tell me what happened,” he said. “Start at the beginning.”
I gave him the rundown. My background first, then the current timeline from the moment I had heard Darryl King was getting out of prison to my discovery of Detective Bateman’s body.
He listened intently, writing down only the occasional word in his notepad. When I was done, he stood there nodding to himself. Then he took a step closer to me.
“Let me get this straight,” he said in a low voice. “The two of you were going down to Detroit this morning to confront the man you put away for murder, back when you were both on active duty?”
“We weren’t going to confront him,” I said. “We were going to ask him if he really did it. Seeing as how we’ve both developed some doubts about his confession.”
Gruley kept nodding. “Did he know you were coming down to ask him this?”
“No, he didn’t.”
“Are you sure?”
“I’m positive. I mean, I know I didn’t say anything to him. I’ve had no communication with him at all.”
“Since back in the day, you mean. When you arrested him.”
“The detective made the actual arrest. But yes. No contact since then.”
“So it would seem,” Gruley said, “that Mr. King had already made plans for his first day out of prison, independent of this little mission of yours.”
“I guess it looks that way,” I said. “May I ask if you’ve located him yet? I gave his name and address to the 911 operator.”
“No, I don’t think he’s been located yet. Detroit PD is helping us out on that one.”
I might have caught just a hint of the patented Michigan State Police superiority complex as he said that. Like this part of the operation is out of our hands, so God only knows if it’ll get done correctly.
“This is a former Detroit cop we’re talking about,” I said. “I’m sure they’ll be all over it.”
“I’m sure they will be, yes.”
“Look, Detective, I know this whole thing sounds crazy. For it to turn out this way… I still can’t believe this happened.”
“You see the irony,” he said. “You thought maybe this man was innocent of murder, yet he ends up killing someone within hours of getting out.”
“If it was him.”
“If it was him, yes. By the way, you see where he might logically take this next, right?”
I looked at the detective. My stomach hurt and I was starting to feel a little light-headed.
“You were also closely involved with his conviction,” the detective said. “Surely you must understand the stakes here.”
I put my hand out to the hood of my truck.
“Mr. McKnight, are you okay?”
“Yes,” I said. “It’s been a rough morning.”
“No doubt. But I hope you understand what I’m trying to tell you. If this man made a list of people to get back at, the minute he got out of prison… Well, yours may be the second name on his list.”
Yeah, no kidding, I thought. I never would have made that connection on my own.
“You don’t look so good,” he said. “I think we should get you out of the sun. Get you some water.”
He took me over to his car and opened up the passenger’s-side door. He started the car and turned the air on. Then he pulled out a bottle of water from a cooler in the backseat. I took a long drink and started to feel better.
“You never get used to seeing something like that,” he said. “I don’t know how the crime scene guys do it.”
“I never did get those guys. They were a breed apart.”
“When you’re up to it, I’d like to take you back to the post and get an official statement.”
I took one more drink and felt the cold air from the dashboard vent on my face.
“Ready when you are,” I said, “but I’m not sure this story is going to look any more sane on paper.”
I spent a good part of the day there. I knew I would. You get into a police station, or a state police post, or any law enforcement building in the world probably, and time stands still. Sometimes they make you wait for a reason. To soften you up, to let you stew in your own guilt, whatever mind games they feel will help their cause. Other times it’s just a matter of them doing things their own way, one slow step at a time. They’ll apologize at every turn, tell you you’ll be on your way in just a few more minutes. But then the wheels keep grinding away, as slow as the hour hand on the clock.