“Yes, Chief. Ask your questions.”
He took another sip of coffee and then pulled a card out of his shirt pocket. His uniform was perfectly pressed, his tie perfectly knotted. “Is this your card?” he asked, putting it down on the table.
“Yes.”
“Prudell-McKnight Investigations,” he said.
“Yes.”
“It was found in Mr. Wilkins’s coat pocket. I take it he hired you?”
“Not really,” I said. “He was a friend of mine, a long time ago. I was helping him find somebody.”
“Go back to that ‘not really’ part,” he said. “Because it’s important. If he hired you, you know you don’t have to tell me anything about what you were doing for him.”
“He gave my partner some money,” I said. “But not me.” I thought about it for a moment. “I mean, he did give me some money, but just for gas. For driving him around.”
He frowned. “If he gave your partner money, he hired both of you. If you’re both in business together.”
“Look, it doesn’t matter,” I said. “I have nothing to hide from you. I was helping him find a girl he met a long time ago. In Detroit. We didn’t find her, so he went back home. Or so I thought.”
“A girl,” he said.
“She was a girl in 1971,” I said. “Now she’s in her forties.”
“He was looking for a girl he knew in Detroit, in 1971,” he said. He took out a pad of paper and wrote down ‘Detroit, 1971.’ “What’s her name?”
“Maria something.”
He looked up at me.
“We don’t know her real last name,” I said. “It could be Valeska or Valenescu or Muller.”
He made me spell all three of the names. He shook his head slowly as he wrote them down.
“When did you last see Mr. Wilkins?” he said.
“Three days ago. I took him to the airport.”
“Where was he going?”
“Back to Los Angeles.”
“Did you actually see him get on the plane?”
“No,” I said. “I dropped him off at the terminal.”
“Okay,” he said. “Did he ever mention anything about Orcus Beach?”
“No.”
“You have no idea why he might have come up here?”
I hesitated, deciding how to play this one. “I have an idea,” I said.
“Care to share it with me?”
“He may have had some reason to believe that Maria was in Orcus Beach.”
“The two of you were looking for her in Detroit,” he said. “Then you gave up and took him to the airport. Why would he suddenly think she was way up here in my tiny little town?”
I took a long breath and dived into it. “We talked to her family,” I said. “They told us that Maria was hiding from somebody. They wouldn’t tell us where. Randy may have gone back to their house and found out somehow. In fact, that’s where you should start looking, Chief. If Randy was hit with a shotgun.”
“Who said anything about a shotgun?”
“The doctor,” I said. “When we were at her family’s house in Farmington Hills, her brother threatened us with a shotgun.”
“What does a shotgun in Farmington Hills have to do with a shooting in my town?”
“A shotgun gets pointed at his head, and then a few days later he gets blasted by one.”
“Even if it’s not just a coincidence, you can’t trace buckshot, Mr. McKnight. There’s no rifling to match up like on a bullet. You know that.”
“So just ask him about it,” I said. “I’ll give you his address.”
“Write it down.”
“She’s in your town, isn’t she?” I said as I wrote. “She’s in Orcus Beach.”
“Who, Maria? The woman with three last names?”
“If it’s such a small place, you’ve got to know about her. Hell, if she’s got an order of protection on this guy she’s hiding from, you’d have to know about it.”
“Do you know anything else about your friend?” he said. “Do you know what he does for a living these days?”
“You didn’t answer my question.”
“What does Randy Wilkins do to make money, Mr. McKnight? Do you know?”
“He said something about commercial real estate.”
“Is that what he told you?”
“Yes,” I said. “Why are you asking me that?”
“I’m trying to figure out what he was doing in Orcus Beach,” he said.
“I would think,” I said, “that your top priority should be finding out who shot him once he got to Orcus Beach.”
“Again with the critiques,” he said. “I should be grateful for all the free advice.”
“What’s going on?” I said. “Don’t you care who shot him?”
“That would be nice to know,” he said. “But there are a lot of private residences on the street where he was found. It could have been anyone, just trying to protect himself from the criminal element. You could almost say Mr. Wilkins got what he deserved.”
I looked him dead in the eyes. I said the words slowly. “What are you talking about?”
He looked at his pad, then flipped the page over and began reading, squinting like a man who needs glasses but won’t wear them. “Randall Wilkins, born 1951, convicted on multiple federal counts of embezzlement, check forgery, and mail fraud in 1979, did six years at Lompoc. Got out in 1985, then in 1990 was convicted again, this time on state embezzlement charges. Did two years at Avenal, was released, convicted again in 1994, did four years at Folsom. Currently wanted by the state of California on new charges, not to mention violation of parole and flight from prosecution.”
“Are you telling me-” I said.
“Your friend’s a con artist,” he said. “He preys on wealthy women. Gets them to invest in bogus real estate deals, then takes off with the money. That’s the commercial real estate he was talking about, I guess.”
“No way,” I said.
“You had no idea,” he said. “You’re totally shocked.”
“Yes,” I said. “Of course I am.”
“If you were helping him in any way to set up a scam here in Michigan, you’d be an accessory.”
“No,” I said. “He was just… No. It can’t be.” I thought about it for a few seconds. “The family, they do live in a nice house, I suppose. Her brother paints houses, so he can’t have that much money. But Maria… Oh goddamn it, who knows? I can’t believe this.”
He snapped his pad shut. “Believe it,” he said.
“Why?” I said. “Why would he come all the way out here?”
“Doesn’t sound like California’s too cozy a place right now,” he said. “Maybe you’re the last friend left who didn’t know what he’s been up to.” He paused a beat. “Now that we’ve established you had no idea, I mean.”
I looked at him. “Why is that county man standing guard?” I said. “Randy’s not going anywhere.”
“That’s what I tried to tell them,” he said. “But the state of California insisted on it. I told them I didn’t have a man from my force to do it, so they told me to get a county deputy. Now I’ve just got to make sure they’re paying for it.”
“And if Randy lives?”
“He goes back to stand trial. And he’s out of my hair.”
“Never mind who shot him.”
“I’m on the case,” he said, picking up his cup. “Don’t worry about it.”
I pushed my chair back and stood up. I took one step out of the room and then went back. “What about his family?”
“What about them?”
“I want to talk to them.”
“They don’t want to hear anything about it,” he said.
“He could be dead by tomorrow,” I said.
“The way his ex-wife said it, they all gave up on him a long time ago. To them, he’s been dead for years.”
“I want to talk to them anyway,” I said. “I have to.”
The chief just looked at me.
“I’m the last man he talked to,” I said. “He told me all about them. If it’s the last thing he ever says about them, they need to hear it. No matter what he’s done.”
He let out a tired sigh and reopened his pad. He flipped through the pages and then copied down the names and phone numbers. “You call them once,” he said. “You tell them who you are, you tell them what he said. That’s it.”