“Where did she run off to, anyway?” he said. “She’s probably with my mother somewhere, plotting against me. You know how women are, eh?”

  “I’m right here, darling,” she said. We both turned to see her slip into the room behind us. She had a robe on. It was the same robe she had on that first night, the first night I ever touched her. It opened up at her neck and clung to her in a way that made me want to throw my drink at her.

  “Are you coming to bed?” she asked, running her hands around Edwin’s neck.

  “Wow,” Edwin said. “You look fantastic. I’ll be right up.”

  She turned and looked at me. “Good night, Alex. I hope you can make yourself… comfortable.”

  “Don’t worry about me,” I said.

  When she left, Edwin stood up and put out his cigar. “I’ve been neglecting that woman,” he said. “But no longer, Alex. It’s all part of the new Edwin.”

  I just nodded.

  “Are you sure you don’t want to sleep in the other guest room?”

  “No, I’m fine right here on the couch,” I said. The two guest rooms were at the end of the house. I wanted to be here in the middle, close to the doors, just in case.

  “Suit yourself,” he said. “I’m off to bed. Wish me luck.” He gave me a wink and a little salute.

  When he was gone, I sat there and finished my brandy, wondering how I had ever gotten there. I’m a private investigator and they’re paying me to sleep on the couch with my gun.

  I thought about the phone call, and about the rose that was left on my doorstep. I sat there for a long time hoping it would all make some kind of sense to me, but it didn’t happen.

  Finally, Mrs. Fulton came into the room and sat in Edwin’s chair. “Can I get you anything, Alex?”

  “No, I’m fine, ma’am.”

  “You know, you and I have something in common,” she said. She crossed her legs and looked into the fire.

  “What would that be, ma’am?”

  “Fear,” she said. “We both know about fear.”

  It took a minute to sink in. This woman had enough money to protect her from anything. What could she know about fear?

  But then I looked into her eyes. I saw the firelight dancing there. And I saw something else. Something I recognized. “Tell me about it,” I said.

  “I don’t share this story with many people, Alex. But I feel like I can tell you, because you know what it feels like. Real fear. The kind of fear that changes you forever.”

  “Yes,” I said. “Yes, I do.”

  “I was kidnapped when I was sixteen years old. That’s one of the dangers of growing up in a very wealthy family, I suppose. They kept me for several days. At one point, they were going to cut off one of my fingers and send it to my father.”

  I didn’t say anything. I looked into the fire with her and listened to her voice.

  “There were three men,” she said. “One of the men, he made sure that the others didn’t hurt me. Even when the leader wanted to cut off my finger, this man wouldn’t let him. They fought over me. He told the leader he’d kill him if he even touched me. Even though he was one of the men who helped kidnap me, I think I started to fall in love with him. It’s strange, isn’t it? When you’re that scared, everything else you feel, you feel it so strongly. And the things you hear, the things you see. Even the color of things is more intense. You understand what I’m talking about, don’t you?”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “You understand because you’ve been there,” she said. “I knew it as soon as I met you, Alex. Or at least when I asked you about that bullet inside you. I could see it then. I could see that we had this in common. That’s why you know what I’m going through now. This whole business with my son. He’s my only child, you know.”

  “Mrs. Fulton, everything’s going to be fine. He was just in the wrong place at the wrong time.”

  “Well, I’m glad you’re here,” she said. “I think I’ll even be able to sleep tonight.” She wished me a good night and left the room.

  I sat there and watched the fire go out. Finally I got up and walked around the place. I looked out the window that faced the driveway, turning off the exterior light so I could see into the darkness. Nothing.

  I went outside and walked down the road for about a quarter mile. It was a quiet night, and without the wind it was not nearly as cold as it should have been. I turned around and came back up to the house, walking around to the porch that overlooked the lake. When the clouds parted, a quarter moon cast its faint light onto the immense surface of Lake Superior. The water was calm enough on this night, you could almost picture yourself sailing under that moon.

  I went back inside and sat on the couch, taking the gun out of my belt and putting it on the coffee table. There was a wedding picture on the table. I picked it up and looked at the two faces, Sylvia radiant against the whiteness of her veil, Edwin wearing a big, dumb smile. My old man had an expression, “He was smiling like a jackass eating bumblebees.” That’s how Edwin looked on his wedding day standing next to Sylvia. I put the picture back on the table and lay my head back on the couch. Eventually, I slid off into the limbo between awake and asleep.

  And then I heard something. I woke up with a start. Where did that noise come from? I sat up and reached for my gun.

  It was gone.

  Sylvia was standing there, my gun in her hand. She was pointing it right at my chest.

  “Sylvia, what the hell-”

  “I should kill you,” she said. “I should kill you right now. That would feel good, Alex.” Her robe fell open. In the moonlight I could see her breasts and the soft hairs that disappeared into the shadows between her legs. She made no attempt to cover herself.

  “Sylvia…”

  She put the gun back down on the coffee table. “Some watchdog you are,” she said as she walked away. She went back up the stairs, leaving me sitting there in the darkness, trying to catch my breath.

  “Goddamn you,” I said softly. “You stupid crazy bitch.”

  I got up and walked around the place again, looking out the windows again. I walked down to the end of the house where the guest rooms were, put my ear against Mrs. Fulton’s door. I could hear the rhythm of her breathing as she slept.

  I lay back down on the couch, thinking I would never sleep again in my whole life. But eventually I dozed off again. I couldn’t help it. After the last two nights of blood and late-night phone calls, I was beyond exhausted. At least I wouldn’t have to deal with another phone call tonight, I thought as I finally gave myself over to sleep.

  I saw the blood. It was Mrs. Fulton’s dream. I was floating above it. It was stretched out as far as I could see in every direction.

  And then I saw the car, moving smoothly and silently through the pine trees. Its lights were out. I could not see the driver.

  And then the phone rang.

  I jumped off the couch and fell over the coffee table. I didn’t know where I was. The phone, where’s the phone? It rang again. I remembered where I was. I picked up the gun and went upstairs. The phone rang for the third time.

  “Alex, are you there?” It was Edwin, from inside the master bedroom. The phone rang for the fourth time.

  “Yes!” I knocked on their door and then opened it. Edwin had turned on the light next to the bed. Sylvia sat up next to him, blinking. The phone rang for the fifth time.

  “Should I answer the phone?”

  “Let me,” I said. I went around to his side of the bed and knelt on the floor. The phone rang for the sixth time.

  I picked up the receiver. There was silence on the other end until I finally heard a man’s voice. “Hello? Is anyone there?”

  “Who is this?” I said.

  “Who is this! Is Edwin Fulton there?” It wasn’t the voice I was expecting. It was someone else, someone I knew.

  “This is Alex McKnight. Who is this?”

  “McKnight! What are you doing there? This is Chief Maven!”

  “Chief Maven,” I said. Edwin looked at me with surprise.

  “Goddamn it, McKnight, what are you, the Fultons’ butler now?”

  “Why are you calling?” I asked. “What time is it?”

  “I don’t know,” he said. “What is it, like three o’clock, I think? Three-thirty? I was calling Mr. Fulton to see if he knew where you were. I was so disappointed, McKnight. You weren’t at the crime scene waiting for me this time.”

  “Maven, what the hell is going on?”

  “There’s been another murder,” he said. “Another bookmaker, it turns out. They found this guy behind a restaurant on Ashmun Street.”

  “What happened?”

  “The cook found him when he was taking the garbage out,” he said. “He was shot three or four times, looks like.”

  “Do you think it was the same killer?” I looked up at Edwin and Sylvia. They were both staring at me. Sylvia started to shiver.

  “Well, I’m not psychic, McKnight, but I have a feeling that we’re going to find the same bullets from the same gun.”

  “Who was the victim?”

  “Guy named Vince Dorney. You know him?”

  “Vince Dorney. No, I don’t know him.” I looked to Edwin. He shook his head. “Edwin doesn’t know him, either.”

  “He’s right there by the phone, eh?” Maven said. “Sounds like I called you right in the middle of your slumber party.”

  “Save it, Maven. What about… I mean, did he cut him again?”

  “No, not this time,” he said. “This time he used the knife for something else.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I think you better get down here, McKnight. Right now.”

  “What are you talking about? Where are you?”

  “As a matter of fact, I’m calling from a squad car parked right outside your cabin.”

  I saw the lights from the squad cars first, the blues and reds bouncing madly through the pine trees. When I rounded the corner, I saw four cars in front of my cabin. There was a county car, a state car, and two Soo cars. Eight men stood together by my door. When I stopped my truck and got out, it didn’t take too long to figure out who was running this little show.

  “Mr. McKnight,” Maven said. “How nice of you to join us this evening.”

  I nodded to the two county deputies. I had seen them once or twice at the Glasgow Inn.

  “Some of the county and state boys were good enough to stop by,” Maven went on. “We’re a few miles out of the Soo, after all. But this pertains to a Soo case, so I’ll be handling things. I was just explaining that to these gentlemen.”

  “What’s going on?” I said. “Why are you here?”

  “I tried to call you as soon as I found out about the murder behind the restaurant. You weren’t home, so I got worried. I sent a car out here just to make sure you were all right. That’s the kind of guy I am,” he said.

  “So why did you come out here? And why are all these officers here?”

  “I called the county and state out here just as a courtesy,” he said. “I’d expect the same if one of them came calling in the Soo. Now go take a look at your front door,” he said.

  I thought of the rose that had been left there. I shuddered to think what he might have left this time.

  I went to the door. One of the Soo cops was taking a picture with an instant camera. In the sudden moment of white light I saw a piece of paper pinned to the door by a large hunting knife.

  “Don’t touch it yet, McKnight,” Maven said from behind me. The officer carefully removed the knife and put it in a plastic bag. He put the note in a separate bag. “That’s a shame about your door,” Maven said. “It’s gonna leave a nasty mark.”

  “What does it say?” I said. “Let me read it.”

  “Just hold on,” Maven said. He took the bags from the officer and held a flashlight over them. “Looks like blood on this knife,” he said. “Three guesses who the lab says it belongs to.” He passed it back to the officer and then stretched the clear plastic flat against the letter. “Sweet Jesus,” he said as he read it. It took a long time to read it. I could see that there were many words crammed on the single page.

  When he was finished, he passed it to me without another word. The note looked like it was typed on an old manual machine with a ribbon that needed changing.

  ALEX

  You know who I am. It is hard to believe I think but you must believe because I am here now and it is time for both of us to be together and to finish the work that has been given to us. Iron bars could not hold me. I flew to you over all this time. Yes you know who I am. You know who YOU are that is to say you know that you are the one who will take us all to a better place. I did not see this before because I was blinded by the power of evil but now I see that you have been chosen to overcome death and to show the way for others to follow. The evil is here. It knows who you are and you must be very careful. I removed the one man who was threatening your little friend just as a sign of good will from me to you but there are others all around us to make this lonely place into a battlefield and tonight I removed another man who was sending out microwave signals for more of them to come. I used a different technique of course to keep them guessing. You always have to keep them guessing and not so much blood means it will take longer to discover he is missing but they will find us in time. They will not get to you I promise. It feels so good to help you now after all these years. Who would have thought it would turn out this way. To think I once thought you were one of them in disguise. I am watching over you and I cannot wait for the day when we can be together at last.

  Yours forever

  ROSE

  P.S. I called you tonight but you were not there which makes me very sad so please do not do it again.

  I read the letter twice and then I gave it back to Maven. All the officers just stood there watching me.

  “I’ll say one thing for you,” Maven finally said. “You certainly get more interesting mail than I do.”

  “This is impossible,” I said. “There’s no way he could be here. There’s no way he could have written this letter.”

  “I take it you know who this Rose woman is?”

  “Yes,” I said. “I know Rose. It’s a man, not a woman.”

  “All right, a man named Rose. How do you know him?”

  “It was fourteen years ago,” I said. “He’s the man who shot me. He’s the man who killed my partner.”

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  It was 1984, a long hot summer in Detroit. Cocaine was still king that summer, the good old-fashioned powder, long lines of it all over the city. Crack was just a rumor. I had been on the police force about eight years, and was just about ready to take the detective’s exam. My partner, Franklin, was new on the job. He was an ex-football player, an offensive lineman. He played at the University of Michigan and made second-team All Big Ten his senior year. The Lions drafted him, but he blew out his knee the first week of training camp. He went back and finished up his degree, and a couple years after that he joined the force. They stuck him with me, figuring an ex-football player and an ex-baseball player would get along together. They were wrong.

  “This is what a baseball player does,” he said one evening in our squad car. The argument had been going on all day. “He stands around in a field. Once in a while, a ball might get hit to him. And if it’s not hit right at him, he might have to move sideways a little bit. I’ll give you that. Occasionally, the man has to move sideways.”

  I just shook my head. We were on our way to the hospital. One of the emergency room doctors had called in a disturbance, and we were the closest car.

  “Now after he’s done standing in the field,” Franklin went on, “he comes back into the dugout to rest. I mean, it’s hard work standing out there like that, right? So he’s gotta come into the shade and sit down on a bench. All right, so he’s sitting in that dugout for a while, having a drink, and then what do you know, it’s time for him to get up and go to bat! So now he’s gotta get up and go stand in a little box they painted in the dirt and swing this big stick, right? Now again, I’ll admit to you, swinging a big stick is a lot of work. I mean, if he fouls a couple balls off, he ends up swinging that stick something like five or six times!”

  “Keep talking, Franklin,” I said. “Just keep digging that hole.”

  “And then, get this, Alex. Say he hits that ball, what’s he gotta do then? He’s gotta run all the way down to first base. What is that, like ninety feet?”

  “Ninety feet, yes. Very good.”

  “Ninety feet the man has to run! And if he wants to try to stretch that into a double, that’s a hundred and eighty feet!”

  “A football player with math skills,” I said. “What a bonus.”

  “Where you going, anyway?” he asked.

  “Receiving Hospital,” I said. “This is the best way.” I was going south down Brush Street, deep into the heart of downtown Detroit. The heat from the day was still lingering there on the streets, long after the sun had gone down.

  “Best way if you don’t want to get there in a hurry,” he said. “You should have swung over to St. Antoine Street, go right down by the Hall of Justice.”

  “Nah, this is faster,” I said. “You don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “I grew up in this city, friend. What do you know?”

  “See, we’re here already,” I said. I pulled around to the back of the building near the emergency room entrance.

  “We would have been here and gone by now if you’d listen to me.”

  “The day I listen to you is the day I retire,” I said. We walked into the place, expecting the usual chaos. But everything seemed quiet. There was a woman in the waiting room, holding an icebag against her cheek. Across from her a man sat doubled over, hugging himself and gently rocking. A nurse was looking through a stack of files at the reception desk. She looked up at us and did a double take. Either I was just too damned good-looking or Franklin was just too damned big.

  “Excuse me, ma’am,” Franklin said. “We’re police officers.”

 

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