Misery Bay (31 page)

Then it got worse.

Misery Bay. Right there on the screen. Charlie Razniewski, the young man I never saw alive, is leaning against the back of his car. There’s a light shining on him. Otherwise everything around him is dark. He seems drunk or half-asleep. The rope is around his neck. From somewhere off camera, the slack is taken up and the rope tightens. Charlie snaps awake and he’s clutching at the rope. It gets tighter and tighter until finally Charlie’s feet leave the ground. He’s in the air now, kicking and struggling in vain against the rope. It’s all silent still, and somehow it makes this all the more unreal. Charlie fights for a full minute until he finally starts to go limp. He hangs there for a long time. The camera finally moves. It comes closer. It circles him. It zooms in on his face.

I want to say something. I can’t speak.

From the nighttime scene at Misery Bay, to daytime. Still winter, with a pale sunlight that makes everything seem to glow. The camera is in motion against the rough wall of a barn. It turns the corner and there’s young Brandon Steele. His back is to us. He has a pistol extended in his right hand. From the recoil we can see he’s shooting. There’s a pair of acoustic earmuffs on his head. He’s not aware of the camera approaching. Closer and closer. Slowly. Pan to the other weapon on the windowsill. A semiautomatic. A gloved hand reaches for it. The gun is pointed at the young man’s head. The barrel is three inches away. Then the side of Brandon’s head explodes. He goes down, pumping blood into the snow. The camera lingers on his body, recording every nuance. Then it cuts abruptly, as if the camera has just run out of film.

Immediately, we are indoors. It is dark. A sliver of light comes through a window and we can finally make out the features of a bedroom. There’s a woman in the bed. She is sleeping peacefully. Haggerty’s daughter. What’s her first name again?

“No,” I say, finally finding my voice. “Please.” As if I have the power to warn her. As if I can stop this from happening.

A helium tank. A hose. A plastic bag with a cord around the opening. The bag is carefully slipped over the woman’s head. Dina is her name. It comes to me. Dina Haggerty. She stirs and turns a little but does not wake up. The cord is tightened. The valve on the helium tank is turned. The camera waits for a long time. The woman seems to be sleeping still. There’s no discernable difference at all. Finally, the woman’s arm is lifted by the cameraman. It falls back to the bed, lifeless. The helium tank is tucked into the bed beside her. The woman’s arm is draped around the tank.

I’m standing there watching this. I feel like I could throw up at any moment.

Then Maven’s kitchen. Charles Razniewski Sr. has already been attacked. His throat is already cut, the blood is already pooling on the floor. The camera can only play catch-up now. It zooms in on his dead face, and on the last gallon of blood as it leaves his body and spreads slowly across the floor.

Then a house. A door is pushed open. I’ve seen this house before. I’ve pushed open this very door myself. The camera goes inside. It seems to search, like it has no idea where it’s going. It’s disorienting to watch. Finally, a gun on the table. The gun is picked up. Another door is pushed open. An interior door this time. We see a man’s back. We see the red flower blossom on his back. He goes down. Only now do we see the woman in front of him. She looks at the camera with confusion, growing into abject horror. She falls backward. The camera comes in close. The gun is aimed at her forehead. It fires. She lies there bleeding. The camera sees everything, then finally a hand reaches out. The same black glove. It takes the woman’s arm and pulls it so that the woman’s body is turned over. She is facing the floor now. The arm is hiding her face. The camera retreats. We see it all getting smaller and smaller, until we’re back outside again. Cut to black.

The black resolves into the shapes of trees. There is deep snow. The camera moves forward slowly. In the distance, finally, we see the lights from a house. The camera approaches the back door. The door is pushed open. There is a man sitting in a chair. He seems to be asleep. The camera comes close. A white PVC pipe is placed against his forehead. The man wakes up. One second later, the pipe is jolted. The man has been shot in the head. The chair is thrown backward. The man is spread eagle on the floor. The hand behind the camera comes out, adjusts one arm so that his position is perfectly symmetrical. The camera watches the man for a few moments, then it goes back to the door, quickly now, and out into the night.

A sudden noise broke the spell. The film had looped all the way through and now it was spinning on the right-hand reel again, making that same sound I had first heard from upstairs. Scrape scrape scrape.

We both stood there for a long time. I didn’t know what to say to him. I had absolutely no idea what combination of words would make any earthly sense at that moment.

Connie finally closed his mouth. He swallowed hard and then he looked down at his father.

“Did you really do this?” he said. “Did you?”

He closed his eyes. He started to sway like he was going to collapse. I took one step toward him and he put up his hand to stop me.

“Don’t touch me,” he said.

“I’m going to go call somebody.”

He put his hand down. I turned and left him there. I left him there with his dead father, his murderous evil dead corpse of a father, and I went up the stairs to pick up the phone and to try to find the words to describe what I had just seen.

And we’re rolling …

… Two miles through the snow. Uphill both ways, right? That’s the old joke.

… Did I tell you the camera loves the snow? I believe I did. Even at night! All this hard work, it pays off. Keep going.

… Door left open, right on cue. Well done.

… Good to see you again, Sergeant Haggerty.

… Or should I say, Lieutenant Haggerty?

… Either way, time for your close-up.

… How do you like this thing? Pretty realistic, eh? I made it myself.

… Damn, that worked perfectly.

And cut.

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

After I had answered all of their questions as well as I could, I sat in the waiting room of the Bad Axe post. Hours had gone by, a large part of the day, and as I finally sat there by myself, I went over it again in my head. I knew I’d be doing that for a long time to come.

Connie was still in the building somewhere, still talking to somebody. He had proven himself to be a complete jackass to me, in every possible way—right up until that exact moment when I had found him in that basement. Now I just felt sorry for him. For his son Sean, as well. I didn’t know how they’d ever be able to deal with this.

A trooper came by and gave me a cup of coffee. He asked me if I wouldn’t mind hanging around a little while longer. I told him I had no problem with that. I sat there with the coffee cup in both hands and watched the rest of the day go by.

I knew it was four hours from Sault Ste. Marie to Bad Axe. Another hour or two to get the full story. Maybe even see the filmstrip if you were properly prepared for the experience. Another few minutes to catch your breath. Maybe six hours total, and that’s just about when Agent Long came through one of the inner doors and sat down beside me. I was glad to see her.

She didn’t say anything for a while. Then she turned to me.

“Why didn’t you tell us you were coming down here?” she said.

“I probably should have.”

“Yeah, maybe.”

“What would you have told me if I had? You’d already eliminated him as a suspect.”

“I would have listened, Alex.”

“I don’t blame you guys for missing him. Not only was he seventy-two years old, he was a good enough actor to make people think he was on his last legs.”

“So then it’s kind of ironic,” she said. “He may have fooled us into thinking he was too weak to do this, but then his heart gave out.”

“Is that what happened? Cardiac arrest?”

“Yes. Before he had the chance to finish his masterpiece.”

I shook my head. “Did you see it yet?”

“I just did, yes. You know, I’m not going to beat you up on this now, but what the hell were you thinking? You should have called somebody right away. What if you had accidentally erased the film or something?”

“It wasn’t my idea,” I said. “But once it started…”

“I get it. I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have said anything. I probably would have done the same thing.”

“No, you’re right. It was a stupid thing to do, but that’s not unusual for me. Just ask Chief Maven.”

She smiled at that. We sat there for a few more minutes. Then we got up and she walked me to my truck. The state police had brought it back down from Wiley’s lake house. It was parked on the street.

“So what’s next?” I said. “Are you guys coming back up to the Soo?”

“I’m not sure. We may be all done up there now. We checked out of the hotel.”

“Already?”

“That’s one thing they teach you, an agent needs to be ready to move out at a moment’s notice.”

“That’s too bad,” I said. “I was going to buy you a drink at the Glasgow.”

“I’ll take a rain check. Next time I’m in the UP.”

“You’ve got my number.” I stood there for a moment, not quite sure what to do next. She put out her hand for me to shake. I took it in mine. Then I got in my truck.

I was about to drive off, but she motioned for me to roll down my window.

“How did you know?” she said.

“About Wiley? Just a gut feeling.”

She shook her head. “That’s a load of crap. There was something you saw that we didn’t.”

“Come up to Paradise and have that drink with me. I’ll tell you all about it.”

She smiled at me again. That slow, careful smile that was really starting to grow on me. I could only wonder if I’d ever see her again.

“Take care of yourself,” I said. Then I rolled up my window. I watched her in the rearview mirror as I drove away.

A drink at the Glasgow, I thought. That’s exactly what I need right now.

I pointed the truck due north and gunned it.

*   *   *

They closed the book on the murders of Charles Razniewski and his son Charlie, Donald Steele and his son Brandon, along with Donna Krimer, and Dean Haggerty and his daughter Dina. When they tried to write the very last page of that book, they cited the connection between Steele and Haggerty and the arrest of Clyde C. Wiley, ten years ago. They failed to find any concrete link to Razniewski, apart from the notebook I had found on Wiley’s kitchen counter. They were beginning to suspect that no link would ever be found in the official records. However Wiley came to know Razniewski, it could have been nothing more than a chance encounter on a completely different day, either on the job during those few times when Razniewski was working on his own, or even off the job. A few harsh words spoken to a man who already had his own reasons to hate Michigan State Troopers, or who would soon come to have such a hatred … it might have been enough. They’d never know for sure because Wiley was probably the only man who could tell them.

The fact that Roy Maven’s name did
not
appear in that notebook, along with the fact that Maven himself had no recollection of ever meeting Wiley—a meeting he would probably remember simply because of Wiley’s celebrity—made it look less and less likely that Maven had ever been a target to begin with. Apparently, Wiley had done all the killing he was going to do. He just died before he could finish his film.

Maven’s wife and daughter flew home from Amsterdam. As soon as they touched the ground, Maven’s wife called him and told him that she would not sleep one single night in that house in Sault Ste. Marie. Not after what had happened on her kitchen floor. Maven put up a brief fight. He had ripped up the floor, cleaned everything in the house within an inch of its life, and so on. But I think even he knew it was a fight he’d never win. So he went outside with a sledgehammer and pounded a
FOR SALE
sign into the still-frozen ground.

His daughter was home safe and his wife was staying with her in Lansing, and Chief Maven went off his administrative leave and reclaimed his job as chief of police. He moved back into his windowless concrete office in the City-County Building, with no pictures or any other distractions of any kind on the walls. His spot on the lower end of the totem pole in Sault Ste. Marie was once again secure.

It was late April now. There was a false sense of spring while everything started to thaw for three days straight. Jackie was actually observed smiling. Then we got ten more inches of snow. I had drinks with Leon after his shift at the Cineplex one night and told him everything that had happened. When I finally dragged him home well after midnight, his wife was not happy. I don’t know which one of us got in more trouble that night. I didn’t regret it for a second, but Leon might have felt differently when he woke up the next morning.