Repo Madness (31 page)

“Phil somebody.”

“Okay, thanks. Good to know.”

“Well, the reason I called.”

“Yes?”

“I ran your list past a buddy, and we got a hit on one.”

“A hit? They found her? Was she drowned?”

“Yeah, they found her. Rachel Rodriguez. But she's not drowned. She ran off and got married to someone her family didn't approve of. She lives in San Diego now.”

“Lucky her.”

“Yeah. It was in the high seventies there. Dry, though; they could use some rain.”

“Any action on anybody else?”

“No, that one just came up right away. The case was old, you know, almost four years ago when she vanished.”

I thanked him and hung up. “So we can cross that one off the list,” I reasoned to Alan.

“Right, but that doesn't mean I'm wrong about the others.”

“I'm not saying you are wrong, Alan. Aren't I going to Shantytown tomorrow to try to track down Phil, last name unknown by everybody, your prime suspect in the Nina Otis murder?”

“So you agree it was murder.”

“I don't know that.”

“You said
murder.
”

“Jesus, Alan! I'm just trying to figure stuff out. You say Nina Otis was killed and maybe by the same person who did away with Lisa Marie Walker. We've got nothing on Lisa, but maybe the mayor can tell us who was buying Nina drinks before the ferry left, if she was in the Ferry Bar. It's the most tenuous lead I've ever heard, but it's the only one we've got so far.”

“Okay.”

I looked at Katie's tiny rental house. The light was on inside, glowing yellow through the curtains. Her driveway and walk had fresh snow from the other day on it, tracked with evidence of her arrivals and departures. I would grab the shovel from the back of the truck and scrape it away for her.

“What are we waiting for?”
Alan asked.

Okay, this was it. I couldn't possibly have a date with Katie with her father there, yammering at me, so I went into my mind. I thought of Alan, searched for him. I wasn't on antipsychotics, but I could still feel him, like cotton stuffed into my head. I mentally went to that Alan presence, and, when I got there, I pushed.

 

24

Why Would Anybody Lie About That?

When I woke up the next morning, the sun was bouncing off the snow, and there were neither clouds nor heat—a blindingly bright, painfully cold day. I could tell we were pushing the thermometer down into record-low territory and reflexively thought of calling Strickland for a weather report.

“I don't want to go out there,” Katie moaned next to me.

“Then don't. Let's stay in bed and keep each other alive with our body heat.” I demonstrated just how much I could raise our temperatures for a moment, and then she pushed me away with a laugh. “I have to go to
work,
” she chided gently.

I went out and started Katie's car for her and scraped the ice off her windows, then ran back into the house so I didn't lose any extremities. When I walked her out and she saw her car, she turned and gave me a look that caused my internal organs to flutter.

As she drove away, she blew me a kiss, and then I got into my own vehicle and invited Alan back—just sort of reopened my mind. “Morning, Alan. You might want to turn up the heat in there today. It's not going to make it to zero.”

He grunted.

“So, where did you go last night?” I asked, curious about how it felt from his end when I shut him out of my mind.

“Go? What do you mean? I fell asleep. Isn't that what you wanted?”

“Sure.”

We drove to Boyne City and pulled up in front of the coffee shop where I told Mark and Kenny I'd meet them. When they arrived, I saw that they had dented the roof of their truck back up from the inside, maybe by using a chunk of the same battering ram we used in the assault on the air conditioner. It looked like an elk had tried to kick its way out of the cab.

Plus there was no windshield.

They were both wearing full woolen face masks, white chunks of ice clinging to the front where their mouths were. They slid into the booth across from me and pulled off their masks, looking shell-shocked as they gazed at me almost without recognition. Their lips were blue, their faces drained of color.

Kenny said something to me, but his mouth was so numb, I couldn't understand it. I told him to be careful with the coffee—it was hot, and I didn't want him burning himself.

“I sort of thought you boys might stop at the junkyard and get yourselves a new windshield,” I drawled.

Mark was staring at his coffee as if his brain had disconnected from the rest of him. Kenny was shivering. “We're kind of short on funds, and we don't got any more credit there,” Mark slurred.

“Yeah, but you can't drive around with no window on a day like today. You'll
die
.”

“We tried driving in reverse but the other cars got mad at us,” Kenny replied. “So then we took turns for five minutes each, one person driving, the other person ducked down under the dashboard to stay out of the wind.”

I thought about it. “Here,” I said. I pulled out my wallet and laid five twenties on the table.

Mark stirred, showing life for the first time. He mumbled something like, “Huh?” only not as articulate.

“That's what I get for collecting payments instead of pulling in a repo, that fee I told you about,” I explained. “My contribution toward the windshield. You guys want breakfast?”

Kenny's eyes were shining like a kid's on Christmas morning. Mark raised his coffee to his lips and slurped. “Thanks, man,” Mark said. “My cousin owns a body shop in Petoskey. With this we got enough to buy the glass and he'll carry us on the labor.”

I nodded. I knew both Mark's cousin and the body shop—I'd affected a repossession on the former from the latter. “After we go out and talk to Phil what's-his-name, I'll tow your truck to Petoskey for you,” I offered.

“You're the nicest repo man in world,”
Alan noted sardonically. I wondered if it was his forced ejections from my brain that were making him so cranky.

We got so toasty warm in the café that stepping back outside caused us to gasp in shock. Eyes watering, we trooped in single file out toward the shanties. The wind had blown away loose snow, and some brave or stupid soul had driven a plow all around the area so that we were walking on white ice that felt like concrete underfoot.

There were several huts that were nice: prefabricated jobs on runners. More often, though, they were tiny little shelters built of weathered wood and plastic sheeting. Some had stovepipes. Many of them looked ready to fall over.

I was glad to have my guides. There were no people visible and, judging by the lack of smoke from the metal chimney pipes, there was virtually no one inside the things, this sub-zero day. Kenny and Mark led me straight to my destination.

Phil the mayor's place was larger than many, but not all, of the places, a solid but old-looking shelter that felt randomly positioned off to one side, not at all in the center of the “town.”

Kenny pounded on the door, using a gloved hand, then surprised me when, after no one responded, he reached up and opened the door. I followed him inside, though.

The place was, I was sorry to note, unheated. A portable toilet at one end had a curtain for a modicum of privacy, and at the other end there was a bunk bed built at head height. In between these two places was a hole the size of a basketball hoop, a black circle in white ice. There was a trapdoor in the floor to cover this hole, but the trap was open.

“You pretty good friends with this guy?” I speculated.

Kenny shook his head. “Not really. He just lets people come in if they want. See, he's got the emergency equipment.” Kenny opened some cupboards. I saw medical supplies, a flare gun, and other miscellaneous safety stuff.

I reached out and picked up a red metal can, a stout sixteen-ouncer with a cone top. “I haven't seen this in a while,” I marveled. “Didn't know they still made it.”

“What's starter fluid?”
Alan asked, reading the label on the red can.

“This stuff is for the old clunkers people drive out here, the ones that have carburetors. It's ether, really volatile. You pour the ether down the throat of the carburetor, and it gives your engine an extra kick.”

Mark and Kenny nodded, unimpressed. “Stove's not going,” Mark observed.

“Yeah. And look, the fishin' hole's froze over. I think Phil hasn't been here for a couple of days,” Kenny added.

“He hasn't been at the Ferry Bar recently, either,”
Alan observed unnecessarily. But I knew what he was thinking: Had we identified our murderer?

“Let's go get some kerosene,” Mark suggested.

We trudged fifty yards to a flimsy hut with canvas for a door. Inside was a guy who sold kerosene. Incredibly, and in complete violation of the law, he stored the stuff in clear, one-gallon glass jugs. He had two walls of his place lined with the containers, all on shelves. He told us he would let us take a couple back, and put it on the mayor's account.

“He's recycling jugs from an apple cider mill?” I asked, reading the label on the jug we were carrying as we headed back to Phil's place. Something else illegal—you weren't supposed to put petroleum products in old cider jugs.

“It's a sweet deal,” Kenny told me. “See, he has this orchard, so in the fall he puts up the apple cider and makes people pay him a deposit for the jugs. Then, when they bring the jugs back in, he fills them with kerosene—he's got a huge tank next to his garage. He sells the stuff out here, and by the end of winter he's got all these empty jugs, ready to be refilled with cider again.”

“Does he clean them first?” Alan and I asked at precisely the same moment.

Kenny frowned. “I don't really know.”

“Kenny. Think about it. Of course he rinses them out,” Mark chided.

“I don't know. The kerosene would sorta sterilize things, wouldn't it?”

We filled the stove at Phil's shanty and pushed the starter button and were rewarded with a blue flame and what felt like no heat whatsoever.

“Maybe he got up in the middle of the night to use the toilet and fell in the hole,” I observed, only half joking.

Kenny nervously shut the trapdoor.

“Sorry about the wasted trip,” Mark told me.

“Oh no. It wasn't wasted at all,” I assured him.

*   *   *

After I dropped the boys and their truck off in Petoskey, Alan had an odd request: He wanted to go back to Boyne City. “Why?” I asked him. “I think it is pretty clear our man has flown the coop. I was thinking my next move would be to ask Strickland to check into good old Phil, find out his background. He's our man. He sat on his personal stool and bought Nina Otis drinks and then grabbed her somehow.”

“Just humor me,”
Alan suggested, as if talking to him wasn't humoring him. Pretending he
existed
was humoring him.

So in the name of humor, we drove back to Boyne City. Just as we hit the outskirts of town, Alan asked me to slow down. I accommodated him, looking blankly around. Here the trees were as thick as on Strickland's property—we were pretty close to his house, in fact. I wondered if I should stop by to make my request in person and find out how he felt about what a cold day it was.

“There,”
Alan said.

I looked. I saw no there there, no there anywhere. “What?”

“Did you see it?”

“See what?”

“Go back.”

Feeling a lot less humorous, I nonetheless swung the heavy truck into a ponderous U-turn and went back up the road.
“Stop right here,”
Alan told me. Across the street, on the lake side, there was a mailbox nearly buried in snow, a plowed gravel driveway disappearing into the trees.

“What is it?” I demanded.

“The mailbox. See the name?”

I did see. “Rogan.” I thought about it. “You think this could be our dentist turned bar owner?”

“I don't know why not.”

“Rogan's a pretty common name.”

“Okay, sure.”

I put on my light bar so that people would know I was on official business and got out and crossed the road, opening the mailbox over Alan's objections that I was committing a federal offense. The mail was all addressed to Wade Rogan.

“It's him, all right,” I said.

“Do you think the house is on the lake?”

“Probably.”

“So why would Rogan tell us he didn't know anything about Shantytown? If he lives on the lake, he's looking at it all winter long.”

I thought about it. “Let's see if he's home and ask him,” I suggested.

“What? No, I don't think that's a good idea.”

I drove down the driveway, which was shouldered with five feet of snow on both sides. Rogan lived in a two-story home with stained wood siding. A snowmobile was sitting uncovered but clean by the steps to his front porch—most people who leave their machines outside put heavy tarps on them when they're not in use. I knocked on the door, but no one answered.

His driveway curled to the right to a detached garage, but there were tire tracks in the snow right down to the ice. I followed them on foot. Alan was right: You could see all of beautiful downtown Shantytown from Rogan's place.

I decided to find out where the tracks led. It was hard but not impossible to see where to go once I was on the ice: Patches of packed snow bore the marks of several car trips, and anyway, they were headed in a straight line. I knew where we would wind up long before we got there: a newer model ice shanty, made of metal, a heavy padlock securing the door. “So not only does he spend all winter looking at this place…,” I mused.