Repo Madness (7 page)

Patience wasn't exactly part of my own investigative technique.

Business had expanded, all due to ex-sheriff Strickland, and now anybody skipping out on their debts north of Grand Rapids had Milt's recovery service looking for them.

“Ruddy. Come in,” Strickland greeted me after I knocked on his door. “Coffee's fresh. Sorry I didn't make it to the Bear after the funeral.”

I told him it was okay as I stomped the ice off my boots and accepted a mug from him gratefully. We sat in chairs near the fire. Hard to believe he wasn't still sheriff; he sure looked the part—his eyes were blue and clear, his hair a metal gray.

“Been a beautiful day, but clouds are rolling in,” he remarked. “Going to bring some precipitation.” In the other room, the Weather Channel was running, sound off.

This was what happened when you lost everything due to a mistake: You wound up alone and miserable. I knew very well what Strickland must be going through. I'd had something very similar occur in my life.

Except now, of course, I had a shot at a second chance.

I handed over a slip of paper with Amy Jo's plate number on it. If her name even
was
Amy Jo. He accepted it with interest, but when I explained why I needed the girl's address, what she had told me, his expression grew flat.

“Oh, Ruddy,” he said mournfully. “Why would you believe something like that?”

I'd given that a lot of thought. “I'm not sure I
do
believe it. But I've racked my brain and you know what? It's possible. I didn't check under the blanket when I got back in the car that night. I didn't even look at her, and if I talked to her, she didn't answer. I can't say for sure she wasn't in the backseat, but I can't say for sure she was, either.”

“What difference could it make? No one is going to reopen the case. She died, and you pleaded guilty and did your time.”

I shook my head. “I'm not thinking that far ahead. I just want to
know
.”

Strickland regarded the paper with distaste. I knew just how much he hated this sort of thing. This had nothing to do with our skip tracing business; it was just Ruddy McCann chasing ghosts.

“Please, Sheriff. This girl was not a medium, I'll tell you that. I've been to about half a dozen, and none of them acted like her. I think what she said is because she knows something. Because she
saw
something.”

Strickland grunted. “I've asked you not to call me Sheriff.”

“Oh. Sorry. Barry.” It sounded odd on my tongue, like calling your father by his first name.

In the end he agreed to get a friend of his to run the plate because, I think, he was too damned bored not to. He walked me to the door, and we both peered at the sky, which was filling with the expected clouds. He told me how sorry he was about Milt. We left it with that sentiment, though I thought I caught something in his expression that must have been mirrored in my own.

Looked like we both might need new jobs.

*   *   *

While I'd been talking to Barry, I'd gotten a phone call and a voice mail. I didn't recognize the number, but I knew the voice. “Ruddy, it's Dr. Schaumburg. Please call me back. You know why.”

I did not call him back.

When the precipitation hit, it came down as something between sleet and rain, if there is such a thing. I stopped in East Jordan for lunch at Darlene's, a restaurant that serves amazing cinnamon rolls I'd reluctantly given up eating. I only had one.

I was only thirty yards from Katie's office, but something told me not to drop in. I sent her a photo of my cinnamon roll instead, hoping she'd take the hint and join me. Instead she sent me back a smiley face emoticon, which could mean something, or nothing at all.

The roads were impossibly slick as I drove away, and I kept my speed low and my gear in four-wheel drive, regretting that I'd taken the time to stop at Darlene's. I should have just gotten a cinnamon roll to go and also another one.

In Mancelona, a tiny town about fifteen miles from Kalkaska, I saw a guy named Tigg Bloom putting gasoline in a Chevy Suburban. I knew Tigg because a year ago I'd sat on his front porch and drunk beer with him until he admitted his brother's Kia was parked behind the pole barn at the far end of the field. I agreed not to mention where I got my information, and Tigg agreed to drink the rest of the beer.

Now it was Tigg's turn: He was more than ninety days past due on the Suburban, and had vanished. I tried the beer trick on the brother, but he was still upset about the Kia and tried to sic his Labrador on me. I threw a stick for the dog, who ran to get it and brought it back to me. Strickland had worked the file and reported that Tigg's relatives all said he'd escaped northern Michigan and was in Florida somewhere. When I chatted with Tigg, I'd ask him if he knew he was related to a bunch of liars.

By the time I'd cautiously U-turned on the icy road, Tigg was in his Suburban, headed back toward the way I'd come. I hung back, following at a safe distance.

A few miles down M-66 toward East Jordan, the road bends steeply downward into the Jordan River Valley, a hilly area scooped out by glaciers eons ago. At the crest of the hill, the vehicle in front of Tigg turned left, and I saw the Suburban's antilock brakes working to hold Tigg on the road as he stopped.

My vehicle didn't have antilock brakes. Instead it had a rust hole on the passenger side that I kept covered in cardboard. In a real emergency, I could always lift the cardboard and stick my foot out, but in this case I was moving slowly enough that by pumping the brake pedal and downshifting, I coasted to a stop on the ice-rinked highway without rear-ending my customer.

Tigg had been watching my approach with considerable concern, and I saw the relief in his eyes when I was able to halt. Then he sat upright.

“Damn,” I breathed. He'd recognized me.

Tigg put his foot into it and rocketed away, and I gave chase. If I lost him now, I might never see him again—a lot of these guys will do a better job of hiding their vehicles once they've seen the repo man.

I racked a full fifty-five miles per hour onto the speedometer before my brain took over. You don't do a high-speed chase in the middle of an ice storm. I was moving much too fast for these conditions, especially considering I was now barreling down one of the steepest hills in the whole state. I lifted my foot off the gas, watching in frustration as the Suburban pulled away. He was really flying.

I touched my brake, and immediately my truck's heavy back end tried to slide up toward its front end. I turned into the skid, then looked up and gasped: Tigg had realized his mistake and was trying to stop, his vehicle jerking and sliding, fishtailing crazily down the hill. A school bus in the opposite lane was rumbling up the hill, honking frantically.

I lost track of Tigg and focused on getting my own rig under control. My brakes were
worthless
. When I touched them even lightly, my tow truck started to drift, and I was swaying back and forth over the center line. “Damn it!” I yelled. I was losing it. Farther down, I saw the Suburban way over in the bus's lane, and then it flew back to the right side and hit the snowbank in a spray of snow and then it was in the trees, crashing into them so violently I could
hear
it.

The school bus was trying to get out of my way, but I had lost control, and I was weaving and sliding and desperately turning the steering wheel against the skid.
I was going to hit the bus
.

I could not let that happen. My front end swung to the right, and I took my foot off the brake and mashed down on the accelerator. All four wheels bit and I surged ahead, flying past the bus and off the road—
“Jesus!”
—and then the snowbank grabbed me and the truck flipped upside down and I rolled over and over until I slammed into the trees.

Yet with all that happening, I had time for a single thought before impact. That voice yelling,
“Jesus!”

That wasn't my voice.

That was Alan.

 

6

I Know You're There

I've been hit in the head often enough to know I don't like it.

When I awoke in the hospital, it was to the nauseating head pain that comes from a concussion. In football they happen despite the fact that you've got a helmet on your head, and when you're crashing your repo truck into the trees, you don't even get the helmet.

Becky was sitting in a chair, an Andrew Gross novel—
One Mile Under
—open in her lap. When my mom died, she left the family home to me, along with boxes and boxes of suspense thrillers and mysteries. I dug into them, and now our whole family is hooked on the genre.

“Did we win the game?” I asked her.

Becky looked up from her book and frowned at me. “Do you seriously believe you got hurt in a football game, or are you just being a jerk?”

“Are those my only two choices?”

She came over and smiled down at me. “They found nothing broken. They were worried you might have brain damage, but I told them there would be no real way to tell.”

“Funny.”

“They thought it might be a good idea for you to spend a couple of days here so they can monitor you.”

“Not doing that,” I replied.

“I know. I told the doctors you would be stubborn and uncooperative and grumpy.” She patted my shoulder affectionately. I gazed up at her, somehow missing her even though she was right there. “What is it?” she asked quizzically.

“I don't know. Things are different between us now.”

“Bad different?”

“No, not bad, exactly. I mean, I don't get to see you as much as I used to. Seems like you've sort of turned the Bear over to Jimmy. I guess I regret that. But you're … softer now, or something. You seem happy. We never fight.”

“I do miss the fights,” she teased gently.

“It was just that when I woke up and saw you there, it reminded me of other times, like when we were kids on Christmas morning and you would sit in that chair in my room and wait for me to wake up.”

“You are on pain medication,” she observed.

“So?”

“Perhaps they've got you feeling sentimental?”

“I actually feel pretty good except for the headache.”

“I miss you, too, Ruddy. You should come over and see what I'm doing to the house. I ripped out the wall between the kitchen and the living room, and I'm putting in engineered flooring.”

“I'd like to see it.”

“As long as you don't try to help.” She smiled.

From somewhere in our family DNA, Becky got the ability to remodel houses, build garages, and stuff like that. I got the ability to watch her do it.

“Maybe marriage agrees with me.” She gave me a level look. “Marriage to Kermit, I mean.”

“I do remember who you married.”

“Just suggesting that you maybe give him a break every once in a while. He really looks up to you.”

I almost said,
He's so short, he
has
to look up to me,
but decided to let it pass. “Has Katie been in?”

The most momentary of shadows passed across Becky's eyes, and I felt my pulse rate kick up a notch. Something was going on, and Becky was picking up on it over the all-female telepathy network. “She said she would get off work early,” Becky finally replied.

“You know she's looking at moving out. Just for the winter, I mean,” I added hurriedly. “Because of the drive and everything.”

“I know.”

“Is there something you're not telling me? About Katie, I mean.”

“No, Ruddy.” Her eyes were open and honest.

But there was something I wasn't telling her, wasn't there?

“What is it?” she asked after a moment, reacting to something in my expression.

I shook my head. “Nothing.”

There's a reason why hospitals are so boring—if they were fun, people would always want to go there. Becky was a good sister, but I could tell she was antsy, so after a few minutes of desultory conversation, I suggested she leave, grinning at the relief on her face.

After she left, I lay in the bed and looked at the ceiling for a long moment, debating what to do—though there really wasn't any choice.

“I know you're there, Alan. I can feel it.”

“When the truck rolled, I thought we were going to die,”
he replied.

“Okay, but you're already dead.”

“Nice. Thank you for that.”

“Why are you here, Alan? Why did you come back?”

“Back? What do you mean? I've been gone?”

“Yeah. You've been away for about eighteen months now.”

“A year and a half? How is that possible?”

“Well, how is any of it possible?”

We were quiet for a moment while we both considered what a good point I'd just made. “I missed you, Alan,” I admitted. Becky was right: The drugs were making me emotional. “Having you gone has felt really weird, like being in the middle of a phone call and then realizing you lost the signal and for some time you've been talking to dead air.”

“Do you think they would let you take a shower?”

I raised my arm and sniffed. “I'm fine.”

“You did not just do that.”

“So that's it? I tell you I've missed you for eighteen months, and your response is to want to bathe?”

“You're right. Sorry, I just wasn't prepared for an onslaught of repo odor. Please continue.”

“Please continue,” I muttered back sourly. I filled him in on everything that had happened since he'd gone radio silent.

“Wait, you and my daughter are engaged?”
he interrupted, sputtering.

“Yes, Alan. Engaged to be married.”

“That's not … That is not a good—”