I was just turning onto the highway to head back to Traverse City when a sheriff’s car came up behind me, moving very fast, its emergency lights on and flashing in an irritatingly ostentatious fashion. I eased over and the car followed me, stopped a dozen yards back. As I watched, Grant Porterfield and Dwight Timms got out of the car. The two of them were getting to be pretty chummy—it was almost cute.
Timms drew his weapon and pointed it at me. “Keep both hands on the wheel!” he shouted.
“Don’t worry,” Alan told me dryly. “You’re the Good Samaritan here.”
* * *
The county jail hadn’t gotten any more attractive since the last time I was there. I used my one phone call to ring up Kermit, asking him to please contact Schaumburg and Katie, and oh, by the way, come bail me out.
“Tomorrow,” Porterfield suggested softly. In theory he wasn’t supposed to be listening to my side of the conversation, but it was too quiet in the jail for him not to. “Nobody’s getting bail this late in the day.”
I was alone in the jail—the crime rate in Michigan drops with the temperature, which was why the sheriff had nothing better to do than harass the local repo man. Timms shut the bars behind me and then stood, grinning, like I was a new pet he’d just put in a cage. Porterfield didn’t smile, though, when he came down the narrow hall, carrying a chair that he put down on the stone floor, making a harsh scraping sound. Timms looked around for a place to sit and then, grunting, sort of leaned against the wall.
“Ruddick McCann,” Porterfield said with a sigh. “Did I not tell you no more repos in this area? Then you go and beat up poor Herbert Yancy. You know he is a good friend of mine?”
“I didn’t beat up anybody.”
“That’s not what he says.”
Alan groaned. I stared at the floor—if Yancy was telling people I put him in the hospital, I doubted anything I could say would make any difference. I’d go back to jail on a probation violation while the assault charges worked their way through the court system, and then I’d go back to prison.
“Look at me now.”
I glanced up into Porterfield’s small pitiless eyes. He had leaned forward, his face pressed against the bars. “I told you no more repos,” he said in an almost gleeful voice. “You disobeyed me. People who disobey me wind up right where you are now. We clear?”
I looked away. Timms banged on the bars with his stick. “Hey! Answer the sheriff!”
“Jesus Christ, Dwight! You about broke my eardrums!” Porterfield barked, backing away from the bars.
Timms turned even more pale than usual.
“You have absolute shit for brains,” Porterfield seethed. “Did you not see that my face was right there? That hurt.”
“Sorry, sir,” the deputy mumbled.
Porterfield stood up, grabbing the chair. “I imagine you’ll be our guest for some time,” he told me. “You think of anything we can do to make your stay more comfortable, you keep it to yourself.”
Timms smirked at me, and the two of them left. I stretched out on the narrow bunk and stared at the ceiling. “Well, at least I have a good excuse to give Schaumburg,” I muttered.
“If Yancy says you threw him off the roof, it is going to be your word against his,” Alan observed helpfully.
“I do know that.”
I lay there, feeling the jail cell get smaller and smaller, snuffing out any sense of the outside world. “What happens,” Alan asked me finally, “if Yancy does file assault charges? Would they still give you bail?”
“I imagine it will be easier for them to just violate me back behind bars for the duration of my probation.”
“God.”
“Yeah.”
“Okay, but what if it doesn’t go that way? All you did is show up to have a conversation. Maybe Yancy will tell them that.”
“In that case, I have to convince Robert Schaumburg that the reason I couldn’t make his appointment was legitimate. I could still wind up in jail.” Which meant, of course, that I could say good-bye to any chance of getting back with Katie. Or finding out anything more about Lisa Marie Walker.
* * *
Breakfast was one of those boxes of cornflakes I used to eat as a kid, where the inside is lined in wax paper and you pour the milk right in on top of it. I sniffed the small container of milk before I added it, using a plastic spoon to finish the cereal off in about three minutes. A small cup of orange juice sealed with foil made up the rest of the meal, all brought to me by a deputy I didn’t recognize. Alan slept through the culinary delights.
He was still asleep when the same deputy brought me lunch, and hadn’t yet awakened when, without warning, the man I’d come to think of as Deputy Mealtime unexpectedly opened the cell door, motioning with his fingers that I should follow him. I followed him out into the front room, where Kermit stood, reading public service posters. We shook hands formally, like men at a funeral. The deputy had me sign some papers and gave me my personal belongings, Kermit hovering nearby. We all were taciturn, almost surly—it seemed to fit the occasion.
Once I was fully processed by the sheriff’s department and certified safe to return to civilization, I followed Kermit outside to the repo truck.
“So?” I asked him.
“The guy in the hospital said you startled him and he fell off the roof. He said it wasn’t your fault; it was an accident,” Kermit told me. “And my lawyer filed a formal plaintiff with the court about the sheriff telling you not to repo. It’s illegal constraint of trade to tell you that you can’t do your job. This is a lawful business.”
I gave Kermit an appraising look. “Wow, Kermit, I’m impressed.”
He shrugged, but I could see he was pleased with the compliment. He told me my sister had followed him down in her car so that I could have the repo truck, which he had redeemed from the county lot—he and Becky were going to have a nice lunch at the Weathervane, one of the local restaurants. “You know what, I should do that. Take Katie there, I mean,” I remarked thoughtfully. Kermit had successfully maneuvered the obstacle course from engagement to marriage. Maybe I could learn a few tricks from him. “I need to make up for missing our date last night.”
“She said she understood when I told her what happened.”
“Thanks, Kermit.”
“Hey, uh, I decided to inquest the autopsy. On Uncle Milt, I mean.”
“I didn’t think you meant on yourself.”
“I just wanted to say thank you. For your advice. It helped,” he replied sincerely.
I told him to think nothing of it. “We’re family, right?”
Kermit didn’t reply, but his return gaze was full of surprise.
* * *
We said our good-byes, and I drove the short distance to the medical office where the former medical examiner, Dennis Kane, still practiced medicine. I told the woman at the counter that I didn’t have an appointment, but that I had been referred by Dr. Sheryl Johnston, and then I spent an hour filling out forms. The woman seemed displeased with my medical insurance, which only pays a claim if I’ve been hit by a meteor. I wrote on the checklist that the reason I needed to see a doctor was that I had a pain in my head.
When Alan woke up, he immediately began asking me strident questions about where we were and how we got out of jail, even though I clearly couldn’t answer him with people in the waiting room. I snagged a key from the front desk, went down the hall to the men’s room, and quickly filled him in, leaning in and talking to the mirror. It seemed slightly more normal to do it that way.
“Did you call Schaumburg?” he demanded.
“No.”
“Why not?”
“Because I want to talk to this Dr. Kane before I do anything else. He’s the missing link, I just know it.”
Alan naturally didn’t think that was a good idea. I invited him to stay silent, and returned to the waiting room.
Dennis Kane himself opened the door to the examining room. He was a medium-sized fellow with a long n
ose and jowly cheeks, pale skin, his white hair mostly clinging to the sides of his head, a few long wisps in front combed back. His glare was icy behind his wire-framed glasses. “Mr. McCann,” he greeted.
I got up, smiling in a friendly fashion, but he turned abruptly away from me and led me down to his office—a small cramped space with mahogany shelves and a couple of black leather chairs. He did not invite me to sit. He stood, his arms crossed. “Why are you here?” he asked curtly.
Haltingly, I explained what Amy Jo had told me. That Lisa Marie had gotten out of the car that night. That some man had “helped her.” I found myself talking faster as I came to the end of the story, because Kane stood very still, his mouth turned down and his eyes cold, not looking at all cooperative. “I thought you could tell me if there was anything in the autopsy, something that didn’t seem quite right to you at the time,” I finished lamely.
“Why in God’s name would you do this? Drag up this matter?” he asked harshly.
I blinked. “Because if what Amy Jo said is true, it means … It means—”
“It is not true,” he interrupted. He took off his glasses and shined them with his tie for a moment, and when he put them back on, his gaze was nearly hateful.
“I don’t know what you are saying,” I responded honestly.
“We both know exactly what I am saying. Lisa Marie Walker died as a result of your negligence. She was in the car that night. It’s despicable to suggest otherwise.”
“Despicable?” I repeated, feeling my anger rise. I thought of my years in prison.
“Yes, Mr. McCann. Because there was something I did not put in the report, something I left out, to spare the family. Something that proves without a doubt that you killed that poor innocent girl.”
13
Someone Knows Something
I stared at Kane. There was an odd reflection on his glasses from the overhead light, so that I couldn’t precisely see his eyes, but the rest of him was rigid and hostile. As for me, I was shocked silent—even Alan had stopped talking. I cleared my throat. “What are you talking about?” I asked faintly.
“You know goddamn well what I am talking about.” He shook his head, and the reflection flashed across his glasses. “I don’t know what you think you were going to accomplish here today, but you made an appointment under false pretenses, and I want you to leave.”
“Dr. Kane … I honestly don’t know what you are talking about.”
I’ve seen the look he gave me then—like I was the lowest life form on the planet. Usually I get it from people who are disgusted I am there to reinforce their obligation to pay back their loans, and I can often cheer myself up by driving away in their cars. Since that wasn’t an option here, I felt myself growing frustrated and angry.
“Just leave.” He made to move past me but stopped when I took a step, putting myself between him and the door. He peered up at me, a flicker of concern in his glassed-in eyes.
“We’re not finished here. You said I know something. Tell me what you think I know, Dr. Kane.”
His lips twisted into a disdainful sneer. “I never told the family the truth. I wanted to spare them the pain, Mr. McCann. But apparently your lack of humanity knows no bounds.”
“Tell me the truth.”
“You had intercourse with her that night. I recovered semen. Can you imagine? Bad enough that their little girl drowned in your car—first you got her drunk, and you … you…” He shook his head, unwilling to speak it.
“Is this true, Ruddy?” Alan whispered, shocked.
My heart was pounding. “Did you keep the semen?”
“What? Of course not! I would have had to put it into my report, then.” He glared at me. “Satisfied? Now, are we done here?”
“Yeah. We’re done.” I pointed a finger at his face—a single finger, when what I wanted to do was feel his teeth on my knuckles. “Just one more thing, Dr. Kane. You think that proves she was in the car? It doesn’t. It proves the opposite. The exact goddamn opposite.”
* * *
Alan’s questions followed me as I stormed out to the repo truck. “What are you saying, Ruddy?”
I got in and slammed the driver’s side door. “Goddammit!” I shouted at the top of my lungs.
“What? Tell me!”
“If that pompous ass had just put that in his report, you know what a difference it would have made?”
“No, what? How?”
“It means, I would have known something was wrong. Because I might have forgotten a few things about that night, but I promise you, I never had sex with Lisa Marie. You don’t forget something like that. I never so much as kissed her! I never would have pleaded guilty if I had known she had somebody’s semen inside her. Maybe we would have hired a private investigator to look into what really happened that night. Or the guy’s DNA might be on file with the cops. Maybe we would have found Amy Jo and gotten her story. Maybe somebody else saw something that night! My whole life would be different!” I started the truck and drove out of the parking lot, forcing myself not to let my anger express itself in a stomp on the accelerator. Alan’s silence was somehow pensive as he experienced me controlling myself. “What?” I snapped at him. “What’s your problem now?”
“You keep saying that,” he replied quietly.
“Saying what?”
“That your whole life would be different.”
“Well, it would!”
“I don’t disagree. But isn’t that sort of beside the point now? You can’t go back.”
“Are you saying I should just let this whole thing drop?” I demanded, furious.
“No! Of course not. I think something much worse happened to Lisa Marie than what anyone knows. There was semen inside her. She got out of the car before you drove into the lake, but she drowned anyway. We owe it to her to try to find out who did that to her. But it won’t change anything. You can’t get the years back. You’ll still be who you are.”
“You are wrong, Alan. It will change everything. You have no idea what it is like for me now. I used to go to the Dairy Queen or the bowling alley or the movies, and everyone was glad I was there. Men shook my hand, little boys looked at me like I was a superhero. Now people are embarrassed when they see me. The kids stare at me like I’m a suspect being interrogated behind a one-way mirror. All because of a fiction.”
Alan was silent. The old repo truck always shuddered its way down the highway, so much road noise that I couldn’t have heard the radio even if it had worked. This one was quiet, the only sound a faint buzz from the knobby tires finding their grip on the pavement. I listened to the buzz for a while. “You don’t understand,” I finally muttered.
More miles buzzed by. “Kane gave us something we haven’t had up until now,” Alan mused.
“How’s that?”
“Motive. Before, it didn’t make any sense. Lisa Marie wasn’t in the car. But she shows up in the water anyway. A man ‘helped’ her, but she still died. Why? It was a complete puzzle. Until you find out that she had semen inside her.”
“So she could have known the guy,” I suggested, nodding.
“Or he’s a predator who came across a drunk teenage girl and saw an opportunity.”
“Jesus.”
“We need to find out everything we can about Lisa Marie Walker,” Alan said decisively.
My phone rang. I picked it up and looked at the screen.
Time to talk to Dr. Schaumburg.
* * *
Schaumburg confessed that his conversation with Kermit left him slightly confused. “The man said you were reincarnated in jail.”
“Well … reincarcerated, maybe.” I gave a not-my-fault accounting of Herbert Yancy’s swan dive off his roof. “So obviously, I couldn’t make it to our appointment.”
“It does seem as though every time we set up a time, something extraordinary happens to prevent you from making it.”
“What, are you saying I wanted to roll the repo truck? To get arrested for some ri
ch idiot falling off his own roof?”
“You didn’t push him,” Schaumburg observed neutrally.
“No, of course not. I was just there to collect an account for the bank.” The ice I was skating on had grown thin under the truth, but it was still holding my weight.
“Could Alan have pushed him off?” Schaumburg asked quietly.
“What? Alan would have been afraid to even climb the ladder.” I snorted.
“I wasn’t afraid,” Alan tsk-tsked.
“Have you spoken to Alan lately?”
“Alan was just a voice, Dr. Schaumburg, something my brain made up.” And that, too, was the truth. A version of it, anyway. Though from the continued noises Alan was making, I could tell he did not agree.
Schaumburg grunted. “All right, let’s set a time for you to come in.”
We agreed that we would love to reunite Tuesday morning.
I finally got a chance to repo a vehicle that was parallel parked on the street, right in downtown Traverse City. I pulled a Ford Edge from between an old Toyota and a new Audi and was out of there in five minutes. The whole experience improved my mood. Alan fell asleep while I was jockeying the Edge away from the curb. How anyone could fall asleep during such a glorious repo was beyond my comprehension.
Katie was having a busy day, but eventually was able to return my call for a quick five minutes. “They arrested you?” she responded incredulously when I told her why I couldn’t make our date. “When the guy ran on a roof, and fell?”
“It was more like a jump, at least at first. The fall sort of came later.”
“Was Dwight there?” she practically hissed.
I delighted in being able to tell her yes, of course, he was the one who put the cuffs on me. Too tight, by the way.
“So that’s what this is all about?” she fumed. “Okay, I’ll talk to him.”
“What? No, don’t do that,” I urged.
“Why not? This is all some sort of juvenile power play. He calls you my bouncer friend. Like, ‘Heard anything from your bar bouncer friend?’ It sickens me.”
“Do you tell him I’m actually your repo friend?”
She laughed. “I tell him you’re my boyfriend.”