I drove back downtown, past the overflowing bars and up the hill toward Charlie Razniewski’s old apartment building. Everything looked different without the waist-high snowbanks, but I found the building more or less where I remembered it. I parked the truck and took another breath of fresh air as I got out, hoping it would wake me up and help me get through the rest of this night.
I knocked on the door of the apartment. A few seconds later, the door was pulled open. It was Wayne, the kid I remembered as being Charlie’s best friend, even if that friendship had been complicated by the business with Charlie’s girlfriend. I blanked on her name for a moment, then it came to me. Rebecca.
“Mr. McKnight? What are you doing here?”
“Can I come in for a second?”
“Sure, of course.”
He let me in and I had to step around a stack of boxes just to get in the place. The big television was gone now, along with all of the other equipment that had dominated the far wall of the living room. Nevertheless, I could hear the thump of some kind of rock music coming from one of the bedrooms.
“Don’t mind the destruction here,” he said. “You sorta caught us in the middle of packing.”
“What’s going on? Is the school year over already?”
“Yeah, this is the last week of finals.”
“Okay, now I get it. All the parties in town…”
“Yeah, it’s kinda crazy, but I’m sorry, do you want to sit down or anything? I mean, what’s going on? Is everything all right?”
“Sure, I’ll sit down for one minute. I won’t take up much of your time, I promise. I just have a couple more questions for you.”
“Okay…” He looked confused, but he cleared off two chairs and half of the dining room table.
“How’s Rebecca?”
“Oh, she’s good. I’ll be seeing her in a few minutes. At the Downtowner.”
“That was the bar where I talked to everybody,” I said. “All of Charlie’s friends.”
“Yeah, that’s the one.”
“Well, I’ll get right to it, Wayne, so you don’t miss your date. A lot of crazy things have been happening ever since I first came out here. I now have reason to believe that Charlie didn’t really kill himself.”
I watched that one sink in.
“I don’t understand,” he said. “What kind of crazy things are you talking about?”
“There were more deaths, in Sault Ste. Marie, in Marquette, a few other places.”
“I didn’t hear about anything like that. Although, you know, I’ve got so much going on here at school…”
“Charlie’s father was murdered,” I said. “That’s the first thing I should really tell you. It happened just after I came out here.”
The color drained from his face. He tried to say something, but couldn’t make the words come out.
“You didn’t hear anything about that?” I said.
“Nobody told me. I swear to God.”
“You know what, I should have called back out here myself. I apologize. I guess I just assumed you would have heard.”
He shook his head. He was staring down at the table.
“So here’s my question,” I said. “I want to run a name by you…”
“Mr. McKnight, is that you?”
I looked up and saw one of the other roommates walking down the hallway toward us. It was the big kid, with the bad skin. He was carrying a framed poster of a woman in a bikini sitting on the hood of a red Ferrari.
“Bradley,” I said, pulling the name out of nowhere. “You’re Bradley, right?”
“That’s right, you got a good memory. What brings you to town?”
“Just asking Wayne a couple questions here, and actually, if you’ve got a minute…”
“Yeah, hey, I’m sorry about the loud music. Why didn’t you guys tell me you were talking out here?”
He leaned the poster against some boxes and retreated down the hallway.
“Guys talking out there and they don’t even tell me I should turn the music down…” His voice trailed off as he went back into his bedroom. That was the other thing I remembered about him. That kid was a real motormouth.
“He’s actually a great guy,” Wayne said. “You just have to put up with a few things. Like his fine taste in art.”
I smiled at the comment and looked down at the artwork in question. Hot girl in bikini, hot sports car. How can you go wrong?
That’s when I noticed what was behind it. It wasn’t one framed poster he was carrying. It was two framed posters. He had fanned them out when he leaned them against the boxes. I got up and pulled the first poster so I could see the second in its entirety.
A young Clyde C. Wiley, sitting on his bike. It was the movie poster for Road Hogs.
“Okay, I’m all set,” Bradley said as he came back down the hallway. “What kind of questions do you have for me? I hope it’s not geography.”
I put the poster down.
“Wayne,” I said, “didn’t you say you have to go meet Rebecca?”
“Well, yeah, but-”
“Go ahead. You don’t want to keep her waiting.”
“It’s really okay, she’s going to be-”
“Just get out of here,” I said to him. “Tell her hello for me.”
He stood there for one more awkward moment, then he grabbed his coat and left. Bradley had picked up on the sudden change of mood. He stood there looking at me and for once in his life he wasn’t babbling away.
“Sit down,” I said.
“What’s going on?”
“Just sit down.”
He did as he was told. I took my own chair back. I looked at him across the table and waited a few seconds.
“Mr. McKnight, tell me what’s going on.”
“You know, you complimented me on remembering your name, but you picked up my name right away.”
“You came out here to ask all those questions about Charlie,” he said. “Of course I remember you.”
“But I had a lot more names to remember. That’s what you’re saying.”
“You must have talked to a dozen people that night. So, yeah.”
“I think Bradley’s a fine name. Maybe that’s why I remembered it.”
“Um, okay. Thanks?” He was looking more rattled by the second.
“Good, strong name. Bradley. It’s distinctive. Don’t you agree?”
“Um, yes.”
“Just tell me one thing,” I leaned in for the kill. “Is Bradley your real name?”
“Yes.” He said it without blinking, and he looked genuinely surprised at the question.
“Where’d you get that poster?” Time to switch gears.
“A poster shop. I know it’s kinda dumb.”
“Not the girl and the car. The other one.”
“What, the movie poster?”
“Yes, the movie poster.”
“RJ left it here.”
“RJ?”
“Our other roommate. You met him. He left it here so I figured I could just take it. Is that a big problem? If you don’t think I should have taken it, why don’t you just-”
“Bradley,” I said. “Shut up a second. Where’s RJ?”
“I told you, he left.”
“When?”
“Like a few weeks ago. Three weeks? Four weeks?”
“Okay, wait, stop.” I had ten questions in my mind and I had to take a moment to put them in order. “Where did he go?”
“I don’t know. He didn’t say where he was going.”
“He just left? Without saying a word?”
“Yeah, pretty much. It was kinda weird.”
“Okay,” I said. “Okay. RJ. Yeah, I remember him now. Tall guy, dark hair?”
“Yeah…”
“And those initials. RJ…”
I stopped dead. I didn’t even have to ask him, but he told me anyway.
“Robert James,” he said. “Everybody called him RJ.”
“His last name?”
“Bergman.”
“Son of a bitch.” I slapped the table loud enough to make him jump.
“What’s the matter?”
“I was right here. Right in this apartment. I talked to him. I asked him questions.”
“You’re starting to scare me here. What’s going on?”
“This is very important,” I said. “You have to help me figure out where RJ is right now.”
“I told you, he left. He just didn’t come back one day.”
“Come back from where?”
“Well, he was always leaving for a few days at a time. He said he was going to the cottage for a while.”
“The cottage?”
“Well, that’s just it. He said he was watching a house for a professor of his who retired and moved down south, but he’d never say where the cottage was. I asked him about it once and he said he didn’t want all of us going up there and trying to have a big party or something. He was kind of a strange guy sometimes-have I said that yet?”
“I believe you, but get back to that cottage. Do you think he could be up there right now?”
“Maybe. I don’t know. It’s just weird because I haven’t seen him around at all since what, the beginning of the month? Like right after you came out here. But how do you just ditch all your classes like that?”
“I got news for you,” I said. “RJ left school last year.”
“That’s impossible. He lived here. He was going to school. He went to class every day.”
“Did you have him in any of your classes?”
“No. I’m electrical engineering. He was video production or something like that.”
“So you never actually saw him attending an actual class.”
“No-but wait, that’s just weird, then. What kind of person would pretend to be in college and not go to any classes?”
“Let me ask you something else,” I said. “How come RJ doesn’t have this place listed as his official address?”
“Well, technically, we’re only supposed to have three people in this apartment,” he said, looking a little sheepish. “When RJ moved in, he offered to double up with me in my room, even though it only had the one desk.”
“And you guys agreed to that?”
“He was paying the same amount of money, even though he didn’t have a desk or much room for anything really. So it made everybody’s rent lower. I know we probably shouldn’t have done it.”
“Don’t worry about it,” I said. “How did RJ and Charlie meet, anyway? Were you here then?”
“No, but it sounds like they went way back, to like freshman year. Funny, though, they never seemed to have that much in common. I’m not sure how they ever decided to live together.”
Maybe one of them just had way too much motivation, I thought.
“One last thing,” I said. “RJ’s got a cousin named Sean Wiley. He lives down in Bad Axe. You ever see him up here?”
“No, but I think I’ve heard RJ talking to him on the phone.”
“How often did that happen?”
“I don’t know. Once every couple of months, maybe? I’d answer the phone sometimes when he called. He always seemed like a nice guy.”
“Yeah, he is,” I said. “There’s a good chance he’s with RJ right now. So is there any way we can figure out where that cottage is? You said he was looking after it for a retired professor. Do you know which one?”
“No, sorry.”
“We’d have to go through his records and find out all the classes he took. Then we’d have to get hold of those professors…” I was working it through in my mind, talking it out, trying to find an angle.
“I think it’s on a lake,” he said. “Does that help?”
“Yes, it does. Which lake?”
“I don’t know. He just said it that one time. The cottage is on a lake and ‘I don’t want anybody else coming up there having a big party and no, you can’t come with me because I’m the only one who’s allowed to go there.’”
“He said that? Those exact words.”
“Pretty much.”
“He said a lake. Not the lake.”
“Yes. A lake.”
“Because if he said the lake, it would be Lake Superior, right?”
“Right. There’s only one the lake around here.”
“Okay, so a smaller lake,” I said. “And did he actually say, what did you just say, now, he didn’t want you guys coming up there to have a party?”
“He said up, yes.”
“You’re sure?”
“Yes. He said up.”
“What kind of car does he drive?”
“A junky old Subaru. Black.”
“So a black Subaru,” I said, “sitting next to a cottage on one of the inner lakes, north of Houghton. I wonder how many there are.”
“You want to see a map?”
I smiled at him. My first real smile of the whole day. I was sure it would probably be my last, but for that one moment I felt almost human again.
“Bradley, you are a good man to have around,” I said. “Don’t let anybody ever tell you otherwise.”
I was about to get up. Then I thought of one more thing.
“Do you remember that story you told me about how Charlie’s father was giving him a hard time about switching to forestry?”
“Was that me?”
“Yeah, don’t you remember? You said his father didn’t understand why he’d give up law enforcement and go study forestry? It was a big thing between them? They had a big fight about it?”
Looking back on it, it sounded to me now like somebody was trying to make Charles Razniewski Sr. feel one hundred percent responsible for his son taking his own life. Like the ultimate twist of the knife.
“I have a bad habit of just saying stuff without thinking, Mr. McKnight. I really should have kept my mouth shut.”
“But did Charlie really say those things?”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean, did Charlie really complain that much about his father?”
“Well, he didn’t really say it to me so much.”
“Didn’t say it to you?”
“No, now that I think of it, it was RJ he talked to most of the time. I don’t know, maybe RJ might have said something to me about it. Like I said, I should have kept my mouth shut.”
But you didn’t, I thought. RJ knew you wouldn’t. In case it ever came up in the future… he didn’t have to say a thing about it, just put a quarter in your slot and stand back. Like a director feeding lines to one of his actors.
A few minutes later, I was back in my truck. I had a good map of the Keweenaw Peninsula on the seat next to me. I called Agent Long on my cell phone.
“What the hell’s going on?” she said. Her voice broke up slightly, making me believe she was still in her car. “Where are you?”
“Robert James Bergman is most likely somewhere north of Houghton right now. Sean could very well be with him. If they’re up here, they’re in a cottage on one of the interior lakes.”
“Wait, what? What are you talking about?”
“Just listen to me. I assume you’re pretty close by now, but you really need to get some other people up here right away. I’ll keep my cell phone on, although I don’t know how good the signal will be once I leave Houghton.”
“Alex, damn it, I want you to stop right now.”
“Just get up here. I’m the one with the head start, and we’re gonna need all the manpower we can get. Bergman’s car is a black Subaru. Sean’s driving a vintage Corvette, mint-green.”
“Alex-”
“A mint-green Corvette. Did you hear me? That should be easy to spot.”
“I got it, I got it.”
“Did you hear from Chief Maven?”
“It’s looking better,” she said, her voice softening. “They think his daughter will be okay.”
“That’s great to hear. Swing and a miss this time for the evil bastard, huh?”
“Alex, you sound like you’re losing your mind. You’ve got to let us catch up to you. You shouldn’t be up there alone.”
“I shouldn’t be up here at all, you mean. But thanks.”
“For the last time-”
“Call me when you get here,” I said. Then I ended the call.
It was almost midnight now. It was dark and I was exhausted and I had no real idea where I was going. No sensible person would have gone any farther. Not another foot.
I put the truck in gear and took off.