Steve Hamilton - Misery Bay

“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.

I crossed the bridge over the canal, which was really just the western arm of Portage Lake, thinking this was probably not the lake I’d be looking for. Even if you had a cottage on the other shore, you’d say it was “across the lake” or something like that. You wouldn’t say it was “up on a lake.”

I went up through Ripley and Dollar Bay, each town asleep now in the dead middle of the night. Not long after that, I started to see the dark water of Torch Lake to my right. It was the biggest lake on my list, and from the looks of the map it was completely surrounded by paved roads. It probably had more cottages on it than all the other Keweenaw lakes combined, but here again I started thinking that this wouldn’t be the lake I was looking for. It was attached to Portage Lake, after all, and really still part of the greater Houghton-Hancock area. If you happened to have a cottage there, I still didn’t think you’d say “up on a lake.” It just didn’t feel “up” enough. So I kept going, passing driveway after driveway, and eventually starting to regret my decision to skip all of them. It’s a pretty damned long lake, I told myself. You’ve been driving a while and it’s starting to feel kind of “up” now.

I stayed with my original call. If I had started going down every driveway here, I would have never made it past this lake. So when I got to the top of it, I swung east and headed down the county road toward Rice Lake. The map showed it surrounded by maybe three or four miles of access road. When I got to it, I started nosing my way down each driveway until my headlights lit up the cottage and whatever vehicles might be nearby. It would have been a hell of a lot easier in the daytime, or even in the middle of winter when I’d be able to see which driveways had been plowed or driven down recently. In late April, with the snow mostly gone, it was a ridiculously slow process. Still, I kept imagining Bergman in one of these cottages, not even twenty-four hours gone by since the attack on Olivia Maven. And Sean Wiley on his way up here to find him, with a fair chance he knew exactly where to go.

Another driveway, another cottage. Most of them still closed up for the winter so I had that going for me, at least. A closed-up cottage meaning no vehicle most of the time. Although whenever I saw a garage, my heart sank, because that meant there was no way to know for sure unless I drove all the way down, got out of the truck, and peeked inside.

It was 1:30 in the morning now. I was starting to lose steam. I kept telling myself one more driveway, one more driveway. This next one could be it.

When I’d circled Rice Lake, I dropped down to Mud Lake. It was tiny and only a mile away, with a handful of cottages on the northern shore. I ran through those in a matter of minutes. Then I doubled back up through Calumet and left Houghton County. I was in Keweenaw County now, the end of the line, the only piece of land left, surrounded on three sides by Lake Superior. I started wondering where Agent Long was, whether she was close or still an hour away. But when I looked at my cell phone there was absolutely no signal at all.

It was two in the morning when I turned onto the long road to Lake Gratiot. I knew the lakeshores would be less and less populated now, which meant fewer cottages to check but more distance to drive between them. One thing I knew for sure-if you owned a cottage on one of these lakes, it was definitely up on a lake.

The cottages on Lake Gratiot were concentrated on the western shoreline, but I had to keep driving down separate access roads to get to them. I was halfway through the lake when I pulled down a driveway and saw an old black Subaru parked right next to a small cottage.

This is the one, I thought. As I got out and walked slowly down the rest of the driveway, it occurred to me that I had come this far with no good idea about what I’d actually do when I found the place. Another typical genius move on my part.

The car was unlocked, of course, because who locks a car at a cottage on a remote lake in the Upper Peninsula? It’s not like somebody’s going to drive up and break into it, even though that’s exactly what I was thinking I’d need to do. It was either that or go look in the windows. I figured if it was me sleeping away in my cottage, I’d prefer the first choice over the second.