Steve Hamilton - A Cold Day in Paradise

“The man was begging me. Said it was a matter of life or death to him. So I figured, hell, I’ll take him with me one day, just make him get me lunch, cover me while I went to the bathroom. I was just watching lifeguards, writing down their routine. I figured he would see how boring it was and forget all about it.”

“That was the place out on Drummond Island.”

“Yeah,” he said. “I watched those lifeguards for three days straight, wrote out a detailed report. I tried to do a good job for Uttley. I guess it wasn’t good enough, huh?”

I looked over at him. He was looking out the window into the cold night. The wind was whipping his crazy red hair in every direction.

“Julius is dead,” I said.

He didn’t say anything. He just kept looking out the window.

“Did you hear me? He’s dead.”

“I thought so,” he said. He looked at me for a second, and then looked at the dashboard. “The way you were talking about him.”

“He was stalking me for months,” I said. “He killed three men, including Edwin Fulton. He tried to kill me, too.”

Prudell just nodded.

“Doesn’t surprise you?”

He shrugged his shoulders. “I wouldn’t have expected something like that from him, but… hell, who knows anymore. I remember, he’d get this look in his eyes sometimes. Made me wonder why I ever let him hang around me.”

“I killed him,” I said.

He turned and looked at me. He didn’t say anything.

“I had no choice,” I said.

He just nodded his head.

I came to Fourteenth Street. “Do I turn here?”

“I think so,” he said. “I think I came this way. I remember having to look around for his street.”

We came to a stop sign. I could keep going north on Fourteenth Street or turn east on Eighth Avenue. “Which way?”

“I’m thinking,” he said. We just sat there in the truck. One single street lamp burned above us. It sounded eerily quiet without the rush of wind through the open window. “Go straight,” he finally said. “I think it’s up this way.”

We passed small brick houses built close together, most of them at least fifty years old. This was one of the original neighborhoods in the Soo, back when there was an Air Force base just across the highway, long before the casinos and the tourists. We went up Fourteenth Street, past Seventh and Sixth, and then we ran into a dead end. “I remember now,” he said. “I came to this dead end and had to turn around. Go back down to Sixth Street.”

I did as he said. I was getting disoriented in this maze of numbered streets. It wasn’t like in New York City, where all the numbers make some kind of sense, and where the streets run one way and the avenues run another way. “All right, now go to Thirteenth Street and take that all the way up until it ends.” We passed Fifth Street and then the road ended at Fourth. “Let’s try a left,” he said.

“It feels like we’re going in circles,” I said.

“Feel free to take over the navigation,” he said.

As we worked our way west on Fourth Street, the houses got smaller and smaller. Most of them had every window and door covered with plastic. With the bay and all its violent weather less than a mile away, I couldn’t see how some of these places were still standing.

“This is starting to look familiar,” he said. As we rounded a bend, a sign told us that were now on Oak Street. “Yes, that’s right,” he said. “I remember the tree names. There’ll be some more tree streets around here. I’m pretty sure his house is on one of them.”

We worked our way through Ash Street, and then onto Walnut and then Chestnut. Prudell kept staring out of the open window and then looking back across at my side of the street. “I know we’re close,” he said. “I know it’s in this neighborhood.”

“We’ve been down every street,” I said. The man was being more cooperative than I could have hoped, but even so my patience was starting to fray around the edges.

“No, we haven’t,” he said. “As soon as we see his house, I know I’ll recognize it. It had this awful siding on it. I can picture it in my mind. It looked like a mangy dog, that siding. All this hairy stuff on it like it was shedding. That house was such a dump. He was renting it. I remember him complaining about the landlord, all the stuff that was broken. The pipes used to freeze every night in the winter, he said. The way he talked about that landlord, I swear. All the things he said he would do to him if he ever got the chance.”

“He never tried anything?”

“I don’t think so. I think he was afraid to even talk to him.”

I thought about that while he looked down the street. It was a dark corner in an unknown neighborhood. The Soo is a friendly place in general, but you never knew who’s going to take exception to a strange truck cruising back and forth in front of the house. I was sure there were a lot of guns around here, high-powered deer rifles with scopes, shotguns.

“How about we keep moving?” I said.

“Wait a minute, now that I think of it, there was a street that I missed the first time through here. I didn’t even see it until I doubled back. I think it was another tree name.”

I turned the truck around and headed back up Chestnut. We took the right onto Ash, and went all the way down the street to Walnut. “This time, keep going straight,” he said.

“It’s just a dead end down here,” I said.

“No, there’s another street down here, see?”

He was right. You didn’t see it until you came to the very end, a side street named Hickory.

I took the left and saw the police car immediately. I held onto the wheel and swung the truck all the way through, like I was just turning around. “Where are you going?” he said. “His house is down that street.”

“There’s a police car in front of the house,” I said. “I don’t want them to see me.”

“Just cruise by like you’re looking for something else.”

“No, they might be watching for my truck,” I said. “I wouldn’t put it past Maven.” I went back up Walnut Street a few houses and pulled over.

“So what are you going to do?” he asked.

It was a good question. In the back of my mind I knew that there was only one thing I could do if I wanted to answer all the questions. There was no way that Maven would ever let me see those papers. The news clippings, the diary. I couldn’t think of a way to force him to show them to me. Technically, they were all pieces of evidence that would be used to close the file on three murders.

“I have to go inside his house,” I said.

“Are you totally insane?”

“I have to,” I said. “If I don’t, this is going to haunt me for the rest of my life.”

“You’re going to break into a sealed house,” he said. “You’re going to corrupt evidence. That’s a felony.”

“I don’t care.”

“There’s a policeman right outside the front door.”

“I know,” I said. It might be Dave, I thought, the same man who was keeping watch at my house. They could be sticking him with more offshift duty. But how would I know for sure unless I went up and knocked on his window? Excuse me, is that Dave in there? Any chance of letting me inside the house for a minute?

“So how are you going to get in the house?” he said.

“When you were here before, did you go inside?”

“Yes, for a second.”

“Was there a backdoor?”

He just looked at me for a long moment. “I think so, yes.”

“Good.”

“You really need to do this, don’t you.”

“Yes.”

“Then I’m coming with you,” he said.

“The hell you are.”

“I’m not gonna just sit here in this truck while you go breaking into that house. I’m an accessory already. I might as well go with you.”