Steve Hamilton - A Cold Day in Paradise

God, listen to yourself, Alex. Just listen to yourself.

I stopped in at the Glasgow for a late breakfast. Jackie made me one of his omelets, with onions, peppers, cheese, the works. It was too early for a beer, but not too early for one of his famous Bloody Marys. Or two or three of them.

I took the card out of my pocket and looked at it again. If I call him, I thought, he’s going to hang up on me. I put the card back in my pocket.

When I got back to the cabin, the man from the phone company was up on his ladder. I owed the phone company an apology for doubting them. “What the hell happened to your phone line?” he said. “It looks like somebody cut right through it with a knife.”

“Long story,” I said. I went into the cabin before he could ask me to tell it.

When he was done, he gave a quick knock on my door. “She’s all done,” he said. “It’ll be on your next bill.”

I thanked the man, and then I picked up the phone to make sure I had a dial tone. Without even thinking about it, I dialed Browning’s number. I didn’t even have to look at the card. I had the number memorized from all the time I’d spent looking at it.

The phone rang. What the hell, I thought. If nothing else, I can at least apologize to the man for yelling at him.

“Corrections, Browning speaking.”

“Mr. Browning,” I said. “This is Alex McKnight.”

“Ah yes, Mr. McKnight.”

“Listen, before anything else, I just want to say I’m sorry about the last time we talked on the phone. I was under a lot of stress, and I shouldn’t have taken it out on you. I know you were just following the rules.”

“That’s quite all right.”

“Everything’s pretty much over up here,” I said. “It wasn’t Rose, of course.”

“Of course,” he said. “He’s been right here the whole time.”

“Of course,” I said. “Although it turns out that there was a man up here who had been in contact with Rose. So I was just curious about how that might have happened. I’m sure you keep records on visits and letters. You probably even have to read the mail, right?”

“We do.”

“Listen, Mr. Browning, I know I don’t have any official reason to ask you this. But just for my own sanity, please, is there any way you can tell me if Rose has been contacted by a man named Raymond Julius?”

“Why don’t you ask him that yourself?” he said.

“Excuse me?”

“I called your Mr. Uttley this morning,” he said. “He wasn’t in his office, so I left a message.”

“He’s gone,” I said. “He left for vacation. Why did you call him?”

“I called him to tell him that Maximilian Rose has agreed to see you.”

I stood there with the phone in my hand.

“Mr. McKnight? Are you there?”

“Yes,” I said. “When can I see him?”

“At your convenience. Believe me, he’s not going anywhere.”

“I’ll come today,” I said.

“I thought you were in the Upper Peninsula,” he said. “That’s got to be, what, six or seven hours away?”

“I’ll leave right now,” I said.

“Our visitation stops at three o’clock,” he said. “You’ll never make it.”

“Mr. Browning, please,” I said. I couldn’t bear the thought of waiting. I had had enough sleepless nights for one lifetime. “There’s gotta be a way you can let me see him today. I can’t tell you how important this is.”

I heard him grumbling on the phone. “Mr. McKnight, you are one genuine pain in the ass, you know that?”

“Does that mean you’ll let me see him today?”

“Don’t kill yourself getting down here, you hear me? The speed limit is fifty-five miles an hour.”

“I’m on my way,” I said.

“Ask for me at the gate,” he said. “Otherwise, they’ll never let you in.”

I hung up and ran to the truck. I made it to the Lower Peninsula in less than an hour, with about 250 miles to go. I had the speedometer up in the eighties most of the way. If my truck didn’t go into a death rattle at ninety, I would have gone even faster.

I didn’t want to waste another minute. The answers, the resolution, my own sanity. It was all there waiting for me.

The State Prison of Southern Michigan, otherwise known as Jackson State, is sixty miles west of Detroit, past Ann Arbor, out in the middle of the state where the cows and the cornfields are. The prison itself is a city unto itself, a sprawling gray complex of cement and razor wire. I knew there were several wings there, with different security classifications. I was headed for maximum security.

I had driven straight through in just over five-and-a-half hours, stopping only once to fill up the truck and to use the bathroom. I splashed some cold water on my face, got back in the truck, and kept driving. The plastic on my window kept most of the cold air out, but it was still noisy. My ears were still humming when I finally turned off the highway at Jackson.

I gave the man at the gate Browning’s name. He looked at his clipboard, asked to see my driver’s license, and then let me through. I parked in the visitor’s lot and went into the waiting room. There were a hundred plastic chairs lined up in rows. A tile floor, a row of lockers on one wall, a glass trophy case on the other. I had the place to myself because the regular visiting hours were over. I gave my name to the guard sitting behind the bulletproof window. He took down one of the clipboards off the wall. There must have been twenty of them. Somewhere in the city of Jackson there was probably a man who made a nice living supplying clipboards to the prison. The guard looked at his clipboard and told me to have a seat.

I went over to the trophy case and looked inside. It was all marksmanship trophies, given out to the guards with the best scores. There was a trophy for each year, going back a good thirty years. It was interesting psychology, displaying these trophies to the people who were here to visit the inmates.

After a few minutes I heard a door buzz behind me. A man came into the waiting room. He was a large man with a crew cut. He looked like a drill sergeant. “Mr. McKnight,” he said. “I’m Browning.”

I shook his hand.

“Right this way,” he said. He led me back through the same door. We came to another window, with another guard behind it with more clipboards on the wall. “Just step through here,” he said as he walked through a metal detector.

“I’m going to set this thing off,” I said. I stepped through and heard the beeping.

The guard opened his door and handed me a little plastic tray, just like at an airport. “Put it all in here, sir. Watch, keys.”

“It’s a bullet,” I said. “It’s in here.” I pointed to my heart.

Browning and the guard looked at each other for a second, and then the guard pulled out his hand unit and waved it over me. It gave out a long wail when he passed it in front of my chest.

Browning stood there in front of me, rubbing his chin. “Rose did that?”

“Yes,” I said.

“Are you sure you want to see him?”

“I have to,” I said.

“Right this way.” He turned and led me down the hallway. I knew there were two types of visitation areas. One for family, with couches and chairs so you could sit with an inmate, even have physical contact if you only went so far. Take away the guards and it would almost look like a living room. But it was empty now as we walked past it. He took me to the other visitation area, the one you picture in your mind because you’ve seen it in the movies. A thick wall of glass, a pair of telephones. He led me to one of the booths, sat me down, and then left me there. The chair on the other side was empty.

I waited there for a few minutes, thinking about what was going to happen. All the time I was driving down here, I was thinking about what to ask him, about what questions I needed answered. I wasn’t really thinking about that day in Detroit when he shot me. But when that metal detector went off, it all came back to me. I’m going to see the man who shot me three times and killed my partner. Fourteen years later, I’m going to see his face again.