Misery Bay by Steve Hamilton Page B

today,” I finally said. “I’ll talk to you soon.”
    I hung up the phone and hit the road again. The sun was still out, but on the open stretches the wind was whipping the snow back and forth across the road. I kept driving, back through all of the little towns I had passed on my way out the day before.
    I drove straight through on M-28, all the way into Sault Ste. Marie. If I was going to lie to Raz’s face, I wanted to get it done with as soon as possible. I picked up the cell phone and called him again. Once again it went through to voice mail. I hung up and dialed the police department. I asked for Chief Maven. I had to wait a few minutes, but he finally came onto the line.
    “McKnight! Where are you? What’s going on?”
    “I’m just looking for Raz,” I said. “I’m almost back to the Soo.”
    “Did you call him?”
    “Yes, I did.” I resisted saying anything else. Like why the hell would I not do that first?
    “He’s not answering?”
    “No,” I said. Count to three in your head. “He’s not answering.”
    “Well, he’s at my house. Give him a call there. Maybe his cell phone’s dead.” He gave me the number.
    “Okay, I’ll try him there.”
    “How did it go out there, anyway?”
    “I found out a few things about his son. He had a lot of great friends.”
    “Is Raz going to be okay with what you tell him?”
    “Yes,” I said. “I think he will be.”
    “McKnight, so help me God, if you add one more ounce of pain to that man’s soul…”
    “Hey, you’re the one who asked me to help, remember? So save the attitude.”
    “All right, relax. I’m just saying…”
    “It was just like you were thinking, Chief. A total fluke thing. One bad day in his life.”
    “Are you just saying what you think you’re supposed to say?”
    You’re making this hard, I thought. There’s nobody else on this earth who can make things hard like you can.
    “It’s the truth,” I said. “I’ll tell that to Raz.”
    “Okay, then. Give him a call. Tell him I’ll be home in a few hours.”
    “I will, Chief.”
    I hung up before he could say another word, then dialed his home number. It rang a few times. Then the answering machine came on. It was Roy Maven’s wife, telling me they weren’t home just then but that they’d like me to leave a number so they could call me back. I’d met the woman exactly one time that I could remember. She seemed quite human and perfectly nice, and at the time I couldn’t help wondering how she had ever come to marry outside of her species. Maybe someday I’d get to sit down and ask her, but right now I had other matters to deal with.
    For the hell of it, I tried calling Raz’s cell phone again. No luck there, so I called Maven again and told him there’d been no answer at his house.
    “My wife helps out at the hospital,” he said, “so she might be there. But Raz should be at the house. I don’t know where else he’d go.”
    “Where’s your house? I’ll stop by and see if I can find him.”
    “McKnight, you’re giving me a bad feeling here. How come whenever you’re involved in anything, I end up getting an ulcer?”
    “Just relax, Chief. Give me your address.”
    He gave me a number on Summit Street.
    “I’ll call you right back,” I said. As I hung up, I tried to shake off the same uneasy feeling. He’s out taking a walk, I told myself. Or he’s asleep. Or maybe he and Mrs. Maven are out having a late lunch somewhere. There were a hundred different possibilities.
    I swung up I-75 and then got off by the college. Down Easterday, past the students outside taking advantage of what passes for a nice day in April around here. I’d seen so many young faces in just the past two days. I made the turn at Summit and went halfway up the block until I found the number I was looking for. I pulled into the driveway.
    It was a nicely kept raised ranch. Nothing too extravagant, but then I wouldn’t have expected anything approaching extravagance from a man