Highway 61 (7 page)

I flipped back to TSN. None of the scores from the evening before had changed; both the Wild and the Timberwolves still lost. When I became bored enough, I switched off the TV and rolled over. I heard voices again. Only this time they seemed to originate outside the room instead of inside my head. I went to the window and pulled the drapes back an inch. Two men were walking side by side along the balcony. One looked like the man who had entered the office while Daniel and I were quarreling. The other was smaller and wore his blond hair biker style, flowing down his back. They spoke quietly. I couldn’t make out what they were saying, yet I heard their voices just the same. It made me wonder.

“If the girl had screamed, someone would have heard her,” I told the room. “Why did no one hear her?”

No one in the room replied.

FIVE

I was awake by seven o’clock, an altogether uncivilized hour for a man to be up and about—and I had done it two days in a row now! Personally, I don’t think people should get up before 10:00
A.M.
or go to bed before midnight. I’ve been told those are the hours that most people keep in France. However, I went to Paris with Nina not long ago, and I don’t believe it’s true.

By seven thirty I was on the road. I stopped at a Robin’s Donuts. I was tempted to order a Bismark or a French Cruller, but felt I would be betraying the World’s Best Donuts in Grand Marais, where I intended to stop on my way south. Instead, I settled for a Sausage, Egg, and Cheese Brekwich that tasted suspiciously like a McMuffin—that is, not very good. I sat at a table and stared out the window. I had such a long way to go, and I was already tired. I drank a lot of Robin’s Coffee, resisting the impulse to pollute it with cream and sugar. It tasted much better than the sandwich.

For some reason I was thinking about gas. My Jeep Cherokee was parked just beyond the window. I needed to gas up before I drove much farther. Probably I should give it a wash, too. It was pretty grubby after the long drive from the Cities. You could tell by the contrast where a hand had rubbed off the dirt just above the hinge of the tire carrier on the back. After I bought the Cherokee a few years ago, I had a heavy-duty rock bumper and swing-away tire carrier put on. This not only freed up storage space inside the rear compartment—which I rarely used—it gave the vehicle a tougher, more rugged look—which, of course, was essential, even though I almost never took the SUV off-road.

I sipped more coffee and finished off the Brekwich and continued to stare at the handprint. It took a while before my brain caught up to what my eyes were seeing. Yet when it finally did, all my internal alarms blared at once.

There’s a handprint above the hinge of the tire carrier of my Jeep Cherokee,
my inner voice shouted.

I could make out where the thumb and the fingers had rested.

Where did that come from?

I could have made it when I scraped the frost off my windows that morning, I told myself. I could have leaned against the frame …

No. The handprint was made with a right hand. I held the ice scraper in my right hand.

It looked like the print had been made by someone who had been leaning against the vehicle—the hand had come out to steady him, to keep him from losing his balance. It had to come from someone who was tampering with the Cherokee.

Had anyone been parked next to the SUV in the Chalet Motel lot?

I closed my eyes. In the image that formed behind them, the Cherokee was alone.

Funny thing about adrenaline—suddenly I wasn’t tired anymore.

*   *   *

The self-service car wash required “toonies”—Canadian two-dollar coins—and I had to dash across the street to an IDA drugstore to buy a few. The woman seemed reluctant to exchange them for my American money, which made me wonder just how sound the dollar was these days. Before returning to the car wash parking lot, I studied the street carefully. If someone was watching they were well hidden.

I crossed the street and went back to the Cherokee. Fantastic thoughts reverberated through my imagination as I started it up and drove it into the car wash.

What if there’s a bomb?
my inner voice asked.

It would have gone off when I started the car or when I drove out of the motel parking lot.

Are you sure?

No.

Pumping the toonies into the coin mechanism allowed me to close the front and back doors of the car wash. It was when I was hidden from view that I went to the wheel carrier. I found nothing. I got down on my knees and searched under the bumper and inside each wheel well. Still nothing.

Getting kinda paranoid in your old age, aren’t you, pal?
my inner voice asked.

“Probably,” I said aloud.

I went back to the wheel carrier and searched again. This time I cautiously ran my fingers along the black metal brackets and crossbars. I felt it before I saw it, a black pouch made from the same material they use in body bags. It had been carefully hidden between the crossbar and the wheel, attached with black electrician’s tape. I would never have known it was there if I hadn’t been searching for it.

I cut the pouch free with a pocketknife and opened it. There was a clear plastic bag inside. I could hear blood rushing in my ears and my own heavy breathing. My sight narrowed until I could see only what I held in my hands. By weight, I guessed it to be about three quarters of a pound of cocaine—make it a third of a kilo. The price of coke varies in the Twin Cities. If you’re buying from a black kid in the less desirable blue-collar neighborhood of Frogtown, you might pay seventy-five dollars a gram; from a lily-white kid in upper-crust Lake Minnetonka, it’ll cost you twice that. Anyway, figure an average of a hundred dollars a gram and I was holding thirty-five thousand dollars. It seemed like someone was paying an awful lot of money to set me up.

Who?

It had to be Daniel Khawaja.

If it is, then he’s a moron.

Given that I already had expressed my reason for coming to Thunder Bay to a detective constable of the police service and that nothing had come of it, to call the cops now—anonymously or not—and report that I was transporting drugs would have been silly. It would be like hanging out a sign announcing that I was on the right track. ’Course, criminals have done dumber things. Except, if it was a setup, why hadn’t I been arrested when I claimed the Cherokee or when I drove out of the parking lot? Unless the call had been made to the Ontario Provincial Police and they were waiting to jump me when I left the city and headed for the border.

Ahh, the border. Customs.

I slipped the cocaine out of the pouch, broke open the plastic bag, dumped it over the drain, and used the power hose to flush it, vinyl pouch, plastic bag, electrical tape, and all. Afterward, I searched the Cherokee as if my life depended on it. When I discovered nothing more, I cleaned the vehicle inside and out. By the time I was finished, it sparkled just like it had the day I drove it off the lot. All that was missing was the new car smell.

*   *   *

I approached the Pigeon River Border Crossing as if I were driving up to a parking lot ticket booth—that is, I was trying real hard to act casually. I powered down my window and handed the border agent my passport. Icy air slapped me in the face. I was sure that was what made me shiver.

“Good morning,” I said.

“Good morning,” the agent said.

He took my passport and examined it. It seemed to me that he examined it for a very long time. Meanwhile, a second border agent appeared out of nowhere and approached the rear of the Cherokee. In front of the vehicle and off to the right a third agent stood. It seemed to me that his hand was resting awfully close to his gun.

“Open the tailgate, sir,” the agent in the booth said.

“Certainly.”

I opened my car door.

The agent said, “Stay in your car, please.”

The snap of his voice startled me, and I quickly closed the door. I had no intention of leaving the Cherokee. I opened the door to merely make it easier to reach the release lever on the floor between the door and my seat. I pulled the lever. The agent in back of the Cherokee swung the wheel carrier out of the way, opened the rear hatch, and peered inside. The agent in the booth started asking the obligatory questions. “Do you have anything to declare?” I answered directly and succinctly. You do not joke with border guards. You do not behave rudely. You do not complain about the wait, question the procedures, dispute the legality of a search, debate border policy, or demand your rights as a citizen no matter how intrusive the guards might be. You do not rant about the government. You do not wear
LEGALIZE MARIJUANA
T-shirts. If you are smart you speak only when you are spoken to. For the most part, fear of terrorism has made border guards virtually untouchable. No matter which nation they hail from, they are tiny gods on earth with the power to ruin your vacation or your life with little provocation. So I sat there, with my mouth shut, waiting and watching, until the agent in back of the Cherokee closed the tailgate and returned the wheel carrier to its proper position, the guard in front of the car strolled away, and the agent in the booth returned my passport.

“Welcome home,” he said.

My heart leapt in my chest, and I felt a kind of warm tingling throughout my body. The same sensation had overcome me only once before and under similar circumstances. It was the first time I had left the country, flying down to Jamaica for a couple of weeks. When I returned, a female customs agent at Miami International Airport said the same thing—“Welcome home”—and I felt a moment of almost overwhelming euphoria, even though I hadn’t missed being home at all.

“Thank you,” I said.

I let my breath out. I had been holding it in for a while without realizing it. A few moments later, I was heading south on Highway 61, the border crossing receding in my rearview mirror.

“That went well,” I said.

Then I thought about the cocaine.

“What the hell?”

*   *   *

Five hours later, I parked the Cherokee inside my garage next to the Audi. I gave the wheel carrier a shake before I left, as if I were daring something to happen. Nothing did. Once inside the house, I set my overnight bag and the carton of donuts on the kitchen table. I gazed out the window to see if the ducks had flown south while I was gone. They hadn’t. The sight of them filled me with both pleasure and disappointment. I was glad that the ducks had seen fit to adopt me. On the other hand, hanging around so late in the year, they were pushing their luck. In Minnesota, winter was always just around the corner.

The clock above my sink read three fifteen. I was anxious to get Jason Truhler off my plate before I saw Nina, so I went to my home office and started making phone calls, although my first call had nothing to do with him.

“For cryin’ out loud,” Clausen said. “They’re ducks. You don’t think they know when to fly south?”

Doug Clausen worked for the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources. I had known him since college.

“You said they’d be leaving any day now,” I said. “That was a week ago.”

“It was four days ago, and nothing’s changed. Dang, McKenzie. How come I only hear from you when you’re worried about your dang ducks?”

“I’m just wondering what’s going on.”

“Yeah, you and all the dang duck hunters. I told you, the unusually mild weather has stalled the duck and goose migration from Manitoba all the way to Mississippi. It’s that simple.”

“But what’s caused the mild weather? Is it global warming?”

“I don’t know from global warming. It’s an evolving science, and it’s in its infancy. I do know that it’s an El Niño year, when there’s a warming of the central and eastern tropical Pacific waters, which brings rain to the Southwest and warmer winter weather to the northern states.”

“Still…”

“Look, if it makes you feel any better, there’s a change in the weather approaching. The migration forecast is for a major movement of dabbling ducks. Want my advice? Watch the Weather Channel.”

*   *   *

It had been about six years since I put in my papers at the St. Paul Police Department, and I still had plenty of friends there. One of them was a sergeant working in the missing persons unit named Billy Turner, the only black man that I knew personally who played hockey. He gave me about half an hour of his time, meticulously combing his databases, including his lists of unclaimed and unidentified bodies. Nothing matched the description of the dead girl in Thunder Bay.

I had sources across the river, too. Unfortunately, the Minneapolis Police Department was suffering through one of its periodic scandals—this one revolving around members of the SWAT team who were moonlighting as armed bank robbers—and paranoia had set in. That made it tougher to find someone who would sell me unauthorized information. However, a little groveling and the promise of a couple of unmarked fifties bought exactly what Billy Turner had given me for free—nothing.

Next I tried the Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension. Unlike the local cops, the BCA had a Missing Person Clearinghouse, a Web site that requested the public’s help in identifying and locating missing persons. The site listed twenty-eight missing persons, another eighteen that were considered runaways, two nonfamily abductions, and three unidentified bodies. One of the unidentified bodies, tagged Female 004, came close to matching the description of the girl in Thunder Bay, but the dates were wrong. Female 004 had been found naked in a drainage ditch four months before the blues festival.

*   *   *

I called Truhler.

“Who knew you were going to the Thunder Bay Blues Festival?” I asked.

“What do you mean?”

“It’s a simple question. Who knew that you were—”

“I don’t know,” Truhler said. “A lot of people, I guess. It wasn’t a secret.”

“When did you decide that you were going?”

“I had always planned on it.”

“When did you make your reservation at the Prince Arthur Hotel?”