Dead of Winter

As Jesse drove north up Highway 44, which circled the lake, the homes grew sparser, giving way to bait shacks, trailers and towering pine trees. Up on the north end, Highway 44 was intersected with dozens of narrow roads. They were the driveways of the tourists’ properties, Louis realized. Most were gated or chained with signs that hinted at the humor and hopes of the people who dwelled within: BLISSFUL ACRES, TWIN PINES, THISTLE DEW, THE LOONEY BIN. Louis strained to get a glimpse beyond the thick trees but could see nothing. Jesse told him that the locals didn’t really mix much with the tourists.

“They look down their noses at us some,” Jesse said. “You know, like we’re a bunch of yahoos.”

Louis nodded.

“But we just smile and take their money,” Jesse went on. “We’re a big tourist destination here. Hell, if it wasn’t for the Eggers, Loon Lake would be just like all the other crappy little dots on the map up here.”

Louis was looking out the window.

“You see that fire station back there?” Jesse said. “Egg money built that place last year. Best in four counties. Bought the lights on the baseball diamond, too.”

It took forty minutes to drive around the lake. As they came back to town, Jesse pulled out a bag of peanuts. Louis politely refused his offer to share. Jesse expertly popped open the shells with one hand, his left hand steady on the wheel.

“Well, I suppose I should fill you in on how things are at our house.”

Louis hid his smile. Jesse had obviously seen to many cop shows.

“Gibralter’s a great chief,” Jesse said. “Runs a clean department and a clean town. What he says goes.”

“I already got that impression. What’s with the quotes?”

“What’d you get, Baudelaire or Churchill?”

“Baudelaire.”

“Chief’s a smart man. Stanford grad, majored in Asian studies.”

“Why’d he become a cop?”

Jesse shrugged. “He told me it was to piss off his old man but I don’t believe it. Chief was a captain in Chicago before this.”

“What the hell is he doing here?”

“You’re here, aren’t you?” Jesse grinned as he popped a peanut into his mouth. “U of M. Isn’t that supposed to be the Stanford of the East?”

“Harvard of the Midwest.”

“Maybe that’s why he hired you. A meeting of the minds.”

Louis squinted out at the snowy landscape. “So, who’s our shift supervisor?”

“We don’t have shift supervisors.”

“Watch commander?”

“Don’t need one. Chief’s always there late, sometimes till ten or eleven. Anything comes up after that, we call him at home.”

Louis shook his head. “A little thin at the top.”

“Chief likes it that way, lean and mean. Alpha units all the way. Gilbralter says if we needed partners he’ll get us dogs. After the chief thinks you’re broken in you’ll be on your own.”

“What about that thin guy I saw last night? He was wearing a sergeant stripe.”

“Ollie Wickshaw. Yeah, he’s a sergeant but he pulls a shift with the rest of us. He’s okay, a little strange. Into that occult shit. Supervision isn’t his strong suit. If it were up to him he’d rather be with his damn homing pigeons than human beings.”

Jesse swung the cruiser off Main Street and into a residential area.

“Anyone else have rank?” Louis asked.

Jesse shook his head. “There’s only nine guys total on the force, including you now. And we’re all on the street, equal in the eyes of the chief.”

“And God,” Louis added.

“One and the same, my friend.”

They drove on in silence for several blocks. Louis gazed out at the neat bungalows with their snowy yards. The sky was a brilliant blue and cloudless. He sank back into the seat, lulled by the heat.

What an odd department structure, he thought. A dictatorship, union-free to boot. But Gibralter seemed to be well liked by his men. Hell, maybe having one man at the top was better than the twenty layers of gold-plated bullshit most departments had.

The photograph on the wall of Thomas Pryce floated into his mind and he wondered if the man had died in the line of duty. But what could get a cop killed in a place like this? Walking into a bad domestic? That could happen anywhere.

“Thomas Pryce,” Louis said. “How did he die?”

Jesse didn’t look over at him. “He was shot.”

“On duty.”

Jesse’s jaw moved. “No, in his own house. Someone walked up and just blew him away with a shotgun.”

“Jesus,” Louis said. He wanted to know more but he sensed Jesse didn’t want to talk about it. Pryce’s death had been only a few weeks ago and he knew how long it took for a wound to scar over in a small department when a cop was killed. He had been to only one cop funeral, right after he started his fist job in Ann Arbor. He hadn’t known the man but he had felt the current of pain and anger that ran like some subterranean river below the smooth daily workings of the department.

“You get the guy who did it?” Louis asked.

“No,” Jesse said.

“So the case is still open?”

“Technically.”

“Who’s running it?”

“Nobody right now,” Jesse said. “We don’t have an investigator. That was Pryce’s job.”

“He was the investigator?”