Read Online Misery Bay by Steve Hamilton - Free Book Online

like Roy Maven. The walkway was clear. The shovel was leaned against the house, right next to the front door. I went up the steps and rang the doorbell. There was no answer.
    I rang the bell again. Nothing.
    I tried the knob. The door was unlocked. I pushed the door open and took one step inside. Under the circumstances, I didn’t think Maven would mind.
    Okay, maybe he would have, but I did it anyway.
    “Hello? Anybody here? Raz?”
    The house was silent. I stood there for a while, thinking about what to do next.
    That’s when the odor came to me. Something I’d smelled before. Organic and metallic at the same time. A basic, instinctive foulness. It was the smell of death.
    The whole scene flashed before me in a fraction of a second. I imagined Raz hanging from a rope he had somehow tied to the ceiling. Taking the same way out. Following his own son into the abyss.
    Or no. He’s a cop. Marshal, ex-trooper, whatever the hell. He’s a cop and he’d do it the cop way, by eating his own gun.
    I went through the living room to the kitchen. As soon as I turned the corner, I saw Raz’s body laid out on the hard tile floor. There was blood all around him. His throat was cut open. He was lying facedown but his body was twisted as if he were still trying to get away. His eyes were still open. He stared right at me as if to accuse me of thinking even for a moment that he’d actually take his own life.
    I stood there for a long moment while it all washed over me. Then I pulled out my cell phone and called 911.
    I went outside and sat down on the front step. The voice on the other side of 911, a woman’s voice, wanted me to stay on the line with her until the police showed up. I told her to send somebody and that I’d wait right here and she started to argue with me so I hung up on her. I sat on the step and I looked out across the street at the other houses. All of them sealed up tight against the winter. We live in such a frozen wasteland for much of the year. That’s the strange thought that came to me as I sat and waited. It feels so cold sometimes, you wonder how anyone would choose this place. Yet we do. We live here, some of us for our whole lives, and the one benefit we should receive in return is that the violence from the rest of the world should leave us in our frigid state of peace.
    That doesn’t seem like too much to ask.
    The thought was interrupted by the first squad car. It was a Sault Ste. Marie police officer who got out and came hustling up the walkway. I knew the state police would be here soon, too. For a crime this big in a city this small, they’d all come running.
    I didn’t recognize this officer, and he turned out to be a youngster right out of the academy, so we had to go through the whole song and dance, with me putting my hands up and him patting me down. I was even thinking he might feel uncertain enough to go ahead and put the cuffs on me and I wasn’t about to complain because I knew that’s exactly what they taught this kid. He had no idea who I was and he hadn’t checked inside the house yet. For all he knew, I could be the killer myself, and I could even have an accomplice waiting inside to jump out and surprise him. So just like they drilled it into his head, whenever you’re alone and there’s any doubt at all, you put your man in cuffs, even if it’s just for a minute while you secure the scene. Even if you have to apologize while you’re doing it, you “hook” your man until the backup arrives.
    But that’s when Maven’s car pulled up and I suddenly had bigger things to think about than a pair of handcuffs.
    “Chief,” I said. “Don’t go in the house.”
    “What’s going on here?”
    He came up the steps and I tried to block him.
    “McKnight, get the hell out of my way.”
    “Chief, don’t. He’s dead.”
    He pushed past me and into the house. I stayed where I was. I didn’t follow him inside because I didn’t need to see it again, and there was nothing I’d