Read Online North of Nowhere by Steve Hamilton - Free Book Online

might have all turned out pretty badly. I’m glad you were there, Alex. I really am.”
    “If all this is true,” I said. “And I’m still not sure I can believe it. But if it’s true…”
    “Yes?”
    “Then I guess I’m surprised, Chief. Surprised and even a little impressed.”
    He raised his hands, sat back in his chair. If he had wished me a good day right then and sent me on my way, I might have left the place fully convinced he was a new man.
    But he didn’t do that.
    “Besides…” he said. He picked up a pen and twirled it in his right hand, looking down at the report again. “Even though you seem to show up every time there’s a major crime in my town, look at how well it turned out this time.”
    “How do you mean?”
    “Nobody was killed,” he said. “Nobody was abducted. I’m not out looking for anybody. I’m not dragging the lake for bodies. And the best part of all…”
    He looked up at me. He was smiling.
    “The best part of all,” he said, “is that you won’t even be involved this time. I won’t be seeing you every time I turn around. I won’t be hearing your name every time I pick up the phone. Because you…”
    He put the pen between his two palms and rubbed it back and forth, like he was a Boy Scout starting a fire.
    “…are not…”
    He kept rubbing and smiling.
    “…a private investigator…”
    I couldn’t decide which was more annoying.
    “…anymore. Am I right?”
    “Yes,” I said. “You’re right.”
    “This man Vargas,” he said. “You don’t work for him.”
    “No.”
    “You never will work for him.”
    “I’m sure I won’t.”
    “You’ll never work for anybody again. Not as a private investigator, anyway. Not in my town.”
    “Are we about done, Chief?”
    “I saw your old partner last month,” he said. “Leon what’s-his-face. I was getting some lunch and I saw him on Ashmun Street. He actually has an office there now?”
    “I wouldn’t know.”
    “No, I guess you wouldn’t. I asked about you, and he said you weren’t his partner anymore. Said you never wanted to have anything to do with private investigation ever again. Said you hadn’t even talked to him in quite a while. I gotta tell you, Alex, I sensed some hurt feelings there.”
    “I appreciate the insight,” I said. “Are we done now?”
    “I think we are. I think that covers it. Thank you for your help on this case. And if I’m ever out in Paradise, I’ll buy you a beer.”
    Maybe I should have left right then. But I couldn’t resist.
    “You know, Chief,” I said, “I’m only getting this secondhand, but I do believe that Vargas has a private investigator working for him.”
    He just looked at me. He stopped rubbing the pen between his hands. He stopped smiling.
    “But as much as Vargas wants to find out who did this to him, I’m sure he’d never ask his man to get in your way. I’m sure he’ll only be trying to help you. And if you think I’m helpful, wait ’til you see what this man can do.”
    “Who?” he said. “Not…”
    “The only private eye in town,” I said, “now that I’m gone. His last name is Prudell, by the way. Leon Prudell. You should remember that, because I think you’re going to be hearing from him. A lot.”
    I heard the pen break just before I closed the door.

Chapter Six
     
    It was a beautiful day in Sault Ste. Marie. For much of the year you couldn’t say that with a straight face. In the dead of winter, especially, it would be nothing but gallows humor. On this day, the day after the Fourth of July, Sault Ste. Marie was a better place to be than anywhere else I could think of.
    The rest of the country was hot that day. I saw it on the weather map in the paper that morning, all the nineties and hundred-pluses throughout the South, the West, the Midwest, even the Northeast. It was ninety-three degrees in New York City that day. It was ninety-two in Detroit. I’ve been in that kind of heat in Detroit. I’ve done it wearing a