The Hunting Wind: An Alex McKnight Mystery Read Online Free PDF

imagine.”
    “Hey, we’re headed for Sault Ste. Marie, right?”
    “Yeah, Leon lives in a little town called Rosedale, just south of the Soo.”
    “I’ve never seen the Soo locks before,” he said. “I think we should go up there first, while there’s still daylight. Then we can go see Leon.”
    “What? I thought you said Leon was waiting for us.”
    “He’s not going anywhere,” he said. “Come on, you gotta show me the world-famous Soo locks. When am I ever gonna see them again?”
    “Randy, the locks aren’t even open yet. Not for another week.”
    “There’s another reason why I don’t want to see your partner yet,” he said. “I sort of have to tell you a little bit more about Maria first.”
    “Why? What are you talking about?”
    “It’s just . . . some stuff,” he said. “I want to tell you this myself, so you don’t get the wrong idea.”
    “Just tell me.”
    “Take me to the locks, Alex. Some things you can’t talk about unless you’re looking at water.”
    I shook my head and kept driving. “Why is this happening to me?” I said. “What did I do to deserve this?”
    Twenty minutes later, the truck was parked in front of the Soo Locks Park. In the summer, the lot would be full, and the observation deck would have maybe forty people on it. On this overcast April afternoon, with a cold wind coming up off the bay and blowing right down the St. Marys River, we had the place to ourselves.
    Randy stood on the observation deck, looking down at the locks. There were still great blocks of icefloating in the water. He was already shivering, with that poor excuse for a coat wrapped tightly around his body. But it was his own damned fault, so I didn’t feel too bad for him.
    “This is it, huh?” he said. “The ships come right through here, and then what, they get lowered in the middle here?”
    “Lowered if they’re going into Lake Huron,” I said. “Or raised if they’re going into Lake Superior. Twenty-one feet.”
    “How long does it take?”
    “Ten minutes maybe.”
    “Must be an impressive sight.”
    “When you’ve got a seven-hundred-foot freighter coming through here, it’s pretty impressive, yeah.”
    “It opens up next week, you say?”
    “Randy, are you gonna tell me about Maria before you freeze to death?”
    He moved up onto the cement bleachers, where there was at least a little bit of shelter from the wind. “This is going to sound a little crazy,” he said as he sat down. “Damn, this cement feels cold on my ass.”
    “It’s gonna sound crazy? How much more crazy can it get?”
    “Well, here it is,” he said. “Just let me tell you the whole story before you say anything, okay?”
    “I’m all ears,” I said.
    “Okay.” He took a deep breath. “In 1971, when I went up to Detroit, there were a few of us who got called up together. You remember Marvin Lane, the outfielder, and Chuck Seelbach, the other pitcher? A couple guys from double-A, too. Anyway, we were all new in town and kinda overwhelmed by everything,so we ended up spending time together, just hanging out in the afternoons, before the games. One day, we’re having lunch at the Lindell AC. It was a nice September afternoon in the big city, you know, so we’re just walking around down there in Corktown, feeling like hot shit ‘cause we’ll be going over to the stadium in a few hours for the night game. And we see this place, with this sign on the sidewalk. A big hand, with all these lines on it. MADAME VALESKA, SPIRITUAL READER . I guess she’d call herself a psychic nowadays. But back then, the sign said SPIRITUAL READER . It was one of those buildings with the stairways that go up the side. We all went up there, thinking we’d all get our fortunes told. See if we’d see any game time that night. You know, just as a gag. I tell ya, Alex, this place was wild. It had this incredible red wallpaper, and all these strange paintings on the walls. One was a guy hanging upside down, like on