Free A Cold Day in Paradise by Steve Hamilton Page A

outside, and locked the door. “I’m going to have to miss your phone call tonight,” I said to the wind. “Whoever you are, if you call me in the middle of the night, you’ll just hear the phone ring four times and then you’ll get the answering machine. Maybe I should change my message. ‘If you’re a homicidal maniac calling to fuck with my head, please press one. Everyone else, please press two.’”
    I went to the truck and sat in the driver’s seat for a few minutes. Finally, I got back out of the truck and went into the cabin.
    I dug through the back of my closet, throwing clothes and boots in the air until I found what I was looking for. I put a bullet in each of the six chambers and stuck the gun in my belt.

C HAPTER S IX
     
    “ G OD, THIS FEELS so good, Alex,” Edwin said. “I feel like a free man now.” He was sitting in one of the overstuffed chairs in front of the fireplace, his feet up on a leather hassock, brandy snifter in one hand, a cigar in the other. I was sitting in the other chair, looking into the fire. I had a brandy, too, but I had taken a pass on the cigar. “It’s kind of funny, isn’t it,” he said.
    “What’s funny?”
    “The way things work out. Something so … horrible. And yet it turns out to be the best thing that ever happened to me. It’s like, have you ever seen a top spinning, and it starts to get wobbly and out of control?”
    “Uh-huh?”
    “And then it runs into something,
bam
, and suddenly it’s spinning smoothly again? That’s what happened to me.”
    “Okay,” I said. “Good.”
    “No, I mean it,” he said. “I have absolutely no urge to gamble anymore. It’s completely gone.”
    “If that’s really true, then I’m glad, Edwin.”
    “Of course it’s true,” he said. He got up to put another log on the fire. There was a deer head with a twelve-point rack mounted on the wall above the fireplace. I wondered if there was anyone in this world who would think for a second that Edwin had shot that animal himself.
    When he sat back down, he said, “So, are you going totell me what’s going on? Why did you want to know about the last time I saw Tony Bing?”
    “Edwin, let me ask you something first. Have you seen anyone around lately who seemed strange or suspicious in any way? Someone who may have seemed to be watching you or following you around?”
    He thought for a moment. “No, I don’t think so. I mean, I haven’t noticed anyone like that. Should I be keeping an eye out?”
    “Maybe,” I said. “Just be aware. And be careful.”
    “What’s this all about, Alex?”
    “I’m not sure, Edwin. I don’t want to alarm you more than I have to. And I certainly don’t want to scare your wife or your mother. Let’s just say that I have reason to believe that there
might
be someone out there who’s watching you, or watching me, or both. Someone who might have been connected to that murder.”
    “Does Chief Maven know about this?”
    “He knows,” I said.
    We both watched the fire for a minute.
    “Is there any chance of you going back down to Grosse Pointe for a while?” I finally asked.
    “Do you think we should?”
    “It might be a good idea.”
    “I don’t want to leave,” he said.
    “What if I
really
thought you should leave, Edwin?”
    He let out a long stream of smoke. “We’re not leaving, Alex.”
    “Okay,” I said. I didn’t know what else to say.
    We sat there in silence again. A log popped and sent a spark into the room. Edwin sat there watching it fizzle on the carpet, burning a little black hole. He made no move to stop it. He’d probably just call someone the next day and have the whole room redecorated. “I am gladyou’re here, though,” he said. “I was just about to apologize for my mother.”
    “She’s just looking out for you.”
    “I know,” he said, “but I thought it was so silly, making you stay here tonight.”
    “It’s not a problem.”
    “Although I have to say, if this is what it took