“Is he dead?”

“What?” I said.

“Is he dead?”

“Is he dead? Did you just ask me if he’s dead?”

Edwin pulled his coat tight around his body. “Oh God,” he said.

“What happened?”

“I don’t know.”

“Edwin, for God’s sake…”

“I don’t know what happened, Alex,” he said. “I swear.”

“Did you call the police?”

“No, not yet.”

“What?” I couldn’t believe it. “What’s the matter with you? Did you wake anybody up? Where’s the office?” It was a simple motel, seven or eight rooms in a row. It was called the Riverside, even though the St. Mary’s River was at least two miles east.

“I think it’s down on that end,” he said. “But wait a minute, Alex. Let’s think this through?”

“What are you talking about?”

“I mean, let’s think about the right way to do this.”

“Get in the truck,” I said.

“I don’t think we can leave,” he said.

“I have a phone in the truck, Edwin. Get in the truck.”

My truck was parked next to his silver Mercedes. There was only one other car in the lot. The owner of the place, no doubt, still blissfully sleeping, unaware that someone had been slaughtered in room six. Either he was the world’s soundest sleeper or the killer had used a silencer on his gun.

When we were both in the truck I fired it up and turned up the heater. I pulled the cellular phone out from under the seat. “All right, first we call the police,” I said. “Are you going to call them, or am I?”

“You’re real good buddies with the county sheriff, aren’t you, Alex?”

“I know the man. What does that have to do with it?”

“I just thought that if you called…”

“Edwin, did you see that sign back there that said, ‘Welcome to Sault Ste. Marie’?”

“Yeah?”

“What does that mean to you?”

“It means that we’re in Sault Ste. Marie.”