I had known many bookmakers back in Detroit. I could remember arresting two of them. They took it in stride. It was part of the deal. You get picked up, you pay your fine, you go back to your business. Aside from that, it was a pretty monotonous way to live, sitting by your phone all evening handling bets. Most of a bookmaker’s customers are regular people. Some are cops even. As criminals go, a bookmaker is practically an upstanding member of society. So why did this guy get slaughtered in his motel room?

He didn’t pay someone. Somewhere up the line, somebody got it in their head that this guy was taking liberties. So they took him out. I’m sure it happens. Not every day, but it happens.

Whoever it was, the killer obviously had it worked out ahead of time. He probably used a silencer, after all. So why cut his throat? You just shot him in the face. If he’s not dead already, he’s dead within two minutes. Why make a mess of the place? Somebody who kills people for a living doesn’t do that, not unless it’s a message. To other bookmakers who might make the same mistake? Maybe. Or maybe it was just personal.

I threw a few rocks in the water until my shoulder complained. The sun went behind a cloud, the wind started to pick up again. The waves started to hit the rocks with a littie more feeling. As I started to walk back I picked up a petoskey stone and put it in my pocket for good luck.

I walked a lot faster on my way back to the cabin. Having gone over it in my mind, having put some distance between myself and a random act of violence that had nothing to do with me, I felt a little better. I walked over those rocks like a man who had someplace to go again. And besides, I was starting to get too damned cold.

I watched for hunters this time as I walked through the woods. The six cabins I owned were strung out down an old logging road. My old man had bought this land back in the early sixties, came up here every weekend, clearing the trees and planning his first cabin site. He built them the old-fashioned way, the “right way.” You take some good solid pine and you scribe it all the way across with a chain saw so that each log fits perfectly on top of the other. He didn’t do any chinking at all. That wouldn’t have been the right way.