Let It Burn Read Online Free Page A

to give the sergeant a call while I was sitting there, just to let him know I was closing in. He seemed a little surprised I had gotten down here so fast, but he gave me the address of a sports bar on Haggerty Road and told me he’d meet me there.
    I made the mistake of taking the secondary roads to get over to Haggerty, ending up in Novi. There’s a huge mall there, plus a million other stores all over the place, and as I sat in the traffic I couldn’t help remembering what the corner of Novi Road and Twelve Mile once looked like. Two roads crossing, fields on all four corners. A traffic light. Now that one corner had more retail shopping than the entire city of Detroit put together.
    More memories hit me when I finally got over to Haggerty Road. It was two lanes through the countryside back in the day, with a mom-and-pop store and a gas station every mile or so. More old-timer’s talk, I know, but damn it all, I swear it wasn’t that long ago. A place shouldn’t be able to change this much, this quickly. There was another strip of retail on every corner now, and every straightaway with enough dry land was lined with new housing developments. I didn’t ask myself where all of these people had come from. I already knew the answer. The people who lived in Detroit were moving out to the first line of suburbs, and the people who lived in those old suburbs were moving out here, in a great second wave. Or hell, maybe it was the third wave by now. Another few years and people would be moving to the moon, just to get away from Detroit.
    I found the sports bar. It was right on Haggerty, between a couple of restaurants and a movie multiplex. It was one of those places with seventy television screens. In the men’s room there were three more screens above the urinals. When I came back out, I saw my old sergeant standing at the door, looking for me.
    “Sergeant Grimaldi,” I said. “I would have recognized you anywhere.”
    I was being kind, I guess. He had lost most of his hair, put on a few pounds. He’d spent too much time outside without putting on his sunscreen. But I did truly believe I would have recognized him, even out of context.
    “Alex McKnight,” he said, looking me over. “What the hell, you don’t look any different at all.”
    “That means I wasn’t much to begin with.”
    “No, I’m serious. Do they have the Fountain of Youth up there in Paradise or something?”
    “Okay, enough flattery. Let’s sit down, okay?”
    We grabbed one of the high tables, with the high stools you have to be careful not to fall off of. There was an afternoon baseball game on over one of his shoulders. Not the Tigers. On another screen there was a soccer game. On another screen there was a news show. Just two guys talking with a running closed caption at the bottom if you really felt like sitting there and reading it. I ordered a beer, and the sergeant did likewise. I was already preparing myself for the fact that it would not be brewed and bottled in Canada.
    “I can’t believe you really came all the way down here,” he said, looking at me and shaking his head. “I mean, I know I offered to buy…”
    “I appreciated the call,” I said, “and it’s been a while.”
    “It’s what, a six-hour drive?”
    “Closer to five.”
    “Okay, so there’s another reason you’re here,” he said. “Me, I’d only drive five hours for one of two things. Money, or a woman.”
    “Well, there is somebody I’m going to see later…”
    “Aha. Okay, now we’re getting somewhere. Who is she?”
    The beers came then. I took a long drink. It tasted good after so many hours on the road, Canadian or no Canadian.
    “She’s an FBI agent,” I said. “I met her when she came up to the UP to investigate a string of murders.”
    “That does sound romantic.”
    I had to laugh at that one. “She’s a good cop,” I said. “Even if she’s a feeb.”
    “God, do you remember how much we used to hate those guys?”
    “I