Read The Hunting Wind: An Alex McKnight Mystery for Free Online Page B

said.
    “I could’ve, but you never know these days. People are suspicious. I didn’t get anywhere. So we still have a good two hundred and seventy or so we can try. It’s a lot of work. I think we should try to narrow it down first.”
    “How do we do that?”
    “Well, a birth certificate would be nice, because then we’d have the parents’ names at least. If they were immigrants like we think, there would be records. Problem is, birth certificates are very hard to get in Michigan. Most other states, all you gotta do is walk in the vital records office and ask for them. In Michigan, they’re not
supposed
to give it to you unless you’re one of the parents or a court officer. Although you never know. You’re pretty sure she was born in Detroit?”
    “She grew up in Detroit,” Randy said. “I gotta think she was probably born there.”
    “They’d have it at the state office in Lansing. You could stop there on your way down. They’d also haveit at the city clerk’s office in Detroit. It’s worth trying.”
    “We just go in the office and ask for her birth certificate?”
    “I think you’re gonna have to beg,” Leon said, “and hope you get a clerk who’s having a really good day.”
    “We’ll just turn on the charm, right, Alex?”
    I let that one go right out of the room.
    “Once you get to Detroit,” Leon said, “the first thing you have to do is go to that address on Leverette Street. The man who lives in that house right now is named—what was it?” He grabbed a pad of yellow legal paper off the bed and flipped through it. “Here it is. Henry Shannon.”
    “How did you find that out?” Randy said.
    “The city directory,” Leon said. “I called the Detroit Public Library, asked them to look it up. That’s the thing about librarians. Unlike most public servants, they actually
like
their jobs. So they’re usually a lot more helpful. She gave me everything she could find on that whole block on Leverette Street. I’ll give you a copy.”
    “So what about this Mr. Shannon? Did you call him yet?”
    “I called him a few times,” Leon said. “But he hasn’t been home. I did try calling a couple other numbers on that block, but I didn’t get very far with that. Somebody calling out of nowhere, asking about who might have lived on the block thirty years ago . . . it just doesn’t work over the phone. That’s the kind of thing you have to do in person. Go up to the door and let them see how nice a guy you are, tell them why you’re there, what you’re looking for.”
    “That’ll work,” Randy said. “We can do that.”
    “I did find out who owned that house in 1971,” Leon said. “A man named Michael Kowalski. The librarian at the Business and Finance desk put me through to the Burton Historical Collection. They’ve got city directories going back to the 1920s.”
    “Wait a minute,” Randy said. “That makes sense. They must have been renting the upstairs of that place. I remember . . .” He stopped for a long moment, looking into the past. “It’s coming back to me now. She said her father was trying to save some money so they could buy a house. He loved America, but everything was so expensive. Food especially. Sausages. I remember that. He hated to pay a whole dollar for sausages.”
    “Write that down,” I said. “Sausages.”
    “Needless to say,” Leon said, ignoring me, “there are a lot of Kowalskis in Detroit. I tried all the Michaels, but no luck. I think your best bet is still going to be knocking on doors in that neighborhood. You’re bound to find one person who’s lived there a long time, or at least
bought
his house from somebody who lived there a long time.”
    “Sounds like a plan,” Randy said. “This is going to be fun.”
    “And like I said, if you want to stop at the state office on the way down there, or maybe try the city office, you might get lucky on the birth certificate. Oh, and you’ve got to stop in at the library. Here’s the