“That’s it? That’s all they said?”
“The kid wouldn’t give us his name or anything. We kept trying to talk to him, but he was just totally silent, so we had to call him in as a young John Doe and they said, oh yeah, we think we know who that is. Bring him up to St. Ignace. I don’t think we ever found out why they wanted us to bring him all the way up over the bridge at that point. We probably didn’t even care anymore. We just took him up and dropped him off and…”
“You used the bathroom.”
“We used the bathroom. Naturally. It’s a long trip. Got back in the car. We must not have stuck around to find out who the kid was, or how he ended up on the expressway. At that point, we had a long ride back and we were both pretty fed up with everything. We just got back in the car and went back to Lansing.”
“But that would have been logged, right? Picking up the kid? It would be in your daily records.”
“Well…” He closed his eyes and rubbed his forehead. “Maybe, maybe not. A day like that, that’s the kind of day you might not even bother, you know? We didn’t really do anything. We just went on this stupid errand and then we brought the car back and then we probably just went out and had a drink and bitched about the job. I think making sure all the paperwork was squared away was probably pretty low on our list of priorities. That wasn’t the only time it ever happened, believe me.”
“Wiley was trying to help them get away,” I said. “He went up there and worked over his son-in-law, and the daughter and grandson were supposed to leave. They must have gotten separated from each other somehow.”
“Wiley was helping them escape,” Maven said. “My God. The kid made it all the way to the Lower Peninsula and we brought him right back. Just like he said, we dragged him back to hell.”
“You had no way of knowing. You didn’t do anything wrong.”
“Tell that to the kid going back to hell.”
“You don’t have to feel guilty, Chief. You or especially any of those other men and their families.”
“Okay,” the doctor finally said. “Can we get back to treating your bullet wound now?”
Maven stood there for one more awkward moment, maybe trying to work it out, have it make sense, say something else about it, or God knows what. But the doctor went back to taking my blood pressure and Maven left the room.
The agents showed up later that day. Or at least they showed up for the first time since I was conscious.
“I’m getting the regular parade,” I said. “It’s like the end of The Wizard of Oz.”
“Which one am I?” Agent Long said. “The scarecrow?”
“No, they were back to regular humans when Dorothy woke up, remember? Either way, I believe I owe you both a big thank-you.”
“Going up there by yourself was probably not a great idea,” Agent Fleury said.
“It seemed like the thing to do at the time.”
“I’m serious,” Fleury said, stepping a little closer to me. “It was reckless and stupid. But you sure as hell paid for it.”
“He knows he’s an idiot,” Agent Long said. “Give him a break.”
He kept standing over me, and I couldn’t help but wonder if he was picturing a golden opportunity to take down Bergman himself going down the tubes. But then he surprised me.
“He filmed the whole thing,” he said. “Every second.”
“I know.”
“We watched it. The film was a little wet, but we were able to get it developed.”
“Already?”
“It doesn’t take long.”
“So how was my performance?”
He looked at me and shook his head. “I’ve never seen anything like it, Alex. I don’t know many men who would have survived.”
“No, I think Agent Long summed it up best. I’m just an idiot.”
He put out his right hand. I shook it.
“Time to get some more rest,” Agent Long said. Agent Fleury left first. She stuck around for another few seconds, just long enough to touch her hand to my face. She shook her head at me. Then she was gone.
Vinnie came out once to see me, bearing greetings from Jackie, along with a single bottle of Molson. Leon and Eleanor drove all the way out there, too. As soon as Eleanor saw me sitting there in that hospital bed, I could tell she felt terrible for me. I could also tell she felt vindicated in her belief that only men who are both single and mentally unstable should ever consider doing PI work. I knew Leon would be hearing about it all the way back home.
The doctor told me I was doing well. The wounds were healing and there were no signs of infection. He removed the tube from my side and let me actually get out of bed to use the bathroom.
On the fourth day, Agent Long came back into my room. This time she was alone.
“Where have you been? I was starting to worry about you.”
“I’m here to take you home.”
“Thanks, but I have my truck. They brought it down here for me.”
“Yeah, and you can’t drive it yet. So my partner dropped me off here. I’ll take you to Paradise and then he can pick me up there. Then we’ll go back to Detroit.”
“You don’t have to drive me. I’m serious. I’ll be fine.”
“Too late. He’s already gone, so I’ll need to ride with you, anyway. We can talk about the case on the way.”
“Sounds like I don’t have a choice.”
“No,” she said. “As a matter of fact, you don’t.”
The sun was shining in our eyes as she drove us to Paradise. It made my head hurt. More than anything, it felt strange to be sitting in the passenger’s seat.
“Are you okay?”
“I’ll be all right.”
“It’s okay to not be all right sometimes,” she said. “You don’t have to be such a man about it.”
“Sounds like you’ve been around some men in your time.”
“Only every working minute of every day.”
“What about when you get off work?”
She thought about that one for a minute.
“I’ve given up a lot to stay in this job,” she said. “Let’s just leave it at that.”
We rode on in silence for a while.
“I assume Maven talked to you,” I finally said.
“About what he finally remembered, yes. You know who else I talked to?”
“Who?”
“A woman named Margaret Steele. I believe you met her.”
“Sergeant Steele’s wife? Yeah, we met her, all right. How’s she doing now?”
“Good as can be expected. She appreciates all the help you tried to give her.”
“All we did was ask painful questions about her son, and then find her dead husband in his girlfriend’s house.”
“Well, believe it or not,” Agent Long said, “she actually remembers Bobby Bergman. I guess her husband talked about him quite a bit.”
“Really?”
“That day Wiley was arrested, apparently he came all the way out from California and stuck a gun in Darryl Bergman’s ear. He told his daughter and his grandson to take the truck and to get the hell out of there.”
“So he really was trying to save them.”
“In his own way, yes. But here’s where it gets a little weird. After Wiley was done having his little man-to-man chat with his son-in-law, he left and tried to catch up with the truck. Bergman called the police, and that’s how Wiley got flagged at the bridge. You know what happened next. But somewhere down the road, his daughter ended up parked at a rest stop. I guess she was waiting for her father, or I don’t know, either she lost her nerve or else it sounds like she was high most of the time. Probably that day, too. It kinda ran in the family. Either way, they found her passed out in the truck a few hours later. Young Bobby was gone.”
“What, you mean he tried to keep going on his own?”