“Just be here,” he said. And then he hung up.
CHAPTER 11
It was still dark when I left. It was dark and it was cold, and instead of being in my bed, I was awake somehow, unshaven and unshowered, my stomach burning as I drove south down 1-75 to the Mackinac Bridge. I kept catching myself driving too fast, pushing the truck until it went into its death rattle at eighty miles an hour. Then I’d let out my breath and tell myself to slow down and watch where the hell I was going, stop thinking about it, stop asking myself why he was lying half-dead in a Michigan hospital instead of being on a beach in California.
I stopped for gas just south of Mackinac. I stood there shivering as a wind came in hard off Lake Michigan. The sun was just coming up.
Before I left the station, I grabbed a coffee and unfolded my map across the steering wheel. Taking 1-75 down to Grayling, then a little jog over to U.S.-131, and I’d be in Grand Rapids by ten o’clock.
Orcus Beach, he’d said. I tried to find it on the map. It wasn’t there. I turned the map over and went through the index. No Orcus Beach.
I hit the road again as the sky started to lighten. When I got off 1-75, the little jog I thought I had to make turned into a slow parade through the woods behind a flatbed truck carrying a mobile home. A couple cars tried to pass it, but the truck was swinging all over the place whenever the wind picked up. By the time we got to U.S.-131, I had lost a good half hour.
It was ten o’clock when I hit the Grand Rapids city limits. It took another twenty minutes to get to the hospital on Michigan Street. Whoever this Chief Rudiger was, if he was like most other police chiefs I’d known, he didn’t like people being late. So I was already off to a great start with the man.
From a couple miles away, I saw the big sign in green neon letters, SPECTRUM HEALTH. When I finally got there, I followed the signs and drove up the ramp, parked on the top level, walked down the stairs and then through a long tunnel enclosed in tinted glass until I came to a lobby. There were a couple people sitting on the blue plastic chairs, watching a television mounted high on the wall. There was a little reception desk, with a guard sitting in front of a clipboard. He might have been twenty-one years old, maybe not. I would have carded him if he were buying liquor.
“I’m looking for Chief Rudiger,” I said to the kid.
“He went to get some coffee,” he said. “He told me to have you wait in room one nineteen. Just down the hall to the left.”
“Can you tell me what room Randy Wilkins is in?”
“The chief said you need to wait for him, sir. Room one nineteen, down the hall on the left.” He tried to put a hard edge in his voice, like he had on a real badge instead of a tin security guard’s shield.
“Look,” I said, “I’ve got a friend here. I need to see him. He’s gotta be in the Intensive Care Unit. Can you tell me where that is?”
“You need to wait in room one nineteen,” he said.
“Down the hall to the left. I got it.”
“Would you like me to escort you there, sir?”
“I’ll manage,” I said. “Don’t leave your post.”
I went down the hall and poked my head in room 119. A table, more blue plastic chairs. A little sink with a coffeemaker next to it. A basket with packets of sugar and artificial sweeteners, a box of that non-dairy creamer stuff. Everything you need to make coffee except the coffee itself. Which is why my man was out looking for it instead of sitting here, waiting for me. Brilliant detective work on my part.
I looked back down the hall at the security guy. He was watching me. I gave him a little wave and kept walking, right into an open elevator.
The elevator had a list on the wall. Surgical ICU, Fifth Floor. That sounded like the right place. I hit five. As the doors closed, I heard the security man yell, “Hey!” and then a couple other things I couldn’t make out.
When the door opened, I followed the arrows to Intensive Care and opened the double doors. A nurse looked up at me, a telephone pressed to her ear. She raised her hand at me and held it there while she kept listening to someone on the other end. I stood in front of her desk, looking around the place. There were two hallways forming an ell, with the nurse’s station at the intersection. Most of the doors were closed in either direction, with gurneys and IV stands littering the hallways.
Then I saw a man in a uniform sitting in a chair outside one of the rooms, halfway down the hall to my right. He was looking straight ahead at nothing, his hands folded in his lap.
I heard the nurse making some kind of noise behind me as I went down the hall. I wasn’t listening. As I got closer to the man, I saw that he was a Kent County deputy.
He looked at me for a long moment. “Can I help you, sir?” he finally said.
“Who’s in that room?” I said.
“Who’s asking?”
“I’m a friend,” I said. I knew Randy was in there. In my gut, I knew he was in that room.
The deputy stood up. “Nobody is allowed in this room,” he said.
“Do you know Chief Rudiger? I’m supposed to meet him here.”
“He’s not going to be happy that you came up here.”
“Just let me see him,” I said. “One minute.”
“Nobody goes in this room,” the deputy said.
As if to prove him wrong, the door opened and a doctor stepped out. While the door was open, I got a quick look inside. One bed, a man with bandages all over his neck. A tube in his mouth. It was Randy.
“Doctor,” I said. “That’s my friend. What’s happening?”
“You know this man?” the doctor said. He was wearing green scrubs, a stethoscope hanging from his neck. “Can you tell me anything about him?”
“He can’t go in there,” the deputy said.
The doctor looked at him and back at me. “Do you know anything about his medical history? We can’t get anything from his family.”
“I don’t think anybody’s even supposed to know who’s in here,” the deputy said.
“Too late,” the doctor said. “If you’ll excuse us.” He took me by the arm and led me down the hall a few yards. The deputy looked unhappy for a moment and then just sat back down on the chair.
“Why is there a county man outside his door?” I said. “What’s going on?”
“I don’t know anything about that,” he said. “I’m just trying to keep him alive. Do you know if he has any drug allergies?”
“No,” I said. “I’m not going to be of much help to you. Until a few days ago, I hadn’t even seen him for nearly thirty years. Wait a minute-what did you say about his family? Why can’t you get the information from them?”
“I don’t know,” he said. “I can’t get through to anybody.”
“I don’t understand,” I said.
The doctor shook his head. “He came in yesterday afternoon with a gunshot wound to the neck. He lost about forty percent of his blood and was in hemorrhagic shock. It’s been”-he looked down at his watch-”almost twelve hours. His blood volume is almost back to normal, but he’s still not conscious. In fact, he’s showing signs of paralysis, even though none of the buckshot hit the spinal cord.”
“Buckshot? Somebody shot him with a shotgun?”
“They didn’t get a clean shot,” he said. “Most of it went right over his shoulder. A few inches to the right and he wouldn’t have a head on his body. He should be conscious right now, feeling lucky.”
I thought about it. He’d stayed in Michigan, or else he’d come back. And then he got shot. By a shotgun.
“When will you know?” I said. “When will you know if he’s going to live?”
“That’s hard to say right now. Do you have a card or something? I can give you a call if anything changes.”
I gave him one of my cards. “Thank you,” I said. “I appreciate this.”
