“Is that what he told you?”
“Yes,” I said. “Why are you asking me that?”
“I’m trying to figure out what he was doing in Orcus Beach,” he said.
“I would think,” I said, “that your top priority should be finding out who shot him once he got to Orcus Beach.”
“Again with the critiques,” he said. “I should be grateful for all the free advice.”
“What’s going on?” I said. “Don’t you care who shot him?”
“That would be nice to know,” he said. “But there are a lot of private residences on the street where he was found. It could have been anyone, just trying to protect himself from the criminal element. You could almost say Mr. Wilkins got what he deserved.”
I looked him dead in the eyes. I said the words slowly. “What are you talking about?”
He looked at his pad, then flipped the page over and began reading, squinting like a man who needs glasses but won’t wear them. “Randall Wilkins, born 1951, convicted on multiple federal counts of embezzlement, check forgery, and mail fraud in 1979, did six years at Lompoc. Got out in 1985, then in 1990 was convicted again, this time on state embezzlement charges. Did two years at Avenal, was released, convicted again in 1994, did four years at Folsom. Currently wanted by the state of California on new charges, not to mention violation of parole and flight from prosecution.”
“Are you telling me-” I said.
“Your friend’s a con artist,” he said. “He preys on wealthy women. Gets them to invest in bogus real estate deals, then takes off with the money. That’s the commercial real estate he was talking about, I guess.”
“No way,” I said.
“You had no idea,” he said. “You’re totally shocked.”
“Yes,” I said. “Of course I am.”
“If you were helping him in any way to set up a scam here in Michigan, you’d be an accessory.”
“No,” I said. “He was just… No. It can’t be.” I thought about it for a few seconds. “The family, they do live in a nice house, I suppose. Her brother paints houses, so he can’t have that much money. But Maria… Oh goddamn it, who knows? I can’t believe this.”
He snapped his pad shut. “Believe it,” he said.
“Why?” I said. “Why would he come all the way out here?”
“Doesn’t sound like California’s too cozy a place right now,” he said. “Maybe you’re the last friend left who didn’t know what he’s been up to.” He paused a beat. “Now that we’ve established you had no idea, I mean.”
I looked at him. “Why is that county man standing guard?” I said. “Randy’s not going anywhere.”
“That’s what I tried to tell them,” he said. “But the state of California insisted on it. I told them I didn’t have a man from my force to do it, so they told me to get a county deputy. Now I’ve just got to make sure they’re paying for it.”
“And if Randy lives?”
“He goes back to stand trial. And he’s out of my hair.”
“Never mind who shot him.”
“I’m on the case,” he said, picking up his cup. “Don’t worry about it.”
I pushed my chair back and stood up. I took one step out of the room and then went back. “What about his family?”
“What about them?”
“I want to talk to them.”
“They don’t want to hear anything about it,” he said.
“He could be dead by tomorrow,” I said.
“The way his ex-wife said it, they all gave up on him a long time ago. To them, he’s been dead for years.”
“I want to talk to them anyway,” I said. “I have to.”
The chief just looked at me.
“I’m the last man he talked to,” I said. “He told me all about them. If it’s the last thing he ever says about them, they need to hear it. No matter what he’s done.”
He let out a tired sigh and reopened his pad. He flipped through the pages and then copied down the names and phone numbers. “You call them once,” he said. “You tell them who you are, you tell them what he said. That’s it.”
I took the paper from him and looked at it. Four names, four numbers. His ex-wife and three children. “One more thing,” I said. “Where is Orcus Beach, anyway?”
“Why do you want to know that?”
“It’s not on my map,” I said. “I’m wondering where it is.”
“You’ve got no reason to know that,” he said.
“It’s not a secret, is it? All I have to do is go buy a better map.”
“McKnight, let me be clear on this.” He stood up and looked me in the eye. “You have no reason to go to Orcus Beach. Go home and make your phone calls. If I need you again, I know where to find you.”
I don’t know how long I stood leaning over the railing. Thirty minutes at least. Maybe an hour. I looked down from the top floor of the parking garage at the outpatient entrance. I watched patients come and go. A woman came rolling out in a wheelchair, a bundle in her arms. A man took the bundle from her and strapped it into the special car seat, moving in slow motion. Some orderlies came out and smoked with their backs to the wall, then went back inside. There were no emergencies. No ambulances racing to the doors. No accident victims holding bloody towels to their foreheads. It was a quiet day at the hospital.
My stomach made a noise. I looked at my watch. It was just past noon. I had been awake for eight hours, going on nothing more than coffee. I took the stairs down to the street level, walked east down Michigan Street, found a fast-food place, and ate a hamburger without tasting it. Then I found a bar with nobody in it but a bartender washing glasses and a woman watching a soap opera on the television. The bartender set me up and then went back to his glasses. The woman never even looked at me.
I watched the soap opera for a while, because there was nothing else to draw my attention. A woman in an expensive dress kept pacing back and forth in an expensive office, going at some guy in an expensive suit. I gave up on the soap opera and went into the bathroom to splash some cold water on my face. I dried myself off without looking at my face in the mirror. Then I threw some bills on the bar on my way out.
I walked back to the hospital. The security guard jutted his chin at me as I passed him. I pushed the elevator button, waited for the car, got in and pressed five. The Intensive Care nurse wasn’t at her station when I walked by it.
The county man was still sitting on his chair outside Randy’s door. He folded his arms when he saw me.
“You again,” he said.
“I’m sorry,” I said. “About before. You’re just doing your job here.”
“And having so much fun,” he said. “I can’t believe I’m getting paid for this.”
“I was a police officer,” I said. “For eight years.”
“That so.”
“I had to do this kind of stuff,” I said. “I know how it is.”
He just nodded at that.
“What do you make of this Rudiger guy, anyway?”
“The chief with the big hair?” he said. “What a horse’s ass. You ever been to Orcus Beach?”
“Never have,” I said.
“One stoplight,” he said. “They used to have a furniture factory there, but that closed. So it’s a ghost town now. Chief Rudiger’s the only full-time officer left.”
“So he said.”
“Anywhere else, they’d disband the force and contract with the county sheriff. But not Orcus Beach. Rudiger must have everybody hypnotized or something.”
“Gotta be the hair,” I said.
The man laughed at that. “He’s got enough oil on his head, they better not let him go in the lake. What was
