Steve Hamilton - Misery Bay

“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?”

“Who knows what he was thinking? Maybe he was planning on hitchhiking all the way to California. Living with his grandfather must have seemed like a much better deal for him.”

“Damn,” I said. “So that’s when Maven and Razniewski picked him up.”

“They called in and drove him back to St. Ignace. Steele and Haggerty drove him and his mother back home that night.”

“Mrs. Steele remembers all this?”

“Her husband kept going back. Even after Haggerty transferred to Marquette, Steele would stop in every few weeks to see how the kid was doing. He tried to get Family Services involved, but I guess nothing ever came of it.”

“This is the cop who tried to help him, you’re saying. And years later, this is how he gets repaid.”

“Obviously, young Mr. Bergman saw things a little differently.”

“So I get how he’d remember Steele’s name,” I said, “especially if he kept coming by. But what about the other three? He gets picked up, driven back part of the way, then driven back home in another car. How does he remember all four names?”

“If he’s a smart enough kid, and it means enough to him, he remembers. And if he remembers, he can go back and find them later if he really wants to.”

“You’re right about that,” I said, thinking about how much information Leon was able to find on the Internet in a matter of seconds.

“But it was all about him,” she said. “That’s the thing. This kid trying to escape and getting taken back. The whole business with his grandfather, that was secondary. That’s why we never saw the connection with Razniewski and Maven. They had nothing to do with the arrest, but everything to do with what happened to Bobby Bergman.”