Can’t hold on.
No. I must fight it. One more try.
I picked my head up. I opened my eyes.
From the tree. A sudden movement. Something hitting the driver from the side. He is down. The snowmobile has stopped. I am looking at it like it is something in a dream. A snowmobile with no rider on it.
A man. He has a big knife. The biggest knife I have ever seen. He is cutting the rope. He is not wearing a helmet like the riders. I know the man. I have seen him before in my dreams.
Another man. I know him, too. I have seen him in the same dream. He is fighting with the rider. The rider still has his helmet on. They are wrestling in the snow. It is all happening in slow motion.
A gunshot rips through the dream.
“Don’t shoot me, you idiot!”
I know that voice.
More gunshots. And then a man’s body covering mine, the impact hard enough to wake me, to chase away the warm numbness in my body. I am cold again. And I am in more pain than I have ever felt before.
I heard the whine of the snowmobiles, the sound getting smaller and smaller until finally there was only the sound of his breath against my ear. “Don’t worry, Alex,” the voice whispered to me. It was Vinnie. “They’re gone.”
Vinnie rolled off me, sat up next to me. Leon knelt down on the other side of me.
“Help is on the way,” Vinnie said.
“You’re gonna be okay, partner,” Leon said.
I tried to speak. Finally, a short breath. And then another. “I…” I couldn’t say any more.
“Don’t move,” Vinnie said. “Don’t try to talk.”
“Just relax,” Leon said. “They’ll be here any minute.”
“I…” I took as much of a breath as I could, swallowed hard and then tried again. “I… hate…”
They looked down at me. The snow continued to fall all around us.
“I… hate…” I said. And then with my last ounce of strength, I finished the sentence: “… snowmobiles.” And then I was out.
CHAPTER TWELVE
When I opened my eyes, I saw white ceiling tiles and a fluorescent light that seemed a thousand times too bright. Then the faces of strangers with white masks on. They were doing something to my side. I felt a vague tugging in my ribs. Then I did not see them anymore and felt nothing but a dull ache all over my body that gave way to a soft rolling sensation like I was lying in a boat in the middle of Lake Superior on a calm day.
I saw Leon’s face for a moment. Then Vinnie’s.
I slept. When I opened my eyes again the room was empty. I looked over at the door. There was a window in the door, where anyone in the hallway could look into the room and see me lying there. There was a man standing there. He was watching me. He had a blue hunting cap on. The flaps were hanging over his ears. I tried to speak but I couldn’t.
I slept again. For an hour or a day or a year. This time when I awoke I felt like I was really awake for the first time since I had come to this place. The pain was stronger now. A lot stronger.
My head hurt, especially over my left eye. My mouth hurt. My legs hurt. More than anything else, my right side hurt. Besides the pain, there was something else. What was it? I lifted my left hand and reached across my body. There was a plastic tube there. It came right out of my body and ran to a machine that was sitting next to the bed. The machine was humming away, doing whatever the hell it was supposed to do to me. God, what was it doing? I felt the tube. It was hollow. It was…
Air.
The machine was pumping air into me.
I can’t breathe anymore. I’m hooked up to this machine because I can’t breathe on my own. Am I paralyzed? No, I can’t be. I’m moving my arm. How about the rest of me?
I moved my legs. I tried to sit up. Pain shot through my ribs.
“Bad idea,” a voice said.
“Who is it?” I said.
“I’m Dr. Glenn.” He appeared next to me, lifting the sheet to look at my right side. He was a tall man, with a beard and eyes that looked right through me. “And you, sir, should not be moving yet.” He measured out every word like it was another form of medicine.
“What happened to me?” I said. “Where am I?”
“You are in the War Memorial Hospital in Sault Ste. Marie. You have been here since yesterday afternoon.”
“Why am I hooked up to this machine?”
“Do not be alarmed,” he said. “It is just to help keep your lung inflated.”
“My lung…”
“You have two cracked ribs, sir, and a slightly punctured lung. You suffered a fifteen percent collapse. Anything more than ten is serious enough to use this machine. Right now, there is a balloon inside the upper chamber of your right lung. We need to keep the lung inflated for a couple of days to let the ribs heal.”
“Wonderful,” I said.
“You also suffered a slight concussion,” he said. “As well as a cut above your left eye that required fifteen stitches.”
I felt the bandage on my eyebrow.
“In addition to all of these injuries,” he said, holding up an X ray toward the ceiling light, “were you aware that you have a bullet in your chest?”
“You found the bullet,” I said. “I looked everywhere for that thing.”
He looked down at me and smiled for the first time. The serious doctor routine was gone. “Seriously,” he said. “What the hell happened to you?”
“You mean with the bullet or with everything else?”
“Start with the bullet.”
“It was fourteen years ago,” I said. “I took three in the chest. The doctors left that one in.”
He nodded and looked at the X ray again. “Inferior media stinum,” he said. “It wouldn’t have been worth the risk to go get it.”
“That’s what they told me.”
“I’m sure they also told you that there will always be a danger of the bullet migrating closer to the spinal cord, right? Which is why you have a chest X ray every year to make sure it hasn’t moved?”
“Uh… I don’t seem to recall them saying anything like that”
“The hell you don’t,” he said. He looked at me and waited for me to confess. When I didn’t, he held the X ray up again. “I’ve never seen this in person before,” he said. “Around here, the gunshots are always hunters. They’re not little bullets like this one. What is that, a twenty-two?”
“Yes,” I said. “From an Uzi.”
“You must lead a very interesting life,” he said. “Now about this business-”
“Which business?”
“This business that brings you to my hospital with a collapsed lung and more braises than I can count.”
“I was sledding,” I said. “I hit a tree.”
He smiled again. “There are rope burns on your wrists and ankles,” he said. “Do you always have somebody tie you up when you go sledding?”
I looked at my wrists. The ropes had left a three-inch band of red, raw skin. “I need to talk to the sheriff, Doctor.”
“He was here. I’ll call him, have him come back, now that you’re awake. There were two men here, too. The two men who came here with the ambulance.”
“Vinnie and Leon,” I said. And then I remembered the face I had seen, or thought I had seen, in the doorway. “Doctor, were there any men with hunting caps out in the hallway?”
“Hunting caps? You mean with the flaps? I don’t know. I mean, I probably wouldn’t have even noticed. A lot of men wear hunting caps around here.”
“How long do I have to stay here?”
“It’s going to be at least two days before we take you off that machine,” he said. “Then at least another day after that We’ll do X rays every day to see how the ribs look.”
“That’s great news,” I said. “I’ve always loved hospitals.”
When the doctor left, I sat there listening to the machine for a long while. Now that I knew what was happening, I could feel the balloon inside me. For a moment
the thought of it was too much and I had to fight the urge to rip the tube out. But then the balloon would still be inside me. In fact, if I pulled out the tube, what would stop me from flying around the room as the air escaped from the balloon, just like in the cartoons?
A nurse came and gave me some pills. When I took them, the pain in my side started to soften again. I took another little ride in the clouds. When I woke up this time, Leon was sitting in a chair next to the bed.
“Hey, partner,” he said.
“What time is it?” I said. “How long did I sleep?”
“It’s about five P.M., ” he said. “You’ve been here about twenty-four hours now.”
“What happened?” I said. “Where did you… How did you… The last time I saw you, we were both at Mrs. Hudson’s house. You were on your way home.”
“You told me you were being followed,” he said. “So I decided to investigate.”
“You followed me home?”
“I followed the men who were following you,” I said. He pulled out a notebook. “Jeep Grand Cherokee, dark green…”
“Wait a minute,” I said. “The guys who were following me were driving a green Taurus.”
“Two Caucasian men,” he said. “Late forties, wearing hunting caps
…”
“One red, one blue,” I said. “That’s them. I helped them get their car out of the snow. They must have wised up and switched to a four-wheel drive.”
Leon looked at me. “You helped them.”
“Yes.”
“Get their car out of the snow.”
“They were stuck,” I said. “It was the neighborly thing to do.”
“And you got a good look at them,” he said. “I like it, partner.”
“Leon…,” I said, but then I didn’t have the strength to finish the sentence. “Just tell me what else happened. What did the two men in the car do?”
“I followed them all the way into Paradise. They pulled into one of those little tourist motels on the south end of town, the Brass Anchor. You know it?”
“Yeah, I think I’ve seen the owner around town,” I said. “Those two guys are staying there?”
“It makes sense,” he said. “North of you, it’s a dead end. All they have to do is sit and wait for you to come down that road, then pick up the tail again.”
“So then what?”
“So then after I watched them go into the motel, I came up to your place. I figured you’d want to know. Your truck was there, and the door was open, but you weren’t home. I saw a lot of footprints in the snow, and the snowmobile tracks. I wasn’t sure what had happened, but it didn’t look good. I tried calling the sheriff on my cellular, but it wasn’t going through. When the regular phone lines go down, all the cellular channels get jammed. Anyway, I went back down your road, saw Mr. LeBlanc pulling into his place. I tried calling the sheriff again, finally got through, and then we both came back. That’s when we heard the snowmobiles. They were pulling you back down the trail. Vinnie grabbed a big stick. I pulled out my revolver. I still have the carry permit. From before, I mean, when I thought I was a real private investigator.” He looked down at his hands.
“You are,” I said, “You probably saved my life.”
“I panicked, Alex. Vinnie knocked that guy off the snowmobile, and I just stood there watching him. The other snowmobiles came back. I didn’t know what to do. I just fired the gun into the air. Vinnie yelled at me not to shoot him. I fired the gun in the air again. The men turned around and drove away. I was aiming my gun at them. I could have shot them. One of them, anyway. The guy who was dragging you behind his snowmobile. I could have shot him. But I didn’t.”
“You did the right thing,” I said. “What else were you going to do? Shoot him in the back as he drove away?”
“They were trying to kill you,” he said. “They were trying to kill my partner and I let them get away.”
“Leon, I don’t tell many people this, but when I was a police officer in Detroit, my partner and I got into a… well, a bad situation. Both of us got shot. I survived, but my partner didn’t. I’ve replayed that day in my mind a million times, and I always end up feeling responsible for his death. I probably could have drawn my gun in time to stop it. But I didn’t.”
“That’s where the bullet in your chest came from?”
“Yes. The doctor and I were just having some fun with that. Anyway, the difference is, I failed, and my partner died. You didn’t fail. I’m alive. So let’s knock off all this shit about you letting them get away, all right?”
“Okay,” he said. “Thank you for telling me that.”
“It’s probably just the drags I’m on,” I said.
We both stopped talking for a while. There was only the sound of the machine pumping air into me.
“They were here,” I finally said. “At least one of them was.”
“Who, the guys who are following you?”
“I think so,” I said. “I can’t say for sure. I was pretty delirious.”
“When?” he said. “Where?”
“He was out in the hallway,” I said “I think it was last night.”
Leon sprang out of his chair as if he could still catch up to him. “Those bastards. We’ve got to find out who they are.”
“You know where they’re staying now,” I said. “Go check ’em out.”
He looked at me and smiled. “You know, Alex, I’ve been thinking. Remember how I was saying that we could call ourselves McKnight-Prudell? You know, with your name first?”
“What about it?”
“Well, the more I think about it, I think Prudell-McKnight sounds better. What do you think?”
“I think you’re pushing your luck, Leon.”
He raised his hands. “Just think about it.” He picked up a brown paper bag and put it on the table. “Here, I brought you some stuff.”
“What kind of stuff?”
“Some books and magazines. Private investigator stuff. You might as well make good use of your down time.”
“Get out of here,” I said. “Go do your thing.”
“You got it, partner,” he said. “Leon Prudell is on the case.”
I watched him leave, a two-hundred-forty-pound whirlwind of flannel and snowboots.
Look out, world.
I spent the rest of the day lying in bed, drifting in and out of a codeine haze. I couldn’t get up because of the machine. I couldn’t even roll over. The nurses came in to check on me or to give me more drags or to empty my bedpan. It was not a fun day.
I could see just enough of the window to know that it was snowing again outside, then it was dark and I tried to sleep. I kept waking up every hour as a new pain announced itself. The stitches over my eye started to hurt, then my right hip, then my right shoulder. All the while the ache in my ribs was a constant background.
In the morning I saw the doctor again. He unhooked me from the machine just long enough to do another set of X rays, then had me wheeled back to my room. Bill Brandow was there waiting for me.
“How ya feeling?” he said when I was back in bed.
“Never better,” I said. “You got my note?”
“Yes,” he said. “I’m working on it”
“What have you got?” I said. “I gave you the description of the two guys who’ve been following me. I gave you the license plate number. Although now they’re driving a different vehicle, sounds like. A Jeep Grand Cherokee. I can even tell you where they’re staying now. They’re at the Brass Anchor in Paradise. Leon tailed them.”
He sat down next to me. “Leon Prudell? That clown who used to be Uttley’s investigator?”
“If that clown hadn’t showed up yesterday,” I said, “Bruckman would still be dragging my ass behind his snowmobile.”
“About that,” he said. “What can you tell me? Start at the beginning.”
“You know the beginning,” I said. “I thought he had taken Dorothy. But now, I’m not so sure. He wanted me to tell
him where she was. And he wanted to know where the bag was.”
“What bag?”
“A white bag she had with her.”
“You don’t know where it is?”
“Of course not,” I said. “Bill, are you going to tell me what’s going on or not? Are you still looking for Bruckman? And what about those two other guys? Did you run the plate?”
“Alex, I told you I’m working on it. On both of those things. I’m not going to sit here and talk about what I know and what I don’t know.”
I looked him in the eye. “You’re starting to sound like Maven,” I said.
“Thanks a lot.”
“I mean it. What are you doing to me here?”
“I want you to promise me something, Alex. I want you to promise me that you’ll let me take care of this, okay? Just relax and get better. Let me do my job, all right?”
“Will you call me when you find out who they are?”
“Promise me, Alex.”
“All right, all right. I promise.”
When he was gone, I had nothing to do but lie there and think about it. I took more drags. I used the bedpan. I can’t take much more of this, I thought. I am going to lose my fucking mind.
Vinnie came by around dinnertime. They had just rolled in a tray with some sort of meat in some sort of sauce with some sort of vegetable and a separate compartment of green jello. “That looks almost good enough to eat,” he said.
“You’re welcome to it,” I said.
“No thanks,” he said. “I had a steak at the Glasgow. You know, with that brandy sauce that Jackie makes?”
“You’re a cruel man,” I said.
“I’m keeping the road clear,” he said. “I’ve been using your truck. And I’ve been taking care of the cabins, although a few guys left already. I don’t know if they paid you in advance or not.”
“They never do,” I said. “But don’t worry about it. Thanks for helping me out.”
“No problem,” he said. He stood there looking at the floor for a long moment. “I’m sorry, Alex.”
“For what?”
“For the way I was talking to you the other night. After we went to see Dorothy’s parents.”
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