Last Exit in New Jersey

by C. E. Grundler

  04:39 THURSDAY, JULY 1

  40°27’24.61”N/74°16’09.29”W

  PARLIN, NJ

  Micah unlocked the shed and held the door open. “Getting a bit bold, don’t you think?”

  “Go ahead; let’s hear it. He’s weird. He’s strange. He’s got fangs.”

  “Definitely not playing with a full deck. One minute he’s talking to you, next he’s staring at nothing.” Micah locked the door behind them.

  Hazel smiled to herself. “He’s sweet.”

  Micah chuckled. “You make the perfect couple: you’re homicidal and he’s insane. He ask you to the prom yet?”

  “No. Just to run away and stay with him forever.”

  “Why do I think you’d actually consid—” Micah paused as Tony charged down the stairs.

  “Where the hell were you two? I’ve been looking half the night for you.”

  “Don’t tell Nicky, but Hazel’s got a boyfriend.” Micah said, elbowing Hazel and snickering. He studied Tony’s expression and his grin faded. Hazel’s throat tightened. She knew that look: it was the look of bad news.

  “What’s wrong?”

  “Joe called,” Tony took a deep breath. “There was an accident on Route Eighty. Your dad’s in the hospital.”

  Hazel spotted Joe’s old Harley off to the side of the Emergency Room lot as Micah parked Tony’s pickup. Inside they were given visitor’s badges and directions to the Trauma Unit, where they found Joe staring stoically out the window. He gave them a grim nod then picked up a phone on a table in the corner.

  “Ian Moran’s daughter is here…yeah…okay.” He hung up and turned to them. “The doctor’ll be out in a minute.”

  “What was he doing, Joe?” Hazel demanded. “Why was he up here, and where were you?”

  His face clouded, but before he could answer, a tall woman with close-cropped sandy hair and a weary expression approached.

  “Miss Moran? I’m Dr. Ramos. I’ve been treating your father.” She guided them to an area where a sofa and armchairs were clustered in an attempt to give the sterile setting a sense of intimacy and warmth. “Please, have a seat.”

  Hazel stood firm. “I want to see my father.”

  “In a moment. We have your father stabilized. When he was first brought in, we believed his injuries were all from the automobile accident. He’d suffered multiple fractures and internal injuries and had lost a great deal of blood. In the ER they discovered three gunshot wounds. He was very fortunate, relatively speaking: the shot to his neck and chest missed major arteries. But it did cause internal bleeding, and his left lung was punctured and it collapsed.”

  Hazel felt like she was going to be sick. “But you said he’s stabilized.”

  The doctor nodded. “At this time our primary concern is shock. He lost a fair amount of blood, and as I said, one of his lungs collapsed. He’s been conscious at times, but we’re keeping him sedated now to manage his stability.”

  Dr. Ramos rose. “He’s strong, that’s in his favor. He’s got a decent chance of pulling through. You can see him, but I must warn you, he looks pretty bad. He’ll be unresponsive, and we have him on a ventilator.”

  They followed the doctor to the door through which she’d entered. She tapped a code into a keypad and proceeded as the door automatically swung open. Holding Micah’s hand in a vise-like grip, Hazel started to follow, but the doctor stopped and shook her head.

  “I’m very sorry, but only immediate family are allowed in the Critical Care Setting. How are you related to the patient?” she asked Micah.

  Micah started to pull his hand free, but Hazel wouldn’t release it. “He’s my brother,” she said, prepared to argue the point. The doctor merely nodded.

  They followed her down a short hall, which opened to a large area. In the center was the nurses’ station, where several nurses went about their business as monitors beeped and phones rang. Rooms circled the outer wall, each with floor-to-ceiling sliding-glass doors. In some, curtains concealed the interior while others were open, revealing patients in their beds and yet more nurses. It wasn’t until the doctor approached one of these rooms that Hazel realized in horror that the unconscious, terribly battered figure lying within was in fact her father.

  His long hair had been shaven away; his face was swollen and barely recognizable. Thick tubes snaked from his mouth to a machine that provided steady mechanical respiration and made an unsettling noise each time his chest forcibly rose and fell. Narrow lines fed solutions into his bloodstream. Gauze dressings covered his neck, and a blanket lay across his chest, concealing the lumpy shapes of more bandages. On the opposite side of the bed, a redhaired woman in colorful scrubs keyed numbers into a pad on a large square machine; with each change it gave an audible beep. Hazel reached forward, cautiously touching her father’s hand.

  “He feels so cold,” she said, her voice small.

  “It’s normal,” said the woman in scrubs. “It’s a symptom of shock and a side effect of some of the drugs we’re using. Hi, my name is Chris; I’m Mr. Moran’s nurse,” she said with a gentle smile as Dr. Ramos quietly left the room. “I can answer any of your questions.”

  Hazel studied Chris, reading over the hospital ID tag on a retractable line pinned high up on her scrubs. In the ID photo, she smiled cheerily yet projected a certain “take no prisoners” attitude.

  “He doesn’t know we’re here?” Micah said.

  “We never assume a patient can’t hear or experience what’s going on around them. You’d be surprised what some people remember even when they’re in comas. We’re sedating him, replacing blood loss, and monitoring everything closely.”

  LCD monitors diligently tracked his vital signs. They reminded Hazel of a marine chart-plotter-radar display, but the readings left her no bearings to his position. There were so many things around him she didn’t understand: red buckets and tubes running to them, red and white plugs, switches and lights. Hot tears welled up in her eyes, and she took her father’s hand, holding it gently.

  Her father’s fingers tightened around hers.

  “Dad?” she cried.

  His eyes partially opened. She wanted to hug him, but feared she’d hurt him.

  “Oh, he’s fighting the sedatives again,” Chris said matter-of-factly. She turned to a machine controlling the flow from a glass bottle of white liquid, fired off a few quick keystrokes, then turned back and laid her hand on Hazel’s father’s arm.

  “Mr. Moran, relax now.” Her voice was soothing. “Relax, everything is going to be okay, but we need you to help us by not fighting this.” Alarms blared on the ventilator, and lights lit up all over its board. More alarms dinged on the heart monitors, but Chris remained calm and focused. Hazel watched helplessly as her father’s eyes flew open and his mouth moved, but the tube made it impossible to see what he was trying to say. Hazel cried out, certain he was choking. Didn’t his nurse see this? A woman in solid green scrubs entered the room. She gave a few touches on the ventilator and the machine quieted.

  “What’s up?” she asked Chris.

  “He woke up. I upped the Diprivan, give it a sec to work.”

  The alarms stopped clamoring; his grip went slack, and his hand fell away. Hazel lifted her hand to her mouth, stifling a cry. Micah pulled her back, hugging her.

  “He’s one tough cookie, I’ll give him that,” Chris said. “That’ll work in his favor. But right now he has to stay sedated to protect him from himself, so to speak.”

  “He was trying to say something!” Hazel cried.

  She nodded. “The ventilator tube prevents that. He’ll be able to speak normally when he’s extubated.” She came around the bed and walked them back toward the hall. “In a few days he’ll be much improved. For now…I’m sorry, but sometimes family can agitate a patient more than is good for them. That’s why we limit visitors to immediate family and only for fifteen minutes at a time.”

  Micah steered Hazel to the side, hugging her as she cried. “You heard the nurs
e,” he said, his voice breaking. “He’ll be okay. He’s a tough bastard. Even horse tranquilizers can’t keep him out.”

  I’M BACK AT THE GATES OF HELL

  “Three bullets and he’s still kicking.” Stevenson’s footsteps pounded as he paced the kitchen, phone in hand. “That’s one tough son of a bitch. You think he’d be able to ID anyone?”

  Crouched in the twilight shadows of bushes outside the screen door, fighting not to hiccup, Hammon shuddered. He’d planned to march in there and confront Stevenson about Hazel, but this conversation stopped him in his tracks.

  “Did he shoot someone?” Annabel said.

  Hammon knew Stevenson was ruthless, but this raised the bar several notches.

  “That’s your choice,” Stevenson said. “Either way I’m going ahead with this.” The kitchen light switched off and Stevenson stalked out, straight past the dense bushes concealing Hammon and over to the carriage house, tearing away in the Mercedes.

  “Follow him,” Annabel ordered.

  No. He was going back to the boatyard and Hazel. It was already past eight. It’d take him an hour to get back there. She’d be waiting like they planned. Waiting, so vulnerable. He grabbed his backpack, feeling the rope and duct tape inside.

  “I said follow Stevenson.”

  No. He’d stick with Plan A: Kidnap Hazel. Then he could keep her safe from Stevenson and everything else. And he’d have her alone, all to himself.

  Annabel glared at him. “You want another migraine, or will a stern warning suffice? Who got shot? Who’s next? What’s Stevenson doing with that truck? Why does Hazel look identical to me? The best way to help her is learn what Stevenson’s up to and stop him.”

  20:47 THURSDAY, JULY 1

  40°53’03.79”N/74°03’22.45”W

  HACKENSACK, NJ

  The hours stretched on as Hazel listened to the hush of air circulating through the ducts, muffled voices behind closed doors, and intercoms paging in codes. Beyond view she could hear activity, and she kept sitting up, expecting someone would appear with news. Intermittent updates came, along with brief visits to her father, whom the doctors deliberately kept unconscious. They claimed he was improving, though Hazel only saw machines breathing for him and feeding him fluids. Each time Micah ushered her out, she broke down, sobbing into exhaustion.

  At one point the police came by to speak with her, Micah, and Joe regarding the shooting, questioning them about possible suspects and motives. Hazel didn’t mention anything regarding Stevenson; as far as she knew, he wasn’t in any condition to swat a fly. Another possibility was whoever Stevenson had been speaking with that night, but again she kept that to herself.

  After they left, Hazel finally drifted into a fitful sleep on the waiting room couch, curled up in Micah’s arms with Hammon’s coat over her like a blanket. She woke in a cold sweat and looked in confusion at the darkness outside the window.

  “How long was I asleep?”

  “Not long enough,” Micah said. “I didn’t want to wake you, but you were crying.”

  She sat up, staring numbly at the framed print on the wall. The halls and rooms were full of them, soothing impressionist landscapes of rolling hills, trees, and ponds. The one above her resembled an overgrown cemetery, less the graves and markers, bringing back details of that reoccurring nightmare. Stevenson was there again, and Hammon as well, smiling in that sad way, blocking her from reading the inscription on the carved granite. She needed to see for herself, to know if it said what she feared it would.

  “The headstone…it was…” Her voice trailed away as her awareness shifted from the horror of her nightmare to the one surrounding her. Micah studied her with concern while Joe dozed, his tattooed bulk slumped across an armchair. He’d been the first to learn of the accident when the police back home came by looking for Hazel. She had questions for him, but there were always others nearby, or he’d slip off before she could corner him.

  “Why don’t we get some food?” Micah straightened his arm, stretching as he rose. “You haven’t eaten since White Castle.”

  She stared blankly at the fabric lining Hammon’s coat. It shimmered slightly, as though threads of fine metal were woven throughout. “I’m not hungry.”

  He held out his hand. “C’mon.”

  She didn’t move. They all should have been out on the water, far from this awful place, with nothing but the wind and the rise of the waves, hundreds of miles from anywhere.

  “Do I have to carry you?” Micah scanned the hall. “Or maybe there’s a spare wheelchair around.”

  Joe opened one eye, very awake, regarding them both. “How about this. She doesn’t eat, I take her back to Forelli’s myself.”

  Hazel sat up. “Where were you, Joe? Why weren’t you with my dad?”

  Joe let out a long sigh. “He didn’t want me involved. He said if things went bad, one of us had to stay out of prison to keep watch over you two, and I shouldn’t get locked up over something that wasn’t my fight. Plausible deniability, he said.”

  “What was he doing?” Micah said.

  Joe shook his head. “I don’t know, but I plan to find out.” He rose, straightening himself stiffly. “I’ve got some calls to make. Go eat something. I learn anything, I’ll let you know.”

  Reluctantly Hazel followed Micah through the halls, past stations of chatting employees, past rolling beds, some with occupants, their mouths slack, past rooms of ailing and dying, staring vacantly at TVs or nothing at all.

  “Dad never said where they took Stevenson.” If he was in a coma, he might be only rooms away from her father.

  “I doubt he’s here,” Micah said. “First off, there’s hospitals closer to where he was. And even if he is here, what can he do? He tries anything, those alarms would start sounding and Nurse Ratchet’ll put him right back in a coma.”

  The cafeteria décor might almost have managed to mask the institutional surroundings if not for all the patrons in scrubs and white jackets. Hazel stared at her dining choices, realizing she still didn’t have any appetite. Micah gathered up some food and led her to a table, urging Hazel to sip her tea while she picked at a corn muffin. He checked his watch.

  “You really should give your boyfriend a call. The poor guy’s probably waiting at the boatyard, thinking you had second thoughts.”

  Hazel pinched crumbs into tiny clumps. “And say what?” She couldn’t explain how, while they were together under the stars, her father was fighting for his life.

  “Family emergency.”

  She’d been wrong to think she could ignore the danger surrounding her family, even for one night. She thought of her father lying there, helpless and broken, and more tears came, burning hot. “I should tell Otto to forget he ever met me. He’d be better off.”

  She wiped her eyes with the back of her hand and dug through Hammon’s overstuffed coat pockets for the White Castle napkins she’d shoved in there hours earlier, pulling out an MP3 player in a ziplock bag and a thick envelope.

  Micah leaned over. “What’s that?”

  “It was in Otto’s coat pocket.”

  The return address, printed in an elegant, understated font, was Stevenson’s. Sloppy notes scribbled across the envelope read:

  RUSTED BLUE BUICK WAGON/FAKE WOOD ON SIDES

  NJPLATES: UHE-631

  RED FREIGHTLINER—MORAN MARINE TRANSPORT BIVALVE NJ

  OLD SAILBOAT BURNED/SUNK

  RED KENWORTH MORAN TRANS PLATE AVA-8744

  HAZEL

  With shaking hands, Hazel opened the envelope and counted seven banded bundles of hundred-dollar bills, loose hundreds, fifties, and smaller bills. Trembling, she removed a printout confirming transfer of fifteen thousand dollars from S&T Enterprises to Forelli’s Boatyard on June 28 for the purchase of one 1986 Flicka sailboat.

  “Crap. This is bad,” Micah said.

  Hazel searched the other pockets. Bazooka wrappers. A novelty floaty pen. A glow-in-the-dark yo-yo. Linty gummy bears. More napkins.

>   “Do you think he shot Dad?” Was that where he’d come from when he’d pulled into the boatyard? Had she been watching meteor showers with the very person who’d just tried to kill her father?

  Micah tilted the pen and watched a tiny sailing ship inside traverse the distance. “He didn’t strike me as the mercenary type, but anything’s possible. So now what?”

  Hazel stared at the cash and notes, furious with herself. She’d been foolish to let her guard down. He seemed so sweet, so harmless, and the whole time it was only a convincing, effective act, one she’d fallen for completely. And what was the point of it? Stevenson must have told him to get close and gain her trust. She wiped away her tears and forced a smile. “I believe he’s taking me to Dairy Queen.”

  “Huh?” It took Micah a moment to shift gears. “Hell no! You are not playing Travis McGee with that nut job. Absolutely not!”

  “What’s your plan? Wait around until someone else gets shot? So long as he doesn’t realize we know he’s involved, we have the advantage.”

  “No. Plain and simple, no. It’s too risky, whatever you’re thinking, you know your dad wouldn’t want you doing it.”

  “Yeah, well, he’s not in a position to argue right now, is he?”

  “No, but I am. Anyone’s going to deal with Hammon, it’ll be me.”

  “Us. We do anything, we do it together. And we don’t—”

  She paused as she spotted Joe running down the hall. Joe never ran. Hazel rose anxiously, stuffing everything into the coat’s pockets as he charged in.

  “Your dad’s awake,” Joe said, out of breath. “He wants you.”

  They raced back to the room to find Chris ordering her father to calm down and trying to keep him from sitting up while alarms beeped incessantly. Shreds of torn paper lay on top of his blanket.