After we talked to the surgeon, I told Marvin to go home, be with his family. I walked outside with him to his car. He opened his trunk and got out a golf club bag with clubs poking out of it. He said, “Borrow these.” I just looked at him.
“Inside,” he said, “is a sawed-off pump shotgun, twelve-gauge. You might want to put it together.”
“I might at that,” I said.
I opened my trunk and he put the bag inside. “We’re on hospital camera, you know,” Marvin said.
“I know.”
I closed the trunk.
I called Brett. I waited in the parking lot till she arrived. I put the golf bag in the trunk of her car. She didn’t say anything. We went up to the waiting room. We were the only ones there.
Brett was red-faced and her eyes were red too. Her hair was tied back and her shoulders were slumped. She sat down beside me and took my hand.
“How is he?”
“No word,” I said. “I think the same.”
She patted my hand.
“I know you need to find out who did it,” she said.
“Yeah.”
“I know what you’ll do when you find them.”
“Yeah.”
“Those weren’t just golf clubs, were they?”
“No,” I said.
“So, how are you gonna get who did it sitting here?”
“I want to know how he is. I want to know he’s okay.”
“We have phones. You sitting here doesn’t change anything. You get that sonofabitch. Whatever it takes, you get him. And if you need me to help you get him, I will.”
“I know,” I said.
She pulled my head around and looked me directly in the eyes. “I’ll stay here. You… you have any ideas. Any way to get ideas, anyone to get ideas from, you do it. Take my car. And when you find who did this, and I know you’ll find them, show no mercy.”