Invalid Evidence

by Stevie Mikayne

  Jil leveled her gaze back.

  “You do your homework, don’t you?”

  Jil waited.

  “To answer your question, we were in negotiations for another whale. Unfortunately, the whale we were going to purchase died before we could have it transferred here. The other sea aquarium was filing for bankruptcy so we couldn’t get our money back, but they sent us a female instead. A breeder. They said she was known to have caused problems, but I didn’t have much choice at that point. Our tank was bigger and she’d have dolphins for company here. Either we took Tsunami or we’d be out almost half a million dollars.”

  Jil didn’t respond. Seemed like losing half a million dollars might’ve been the better option…

  Rebecca scanned her key card in front of a door, and it buzzed open.

  They pushed their way into an office where a young guy was lounging on a hammock chair, a laptop on his chest.

  “This is Leonard, my partner.”

  He smiled and sat up as much as he could in the hammock. As he maneuvered himself, Jil noticed he had a metal prosthetic from the left knee down.

  “Silent, mostly,” Leonard said. “I just do the accounting. Rebecca deals with people.”

  “He’s being modest,” Rebecca said. “He was quite an accomplished trainer, back in the day.”

  “Yeah, before that shark tried to eat me. Now I stick with numbers.”

  Leonard smiled awkwardly but shook her hand firmly, his too-large square glasses slipping down his nose. He pushed them up.

  “I don’t envy her at the moment,” Leonard added.

  “And I don’t envy you,” Rebecca replied.

  Leonard sighed and stretched. His face was lined with stubble, like he’d been working too many long nights. “Without the revenue from the whale attraction, we’re going to be sunk. I’ve tried to do a little creative accounting here to keep us afloat, but unless we get a resolution, soon, we’re in trouble.”

  “I’m just going to fill Jil in on the details of that night. Unless you’d like to add anything.”

  Leonard shuddered. “No, thank you. I lived through it once and that’s enough. I’ve got a date with the hot dog stand.” He swung out of the hammock chair, his prosthetic smacking the floor with a thud.

  Jil watched him go.

  “How old was he when he lost his leg?”

  “Seven.”

  Jil turned back.

  “He lost it in a car wreck.”

  “But he said…”

  “Oh, yes. He did get attacked by a shark here some years ago, but he’d already lost the leg when it happened. He had a good chunk of his upper arm taken out, but after a few surgeries, it looks all right.” She shrugged. “Won’t get back in the water, though. It’s too bad. He was good at his job.”

  Rebecca picked up a box from her desk and plunked it down on the table in front of Jil.

  “Here’s everything I’ve put together for you. A file. A few videos. And the call to the police.”

  Jil sat down and began skimming through the information.

  “I’m yours for the morning, so let’s get started.”

  “Great.” Jil flipped open her notebook. “Let’s start with the roster of staff. Who works here, their dates of hire, and their employee files.”

  Rebecca searched out a pile on her desk and handed it to Jil.

  “Is this everybody? Trainers, maintenance?”

  “Everybody,” Rebecca answered. “Even me.”

  “Thanks.” She checked that off her list. “A record of the animals. A complete list of which animals are here now, when they came, where they came from, and who their main trainers are.”

  “Wow. Okay. That one may take some time.”

  “Okay. We can work on that today. Now, they all think I’m an accountant?”

  “Yeah. I thought it was better for now.”

  “Right. So I’m going to hang around for a few days, not do any formal interviews, but see what I can get from just getting to know people a little better.”

  “Sounds good.”

  Jil looked at the staff list, then back at Rebecca, a question forming in her mind.

  Then they heard screaming from outside.

  Rebecca took off at a run down the hall, Jil following closely behind her.

  Tait, the young trainer, was coming toward them up the ramp. “She’s ramming the tank. It’s gonna pop, Rebecca.”

  Rebecca ran faster—so fast Jil had a hard time keeping up to her.

  “If that tank breeches, we’re going to have a busted enclosure and a dead whale. We’ve got to stop her.”

  Jil imagined the crack in the glass of the viewing area spidering and splintering. The water surging through the opening, a giant waterfall into the underground viewing deck. And Rebecca was running straight into the fray.

  “Do you really think you should go down there?”

  “It’s the best place to see her from,” Rebecca called as she jogged down the stairs in her low-heeled pumps.

  Jil followed and stopped at the sight of a giant whale head battering the glass. Leaks sprang from the bolts on one side.

  “Fuck,” Rebecca said.

  She approached the glass and put up her arms as Tsunami charged again.

  “This thing is going to breach.”

  Jil’s heart thudded loudly. Would she make it to the stairs in time if the water started pouring in?

  Rebecca flipped on the lights and turned up the music, making the serene underground sanctuary come alive like a disco. The whale stopped just short of the glass, and Rebecca breathed out a sigh of relief as she reached out to squeeze Jil’s forearm. Her fingers were ice cold and shaky.

  Her radio crackled and a man’s voice hailed them.

  “I’ve opened the barrier!” said Ramone.

  “Good. Get out some food and bang the bucket. Let’s get her the hell into the performance tank.”

  “Already on it. Almost ready.”

  “Well, do it quickly. This glass is about to breach.”

  From somewhere up above, Jil heard a sound like a crowbar striking metal.

  Jil looked up, straight into the animal’s wet, black eye. Tsunami looked at her steadily for a second and Jil held her hands up, backing away.

  Tsunami slowly turned away and moved topside, her tail moving through the water with barely a bubble. Then she flipped and drove herself at the glass once more—a freight train colliding with the station.

  One of the bolts popped and a stream of water burst like a fire hydrant cracking open. Jil felt a lurch of fear.

  Another bolt popped, and another, sending water flooding into the observatory.

  “Get that blowtorch up here, now!” Rebecca yelled into the radio.

  She hadn’t even finished speaking when Ramone came running down into the tank room, radio in one hand and a giant bag of equipment in the other.

  “Get out of here, Rebecca. This thing could pop any second now.”

  Jil looked back up and the whale was gone.

  “They’re getting her into the performance tank. She’ll have to stay there till we can get this fixed. However long that is.”

  Another bolt popped.

  “The wall’s buckling. We have to get it under control before the whole thing goes.”

  Rebecca’s face had blanched.

  “Where’s maintenance?”

  “They’re afraid to come down here.”

  “Well, tell them to get over it. We need this tank fixed immediately!”

  Ramone barked over the radio in Spanish, then French, and finally in a language Jil didn’t recognize.

  Within seconds, six young people were sprinting down the stairs, tossing equipment back and forth. The blowtorch lit up as they set to work, and Jil hoped that the animal was safely ensconced in whatever holding tank she’d been put into. This amount of noise and light would probably drive her crazy.

  A clack on the stairs alerted her to Leonard entering the observatory. He stopp
ed at the bottom of the stairwell, radio in hand.

  “That animal is psychotic,” he said quietly.

  Rebecca turned around, her face drawn.

  “We’re going to have to accept it, Rebecca. I’m sorry. But the faster we unload that thing, the better for everyone.”

  “That may be true,” Jil said. “I don’t know much about whales, I’ll give you that. But I do know that enclosure was tampered with.”

  Leonard stared at her. “Tampered with? Who the hell would be crazy enough to try to free Willy?”

  Jil leaned down and picked up a bolt head that had been sawn off.

  “Looks like someone else saw the movie…”

  Leonard took it out of her hand and turned it slowly over in his fingers.

  “Fuck.”

  A sound like a fire hydrant exploding sent them all barreling up the stairs.

  “Go, go, go!” Rebecca yelled.

  Leonard outstripped them, shouting into his radio. “Evacuate the observation deck. Evacuate the observation deck.”

  Rebecca collapsed on the outdoor bench seating.

  “Fuck, what a mess,” she said. “We need to get an industrial vacuum down here and some fans. Get this place dried out. And, Leonard, when that’s done, call the police.”

  “You’re sure you want to do that?” Leonard said doubtfully. “Remember what she was like the last time?”

  Rebecca sighed. “Oh, how I wish I could handle this in-house. But we’re in over our heads here. One death is enough for me. I can’t afford a SeaWorld catastrophe. It might be time to cut our losses.”

  Chapter Eight

  The chair, with its ripped arm and dented leg, still sat in the corner, almost reproaching Jess. How long had it been since she’d just sat here by Mitch’s bedside? Talked to him? Visited for more than a few minutes, even?

  Such a stark contrast to those first few weeks, when she’d done everything for him. The round-the-clock days when they waited to see if the swelling in his brain would go down, if he’d wake up.

  Ironic, she’d touched him more in the first few months he’d been like this than in the last years of their marriage.

  Rubbing cream into his heels, cracked and dry from the long winter. Stretching his legs, bending his knees until they almost touched his chest. At first, they’d been so heavy. So hard to maneuver. She’d lost her grip and let his leg crash to the bed once.

  The surprise that his hair continued to grow as he lay still. The five o’clock shadow that crept over his cheeks. Shaving him.

  Inevitable, but still unexpected—the ebb of life, creeping back in. One day she’d had to go home to wait for the plumber to come fix a leak…the next day, she’d finally conceded that she couldn’t live on tea and peanut butter. She had to do the grocery shopping—alone, up and down the aisles of the indoor market—something she and Mitch had always done together. Saturday mornings. Fresh fish and an assortment of cheeses, soup bones, prime rib, oysters if they had them. The bakery for bread and cakes.

  He loved to shop for food. To find new herbs and rub them between his fingers, letting her smell the earth and the pungent flavor she could infuse into their meals. He thrived on olives. And smoked meats. Artichoke hearts soaked in pickling juice, burrata smothered in top-notch olive oil and salt, spread on rosemary focaccia.

  She loved to cook. He loved to eat.

  She loved to garden. He loved the flowers erupting from vases all over the house.

  Navigating the market alone. Carrying all the bags. Her hands and shoulders ached, and the doctor said it was probably just stress.

  They didn’t know then, of course. How difficult it would get. How many layers of alone she would feel over the next months.

  After that first trip to the market, she put the food away and tried to imagine cooking for one. Tried to imagine the point of it.

  How could she go back to the hospital when she had to catch up on bills, return the messages that had been piling up for the past five days, six, seven?

  Two weeks, a month, and she went back to work. She had to—her leave was up. Her students needed her. Her bank account needed a paycheck.

  Three months in, and she still visited in the evenings. Sat and read him the paper she used to read him during the morning visits she no longer had time for.

  A weekend conference.

  A dinner with friends.

  Five months. Six.

  Then she met Lily.

  Jil.

  Outside, freezing rain hit the windowsill, accreting on the glass until she could barely make out a dim glow of the streetlamps as they switched on in the dark early evening.

  “Jessica, there you are.”

  Jess struggled out of her chair and shook hands with Dr. Rabinovitch. He leaned forward, his posture having deteriorated even more since she’d last seen him, so that he seemed to be permanently bent as if searching for something on the ground. His yarmulke had come slightly askew and was sitting at an odd angle on his head. He smiled wanly, but his drooping eyelids betrayed his weariness.

  “Sorry to call you away from your holiday, Jessica.”

  Jess turned to Mitch.

  “He looks so old, doesn’t he?”

  Dr. Rabinovitch sighed. “He’s been in this state a long time. It’s hard on your body, immobility.”

  Jess clasped his hand. “I’ve been sitting here with him, thinking about how he used to look. How tan he was. How strong.”

  Nothing in the wasted body before her resembled her husband anymore.

  “What is that smell, Doctor?”

  Two nurses swung in the door, one with an IV bag in hand.

  They watched her hang it and change out the old one before the two of them set to work turning Mitch over.

  Dr. Rabinovitch gently pulled her out of the way.

  Jess swallowed hard.

  “We’re doing the best we can with rotating him every thirty minutes, but his skin is so broken down that it’s hard to find a good spot. That bedsore on his buttock is seeping constantly. That’s what you’re smelling.”

  “Oh my God,” Jess said, putting her hand to her throat.

  “Unfortunately, that’s not the worst of it. He does have septicemia.”

  Three heel clicks on the hallway floor was all it took for Jess’s fingers to run cold.

  Before she could even consider an escape route, the door swung open and Myra’s eyes locked with hers.

  For a moment, they stood staring at one another, Myra lifting her chin and breathing deeply through her nose, nearly a snort.

  “Jessica,” she said finally.

  Jess desperately wanted to sit down, but wouldn’t concede defeat so early in this round.

  “Myra. I’m surprised to see you here.”

  It was exactly the wrong thing to say, of course. “Really? Because I’ve been here several times a week for the past five years. You. Have not.”

  You’re also a retired old battle-ax with nothing else to do but sit in a hospital room, knitting and telling everyone how to do their jobs.

  Which she did not say.

  “How is my son today, Doctor?”

  Dr. Rabinovitch sighed audibly. “No improvement, I’m afraid, Mrs. Blake.”

  She smiled as if he’d told her Mitch had made a full recovery overnight. “Well, my prayer circle will be here later this morning. I’m sure he’ll be himself again in no time.”

  Myra looked at her again. “Would you mind, Jessica? I’d like some time alone with my son.”

  Jess stared at her. She was tempted to just walk out. Leave her to the lunacy that had sustained her all this time. But she couldn’t this time.

  She took a deep breath. “Actually, we were just discussing his final directives,” she said.

  Myra drew herself up, cold fury in her eyes. She sputtered before finally getting out the words. “His final directive is in God’s hands. Not yours.”

  Jessica was tired of this argument. She’d been tired of it for years, but
seeing Mitch’s condition—smelling it, actually—was the deciding factor.

  She closed the gap between them. She stood close so Myra could see the intent in her eyes. “I will be signing his DNR, Myra. It’s time.”

  Her face drained white. “How dare you? How dare you come in here and pretend to be his next of kin?”

  Jess reeled. She wasn’t wrong. “I am his next of kin. I am his wife.”

  “Hardly. Hardly!”

  Dr. Rabinovitch took her elbow and guided her to the door. Myra fluttered over Mitch and ran her hands over his face while the doctor led Jessica outside.

  She sat down, shaking.

  “Can I get you some water?”

  She shook her head. “No. Thank you.”

  “Maybe we’d better organize a meeting,” he suggested gently.

  Jess laughed bitterly. “What’s the point? She hasn’t seen reason for the past five years. Why would she begin now?”

  “His condition will only deteriorate,” Dr. Rabinovitch said. “It will stop his heart. The only question is, how should we proceed when it does…?”

  * * *

  At home, on the porch, Jess lit the outdoor fireplace and tucked her feet up under the blanket. A book lay in her lap, but she couldn’t bring herself to pick it up. Instead, she scrolled through Jil’s latest text messages.

  Skype at 6pm?

  Still another ten minutes to wait.

  She sat and looked out over the street. She sipped her wine and remembered the last time she and Mitch had sat here, side by side on this porch.

  She imagined Myra, bible in one hand and crucifix in the other, rocking in the same chair by the window that Jess had been in for the first month after Mitch’s accident. The same rocking chair she’d occupied after they’d told her he probably wouldn’t wake up. Where she’d read the forms, read them again, and ultimately decided to take him off life support.

  But Myra had wept so much, pleaded with her, that she’d changed her mind. She thought she was just allowing him to die naturally. She’d never imagined it would go on for five years. Five years.

  Or that Myra’s bitterness against her would blossom into something resembling hatred.

  In sickness and in health. For better or for worse. You don’t deserve to be his wife. He would never have left your side.