The Arms of Death

by Maggie Foster

  Ginny stepped into the box and made her way to the sound deck. She plugged in her dance warm-up medley and turned the machine on, adjusting the volume on the public address system. Music flooded the ice surface. Cheerful music. Quick, lively, energetic music, a piece called “Perpetual Motion” that lived up to its name. The other two skaters looked up and smiled at her. Ginny smiled back and stepped back out onto the ice.

  She stroked around the rink, matching her timing to the music, starting smoothly and accelerating, concentrating on details. The idea was to get the maximum thrust from the potential energy stored in the curved and hollowed out blade. She stroked harder, extending her leg, pointing her toes, testing the physics yet again. Under her breath, she coached herself, push, push, push, push, with each stroke.

  Simple three turns, and not so simple ones. Outside, then inside edges, backward to forward to backward again. Rockers and Mohawks, drop threes and cross rolls. Faster and faster. No time in this music for long smooth edges. Those would come later in the session. For now she was flying.

  In her head Ginny could see what a truly gifted skater could do with this music, could see the breathtaking speed and precision, the startling changes of direction, the grace and power and line. She pushed harder.

  Cross, cross, cross, cross. Faster and faster, each foot re-positioned with each beat of the music. Change edge, change direction, keep going, keep moving, and always faster and faster, harder and harder. Trying to keep up with the music. Pushing herself, pushing the ice, pushing the bounds of physics.

  Ginny got a split second of warning before the blade slipped, a subtle shift in the tension on her right skate, but it came too late for her to save herself. She was turning a corner when she lost the edge and with it her control. She fell, landing with a crack that brought the other two skaters running. The momentum carried her across the remaining ice. She slammed into the boards and lay still.

  * * *

  Ginny took a slow, deep breath. She didn’t even try to move, not at first, she just lay quietly and waited for time to pass. Eventually she started to get cold. She opened her eyes, trying to figure out what was going on around her. There were too many people here. The other two skaters, of course, but men, too. At least one of them rink management. Someone in a fireman’s uniform, or was it an EMT? She squinted up at them, wondering if her head was going to hurt this badly for the rest of her life. She wanted to sleep, to lie still and wait for the pain to subside, but they wouldn’t let her. They were touching her, pulling her skates off, moving her. Straps of some sort. Voices. One of them had noticed she was awake. He spoke to her, asking her to help him. “What hospital?” he asked. “Hillcrest,” she whispered.

  The ride to the medical complex was like something out of a nightmare. Ginny kept waking to find that only a minute or two had passed and she was still being jolted around inside the ambulance. She was beginning to feel nauseous and was glad to slip back into oblivion.

  In the E.R. it was almost worse. The exam lights hurt her eyes and everyone was busy, busy, busy. There was too much noise and a steady stream of irritants. “Look here. Talk to me. Let me just do this.” Ginny closed her eyes and wished herself back on the ice, flying around the oval, her heart soaring, released by the music and the ice and the skates and her own twelve years of work. Accidents happen, of course, it was expected. “If you aren’t falling, you aren’t trying,” her father had said. She’d fallen before, many times, even hit her head, but never like this.

  She opened her eyes to find two doctors examining an x-ray, their backs to her, holding the film up to the light box on the wall. She could hear them talking.

  “Linear temporal fracture, no depression, and no hematoma. We’ll pop her into the neuro ICU and keep a close eye on her. That way we’ll be ready if the swelling gets out of hand.”

  “How fast was she going?”

  “No way to know. The witnesses told the police they’d seen her do the same routine dozens of times before without problems.”

  The next time she came out of it, it was to find Jim perched on a stool beside the stretcher. He was watching her. He rose and leaned over the side rail.

  “Hi, Ginny. How are you doing?”

  She swallowed. “My head hurts.”

  He nodded. “I’ll bet it does. That was some fall.”

  Ginny blinked, interested in spite of the pain. “How can you tell?”

  He hesitated for a split second. “They told us there was blood smeared across the ice and a pool of it under you when the ambulance arrived.”

  Ginny started to reach for the side of her head, but he intercepted her.

  “Don’t touch just yet. You have a laceration along the scalp line and across the top of your ear. There are dressings over the stitches. Just leave it alone.”

  She squinted up at him. “How bad is it?”

  “Two cracked ribs, twenty two stitches, and something that looks like road rash.”

  “What about my head?”

  He kept his voice quiet. “You have a skull fracture, and a concussion.”

  Ginny was too experienced not to see he was hiding something. “And what else?”

  There was a short pause. “One of your pupils is larger than the other.”

  Ginny sighed, knowing exactly what he meant. Her brain was swollen within the hard shell of bone. They might have to do some very aggressive surgery before the swelling started to go down again. She might have to go on a ventilator. She might die.

  Ginny closed her eyes, exhausted with the effort of talking. She heard Jim settle back down on the stool, then nothing.

  All the rest of that day Ginny drifted in and out of consciousness, sometimes finding herself attended, sometimes alone. The nurses came, checking her pupils and pushing drugs into the IV line. Doctors came, making sure she was no worse. Her mother came, her face white, but her voice calm. Ginny stirred herself to minimize her mother’s fears. Just a bump on the head. A matter of time. Of course she would skate again, she loved it too much to give it up. When her mother had gone away again, Ginny retreated into the pillows and did as little as she could get away with. It hurt to open her eyes, hurt to talk, hurt to breathe.

  * * *

  Chapter 38

  Thursday

  The following day was better, and worse. They moved her out of the ICU into a normal hospital room where she could have flowers and visitors and television, but all she wanted was quiet. Hal had come, looking pale, and tried to cheer her up with funny stories from work. Ginny smiled and was glad when he left.

  Elaine had come, with news the missing documents had been found and dispatched safely to the museum, and handing over the images she had promised. Caroline had come, bringing chocolates, and very sensibly gone away again. Her mother had come and Alex had called. Ginny accepted all these attentions stoically, but wished with all her heart she could be left alone.

  There was a knock on the door.

  She blinked as Steve Cheshire, the guy in charge of the skate shop at the rink slipped into the room, followed by the rink manager. William Morgan stepped over to the bed and extended a hand.

  “I’m so sorry you were hurt.”

  “Thank you.”

  He settled into the chair beside the bed. “But you’re going to be all right?”

  Ginny smiled slightly. “They’re not committing themselves, but yes, I think so.”

  He nodded in satisfaction. “Good,” he said, then fell silent.

  Ginny looked at his expression, then over at Steve, wondering why the two of them had come. “Don’t worry, Mr. Morgan. I’m not planning to sue the rink. It was just an accident.”

  His frown deepened. “Well, that’s the problem, you see. We’re not sure it was.”

  Ginny’s mouth dropped open. “What?”

  Steve stepped forward holding a woman’s skate. He placed it on the bed beside her and stepped back. “It looks like someone tampered with your skates.”

  She stared at him. />
  “Steve was helping to take your skates off. He had the right one, this one. When he pulled on it, the blade came off in his hand.”

  Ginny just stared.

  “That’s not supposed to happen,” Steve said. “I’ve been around rinks for the better part of fifteen years and I’ve never seen it before. Not like that. So I took a look at it.” He stopped to lick his lips.

  “And?”

  “It was a slick job. Whoever it was took the blade completely off, enlarged the holes just the tiniest little bit, with a drill — there were fresh cuts in the leather — then filled the spaces with something that would crumble under stress. Then he put the screws back in, making sure the blade lined up exactly with the stains on the leather sole, so the tampering wouldn’t be noticed.”

  Ginny digested this information. “Would any of this require special tools?”

  “No. All you need is a Phillips head screw driver and a drill, and the filling compound, of course.”

  “How long would it take?”

  “Not more than an hour and probably a lot less.”

  Mr. Morgan leaned forward. “We wanted to come tell you first, so you wouldn’t hear it from someone else.” He met her eyes. “I think you should tell the police.”

  “I’ve already talked to them. They classified it as an accident.”

  Steve shook his head. “This was a deliberate attack on you. I took the material to the lab at the University and asked them to analyze it for me. It’s a polyform steel epoxy, available at any hardware store. Easy to get hold of, but it would take someone with a chemistry background to recognize its potential.”

  Ginny felt her throat tighten. Another chemist? Or the same one?

  “What do you mean?”

  “Well, as a glue, at room temperature and under compression, it works pretty well. So whoever chose it must have known what kind of stress is normally placed on a skate blade: cold air and lateral sheer.”

  Ginny wrinkled her forehead. “I don’t understand.”

  Steve shifted his weight from one foot to the other. “Well, don’t you see? You could walk on that blade, even skate gently on it and nothing would happen. The bond would be as good as what we normally use and no one would be the wiser. It wouldn’t be until you really started to work — to pick up some real speed — that it would fail. So whoever did this intended a high speed accident.”

  Ginny felt sick.

  Mr. Morgan reached over and patted her hand. “Tell the police to call me or Steve. We’ll let them know what we found.” They let themselves out, leaving her alone with her thoughts.

  Steve was wrong. He had to be wrong. Most of the sabotage that occurred in ice skating happened during competition and most of that consisted of things stolen at the last moment. She had heard of a clever competitor who sprayed a rival’s blades with silicone, which destroyed the aerodynamics and made the victim feel as if she were trying to skate through molasses. But tampering with the blade mounting? Who would dare to try?

  Ginny had seen blades come loose before, in competition and in practice. Not a pretty sight. Invariably it was boot failure. A well-mounted blade did not move, but the stress of skating on it, hour after hour, day after day, and the natural aging of the leather sole, could loosen the fit, allow the metal plate to slide, or the screw to fall out. One kept a screwdriver in one’s bag for just that emergency. And a wise skater checked her screws regularly.

  Ginny frowned. What skater, or skater’s family, didn’t know that?

  If someone really had tampered with her skates (and Steve seemed convinced someone had) then the question became why? Was this a warning, or had someone hoped to put her out of commission for a while?

  Ginny’s hand instinctively reached for her talisman, but it wasn’t there. Pendants had a way of flying up and hitting one in the face, so she never wore it to the rink.

  If this was a warning, then the perpetrator would let her know, somehow.

  If, instead of a warning, this was an attempt to kill her, then whoever was responsible would be careful to cover his (or her) tracks.

  Ginny pulled her knees up and put her head down on them. It was all impossible. It had to be an accident. No one she knew would deliberately try to hurt her. No one. It must be an accident. Just an accident. She felt the tears well up, then slide down her cheeks.

  “Ginny?” Jim set the magazines down on the deserted chair and came over. He plucked several tissues from the dispenser, then sat down on the edge of the bed, facing her, leaning forward to blot her cheeks. She tried to turn her face away, but he wouldn’t let her.

  He picked up the flashlight from the bedside table and put her through the neuro exam, then inspected the bandages. “Are you hurting?”

  She nodded.

  “I’ll get you something for it.”

  Jim pushed the call button and spoke to the nurse’s station. He waited in silence while the nurse brought the medication, then shook his head at her question.

  “No. I’ll watch her. Thanks.”

  The nurse injected the medicine into the IV line. “This should help,” she said. She disposed of the syringe, completed the charting, then slipped out.

  Ginny leaned back into the pillows, letting her eyes close. It was a good thing Jim had interrupted her crying. Tears would make her head worse. Better she should sleep. If she could. She swallowed hard, her eyes drifting open, finding his on her.

  “It’s okay, Ginny. Sleep. We’ll talk later.”

  * * *

  Chapter 39

  Thursday

  Jim waited until he was sure the medicine had taken hold, then slid off the bed. He’d been unable to sleep and had come to work early so he could spend some time with Ginny. He would rather have been able to talk to her, but at least he could make himself useful.

  He could hardly look at her without feeling sick with grief and guilt. This was his fault. He’d known. On some level, he’d known this was coming.

  Who could have done this to her? Who would be willing to risk her life this way? She might have died or been left alive, but brain dead. Who would risk that?

  Not anyone at the hospital, where she was well liked. Not any of the Scots. Not Hal.

  Jim frowned. Much as he wanted to think ill of his rival, if Hal wanted Ginny, he would want to protect her. She should be safe with him.

  Quite apart from wanting her for himself, he didn’t like the idea of Ginny marrying Hal. Why not? Why wasn’t his old school chum good enough for this woman he hardly knew?

  Because Hal had misbehaved in college? Everyone did that. Most settled down to boring, respectable lives.

  Because he was rich? Jim was, too (if you didn’t count the school loans), and for the same reason, having inherited his parents’ estates, and being gainfully employed, of course.

  Because he manipulated people? Jim hadn’t even thought about that in years. It had been a running joke. Hal was always the one sent in to sooth the savage breast of whatever sort; professors, administrators, parents. He’d always gotten the girl, too, because of it.

  Obviously, Jim had been right to worry. Ginny had an enemy, a bad one. Who? Who had access? Who had the skills necessary? Who would be willing to hurt her like this?

  He turned away, moving restlessly around the room, the questions tumbling over one another in his mind.

  If he’d wanted her to trust him, to listen to him, he’d been going about it all wrong. He’d known she would take it badly, about Hal being in that lab. Why hadn’t he kept his mouth shut?

  That business with Mrs. Campbell had surprised him. Ginny’d been fine until the screwdriver surfaced. Then not. She’d sounded more than simply relieved. That had been a gut reaction, not an intellectual one. Then she’d taken off without his finding out why she looked so distressed.

  He’d followed her around the lake the next day. Okay, it had seemed like a good idea at the time, but she’d seen him watching her, stalking her. That couldn’t have looked good. He should h
ave spoken to her, made up some excuse, tried to explain.

  She’d been like a skittish colt during the power failure. Worse, as if she expected someone to attack her. He’d tried to warn her to be careful, but he hadn’t seen this coming.

  On his third circuit of the room, Jim’s eye fell on a paper lying on the bedside table. He didn’t recognize it. Something out of her chart, perhaps? Or some handwritten notes left by one of the physicians? About patients? That would be a HIPAA violation. He picked it up and looked closer. It was like nothing he had ever seen before.

  February 22, 1777 – Called to see Mercy Allen,

  Reverend Allen’s youngest, for a stomach ailment. The girl is with child by a British soldier quartered in her father’s house, but otherwise healthy.

  March 4, 1777 – Called to see Benjamin Williams. His

  wound is infected. He suffers from fever and may die. Perhaps that would not be such a bad thing. It is a shame he had not already gotten sons by his poor Rachel for it is certain that he can sire none now, even should he live to remarry.

  August 12, 1777 – Born today to Mercy Williams,

  a fine,healthy boy.

  He took the paper over to the window, to get better light on it and squinted at the unfamiliar images. At first, he thought it was written in another language, but some of the words seemed to be English. February, for instance. He could read the dates. Well, not the year. He struggled a while longer, then gave it up and started to set it back down where he had found it, but there was another underneath this one.

  The second item appeared to be a letter. This one was easier to read.

  Saratoga

  My dear Prudence:

  Forgive my long silence. I take this opportunity to write to you at last and tell you all our news.

  Well, it is all very satisfactorily concluded. Mercy was wed last June to Benjamin Williams and has since given birth to a son. You will remember Squire Williams, I think, from your last visit, him that was wed to Rachel Canon, may she rest in peace. A decent, God fearing man who will be glad enough to get a son, even if not his own flesh and blood, and a mother for his three small daughters. We have received news that the Tory boy who bedded Mercy was killed in the fighting. She is unhappy, of course, but that will pass. She is reconciled to her new life and will do her duty. Benjamin, God bless him, has given the child a name and Mercy will not do anything to hurt her sweet son.