Troubled Waters

by Carolyn Wheat

  The words were so low I barely heard them. They were so unexpected that I couldn’t process them. “So could you.”

  “What did you say?”

  “I said, so could you.” Tarky’s face was turned toward the television sets, which still showed the stage, empty now, on which the candidates had faced one another.

  “And just what do you mean by that?” Now Wes was as quiet, as dangerously patient, as Tarky had seemed earlier.

  “I’ve got the hemo.”

  “The what?”

  “Oh, my God.” I put my hand to my mouth to recall the words, but it was too late. Both men turned and stared at me as though aware for the first time that there was another person in the room.

  Wes pointed a finger in my face and said, “Nothing said in this room goes out of this room, understood?”

  “I can’t agree to that,” I replied. “What Tarky’s talking about is the weapon that killed Kenny.”

  Wes turned his attention back to Tarky. “What hemo?”

  Tarky shook his head. “Give it up, Wes. You know what this is about. Everyone thinks Ron and Cass discovered Kenny’s body under the weeping beech tree.” He pulled the cold cigar out of his mouth and pointed it at his heart.

  “But that’s not true. I found Kenny. I found Kenny lying dead and I found your hemostat, the one you used as a roach clip, next to his hand. I picked it up and kept it all these years. So,” he continued, putting the cigar back between his lips, “I’d reconsider that firing if I were you.”

  But the man who’d just demonstrated his ability to think on his feet smiled. “The old magic twanger. I wondered what happened to it.”

  “That’s pretty lame, Wes.”

  “No, Tark. If you give this thing even one minute’s thought, you’d see that I didn’t kill Kenny. If I had, why would I leave the magic twanger?” Wes’s face wore the same self-satisfied smile he’d used on Sally Spurrier. “It would be like signing my name to the murder. Which means it must have been left by someone else in order to implicate me.”

  Tarky pursed his lips. “It might be interesting,” he said, “to produce the hemo and see how it squares with your little speech about smoking just one joint in your whole—”

  Wes made for the door. Over his shoulder, he called out, “Fuck you, Tark. Have your shit out of the office by ten tomorrow.”

  Tarky forced his lips into a smile that contrasted with his gray face. “He doesn’t mean it,” he said. “He’ll call me first thing in the morning and ask where he’s supposed to be when and what the focus group said about the debate. You’ll see.”

  “Maybe.” It was as far as I could go in encouraging Tarky’s optimism. “But if and when he finds out that the person who gave you that so-called political contribution was Rap, I—”

  “Go away, Cassie,” the former campaign manager said. “Please do me a favor and go the fuck away.”

  I considered Tarky’s story as I drove to the hospital to check on Jan and see Ron. We’d learned at the time that Kenny had inhaled parathion, but it wasn’t clear how, since there had been none found at the crime scene. Now the pieces came together with startling vividness: poor Kenny accepting a joint from a person he considered a friend, and then dropping dead when it turned out to be laced with an extremely potent poison.

  Wes had a point. If he’d been the one handing the marijuana to Kenny, why wouldn’t he have taken the hemo with him? Which meant that the killer’s plan to incriminate Wes had been derailed by Tarky’s unexpected appearance on the scene.

  And what was Tarky thinking when he removed the magic twanger? Did he believe his future candidate had killed a sixteen-year-old boy—and did he deliberately suppress that fact so he and Wes could go on to political glory together? His pathetic attempt at blackmail seemed to have failed, but Wes was facing a tough fight. Questions about a long-ago murder, a sixties act of defiant radicalism, and contributions from a drug-dealing bogus airplane parts seller were likely to bury his political career for good.

  I closed my mental file on the subject as I slipped my rental car into a space in the Toledo Hospital parking lot.

  Jan lay in the intensive care tent, tubes and pipes and machines surrounding her. I could see her chest rise and fall, but how much of that was her doing and how much was the work of the respirator, I didn’t know.

  Death would be easier.

  Wouldn’t it?

  Wouldn’t Ron be—well, not happier, but more at peace if we had a nice funeral, Father Jerry presiding, and put Jan in the ground? Shed the tears, say the prayers, and move on.

  Hard to move on, though, without knowing who wanted Jan dead so much that he slammed her skull five or six times with a baseball bat.

  Zack and Ron had gone for a coffee break. I was alone with the woman who had been my sister-in-law without my knowing it for fourteen years.

  Could people in a coma hear you if you talked to them? It all depended on which segments of Oprah you’d seen.

  But what could I say to her?

  I sighed. It all boiled down to one thing. One thing I hated like hell to have to say to anybody, let alone the woman who’d stolen my brother.

  “I’m sorry, Jan,” I whispered.

  As long as I live, I will never believe that what happened next had anything to do with my words.

  The eyelids fluttered, like the wings of a fly trapped in a spiderweb.

  I held my breath.

  More fluttering. The fly was in serious trouble.

  At last I saw blue. Jan’s eyes were open. She stared straight at me and gave a strangled croak. Her lips moved and sounds came out, but none of it made sense.

  She was conscious—but how much of her brain still worked?

  And what was I supposed to do about this? Call a doctor or try to communicate with her?

  I ran for the door and called out, “Someone help. Quick.”

  Then I ran back to the bed. “Jan, it’s me. Cassie. Can you talk? Do you recognize me?”

  The bruised, swollen face was incapable of registering emotion. She looked like a beefsteak pounded into submission by a French cook. More strangled sounds emerged from her mouth, but nothing I recognized.

  Where the hell were the doctors? On TV, there would be six of them surrounding this bed. I patted Jan’s limp hand and said, “I’ll be back. I’ve got to tell somebody you’re awake.”

  Before I made it to the door, a nurse rushed past me and lifted Jan’s hand for a pulse reading. She leaned down and moved Jan’s eyelids, nodding at whatever it was she saw. She put a blood pressure cuff on Jan’s arm.

  I couldn’t stand it any longer. “Is she conscious? Can she understand what we’re saying? Will she be all right?”

  “We don’t know that yet,” the woman replied, her voice heavily accented with the rhythms of the West Indies. “I’ll go get Dr. Singh. He can tell you more than I can, but I doubt that even he will have a prognosis at this early stage.”

  When she’d bustled out the door, I stepped over to the bed. “Well, at least you’ve got a prognosis,” I said. “That’s an improvement, you know. Yesterday I heard Ron talking to Father Jerry about your funeral, and tonight you’ve got a prognosis.”

  I stroked the limp hand, which reminded me of Ron’s. “I hate funerals. I’m kind of glad I won’t have to go to yours. I’d be even gladder if I knew you could understand a word I’m saying, but I guess you can’t have everything.”

  The limp hand moved and grabbed mine with a sudden strength. The head lifted off the pillow and the face screwed itself into an expression of intense purpose. The swollen mouth opened and sounds that might almost have been words came out.

  “Gaaaaaa,” she said. She broke off in frustration as the realization hit her that whatever was in her injured brain wasn’t coming out of her mouth the way she’d intended. She tried again. “Caaaaaaaa Daaaaa.”

  “Canada!” A rush of elation hit me. She was making sense. “Yes,” I shouted. “You were trying to get refugees
to Canada.”

  “Ooohhhh,” she grunted. Her neck muscles bunched as she tried in vain to move her head from side to side. I gathered she was trying to say no.

  I reached for her bandaged head. “You can’t move,” I said firmly. “You’ll rattle what’s left of your brains.”

  “This is correct,” a precise voice behind me agreed. Dr. Singh stepped up and gently took my hands away. He put his stethoscope on Jan’s chest and nodded at whatever he heard through the long black tubes. He took a penlight from his white coat pocket and shone it into each eye, lifting the lids just as the nurse had done. I could have sworn a look of deep annoyance gleamed from those blue orbs. Warmth swept over me; whatever Jan’s problems communicating, it seemed there was still an active intelligence inside the battered head.

  Sudden tears stung my eyes. Was it possible that my brother was actually going to have a living, breathing wife?

  The whirr of Ron’s wheelchair sounded behind me. He came into the room under his own power, with Zack following. “What happened? I heard someone at the nurse’s station say she was conscious.”

  “She is,” I replied. I stepped out of the way to let him roll closer to the bed.

  “Jan, honey,” he said in a tone of voice I’d never heard him use. He lifted his hand, slowly and deliberately, toward hers. She saw him and her mouth twisted into what might have been a smile. She tried to lift her own hand to reach his, but it jerked like a gaffed fish instead of moving in his direction.

  Ron’s hand was steady if slow. Finally he connected with her white fingers and clenched his own fingers around hers. She stopped trying to move and gazed at him the way a baby fixes on its mother.

  Another person entered the room. Dr. Singh frowned. “There can be no more visitors,” he said sternly. “There are too many people in this room as it is.”

  Then he saw who the newcomer was. “Oh, it is you, Father. Well, if you are here for religious purposes, I suppose I cannot ask you to leave. But it would be better for the patient if there were fewer stimuli.” He turned his critical eyes on me.

  I saw his point. Ron was the husband, Zack was here for Ron, and Father Jerry was a man of the cloth. Which left me as the superfluous visitor.

  When Jan saw Father Jerry, her neck muscles bulged and her eyes widened. She made more sounds. “Caaaaaaa Daaaaaaaa Saaay.” Her hand left Ron’s, flying up like a startled gull.

  The priest stepped closer to the bed, standing next to Ron and placing a hand on Jan’s shoulder. “Stay calm,” he said in a mellow, soothing voice. “We promise not to leave until we understand what you’re trying to say. So take your time.”

  “Uuuud.” Her head fell back, and her neck relaxed.

  “Does that mean ‘good’?” I asked. She didn’t look in my direction, but her head moved slightly up and down.

  “Blink twice if it means good,” I ordered. All those Ben Casey reruns were finally paying off.

  She blinked twice.

  Then she ruined the effect by going into a series of ticlike blinks, clearly uncontrolled. The limp hand clenched into a limp fist. She pounded the fist on her thigh.

  Father Jerry stopped the hand, holding it in his own brown fingers. “We said we’d stay and we will. There’s no hurry.”

  “What I want to know,” Ron said slowly, “is who hit you? Who did this to you?”

  This time there was no sound, no blinking. Jan lay on her slab as if stunned. No expression on her face, no light in the blue eyes. She seemed to be staring deep within herself. At last she opened her mouth. “Oohhnn Memmmmmmerrr.”

  “You don’t remember,” Ron translated. Then he added, “Blink twice for yes.”

  She blinked twice. The blue eyes filled as she added, “Ooorrree.”

  Ron smiled and took her hand once more. “Don’t be sorry. We’re just glad you’re back this far.”

  Tears slid out of the corners of her eyes onto the pillows. She turned again to the priest. “Naaaaaakeeeen,” she moaned. “Caaaaaaaanaaaaaa Daaaaaaa Saaaay.”

  Father Jerry shook his head. “I don’t understand. What are you trying to say?”

  Dr. Singh edged Father Jerry aside and leaned over the bed. “I have some questions I must ask,” he said. “Can you tell me your name?”

  Jan’s eyes lit up; she tried to nod, but her head was locked in a fixed position. “Aaaaaaaan Eeeeehaaaaa,” she managed to say. She tried again and this time there was at least one more consonant.

  “Knows who she is,” the doctor remarked, making a note on his clipboard chart. “What year is this?” He raised his voice when he addressed Jan, as if testing her hearing as well as her comprehension.

  Jan’s face wore an expression of pride as she replied, enunciating each syllable, “Nnnniiiiiinnnnnteeeee.” She stopped for a breath. “Aaaaaaaaaay Dooooooo.”

  By no stretch of the imagination could her reply be translated into “Nineteen ninety-six.”

  Dr. Singh confirmed my growing suspicion when he asked his next question. “Can you tell me the name of the president of these United States?”

  “ Oooooooonal Aygaaaaaaa.”

  Right. The year was 1982 and the president was Ronald Reagan. Jan was alive and conscious, but she hadn’t come back to this decade.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  I ran into Ted on the way out of the hospital. I told him the good and bad news about Jan and saved him a trip by telling him there was no way Dr. Singh was going to let him into her room.

  “Meanwhile, how are you coming with Kenny’s notebook?” I stepped up my pace to keep up with Ted’s long legs. “Any breakthroughs I should know about?”

  He shook his head. We were in the parking lot now and the light from the overhead lamps made silver streaks in his hair.

  Kenny’s notebook. We had to figure out what Kenny’s symbols meant. Nothing in the notes would make sense until we did that.

  “I need coffee,” I said.

  Ted nodded. Five minutes later, we were sitting at a table in the hospital cafeteria, a thermos pitcher of coffee between us, and Kenny’s notebook open to the first page.

  “Who could L be?” I asked, not really expecting an answer. “Libby Altschuler?” She’d been Wes’s girlfriend, later his wife, still later his ex-wife. But she hadn’t really been one of us, so I doubted she’d have appeared in Kenny’s notes as often as the person designated as L showed up.

  “This one is like the symbol for a man,” Ted said, pointing. It was the classic circle with an arrow pointing upward on the right side.

  “Well, that doesn’t narrow it down very …” I began, then turned the page and put my finger on another design. “And here’s the female symbol.” The familiar circle with a cross underneath adorned several T-shirts and posters in my possession.

  “Not exactly,” Ted corrected. “It’s like the female symbol with little horns on top of the circle.”

  I smiled. “So maybe it stands for a she-devil.”

  We both said it at once: “Dana!” The resulting laughter made me feel almost as good as the hot coffee warming my throat.

  “I know this one,” Ted said. His finger rested on a design that was a cross between a 2 and a 4.

  “What does it mean?”

  “I don’t know. But I’ve seen it before. It’s like a planet or something. Astrology.”

  “You believe in astrology? A just-the-facts-ma’am reporter type like you?” It was fun teasing Ted. It made me feel like the teenager I’d been when we dated.

  “Not me,” he replied. “It was my ex who was into all that stuff. Horoscopes, tarot cards, crystals—the whole bit. Drove me crazy after a while. There was nothing that she didn’t relate to the stars. So all I know is, I’ve seen this before. I just don’t know what it means.”

  I considered asking Ted about his marriage and divorce. Did he have kids? Were they still friendly? Was he seeing anyone?

  I decided to stick to business. “Well, okay. That gives us one masculine symbol, one feminine symb
ol with horns, one unknown planet. And here’s a circle with a dot in the middle.”

  We found three more symbols. Three variations on one symbol, really. It was a letter P with a dot in the middle, and each of them had a subscripted number underneath. There was a P1, a P2, and a P3.

  We wrote down all the symbols and tried to match symbols with people, and came up dry every time. There was just no clue, no matrix, to help us decipher Kenny’s notes.

  Sixteen years old, and he’d created a puzzle we couldn’t solve.

  “He was just a kid,” I said. “A kid who spent his spare time reading comic books when he wasn’t—”

  “Comic books.” Ted stopped cold. “That reminds me of something. Some damn comic book he used to read. What the hell was that thing called?”

  “Superman had kryptonite,” I said, doubt in my voice. The symbols looked scientific to me. Scientific or astrological; my friend Dorinda back in Brooklyn wore a strange symbol around her neck, signifying what she called her sun sign. Although as I recalled, she was more impressed with the fact that her moon was in Pisces.

  Ted flashed a quick smile at me. “I doubt that you’ll find kryptonite on the periodic table,” he said. “These are real designations for certain metals, of that I’m—”

  He broke off, enlightenment flooding his face with an energy that made him almost handsome. “I remember,” he said simply. “Metal Men.”

  “There’s a comic book about metal men?” I hated to rain on his parade, but—“Like robots?” There had to be forty comic books about robots.

  “No, no. Superheroes, sort of. Made out of metal. They had the periodic table symbols on their heads.”

  “Yeah.” But my scorn was half-kidding. He looked certain. He looked positive. He looked sexy.

  “Okay, so we get a copy of this comic book,” I said. “Or we find a twelve-year-old boy.”

  Which made me remember, really remember, Kenny Gebhardt. A kid. A kid with a lot of years ahead of him. Sure, I’d been upset by his death when it happened. But now that almost thirty years had passed, thirty years during which I’d lived and loved, I felt the real tragedy of Kenny’s passing.