This was interesting. “Someone blamed you?”
“No, but I’m the manager over the engineers. I’m the guy who double-checks their work. If they go down, who do you think the scapegoat will be?”
“I don’t think you have anything to worry about. All the readings look good. You guys did your job.”
“I’m glad you think so.” Robert offered his hand. “Well, seeing as you have your car, I’ll go back to the office and do a once-over again for your tools before I check out. I’m sure they’re around somewhere. And you go ahead and romance your lady friend over there.” Before Bret could protest, Robert turned and strode up the bank, heading to where they had left their vehicles.
Shaking his head, Bret walked in Autumn’s direction. Men were leaving in small groups now, but there were more coming to take their places, as though having the Navy Seals there had encouraged a greater show of manpower. Not that it would do the victims any good. Dead was dead, as Christian would have said. What did it matter how long they were under the water? That was just like his brother, not a thought for those remaining. The dead were fine, but the survivors’ pain went on.
Autumn heard him as he approached, and she turned, her cautious expression becoming a smile. “Hi,” she said softly. At that moment she looked too much like Tawnia on the night he’d first kissed her at the door to her apartment. She hadn’t invited him in, but that was okay because that kiss had told him everything he needed to know. He hadn’t wanted it to end.
“I asked if you found anything.” Autumn lifted the brow over her hazel eye—the right eye. “Are you okay?”
“I’m fine. It’s just—” No use in bringing up Tawnia again. Autumn couldn’t help her appearance.
“I know I’m a mess.” Autumn looked at her clothes. “But my arm feels a lot better, thanks to you.” She turned back to the water. “I thought they’d find him today.”
“I’m sorry.”
“You don’t have to be. Whatever happens, Winter wouldn’t want me to be unhappy.”
Bret smiled. “How did he get a name like that? Did his parents really call him Winter?”
“He was born Douglas Rayne, spelled R-A-Y-N-E, but his friends called him Winter because he went white so early. I never saw him with any color in his hair. He says it happened when he was serving in the army overseas. He saw action in, well, I’d say Budapest, but that’s probably wrong. Geography isn’t my strong point. When he met Summer—that’s my mother, and it’s her real name, believe it or not—the nickname stuck even more. He finally went and had his whole name legally changed before they got married.”
“Well, it makes sense then. I guess.”
“They were special people.” She lifted her chin defensively. “Weird, I’ll admit, but special.”
“If I’d called my parents by their first names, I would have gotten a spanking.” He hoped the words would make her smile.
She looked at him steadily, her face expressionless. “I wish I’d called them Mom and Dad.” Her eyes dropped as she added, “Now that they’re gone.”
Silence, deep and uncomfortable, fell between them. Bret didn’t know what to do. Christian would have had this woman laughing inside a few seconds, while he seemed only to bring out the worst in her.
“Look, I’m sorry, okay? I didn’t mean to . . . I don’t know. It’s hard to know what to . . . I just came to see if you’re all right. The arm and everything.”
Her smile was back now. “You sound about two years old, you know? Like your mom caught you with your hand in the cookie jar.”
He laughed. “That’s pretty much how I feel. I’m glad your arm’s feeling better. Let me know if you need anything.”
“You leaving?”
Was that regret he saw in her face? “No, I’m about to go take a peek inside that boat.”
She looked over her shoulder. “That’s the one that hit the bridge.” The words came stiffly. For the first time he noticed the sheen of sweat on her forehead under the unruly top mass of red-dyed hair. By contrast, the brown part underneath hung limply, shiny against her neck. Had she even combed it today? She certainly hadn’t washed it.
“Yeah. I think the FBI and the other authorities have been through it already, but I’m curious. The captain and the crew claim they were heading right under the lift. They say there’s no way they would have hit it if the bridge operator had done his job, but some think they actually hit the side, not the lift itself, which would indicate they’re lying.”
“What do you think?”
He shook his head. “It’s impossible to tell from the video angle, however much they fiddle with it. And I don’t like to guess.”
“Sometimes life is guessing.” She tilted her head as she spoke, looking so much like Tawnia it was uncanny. But Tawnia was from Kansas and Autumn from Oregon. They had no connection.
“Yeah.” He nodded at her and started for the boat. To his surprise, she came along. When he lifted a brow at her, she shrugged. “I’m curious, too. Do you mind?”
“No.” He slowed his pace to match hers. She was moving carefully, as though every step jarred her arm, and he wondered if she was in pain.
The boat was roped off and watched by the young guard currently in charge of keeping sightseers out of the entire area. He came toward them as they arrived at the boat. He was just a boy, really, with light brown hair and average features, someone no one would look at twice in a crowd. When he saw Bret’s ID badge, he let him onto the deck. “You’ll need this key for what remains of the crew quarters,” he said, tossing it to him. “Unless you want to climb in through the top.”
Bret looked up where the top part of the boat should have been. Not an easy climb for someone with a broken arm. “Thanks.”
“Just see that you lock up and get it back to me before you leave the site.”
“Sure.”
“They’ll be taking off the cargo tomorrow or the next day,” the guard added. “It’s been cleared. What are you looking for, anyway?”
“I don’t know.” Bret started up the ramp that led onto the ship. “Anything that stands out.”
“They found a bottle of gin inside the part that was cut off. That’s about it. The captain was supposed to be on the bridge when it hit, but they found him on the deck, safe. He must have jumped. There were people in the crew quarters below the bridge, and they had their ceiling torn right off. Must have been weird, one minute having a ceiling and the next, nothing.”
“The captain was drinking?” Bret had read the report, but there hadn’t been anything about alcohol.
“He swears not. But he doesn’t remember anything. He said he was at the wheel, and the next thing he knows, someone’s shaking him awake.”
“Odd.”
“Well, he hit his head pretty badly. They were lucky there were no injuries.”
“There were plenty of injuries,” Autumn retorted.
The young man nodded at her, his cheeks going red. He seemed even younger than before. “Sorry about your loss, ma’am.” He obviously knew Autumn by sight and, like all the other workers, afforded her a cautious respect. Bret noticed that his gaze didn’t exactly meet Autumn’s. It was a sight he himself had grown accustomed to after his brother died. People didn’t know how to treat you after a tragedy—which made perfect sense, because even after more than a year, Bret still didn’t know how to act when meeting someone who had known Christian.
Autumn nodded at the guard’s apology and turned away.
“Did you hear anything else?” Bret asked.
The guard shook his head. “Only that the captain swears he was dead center. He says the bridge operator did something wrong.”
“The bridge operator was interviewed thoroughly. He claimed the captain was coming on too fast, but that it would have been fine if he hadn’t hit the side.”
“The side definitely hit something. That’s for sure.”
“I don’t see any damage.” Bret studied the side of the boat.
“It’s on the other side.”
“But it hit the right side of the bridge, not the left.”
“The boat’s turned around. You can see it if you walk to the other side. What we can’t say is if the damage happened before or after the first impact.” The guard took a few steps back. “Well, I’ll leave you now. I’ve got to do the rounds. You wouldn’t believe how many people come to gawk. They really get in the way.”
“Thanks again.”
The boat’s deck was full of huge plastic transport containers. A few of the containers were open, exposing cardboard boxes filled with something else, but most of them were shut tight. Bret sighed at the impossibility of finding anything here. “Like looking for a needle in a haystack,” he murmured.
“It doesn’t look this big from the shore,” Autumn commented.
“Let’s go to the other side. I want to see the damage there.”
Sure enough, the metal on the far side was deeply scraped and dented. Several sections of metal were missing. What remained of the crew quarters was caved in on this side, and some other structure—a stack of some sort?—had been ripped off and thrown into the rest of the boat. But had the boat hit the side of the bridge and then bounced into the lift, sheering off the top? Or had it happened in the reverse? Or more nearly simultaneously, as the video coverage hinted? Bret shook his head. A waste of time, this. Robert was right. The fact remained that even allowing for the extra weight of the missing part of the boat, the math and the measurements of the equipment didn’t lie: the boat couldn’t have caused such extensive damage unless the bridge was otherwise damaged. And Robert’s records would have shown that.
Unless Robert had forged them.
Bret had a hard time thinking such a thing. Yes, Robert was worried about shouldering the blame—he’d admitted that already—but even if maintenance records could be forged, the current readings couldn’t be manipulated, and they supported Robert’s records. Besides, Robert seemed sincere.
Yet something didn’t add up.
They walked past the containers and went below, where they were greeted with more of the same. Bret wondered if the authorities would have to go through all the cargo. Probably not, since the cargo seemed to be incidental to the accident. Still, what if the cargo was somehow illegal? What if the accident had been sabotage of some sort to take something quickly off the boat when chaos ensued?
Then it would likely be gone already. Bret shook himself. He wasn’t the type to envision what-ifs. He only wanted the facts.
Fact: half the Hawthorne Bridge collapsed.
Fact: the boat couldn’t have caused the collapse alone.
Fact: the bridge had stress fractures and needed some repairs but shouldn’t have collapsed on its own.
Fact: Robert had somehow misplaced his tools, but Bret had used the county’s better ones for his tests. The test verified that the bridge shouldn’t have collapsed.
So what was he missing? There must be a piece of evidence yet to be found.
“Let’s go see the crew quarters,” Autumn said.
Bret let them in with the key, though there were several broken windows and he wondered why anyone bothered with a key at all. “What a mess.” Garbage, pieces of metal, and a scattering of bedding and personal belongings. Apparently, everyone had been in a hurry to leave. Understandable, given the events. Overhead the sun was sinking into the west, and its light shown on the few cirrus clouds above, turning them into bright pink and orange streaks in the sky.
Autumn shivered. “It’s just not right, seeing sky from in here.”
“I know what you mean.” He started looking in the lockers, slowly going over everything. The police had already been here and the FBI. What did he think he could find?
Autumn sat on one of the intact lower sleeping berths. On the floor near her feet was a brightly colored wooden chest about the size of a six-pack cooler. She picked it up and looked inside. “There was a child on board,” she said. “Look, crayons, clay, and a coloring book.”
With her left hand she clumsily unwrapped a corner of the huge piece of red clay, tore off a chunk, and began kneading it. “I used to love clay.”
Bret slowly finished his search, hoping to find a scrap of paper with a clue. Or perhaps diving gear with remains of materials that signaled some sort of sabotage to the bridge. When he opened the next locker, he was surprised to see a pair of fins belonging to a diving suit. But what did that say anyway? He was on a boat. It was only natural that some member of the crew was interested in diving, though what use fins would be on a commercial boat, he wasn’t sure. The captain wasn’t likely to stop and let the crew have fun diving when he was on a deadline. What about the rest of the suit? Perhaps the authorities had confiscated it to run tests, just in case. He’d have to remember to ask if they’d found anything.
Autumn was rolling the red clay into a snake on her pant leg. She didn’t look well. Her eyes had taken on a glazed look, and every so often, she gave a small shudder as though she was cold. He sat on the bed next to her. “Autumn?”
“Hmm?”
“You okay?”
“I was thinking about Summer. We used to make all sorts of things out of clay. Pots and stuff. Sometimes we sold them at the store. Like for a dollar or something. I felt rich.”
It took him a moment to understand that she was talking about her mother and not the season. He reached out and touched the hand that held the clay. It was like touching a rock on a hot day. She had a fever, and what was he supposed to do now?
“Let’s get you home.”
“I can’t go home. He needs me.”
“You need to rest.”
“I can feel him, or something. I can’t sleep. I need . . .” Her face crumpled. “Oh, Winter. Daddy.” Tears leaked from her eyes, yet she wasn’t exactly crying.
Bret hesitantly put his arms around her. “It’ll be okay,” he whispered. “Not tomorrow or next week, or even months from now, but it does get better.”
The words calmed her, though she didn’t reply.
He released her and stood, gently urging her to her feet. “I’ll drive you home.”
“We should have had Spring. Then I wouldn’t be alone.” She slumped back down on the thin mattress.
She wasn’t making any sense, but then people with fevers often didn’t. He wondered if he should take her back to the clinic or to her store. But who would watch her? He had a job to do, and he certainly couldn’t get her cleaned up. She needed another woman. Too bad she seemed to have cut herself off from all her friends.
He considered the options. None of them would do Autumn any good, and that meant he needed to find another alternative. But what? Well, maybe he needed to do what he was doing with the bridge—start with the facts: Autumn wouldn’t go home, and she needed help, preferably a woman’s.
Of course, the biggest fact of all had been staring him in the face, but he had overlooked the possible meaning until now. “Are you adopted?” he asked.
She opened only one eye, the blue one on the left, as though it was too much effort to respond.
“Well?”
“It only meant they loved me more.” Her voice was low and sleepy.
He had to call Tawnia. She hadn’t expressed interest in finding her birth family, but maybe she would feel differently after meeting Autumn. Their similarity might be a family connection, however distant. And at least she could help with getting Autumn clean and dressed in something other than dirty jeans and sweatshirt. It wasn’t just an excuse to call her. It wasn’t.
He took out his phone, hoping she would answer.
Chapter 8
Hands full of plastic grocery sacks and her purse in her mouth, Tawnia struggled to open her front door. Inside, she dropped her purse on the chair in her tiny living room, kicking the door shut with her foot. She was starving and angry. The day had gone from bad to worse. First her car repair had taken an hour longer than promised, and then she’d spent another hour trying
to find her way home from the grocery store. She’d printed out the directions from her computer at work, and it seemed simple enough to get there. But the directions home had dead-ended into street construction, and she was positive the detour signs had been placed by a madman whose only goal was to make her life miserable. When she finally found the right street, after stopping to ask directions three times, she’d missed her turn not once but twice and had to circle around through the construction again.
Staggering into the kitchen, she plopped the sacks onto the small round table. There were deep red marks on her wrists where the sacks had dug into her flesh. She slumped into a chair, pulling out a half-eaten bag of chips from one of the sacks. Baked, because she knew she’d eat the whole bag, and while she didn’t have to worry about her weight now, her mother insisted there would come a time when she would. Her mother had gained twenty pounds when she hit fifty. Being slim was one thing they’d always had in common, despite their lack of shared genes, and Tawnia thought her mother mourned the loss of their being alike more than the actual weight gain.
Tawnia sighed as she thought about her mother. She was all about appearances and the proper way to go about your life. Some things you simply didn’t discuss in any company—like adoption. They had not told even Tawnia about her origin, leaving the discovery to an accident when she was five.
“I don’t know where she gets the talent for drawing,” her mother said, coming into her bedroom, “but she is very good.”
Six-year-old Tawnia was sitting on the floor of her parents’ walk-in closet because it had shelves just the right size to make her Barbies a three-story house. She hadn’t expected to be bothered here since her mother had been in the kitchen and her father hadn’t come home from work.
“Maybe her birth mother was an artist,” her father replied. “You know how irresponsible those kinds of people are.”
“Well, environment has a lot to do with raising a child, too,” her mother said with a sniff. “That means us. We’ll teach her to work and to succeed. She’s a good little girl. And so beautiful. I couldn’t have hoped for more if I’d had her myself.”
Eyes of a Stanger Page 10
