Dead in the Water

by Glenda Carroll

  I could hear the deep ‘thup, thup, thup’ of a helicopter moving toward the accident scene. It was an air ambulance and it had found a very wide stretch of beach not far from the parking lot. Jackie was quickly transported away from her twisted and crumpled car to the medical copter.

  “Where are they taking her?” Mike asked one of the EMTs standing close to him.

  “SF Memorial.”

  “There’s no place closer?” he asked.

  “Sure, but some of the hospitals don’t have helipads or don’t specialize in trauma victims, people who have been seriously hurt, like this. SF Memorial has both.”

  With that he joined a firefighter and an EMT and they jogged toward the copter. Police had stopped traffic in both directions and had cordoned off much of the beach. The helicopter started up again. The noise was deafening and the power of the rotors tossed the beach sand in every direction. It lifted straight up into the sky through the fog and disappeared.

  It was an eerie sight.

  Up on the cliff, near Highway 1, the onlookers were starting to get back in their cars. In less than fifteen minutes, the fog would erase everything around us.

  “Are you okay?” I said to Mike.

  “I’m going home,” was all he said.

  Not me, I thought. I’m going to San Francisco Memorial.

  9

  On the drive back, I punched in Terrel’s phone number at the hospital.

  “Hey, girl, really can’t talk now. On my way in to see an injured nine-year-old soccer player.”

  “Look, a swimmer’s been hurt. She’s being helicoptered in.”

  “Who is it? What happened?”

  “Long story. I’ll tell you when I get to the hospital. Should be there in about forty-five minutes.”

  I hung up, and turned off on a feeder road that would lead me away from the coast to Highway 280 and a faster route.

  By the time I reached the ER, Jackie was in an operating room, the young soccer patient had gone home with a blue and yellow cast and Terrel was out in the hall talking to the lab technician.

  Terrel glanced up at me as I trotted down the hall toward him and the tech.

  “You didn’t tell me your swimmer was in a car accident,” he said. “I was expecting something completely different.”

  “Sorry about that.”

  “The EMTs said that she drove off a cliff. How’d that happen?”

  I explained what I knew, which wasn’t all that much.

  “The only thing that seemed odd was Mike’s description of her following him up the coast. She kept slowing down and when Mike called to check on her, she mentioned something about the car being hot, her windows steaming up and that she felt nauseous.”

  “Maybe she had wet things in her car, a wetsuit and some towels. If they were thrown over the front seat, there might be condensation on the window. But that is easy to take care of,” said Terrel.

  “Right, just open the window or put on the defroster,” I said.

  “Let’s continue this in a minute, I need to finish up here,” Terrel said, turning back to the lab tech.

  While the two men were talking, a colorful collage of children’s drawings in a display case by the door to the ER caught my eye. Very clever, the triangular-shaped display was in layers, each layer smaller than the one below it. It cheerfully displayed generations of families. At the top, the pinnacle of the triangle, was one picture of a boy and a girl holding hands.

  Cute, I thought. Wait a minute…who was just talking about triangles? Somebody. It was Justin Rosencastle, the guy I met at the Santa Cruz swim. He said that Jackie was the apex of the romantic triangle with Dick Waddell and Mike Menton.

  “Terrel, do you think that Waddell’s death and Jackie’s accident might be related…maybe caused by the same thing?”

  “It crossed my mind when I got your call. I’ve asked the lab to run some tests. I should know more later.”

  I stayed at the hospital for a few hours waiting for test results. But, eventually I left without them and came home to a dark house. Lena was asleep. For that I was grateful; I didn’t want to talk about yet another accident. I was hoping that the long drive to and from Santa Cruz, and the time at the hospital would be enough to keep me asleep all night. No such luck. I was up at 2:00 a.m.

  Accompanied by the hamster running track on his revolving wheel in my head, I walked into the living room and stared at the one family picture my sister had displayed on the dark end table. Dad and Mom connected. In the photo, you could see it in the look in their eyes and their smiles in as they glanced at each other, but kept a death grip on each of us. It was taken at the Marin County Fair years ago by one of their friends. I was eating cotton candy and pulling away from Dad’s outstretched hand. I must have been about 10-years-old. Mom had hold of the back of Lena’s tee shirt as she tried to go in the opposite direction. Just two years old, Lena had the determination of an angel running from hell. We stood in front of a Ferris wheel. Mom and Dad were enjoying each other, the fair and us.

  I picked the photo up and carried it over to the couch. Holding it was comforting. There were good times—once. None of us in that picture knew that the next five years would change everything.

  I looked at the photo for a long time, then I put it back on the table, walked back to my room and fell into a deep quiet sleep.

  In the morning, I could hear Lena banging pots around in the kitchen—not the ‘Hey, I’m busy enjoying myself cooking’ kind of banging, but rather, the ‘I’m going to knock the shit out of this pan’ kind of banging.

  Something was clearly wrong.

  “Lena?” I stood in the doorway. “What is the matter?”

  “You. You’re the matter.”

  “Excuse me. I’m the matter? What does that mean?”

  “Just the other night—you drop this comment that you’ve been involved with the police somehow. What happened?”

  “It’s none of your business.”

  “I’ve been thinking of all the things you could have done. Each one gets worse than the rest. Tell me. You couldn’t have been drinking and driving…you barely drink. I can’t believe you hurt anyone.”

  “No, I didn’t.”

  “Then what?”

  “Okay.” I sat down at the kitchen table and motioned for her to do the same.

  “Before Brad walked out, we spent a lot of our evenings at the sports bars close by our house.”

  “But…”

  “Let me finish. Brad seemed so restless. He would go to bars without me. I didn’t like that. So I went with him and we drank together—a big happy family or rather a small drunk unhappy family.

  “One night I was the designated driver. I ran into two parked cars and did extensive damage.”

  “Trish.”

  “There’s more. When Brad left, I continued drinking, mostly at home. I picked up another DUI. I actually spent some time in the county jail.”

  “No…not you.”

  “Yes, me. The judge sentenced me to attend AA meetings. I wasn’t crazy about the idea, but I went. It wasn’t so bad and things began to change. I have to tell you, though, when I see a police car, I get very nervous. I want to stay as far away from the law as possible.”

  Lena looked stunned. “I don’t know what to say.”

  She stood up and walked out the backdoor, heading for her garden. Picking up a hand rake, she attacked the few straggly weeds growing next to her tomato plants. Then she tossed the small garden tool as hard as she could at the tall wooden fence.

  With a sigh, I headed for the front door. What would she say if she knew about my part in the local burglaries so many years ago?

  The tree-lined streets were quiet, except for a few joggers out before the sun shut down their exercise. I thought about Jackie. Was she afraid when her car left the road and dropped toward the ocean? What about Dick Waddell? Did he panic when he realized he was too sick to reach the floating dock? My gut told me these two accidents were connecte
d. I wanted it to stop this—whatever it was—before more people were hurt.

  I took out my cell phone and punched in Terrel’s phone number.

  “Hey Trish,” he answered. “What’s going on?”

  “Did you get any of Jackie’s tests back yet?”

  “Can’t talk about it, Trish. You know that. Privacy laws.”

  “Understand. I get it. Can you tell me anything?”

  “She’s alive.”

  “Good.”

  “And there’s something else. Remember the new street drug I was telling you about? I have a friend, Dr. Tariq Kapoor, who is one of the head docs at the Turk Street Community Clinic. He told me that High Test has morphed into something called HT2. It is an amphetamine. It can be injected, snorted, dissolved or swallowed in a capsule. Users develop heart palpitations, as well as shortness of breath, dizziness, sweating, anxiety and nausea.”

  “Charming.”

  “There’s more. Some of his patients on this drug hear voices, see things and can be violent—like meth addicts.”

  “What does this have to do with Jackie?”

  “Nothing yet. Tariq has seen people who have combined HT2 and High Test for a higher high and the results were fatal. Then, I got to thinking about the other swimmer who had the accident?”

  “Waddell?”

  “Yeah, Waddell. I did some research about swimming deaths in triathlons. You know, more people die in the swimming leg of a triathlon, than in the biking or running leg. I found a research letter that talks about it in JAMA, the American Medical Association Journal. It’s by some folks at the Minneapolis Heart Institute Foundation.”

  “Did they say why?”

  “Crowds, being bumped, kicked, maybe swum over. Add that to inexperience and you end up with distress.”

  “You mean panic. The starts for some open water swims can be brutal, from what I’ve heard. But Masters swims aren’t that bad. I’ve seen them. And Waddell was very used to the open water starts, turns, finishes. Everything.”

  “They also mention that some of the swimmers that died had cardiovascular abnormalities. So if you combine the stress of a race, underlying heart problems and HT2 or something similar…see where I’m going with this? It is something to think about,” said T and he clicked off.

  I didn’t think my boss would like Terrel’s theory. But it was time to tell him about Jackie. I left a message on Bill’s cell phone that there was yet another accident involving an open water swimmer.

  10

  Early Monday morning, I was on the road toward the Golden Gate Bridge and the swim office. I wanted to write up the open water swim evaluation, and have a chance to look it over before I gave it to Bill.

  It was not quite 7:00 a.m. when I pulled into the almost empty parking lot at Fort Mason. There was no wind and rare early morning sunshine warmed this side of San Francisco Bay. But right down the middle, between the City and Marin County, a streak of dense thick fog from the Golden Gate Bridge all the way to the Berkeley Marina, wiped out everything, including the island of Alcatraz.

  No one had been in the building yet, so I used my key to open the heavy front door and climbed the three flights of stairs. The office was quiet, peaceful, but the blinking lights on the phone indicated that there were calls waiting. Nothing unusual there. This was a much busier office than I ever suspected.

  I punched in the numbers to hear the playback.

  “You have six messages,” said the robotic woman from her tin can recording studio.

  “First message. Sent Saturday, at 1:30pm.”

  “Hey Bill, call me. It’s Mike Menton. Jackie had an accident. Can’t believe it. Just can’t believe it.” His voice was calm.

  Did he sound overly unbelieving? Maybe.

  In the background, I could hear the drone of a police radio, male voices and something about a tow truck. Then the line went dead. I pressed ‘save’ and then ‘repeat.’

  I listened to Mike’s message again. Then the next message came on. This time it was a distraught Mike Menton.

  “Bill, call me. Jackie drove off a cliff off Highway 1.”

  I know. I know.

  The next call was an abrupt message from the Santa Cruz event director, the man I’d seen in the warm-up jacket and knit cap, prepping the life guards before the swim. “Bill, it’s Randy. Call me as soon as you get in.”

  The rest of the messages were routine. Swimmers wanted to know about results, lost gear and how the end of the season points were tallied. In other words, nothing that was out of the ordinary.

  Except for the last message. It was for me.

  “Hi, Tricia. This is Justin. We met on Saturday at the Santa Cruz swim. I know you like baseball. And, uh, I have some free time this afternoon. Not enough to watch a whole game, but I’m going to stop by the Port Walk, the free viewing area at AT&T Park, across from McCovey Cove. Why, uh, don’t you stop by? I’ll be there around 1:00 p.m.”

  I smiled while I hit the delete button. Justin sounded nervous. Would this be considered a date? No, we would be two people hanging out at a ballpark. If we didn’t have anything to say to one another, we could at least watch some of the game.

  I’m going, I thought. But I had to finish the final version of the swim evaluation first. I read it over a few times, started to think about Justin, and the events of the past two weeks. They were more than puzzling.

  I pulled a pack of 3 x 5 cards out of the desk and jotted down notes about the two incidents. I’d been told that no one died at these swims. Waddell’s death had been the first for the organization in thirty years. Yet, here were two incidents a weekend apart. According to Justin, Jackie, Waddell and Menton were all connected. Could it really be coincidental?

  This wasn’t making any sense. I needed a cup of coffee from that expensive espresso bar in the next building—a fancy cup of coffee that takes almost five minutes to order—and maybe a sugary morning bun to go with it. I was bent over the bottom drawer of the desk pulling out my wallet, when a dark haired security officer from the National Park Service police knocked on the door and stepped into the office.

  “Yes?” I said dropping the wallet and standing straight up.

  “Sorry. Didn’t mean to startle you,” he said. “I’m not used to seeing anyone in the buildings so early, so I thought I’d better check.”

  I sat back down and let out a deep breath. “I’m fine. Have a little work I need to get out the way. It’s easier to do when everything is quiet and the phones haven’t started to ring yet.”

  “Got it,” he said and smiled. “Just one more thing. When you leave the office, even for a minute or two, be sure and lock your doors. There’s been a rash of burglaries—mostly purses, laptops. Nothing dangerous that we have seen. But you don’t want to lose money and your ID.”

  “Thanks for letting me know.”

  “We don’t really have a description of the thief, but some of the victims thought they saw a man wearing a dark sweatshirt with a hood.”

  “I see a lot of guys around here who fit that description,” I said.

  “I understand. But if you see someone like that, call security,” he said. The officer walked down the hall to the next office and knocked. When nobody answered, he turned around, waved at me as he walked past and headed for the steps.

  “Hey wait,” I called after him. “I’ll walk with you. I’m going for a cup of coffee.” This time I picked up the keys to the office, my wallet and walked to the door, shutting and locking it behind me.

  “My name’s Jonathan Angel. Just call me Jon,” he said, holding out a hand.

  His handshake was solid, confident.

  “Jonathan Angel, really. Do they call you Johnny Angel?” I said referring to the sixties pop tune.

  “Jon is just fine,” he said with a slight smile.

  He held the large heavy front door open and we walked out into the early morning sunshine.

  “You a swimmer?”

  “No, not me. My sister is. I
needed a job and this kind of fell into my lap.”

  “You know about Fort Mason?”

  “Not really. I drive by it all the time, but…”

  “Okay. Here’s the five cent history tour.” With that, Jon told me that in 1776, while the founding fathers were working on the Declaration of Independence on the East Coast, the Spanish were building Fort Mason on the West Coast. During the Civil War, one of its many uses was a defense point, in case of a water attack by the Confederates.

  He described the museums, theaters and restaurants housed here. When he started in on the sporting events, in particular the curling matches, I said, “Enough, thank you.”

  11

  You wouldn’t call Bill Rutherford, the chair of Nor Cal Swimming, a laid back type of person. Just the opposite. Everything was a big deal to him. When I walked back in the office with my cup of coffee, he was already there, headset in place, pacing the floor, shaking his head and waving his arms around like a mad man.

  “Look, Randy, this was an accident. It had nothing to do with the swim. Sounds like she was going to meet Menton and drove off the cliff. It was a mistake. A terrible mistake. Maybe the accelerator stuck or something like that. But you and your team aren’t liable. Our liability—the organization’s and yours—ends when the swimmer leaves the parking lot. She was way out of the parking lot. As I understand it, Jackie left the swim almost thirty or forty minutes before.”

  There was a pause.

  “I know. I understand. Look, I’ll check with our insurance carrier. Maybe you should, too.”

  The call ended and Bill glanced over to me.