Dead in the Water

by Glenda Carroll

He turned to walk away.

  “Forgot to tell you. Your friend… Jackie. She’s out of intensive care.”

  “She’s here. I know she’s still here,” said the woman carrying a blue ‘It’s a boy’ helium balloon, a teddy bear dressed in blue shorts and a potted plant.

  The hospital receptionist at the front desk looked at her computer screen again, typed in the name of the new mother once more and then said, “Ah yes, here she is. Her name was spelled wrong. She is on the sixth floor.”

  The woman smiled and almost bounced down the hallway to the elevator.

  “Yes?” said the receptionist.

  “A colleague of mine, Jackie Gibson, was recently moved from intensive care to a step down unit. I’d like to visit her.”

  “Ninth floor, room 311.”

  It was lunchtime and the elevator was crammed with staff heading to and from the cafeteria. I shifted back as far as I could go. Each time the elevator door opened, some people got off and more got on, crowding me to the point of feeling claustrophobic. But at least, no one could take my picture here. When it reached the ninth floor, people parted like the red sea and I lunged for the door, glad to be out. A medical assistant at the reception desk pointed in the direction of Room 311.

  “A friend of Jackie’s?” she said.

  “Yes, I work with her, kind of.”

  I gasped when I pushed open the door to her room and caught sight of what was a strikingly beautiful woman just a week ago. One side of her face was covered with bruises, eggplant purple and a sickly yellow. The top of her head was wrapped in snow white gauze. I couldn’t tell for sure, but it seemed that some of her thick black wavy hair had been shaved off at the scalp. An IV bag hung by the side of her bed. Pain medication dripped slowly through the clear tubing connected to her lower arm. The other arm was in a cast. And so was a leg. There was a clip on one of her fingers, monitoring her heart rate. Next to the bed, the lines on the computer screens kept changing, as she breathed in and out.

  She seemed to be sleeping, so I sat down next to her bed and reached out to touch her hand. To my surprise, her eyes fluttered open.

  “Who are you?” she said in a faint voice. I had to lean forward to hear her words.

  “I’m Trisha Carson. I work for the Nor Cal Swim Association. I just came over from the office to see how you were doing.”

  “Great,” she said. “Just great. Can’t you tell?”

  “Well, you’re out of intensive care, that’s a good thing.”

  Jackie turned her face away from me.

  “Lovely flowers,” I said, gesturing to the many get well bouquets around the room. “I really hate to bother you about this, but do you remember what happened?”

  She looked back at me.

  “Not really. I was driving…coast road. I didn’t feel well. My heart was racing, pounding. I felt hot and started to sweat. I was having trouble breathing. It felt like my throat was closing up on me. Couldn’t concentrate. That’s it. I woke up here, in this room, yesterday.”

  “Did you feel okay during the swim?”

  She nodded. “The swim, yeah, right. I felt okay. Felt really thirsty after…I remember that.”

  “Did you get something to drink?”

  “Mike had the kids fill up my water bottle.”

  “Do you remember posing for pictures with Mike Menton?”

  “Yes.”

  “Is he your boyfriend?”

  “What business is it of yours?” She grimaced in pain.

  “I don’t mean to pry, but is he?”

  “No, just someone to have lunch with. Not my type. Bratty daughter. I don’t have a boyfriend. Anymore…”

  A nurse poked her head in the door. “Don’t spend too much more time. She is still in the early phase of recovery and she needs her rest.”

  I smiled at the nurse. “I’ll be out of here in a minute.”

  Jackie’s eyes were closed.

  “Can I ask one more question?”

  No response.

  “Was anybody mad or upset with you?”

  Her eyes barely opened.

  “No. Well, guys get upset with me sometimes. But they get over it.”

  She paused and closed her eyes, then opened them again.

  “I was supposed to have dinner with someone the evening after the swim. I cancelled. No big deal.”

  “Who was that?”

  “No one you’d know.”

  “Try me.”

  “It’s none of your business.”

  “Do you think anything might have been put in your water bottle?”

  “Sure, water.”

  “No, I mean something else.”

  She opened her eyes wider and for the first time, really focused on me.

  “What is this? One of the doctors said I tested positive for cocaine and meth. Does that sound right to you? I don’t need drugs to get what I want.”

  She tried to raise herself up in the bed and the heart monitor clipped to her finger slipped off, causing the computer to start beeping. At once a nurse was in the room.

  “You’ll have to leave now.”

  “Sorry, so sorry. Feel better, Jackie.”

  I slid into the front seat of the Checker Cab in the multi-tiered concrete hospital parking lot. I was parked on the third floor, the purple floor, as large squares of color indicated. Patients walked by on their way to the elevators, looked at the tank-sized bright yellow taxi and smiled. Normally, I would smile back and nod. But that didn’t happen today. I was lost in thought.

  Once again I opened my phone and flipped through the photos emailed to me. Then I looked around the parking lot, peering into the shadows partially hiding each car. Was someone there with a camera? The temperature seemed to dip inside the cab. The hairs stood up on my arms and the back of my neck as I glanced from parked car to parked car. There was a steady stream of automobiles driving up the circular parking ramp looking for empty spaces. Were their glances aimed at me or the cab? As each car passed, my breathing became more rapid.

  I punched in some phone numbers and left a message for the three swimmers who had been pulled out of the water with breathing problems. I wanted to know what they had in common with each other and my sister. A dark sedan pulled up directly behind the Checker. The driver, a man with a full, round face and rusty colored goatee glared at me. I stared back, my mouth open. This was it. I knew it. This was the guy who had been taking pictures. I took a deep breath, and put my hand on the door handle. My plan was to open the cab door, stay low, and run across the parking lot for the elevator—screaming all the way.

  “Lady, are you coming or going? I’ve driven up and down this ramp three times and you’re still in the same place,” he said. “Are you leaving or not?”

  “Leaving,” I said. My voice was weak; my knees were weak. I’m glad I didn’t have to stand up. He backed up his car as I turned the key in the ignition, pulled out of the parking space, and headed for the exit.

  23

  The next morning, Bill was back at his usual place, talking into his headset, using his hands to punctuate a thought. He nodded as I walked in the door, mouthed ‘pick up’ and pointed to the phone.

  “Trisha just walked in. I’ve asked her to join us. Trish, this is Richard Waddell’s swim coach, Cody Stephenson. You’ve talked to him before, right?”

  “Yes, at the Cold Water Clash.”

  “He is helping Richard’s sister, Pamela, plan a memorial celebration of Waddell’s life and I volunteered you to help.”

  “Okay,” I said wondering how the ‘Don’t talk about it’ rule was going to fit in.

  “We want you to pull some of his past swim records and do a search on photos under his name. Plenty of material should come up.”

  “Glad for any help you can give me,” said Cody.

  In the background, I could hear voices talking, someone giving a countdown, then yelling ‘Go’ followed by loud splashes.

  “I’ve got my hands full with both the adul
t and kids team, but I promised Pamela that I would help.”

  “Maybe we need to meet and figure out our next steps,” I said.

  “Great,” said Cody. “I’m supervising an open water swim practice this afternoon for my Masters group at Shadow Cliffs in Pleasanton. Do you want to meet around lunchtime? Maybe after the meeting and before the swimmers arrive?”

  Bill looked at me and nodded his head. “Yes.”

  “Sure thing,” I said. “I’ve never been there.”

  “It’s easy to find. Just look for the blue waterslides.”

  When we all hung up, Bill brought over a folder about Shadow Cliffs Recreational Area, which was once a gravel quarry and was now a 226 acre park with an 80-acre lake.

  “It’s a nice park, great place to swim. Don’t get into your ‘dead swimmer’ theory. You are there to help develop a memorial program. That is all. Remember. Why don’t you do a quick computer search on Waddell and take over what you find?”

  “Will do.”

  Actually, already did, I said to myself. Right after Richard died, I downloaded page after page about him. My Waddell file was sitting in a folder in my desk.

  It was late morning when I left the office and climbed into the Checker. I locked the cab doors; then looked over my shoulder at the rows of parked cars. Was there someone with a camera here? In the parking lot? On the hills next to the building? Would I ever get into a car again and not feel a pair of eyes watching me?

  As I drove down Van Ness Avenue, I kept glancing into my rear view mirror. A dark colored sedan had been a few cars behind me since I left Fort Mason. It looked like the car from the hospital parking lot. I stepped on the accelerator and buzzed through an intersection on a yellow light. The sedan stopped as the light turned red. I never saw it again.

  “Not everyone and every car is following me,” I said out loud. I switched on the radio and rolled down my window.

  Bridges are a necessity here in the Bay Area. While the Golden Gate Bridge with its deep orange towers is perhaps the most photographed bridge in the world, I think of the long Bay Bridge with its two spans as the neighborhood workhorse. More than twice the number of vehicles use it each day than use the Golden Gate Bridge. The bridge fed into Highway 80 and I veered onto 580 on my way out to Pleasanton.

  After pulling into the Shadow Cliffs parking lot, I walked past the snack bar and there it was. A lovely warm lake. Kids were playing at the water’s edge, splashing and laughing with their mothers watching from the shore. A little farther out, three swimmers were following each other in the area set aside for lap swimming.

  While San Francisco had been in the low 60’s when I left the office, here it was about 80° and sunny. Cody said he’d meet me by the snack bar, so I sat on the concrete steps leading to the beach and waited. I stretched out, face toward the sun.

  “Trisha?” a deep voice said.

  I picked my head up. It was Cody. Carrying a clipboard, stopwatch and a bullhorn, he was ready for his team to show up.

  “Let’s sit over here.” He motioned to a picnic table out of the sun.

  As we sat down, I pulled out my file and turned on the laptop I had brought with me.

  “So this is for a commemorative service for Richard Waddell, right?”

  “Yes. As I mentioned to you before, this is a loss for our team. He’d been a member for less than a year. But he came to every workout, went to the pool meets, loved the open water swims. He was a real competitor. Before I forget, I told Pamela that you were working on this and she asked if you would stop by her house after we talk. You know Pamela, right?”

  I nodded.

  “She’s not far from here. She says she has some pictures of Richard when he was young. Can you include those?”

  “Will do. But let’s start at the beginning. Are you looking for any particular type of tribute? Do you have something in mind?”

  “Wish I did, but I haven’t had the time to do more than agree to help with it. The idea actually came from Pamela. I said I’d spearhead it…don’t know what I was thinking when I agreed to do that…but some of our swimmers are willing to help. One knew Richard pretty well. If you could put the photos in some kind of order and write simple copy, that would be a start. Maybe you can begin with his upbringing in Texas. He was very proud of being from that state. He only moved to Northern California to be close to his family.”

  “He wasn’t from Texas originally,” I said.

  “Really?”

  “He was from a small town in Nevada. We’re not talking Las Vegas. He grew up on a cattle ranch.”

  Cody shook his head. “Well, I never heard that before. Are you sure?”

  “Yes, I’ve seen his high school swim team picture. It was definitely Nevada,” I said. “How about if I ask you some questions to get us started?”

  “I can only really talk about the year that I’ve known him and that’s pretty much been at the pool.”

  “Let’s start there. What was he like at the pool?”

  “Hard worker. Competitive. Very competitive. He pushed himself unlike anyone I’ve ever seen.”

  Cody stopped and stared down at the folder on the table.

  “Yes?”

  “He hated to lose. Even the fun relays we did during workout, you’d hear him complain if his team lost. Maybe you can reword that somehow.”

  “I will…no problem.”

  “His teammates were somewhat in awe of him. He came to the team after years of swimming at the very highest level. He was one of the fastest men in the pool, didn’t matter what age they were. But he wasn’t able to relax and enjoy himself.”

  “Doesn’t sound like much fun to me.”

  I pulled out some of the pages I had downloaded with swimming statistics and showed them to Cody.

  “Some of these need to be included, for sure.”

  On my laptop, I brought up the file with his photos. They dated back to his college swim days, through his attempt at making the Olympic team to his move into open water.

  “That’s what we’re looking for, but you’ll have to find someone else to talk about his past. I really haven’t known him that long.”

  “Maybe Pamela could help with that. I also know a friend of his. They swam together in high school.”

  Cody waved to two women that had walked on to the beach. The swimmers dressed in shorts, tee shirts and flip flops, strolled over to our table. “Gonna get in some extra yardage before practice starts,” said the dark haired woman.

  “Good for you. This is Trisha from the NC Swim office. She’s going to help with the memorial for Richard.”

  “So sad,” they both said in unison. “But he died doing what he loved,” said one woman. And they walked off.

  “We had that conversation earlier, remember, about him doing what he loved? You had a different take on that, didn’t you? You called him ‘desperate.’ What did he do for you to say that?” I asked.

  “About eight months ago, he stopped by my office after workout. He wanted to ask me about nutritional supplements, what I thought would help him get that edge back. I remember him very distinctly saying, ‘When it comes to swimming, I have had control over my body since I was about eight years old. It’s not there any more, I can tell. I’m doing the same things but my times are slower.’

  “I tried to talk about how important rest was, probably more so than any nutritional supplement, as well as body flexibility and core strength, especially as we age. He didn’t want to hear it. He wanted more workouts, not less.”

  “So what happened?”

  “He wasn’t happy with our conversation. At the end, he said he was going to try some new vitamins. I joked and said, ‘Are they legal?’ He glared at me and said, ‘nobody tests in Masters swimming. And besides, USMS has no rules against what I think you are talking about.’ I remember looking at him and saying, ‘Are you sure?’ He said he was. He had checked. I didn’t know what to say after that except, ‘Richard, don’t do it. It’s not wort
h it.’”

  “And?”

  “He left. In a few months, his times began to drop. He got faster. His personality, which was never a strong point, was erratic. He reminded me of a junk yard dog, looking to attack. There were other telltale signs; he developed pimples on his back. What 50-year-old gets a case of acne? That blond wavy hair of his seemed to be falling out.”

  “Those are signs of what?”

  “Classic signs of steroid use, probably testosterone.”

  “Do you think he died of a heart attack?”

  “I don’t know a lot about medicine. But for me, I’d call it an inwater drug overdose. I think he was using performance enhancing drugs of some kind, and that killed him.”

  “Any idea where he got them from?”

  “I have some ideas.”

  “Yeah?”

  “Sorry…not comfortable accusing someone unless I have specific proof. And I don’t.”

  Off to the side, a lifeguard driving a small motorboat carrying two yellow round buoys headed out for the middle of the lake. He dropped one anchor line into the water, dumped the yellow buoy over the side, and repositioned it; then motored off to set the second buoy.

  Cody was looking out at his swimmers on the lake and glancing over to the guard setting the buoys. “We can continue this conversation later, if you want. Better yet, I can have one of our team members who knew Waddell give you a call. Gotta go. Remember, none of this—especially the steroid part—is to show up in the memorial presentation.”

  “I understand.”

  He picked up the bullhorn, clicked it on and called out to the swimmers in the water. “Okay, everyone, let’s do a warm up out to the first buoy and back.” The swimmers slowly moved together as a group, about two or three abreast, each group following the other heading for the first yellow buoy.

  I walked with Cody over to the water’s edge. He stepped onto a small boat and took off, following the line of swimmers while they stroked gracefully up to the first buoy.

  As I was walking out to the parking lot, my cell phone rang.

  “Where are you?” said Terrel. He was clearly annoyed. “I thought you were coming by the hospital today at lunch.”