Dead in the Water (8 page)

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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.

“Thanks for the call about the accident,” he said to me.

“You know, I was there, driving home, up the coast road and I saw the car. I talked with Mike Menton at the crash site. This isn’t normal, is it? Two accidents in two weeks?”

“No, not at all. Trisha, I can’t explain why these two…uh… events happened, one right after the other. I know that Jackie’s accident must have been upsetting and you were kind to go to the hospital and check up on her. But, and it is a big but, your job as an assistant in this office—even a temporary one—is to let me know immediately when things out of the ordinary happen. Mike Menton tracked me down from his car before he left Casitas Cove. I was very surprised when he said you had just left and then he asked ‘hadn’t she called’ to let me know?”

“Sorry. My fault. I’ll do better with the communication.”

I walked to my desk and sat down. Bill was right. He needed to be informed. I had let him down.

“Bill, do you think it at all possible that Waddell’s death and Jackie’s accident are related?”

“No, I don’t. They aren’t. They couldn’t be.”

“What about Mike Menton? He seems to be connected to both Dick Waddell and Jackie. Do you think he is involved with these events in some way?”

“This has nothing to do with him. They were accidents. Mike’s an okay guy. A little intense, but so are many of the swimmers.”

I changed the subject. “The evaluation.”

“What?”

“The evaluation for the Cold Water Clash. Remember? I was doing the evaluation?”

“Oh, yeah.”

“I’ll have it to you later today. Before I leave.”

Bill glanced up at me.

“Bet you didn’t expect all this to happen in your first few weeks of work,” he said with a slight smile. “Like in Waddell’s case, don’t talk about Jackie’s accident. You can say that she is alive and what hospital she is in. Other than that, be polite and vague. Got it?”

I nodded. “Right. Lawyers.”

“Let’s send Jackie some flowers,” I said.

Bill gave me the office credit card and I called Green Street Flowers in the Marina District and ordered a cheery get-well bouquet.

“I’ll pick them up,” I said to the florist. “Around noon.”

They suggested I text them as I was leaving the office and they’d wait outside of the shop with the flowers.

“I can’t believe it.”

I was standing in the large parking lot just outside my office at Fort Mason, looking at what was left of my car’s windshield. Glass was scattered everywhere. Shards of it glittered like cold hard ice chips on the Honda’s front seat.

“Who would throw a brick at my car?” I said out loud.

“Oh no.” My hands went up to my mouth. “My car doors. They’ve been keyed.”

I walked around the car and ran my hands along the deep scratches etched into the side panels. This car was the one thing that I owned completely. I was proud of it. It was mine. Now it was damaged and I had no money to repair it.

I called upstairs to Bill and told him what happened. In a few minutes, he was by my side walking around the car.

“What a mess. Who’d you piss off?” he asked.

“Nobody. I haven’t worked here long enough to piss off anyone.”

Jon Angel pulled up in a NPS car. “What happened here?”

“Some jerk ruined my sole possession in life.”

“Did you see anyone around your car?” he asked.

“No. It was okay when we walked by to get coffee this morning. I haven’t been outside since.”

“Well, I’ll need to make out a report.”

Jon pulled out a small black notebook and looked at me. I wasn’t paying attention, that much was obvious to him and the small crowd that had gathered around the car.

“Tell you what,” he said, looking around at the gawkers, “let’s call your insurance company and report this. Then, we can talk in your office.”

“I was on my way to pick up some flowers, then go to SF Memorial. How am I supposed to do that? How am I supposed to drive home?”

How am I supposed to get to AT&T Park
? I thought.

“We’ve got a small storage garage between the buildings by our headquarters. Maybe we can move your car there until you figure out what you want to do. Give me your keys. I’ll meet you upstairs.”

I threw the keys to Jon and followed Bill back up the three flights, mumbling to myself with each step.

“Randomness, that’s what it is. Pure randomness,” he said.

“I don’t know about that.” I gave the door to the office a good solid kick and it flew open and bounced back, almost closing in our faces.

“You want to use my car this afternoon. I’m not going anywhere for a change,” he said.

“Thanks, that would work. I’ll call my sister and get her to pick me up later.”

It took about fifteen minutes before I heard Jon’s footsteps in the hall.

“This belong to you?” he asked. He was holding a large red brick with some kind of paper wrapped around it.

“No,” I said.

“It was on the floor of the passenger side in the front.”

“What is it?” asked Bill. He walked over and took the brick from Jon. He turned it around and around in his hands. “Someone sent you a note.”

A wrinkled piece of paper with a three word message was ducttaped to the brick. “Stay out of it.”

“What does that mean?” asked Bill.

“Stay out of what?” asked Jon.

“I have no idea,” I said. “Maybe it’s a mistake…someone got the wrong car.”

Or did they, I wondered. Instead of a mistake, it could be a warning. Who would know that I was interested in both Dick Waddell’s and Jackie Gibson’s accidents? The only name that came to mind was Mike Menton.

Jon and I sat down and we filled out the accident report. He included the wording of the note. When we finished, he gave me a strange look.

“You can keep your car in the NPS storage garage.”

Bill handed over the keys to his car. “Be careful, okay?” All that was left was for me to deliver the flowers to Jackie.

I nodded and headed for the door, still talking to myself about the idiot who damaged my car.

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12

Green Street was packed
with the lunch crowd. The sun was like a magnet for pedestrians. The warmer it was, the more they headed outside their offices. They clogged the sidewalks and streets. I held down the horn trying to get them to move a little faster. It didn’t help much.

As promised, there was a clerk in a bright green apron waiting in front of the shop. With a ‘Hi, I’m really happy to see you’ smile pasted on her face, she opened the trunk and carefully wedged in the flowers.

I wish I was in my own car, I thought. How much would the repairs cost me? Whatever the amount, I don’t have it.

The streets surrounding the hospital were just as crowded as in the Marina District. I pulled into the hospital parking lot, took out the flowers and walked in. The hallway on the second floor that led to Intensive Care was surprisingly empty. By the double doors leading into the IC unit, there was a security desk; but the guard was nowhere to be seen. I pressed the automatic door opener and walked in, no questions asked.

The air was filled with a quiet hum. No loud talking; no heavy bass from a radio—just subdued voices. I walked by nurses checking computer screens outside each room. Most of the patient’s doors were shut.

The hospital rooms formed a circle around a nurse’s station where three staff members sat. They looked up briefly when I walked by, but then went back to their work. I stopped one nurse checking a computer screen outside a patient’s door and asked where Jackie was. She pointed farther down the corridor and I continued walking.

Jackie was in a large airy room. She was hooked up to a number of machines that blinked and pushed out ever-changing numbers, monitoring her blood pressure and heart rate. The spikes and valleys of an electrocardiogram kept track of her heart’s electrical activity. Her eyes were closed. One arm and a leg were in a cast.

My flowers were not the first. In fact, I had to make room on top of a table for my bouquet. I wondered how many of these were from men. Most of the cards were signed by names I didn’t recognize, but some looked familiar. There was a spray of roses from Mike M. Next to that was one from an anonymous admirer. It was only signed ‘Your almost Saturday night date.’

That’s provocative.

There was even a bouquet from her swim team in Pacifica. And another with a card that said, ‘I’ll be there to help you recover. Xoxoxo Sis.’

The computer with her medical records had been moved inside the room almost next to the bed. Her nurse must have just left, since test results were still on the screen. Looking around first and making sure that the hospital door was shut, I clicked through them. For the most part, I didn’t understand a word. But, I quickly jotted down the tests marked positive on the back of an envelope I had crammed into a pocket. Maybe Terrel could interpret what I was looking at.

I walked out and went to the nurse’s station. “How is she doing?” I asked the fifty-something nurse sitting behind the desk.

“And you are?” she said.

“I’m with the organization that she swims with. As a group, we are all very concerned about her.”

“You’re not supposed to be in here,” the nurse said. “This is Intensive Care, normally just family members.” She stood up and pointed toward the door.

“Sorry. I wanted to drop off some flowers from the office. It doesn’t look like she has any family close by. I only saw one getwell bouquet from a sister, but no one else. Are her mom and dad around?”

“You’ll have to leave.”

She pushed the automatic door opener and nodded to the guard now sitting at the door. He moved toward me at a quick pace. I politely thanked the nurse and walked out with him.

“Thanks for the escort. I know my way from here,” I said, as I walked to the elevators and pushed the down button. Maybe Dr. T was in the Emergency Room.

Walking through the double doors to the ER waiting room, I approached the main desk. The same nurse that was on duty when I was here yesterday had just finished registering a patient.

“Is Dr. Robinson, Terrel Robinson, on this shift?” I asked him. The nurse had tattoos running up and down his arms.

“I’m a close friend,” I said, since I could tell he was about to ask for every piece of ID that I was carrying. “Just wanted to say “Hi.”

“Sorry. He’s not. Want to leave a message?”

“No thanks, he’s my sister’s boyfriend. I’ll see him in the next few days.”

I was on my way out when I turned around. I had almost blown one chance in a million. “Weren’t you here yesterday when Jackie Gibson was brought in?”

“Oh, yeah. Crash victim. Drove off a cliff somewhere south of Pacifica. Lucky she’s alive.”

“Remember me? I came in about forty-five minutes later and talked to Dr. Robinson then.”

He shrugged. “This is a busy place. People are in and out all the time.”

“Anyone know what happened to her? Was it a major car malfunction? Brakes failed?” I was pushing my luck here. The nurse wasn’t supposed to talk about a case with anyone except the family.

“Could be drugs from what the preliminary tox screen showed.”

“Really? Like what kind of drugs? From Terrel’s conversation yesterday with the lab tech, I knew they were testing for something in particular.”

“Maybe you’d better talk to him,” the nurse said, clearly uncomfortable with the way the conversation was going. He nodded at me, then turned to the woman standing behind me. “Can I help you?” he said.