Submerged (2 page)

Matthew “Bear” Barrett slipped beneath the
surface of the private lake he had loved.

Chapter1

“They don’t have a
power tool for this?”

Perry Sachs looked at his friend Jack Dyson
and laughed. “Is that your solution to everything—power tools?”

“Since you put it that way—yes.” Jack hunched
over a wide board and pushed a flat piece of metal along its
surface. For a man as tall and as broad as Jack, bending over for
extended of periods could be painful. He pushed the scraper forward
again, and the burr on the edge of the rectangular piece of metal
peeled up shreds of wood and glue.

“Woodworking is about more than power tools,”
Perry said. “It’s about crafting something that will live long
after you’re gone; it’s about pouring yourself into the work,
feeling the wood beneath your fingers, smelling the unique aroma of
the wood as you sand and scrape. Woodworking is about inserting
yourself into the object you make.”

“Yeah, very poetic. You got anything nice to
say about my aching back?”

Perry drew a dusty arm across his forehead,
pushing back black hair that had just begun sporting some gray,
diverting sweat from his blue eyes. It was a warm August day in
Seattle, warmer than most residents cared for. He finished seating
a long plank of wood in the lathe. He would have to put the turning
off just a little longer.

“Let me show you.” Perry walked to the wide
assembly table, where Jack was struggling with his task. “Since we
milled the wood ourselves, we’re left with machine marks. Add to
that the glue that squeezed out when we built up the tabletop. All
of that has to be removed before we can get down to the serious
task of sanding.”

Jack relinquished the scraper, his black face
a mask of innocence. “Teach me, oh wise one.”

Perry always felt tiny next to his friend who
was large enough to make linebackers look at him twice. Perry was
trim and six-foot-two, not small by any means, but size was
relative. Jack cast a wide shadow. He was also one of the brightest
men Perry had ever met. He was not a dumb jock. In fact, he wasn’t
a jock at all. Despite his size, he had only a passing interest in
sports and preferred the Discovery Channel to a football game.

“Watch and learn. Put just a slight bend in
the scraper, then push it along the grain. Don’t dig the edges into
the wood’s surface. Quality hardwood is expensive.” With practiced
hands, Perry pushed the scraper over the rough surface, and the
Honduras rosewood yielded to him. He repeated the action, loving
every minute of it.

Perry was in one of his favorite places. When
not working in some far-off corner of the world for his father’s
firm, Sachs Engineering, he spent as much time as possible in his
wood shop. This shop was new. Six months ago, he had bought a home
with a great view of Lake Washington, but the view was secondary.
The previous owner had added a shop to the side of the house to
work on his car collection. The shop was large enough to
accommodate the man’s vintage cars. Perry had no interest in
classic automobiles, but he did need a large place for his hobby of
furniture making.

Jack had helped him fix up the house and move
in. As a reward, Perry promised to make Jack’s mother a new dining
room table. Jack volunteered to help. So began the lessons.

Perry stroked the wood in smooth, rhythmic
motions, and his mind began to wander. The woodshop was where his
best ideas germinated.

He stopped and looked at Jack. “This is a
trick, isn’t it?”

“Trick? Me, trick
you
?” Jack struggled to fend off an insistent smile.
“Why, you’re far too clever to fall for a trick from a simpleminded
man like me.”

“MIT doesn’t give civil engineering degrees
to simpleminded men.”

Perry and Jack had attended MIT together.
Perry earned a degree in architecture. It was his love for
structure that made him excel at his work and also gave him a love
for smaller structures like dining room tables.

The phone began to ring. Jack jumped a foot.
“Whoa! Is that thing always that loud?”

“It’s hard to hear a phone when a table saw
is running. Here, get back to work, or I’ll tell your mother that
you held up the delivery of her table. And remember, you asked to
help.” Perry handed the scraper back to Jack and moved to a phone
mounted on the wall near one of the workbenches. “Hello.” He could
hear Jack mumbling and the soft scratching of metal against
wood.

“Perry, it’s Mom.”

“Hi, Mom. You should be here. I got Jack to
do some meaningful work.”

“Perry . . .”

“Do you and Dad want to do dinner tonight? My
treat. We could go for steaks or fish if you like.”

“Perry, it’s your father.”

Perry’s heart stumbled to a stop, and his
stomach pulled into a knot.

“They’ve taken him to the hospital in an
ambulance.”

Perry could hear tears in her voice. “When?
Where are you? What happened?”

The scraping stopped, and Perry turned to
Jack. The big man had picked up the urgency in Perry’s voice.

“They wouldn’t let me ride in the ambulance.
They took him to Seattle Medical Arts Hospital. He just collapsed.
I was cleaning up after lunch and . . . oh, Perry, his eyes—his
eyes.”

“I’m coming for you, Mom. You stay right
there.” Perry looked at Jack. “They’re taking my father to the
hospital.”

Jack approached, shaking his head. “You go to
the hospital. I’ll get your mom.”

Jack tried to take the phone from Perry. He
was reluctant to release it, as if holding on to the receiver was
the same as holding his mother.

“Go, pal,” Jack urged. “I’ll lock up and get
your mother. Go. Get out of here. And don’t drive stupid. One Sachs
man in the hospital is enough.”

Perry Sachs, forty-year-old architect and
engineer, fought back tears as he ran for his car.

The irony wasn’t wasted on Perry as he pulled
his black BMW 760Li sedan into the parking structure of Seattle
Medical Arts Hospital—Sachs Engineering had provided structural
consultations on the hospital and parking structure. Now the man
responsible for the work was somewhere inside the walls he helped
design.

Perry yanked the steering wheel to the right
and pressed the gas pedal. He reminded himself that speeding
through a parking structure was unwise and illogical. He didn’t
want to be wise or logical; still, he reigned in his urge and
focused on finding a parking place. The structure was packed. In
the past Perry would find the most distant parking place, believing
that it provided him some exercise and a little extra protection
for a car he had possessed for a mere three months. This time he
took the first spot he found.

With head down, his pace just a stride less
than a trot, Perry walked toward the hospital. The image of his
father came to mind: gray hair combed back in easy waves;
sun-browned face that wore new wrinkles well; and a mouth that
preferred smiling. Two inches shorter than Perry’s six-foot-two,
Henry Sachs was still broad in the shoulders and strong in the
back. Sixty-three years of life had bleached the color from his
hair and lined his face but had not been able to touch his spirit,
resolve, or drive.

The parking structure gave way to an open,
planted courtyard. Trees, bushes, and flowering plants reached out
from their planters as if driven to touch each passerby. Perry knew
the hospital well, not because he had worked on it—he had been
absorbed in another project overseas—but because he came here every
year for a physical. All executives of Sachs Engineering were
required to take annual physicals paid for by the company. As the
vice president of the firm and the director of field operations,
Perry fell into that category.

He marched through glass doors that opened as
he approached and entered the realm of the sick. The smell of
antiseptic cleansers assaulted his nose. He passed the main lobby
and turned left down a wide, pale green corridor. His sneakers
squeaked on the polished floor. Plastic engraved signs told what
lay behind each door. Perry ignored them and headed for the area
where he was certain his father would be—the emergency room.

Uncounted steps later, he pushed through a
pair of doors and entered another waiting room. Light blue paint
dressed these walls, and pastoral landscapes hung unnoticed by a
dozen people waiting their turn to see the ER docs. Some slumped in
chairs, their eyes closed, fighting off whatever pain or discomfort
had moved them from their homes or jobs to come here. A few watched
a small television mounted high on one wall. It was Saturday, and
some home improvement show was on.

To Perry’s right was a window with a view to
another room. The room was barely larger than a closet and seated
inside, behind the pane of glass, was a young man with a shaved
head and a patch of beard on the end of his chin. He appeared
bored. A sign above the window read: Triage Nurse. A round hole in
the glass allowed conversation between attendant and patient.

Perry approached. “My name is Perry Sachs. My
father was brought in by ambulance.”

The young man looked up. He had weary brown
eyes and an expressionless face. Pain and illness and worried
family members no longer affected him. “Patient’s name.”

“Henry Sachs. He would have arrived within
the last twenty minutes—”

“One moment, please.” The young man turned to
his computer and fingered a few keystrokes. A second later he shook
his head. “I don’t show him in the computer.”

“Not here?” Had he heard his mother wrong?
Had the ambulance not arrived yet? That didn’t seem possible. “That
can’t be. Henry Sachs—S-A-C-H-S.”

“He’s not in the computer.”

Perry noticed the man was chewing gum. For
some reason that irritated him.

“Are you sure you have the right hospital?
Sometimes when people panic they get confused.”

“Panic?” Perry resisted the urge to tell the
pup that in the last year and a half he had been lowered through
two miles of Antarctic ice and left afloat in an under-ice lake or
that a year ago he had almost been buried alive in the Tehachapi
mountains of California. There had been no panic then, and there
was none now. Perry leaned closer to the opening in the glass
window. “Perhaps you’re too young or inexperienced to distinguish
between a panicked man and determined one. Your computer is wrong,
so I would like to suggest that you haul your skinny fanny out of
that squeaky chair and walk back to the ER and check for yourself.
And when you find my father, you will tell his doctors that Henry
Sachs’s family is in the waiting room.”

The man stopped chewing. Anger flared in the
male nurse’s eye but evaporated a second later. Without a word, he
rose and left the security of the cubicle.

An eternity of seconds chugged by before the
nurse returned. His attitude had softened, and some of the color
had drained from his face. He cleared his throat. “A nurse was just
posting your father’s admittance into the computer. That’s why I
couldn’t find him. I, um, I told the doctors you were here. I can’t
let you back there. It’s against hospital policy, but the doctor
said he would be out to talk to you just as soon as he can.”

Perry had expected this. There was nothing to
do now but wait and pray. He was used to doing both. He started to
turn away but stopped. “We okay?”

“Yeah,” the young man said. “We’re okay. I
had it coming.” It was clear he was upset.

Perry nodded. “Thank you.” He then moved to
the corner formed where corridor met lobby and leaned against the
wall. He crossed his arms and bowed his head, pushing back emotions
that threatened to burst free with Krakatoan intensity. Minutes
oozed by at glacial speeds. Seconds seemed like hours and minutes
like days. Perry tried to lose himself in prayer for his father,
but intercession was crowded out by memories of Little League games
with his father in the stands telling him to choke up on the bat;
of birthday parties; of trips taken overseas while he was still a
boy; of hearing his father tell him that hard work built character
as well as muscles.

Did recollections count as prayer? He hoped
so.

“Perry?”

He glanced up and saw the normally smiling
face of Jack drawn tight with concern. Next to him was Perry’s
mother. Jack had his big arm around her shoulders. His eyes met
hers, and silent words were uttered through their gaze.

Anna Sachs was a stout woman with dark hair
that gray had avoided and blue eyes that could dance the tango when
joy filled her heart. Today her eyes didn’t dance. Instead, they
radiated fear like an oven pours out heat. “Oh, Perry.”

She stepped to him, and he took her in his
arms. He said nothing. Their communication was beyond the scope of
words. They spoke the language of souls. Anna—as strong a woman as
Perry had ever met—crumbled into tears, and her tears became sobs.
Perry could feel her shaking in his arms. A moment later he was
holding her up.

He needed to be strong for her, needed to be
her pillar of support, but his own foundation was cracking. He
closed his eyes and lowered his head until his forehead rested on
her hair.

In the light of the lobby, in the middle of
the day, darkness descended, engulfing them. Perry didn’t know what
had happened to his father, but his mother’s words and the look on
the male nurse’s face told him that it was bad.

Something wrapped around Perry shoulders,
drawing him and his mother in. Something strong. Something thick.
Jack had encircled his friends with his arms. Soft words were
spoken. It didn’t take long for Perry to recognize a whispered
prayer.