The Dirty Secrets Club (21 page)

Tang had drawn into a prickly shell, like a sea urchin. Jo sensed that, inside, she was wilting. Her black T-shirt was rimed with dried sweat, like a salt lick.

They stared at the bridge. Burnished by the sun, it stretched like a vast iron bow across the rough water between the headlands. It was magnificent and frightening, a bow powerful enough to shoot people into oblivion.

"Before he went over," Jo said. "When you ran toward the sccne. Tell me exactly what you saw."

The wind riffled Tang's spiky hair. "It was hard to see clearly with so many people on the sidewalk. I only caught glimpses. I saw Southern backed against the railing." She stared at the water. "I saw the little guy, Skunk, advancing toward him. One hand in his pocket like he had a weapon. I thought Skunk was going to kill him."

Jo clasped her hands between her knees. "Go on."

"But Southern tackled him. I was running by then. People blocking my view. When I got a clear line of sight, everything looked different. Southern and Skunk were scuffling. It looked like ..." She paused. Wiped her nose. "It looked like Skunk was trying to keep Southern from going over the rail."

Jo said nothing. The wind was taking on an edge. Across the parking lot the SFPD uniforms climbed into their patrol car and pulled out. Tang raised a hand as they passed.

She glanced at Jo. "Does that make sense to you?"

"I think you're half right. Skunk wanted to prevent Southern from falling. But he also wanted Southern to give him something. He had his hand out."

"I saw. But what?"

"Describe the scuffle. Did it look like Southern lost his balance and pitched over the rail? Like it was a freak accident?"

Tang shook her head. "He was a big guy, but not a giant. He couldn't have just toppled over."

"Skunk couldn't have picked him up and dumped him over."

Tang looked at her hands. "No. There's no way Southern fell accidentally. Skunk was trying to keep him from jumping." She frowned. "Or trying to grab whatever he was after before Southern fell."

Jo's throat felt tight. "I think Southern drew Skunk to within arm's reach and grabbed him. But a tourist distracted Southern, and Skunk managed to break free."

"Grab Skunk? Why?" Tang said.

"Southern killed himself and tried to take Skunk with him."

Tang stared at her hard and long. "You think it was another attempt at murder-suicide."

"Yes."

"Why?"

"I saw Southern's face."

"And?"

"He knew he was about to die." She had seen more. But she couldn't explain. "That's why I ran across the road. He looked at me. I saw him make the decision."

"You're freaking. That's hindsight. You can't know that."

Jo turned to her. "I can. I've seen that look before. It's an absolute recognition of what's about to happen. It's the moment of truth."

Tang didn't look away. Jo tried to suppress all her feelings but they rolled upward, through the cracks in her armor.

"He knew he was seconds from death. He understood that absolutely."

Tang frowned and bent toward her. "Hey. You okay?"

Nowhere close to it. "I'm fine."

She stood up, walked around the truck, and opened the driver's door. "You may not believe me, but I'm dead certain. Scott Southern lured Skunk to the bridge, intending to kill them both."

She got in the truck and started the engine.

Tang climbed in and shut her door. "What convinces you of this?"

"He told me on the phone. Said I couldn't help him, that there was only one way to fix the problem. He said his solution was a sure thing." She put the truck in gear. "Surer than a bullet."

She spun the wheel. "He was quoting the suicide statistics."

"Oh, shit."

"He'd done research on committing suicide, Amy. He knew that jumping from the bridge is an almost foolproof way to die." She glanced at the bridge, with all its splendor and portent. "Thirteen hundred people have jumped from there. Only a couple dozen have survived. You want to die, you don't take pills, you don't slit your wrists, you don't even shoot yourself. More people survive self-inflicted gunshot wounds than survive hitting the bay." She pulled out of the parking lot. "You want to die, you climb over that railing and you let go."

Tang hunched into the seat. "Two dozen have survived?"

Jo hated, more than anything, the sound of hopeless hope in someone's voice. But Tang was praying into a void. Jo knew what happened, physically, to people who hit the water.

And Tang had seen that.

"You didn't look away, Amy."

"I saw him hit." Her face drew tight. "It took forever."

Jo was quiet for a minute. "You saw him in the air, reaching up toward us?"

Like a stone, accelerating toward terminal velocity.

"He knew it was too late," Tang said.

"Wishing he had Skunk."

"Or changing his mind."

She saw him, telescoping down through the air, already falling at seventy-five miles an hour, hand stretched toward the bridge. Roughly she shoved her hair out of her face.

"There's no fucking turning back from that. And he knew it," she said.

She saw him surrender and spread his arms wide, as if welcoming a crucifixion.

Tang looked at her. "You've watched people die."

"Yes."

Tang stared at her with wide eyes, an edgy elf. "Was it hard to watch patients go? Too hard? Is that why you switched to psychiatry?"

A wave of compassion rolled over Jo. Tang was savvy and competent, and all thorns on the outside—but she was inexperienced at death. Even though she was a city cop, she hadn't seen people die.

"It's why I try to help survivors understand what happened to the people they loved," Jo said. "It's all I can do."

She didn't say the rest. That doing what she could wasn't always enough.

They had failed today. And Tang's forty-eight-hour timeline was shot to hell. She turned onto the freeway. She thought: Who's next?

J
o went home, but the house felt airless.

Was it hard to watch patients go? Too hard?

Dust motes winked in the light falling through the bay window. The clock ticked on the mantle. Counting off yet more seconds, carrying her ever further from her final moments with Daniel.

That last day with him, she had climbed aboard the helicopter and strapped herself in for the medevac flight. The trip to Bodega Bay was a gut-churner. The wind chucked the chopper around and rain shredded horizontally across the windows.

She held on tight while she and Daniel got the briefing on the patient. Emily Leigh, age six, ruptured appendix on top of Crohn's disease and a constellation of other chronic conditions. She was a fragile little girl who'd just been hit with a new dose of bad luck, and she, Daniel, and the pilots knew that if they couldn't get her to the peds surgical team at UCSF, she would die of peritonitis before the sun went down.

Daniel looked at Jo. "But this weather's so bad I can't see the sun. So that's not going to happen."

The Sonoma coast was remote. The one-hour flight took them into a near-wilderness of ragged coastline, wild waves, and mountains polished green from the constant wind and Northern California storms. Bodega Bay was an isolated bohemian fishing town. As they approached, a flock of seagulls scattered like crazy litter. Through her headset Jo heard the pilot swear. Pilots hated birds. They set down on a wet playing field and kept the rotors turning. The ambulance was waiting, lights spinning in the rain, windshield wipers struggling to keep up. Jo jumped down from the chopper and the force of the wind hit her across the side of her head.

The local docs brought little Emily across the field on a stretcher. She was bundled under a thermal blanket. A nurse held an umbrella over her as they jogged. Emily's mother ran along with them, holding her daughter's hand. They ducked and approached the chopper.

The docs loaded Emily inside, calling out vitals. Daniel wrote them down on a clipboard. Jo secured the stretcher and hung her IV bag. Emily was pale and holding very still, trying to elude the pain. She looked at Jo with huge eyes. She was biting her lower lip, trying not to cry.

Jo felt a catch in her throat, and swallowed it. Seeing Emily clear-eyed and fighting the pain was good. It showed she was lucid, and that meant infection hadn't set in. They had to keep it that way. If peritonitis got to her, the little girl wouldn't last an hour.

Her mom leaned through the doorway and shouted, "Can I come?"

Daniel shook his head. "No room. I'm sorry."

The mom's face was stricken. Jo said, "We'll take care of her."

The door of the helicopter slid shut and the engines cycled up. They lifted off from the field, downwash splaying pale circles in the green grass. The last thing Jo saw as they turned south was the woman's face. She made the sign of the cross and blew Emily a kiss with both hands.

Was it too hard to watch people go?

No. Breathing afterward, every day, was harder. She turned away from the window.

People in the Dirty Secrets Club were dying. So were their lovers, children, and innocent bystanders. She phoned the ICU at St. Francis and spoke to the charge nurse.

"Ms. Meyer is still unconscious," the nurse said.

"Has anybody come to see her?" Jo asked.

"Two interns from the U.S. Attorney's Office. They left cards and flowers."

"No family?"

"Nobody's been in touch."

Jo's stomach was churning. "The crash that injured Ms. Meyer was suspicious. Tell your staff to keep an eye out for anybody asking questions about her, or coming to the ICU wanting to see her."

The nurse was silent for a few moments. "You got it. Any chance we'll get police protection?"

"Not right now. I'll talk to the department, but there are no guarantees."

"I'll tell Security."

"Thanks."

When she hung up, the house felt stifling. She changed into workout clothes, grabbed her backpack, and headed to a little park down the hill to go bouldering.

Dusk was approaching when she pulled to the side of the road and walked through the park to a green, rock-strewn gully that was hidden from the teeming city outside. Most bouldering sites in the Bay Area were artificial walls. Actual rocks were a rarity. But past a copse of live oaks she found the jumble of boulders. She put on her bouldering slippers, tightened the Velcro, clipped her chalk bag to a belt loop, and approached them.

The lights of the city, the noise of traffic, all faded into the background. The air felt crisp. Halloween air, full of the promise that good times were coming. The sky was brightening to gold in the west. She chalked her hands and approached the first boulder.

It was a good twelve feet tall, crammed with the others in the gully like rubble strewn from a giant's tantrum. The rock felt cool to her touch. It was sandstone, rough beneath her palm. The face was essentially vertical. She examined it, planning her path to the top, what climbers called a problem. Four meters—she hadn't bothered to bring a crash pad to cushion her if she fell. She knew these rocks well. They were old friends, silent, uncompromising, and trustworthy. There could be danger in bouldering, but that wasn't the fault of the rock. Risks would arise from her own failings.

She started the problem, putting her right foot up on a dime-edge of rock. She felt stiff. Her muscles were tight. She knew it was emotional. She pushed up, stretched overhead for a handhold, pressed herself against the rock.

Let it go, Jo. Just breathe. Give it up, stretch, turn your mind over to the problem you're in. The rocks won't lie. They won't hurt you. They won't leave. They'll still be here in a million years.

She checked her grip and footholds. Leaned out and jammed her left hand in a crack. Looked up.

The sky was shimmering, blue with a magical silver edge. Daniel had always loved this time of day, even dog-tired after twenty-four hours on call or after taking on a wall in Yosemite. He loved to empty all his stress into the stone, loved the challenge and the purity of climbing. That last time, up at Tuolumne Meadows, they had boul-dered before cooking dinner over the campfire. He was wearing a faded brown T-shirt, the color of the stone beneath her hands, and he had been so tan, so ripped, completely at peace with everything around him. He wasn't a quiet soul. He was a reverse cyclone, calm to the world's chaos while storms drove him inside, but that evening he had been serene. Not even hungry, except for her. It was a crystalline moment.

She wedged her fingers solidly into the crack and found two inches. Hung for a second, and pushed up hard with her legs.

She saw the look again. The whole-body acknowledgment of finality. She saw Scott Southern backed against the railing of the bridge.

She lunged, grabbed for a hold. She slapped it, but missed. She peeled off and felt herself falling.

She pushed off, turned, and landed on the cool dirt.

Scott Southern had killed himself and tried to take his tormentor with him. Scott Southern had been desperate, afraid that his family was in danger.