Dead in the Water (23 page)
“When he began to complain about Menton being a threat in his age group, I told him I’d put together something new that was to be taken with what he already had. I told him to try it at the Lake Joseph swim, that he’d fly through the water. I knew he had some minor heart problems. Spencer told me. Early on, I tried to warn him. But he didn’t care. All he wanted was to go fast.”
“You killed him.”
“Nah, not me. His arrogance, his fear, his competitiveness killed him. I only provided the means.”
Justin moved over to the couch to sit next to me. I got up and shifted toward the door.
“What about Jackie? Were you involved with that?”
“That was so easy. Waddell was finally out of the way. Jackie and I were going out to dinner after the Cold Water Clash. Then along comes Mike Menton. She cancels, says she has other plans. I could tell from the way they were hanging on each other after the swim that it was with Menton.
“She stopped by the booth complaining of being a little tired. ‘I have just the thing,’ I told her. ‘It’s one of our new after race recovery products.’ I handed her a capsule and she swallowed it with a swig of RazzleD. About 20 minutes later she drove off a cliff.”
“And the Russian River swim?”
Justin chuckled.
“I was pissed. Your board didn’t want our products at the swims anymore. I drove up about 45 minutes before the starting gun, set up my table with samples that had an extra special ingredient and gave them away.”
“That extra ingredient had something to do with nuts, didn’t it? Every single swimmer who was pulled from the water is allergic to nuts, some severely, like my sister.”
“Did they die?”
“That’s not the point. Why would you go after the swimmers?”
“If I couldn’t be at the swim, why should they?”
“What did you put in your RazzleD drinks?”
“You should know.”
“Me?”
“Yeah, you. You told me your whole family had nut allergies. Remember? When I needed something to randomly affect some swimmers, but not all, I added peanut oil. It was extremely effective, don’t you think?”
I was talking to a lunatic. My eyes quickly darted to the door. How would I get out of there? Justin saw the glance. He moved to the door and shut it. The walls of the office began to close in around us. He slid toward me and I began to back up once again toward the bookcase. I couldn’t breathe.
“You’re different, I can tell,” he said. “You’re not like Pamela or Holly or Jackie.”
My arms and legs started to tremble and my mind began to race.
“Hey,” I called, hoping the receptionist could hear me. “Help me.” But my voice was weak; the words came out smothered like yelling in a dream. I bumped into the trophy bookcase. He approached slowly. He reached both arms out to the bookcase, trapping me between him and the shelves. Then, he slid his hands down my arms, took hold of my wrists and quickly pushed them behind my back.
“Stop, that hurts. Let me go.”
I felt a warm light kiss on the back of my neck. I turned my head away and gritted my teeth.
“You smell good. Taste good too.”
“Stop, I…”
“Quiet…it’s okay.”
There was no room to move. I was pinned between him and the bookcase. His light blue eyes were glassy, almost transparent. Beads of sweat began to ooze from his forehead. His cheek chafed against mine like sandpaper. He pushed my hands back into a shelf. I could feel one of the trophies. It was the heavy silver plaque. I grabbed it.
He leaned over and kissed my neck again, then my cheek. Then he dropped my wrists, reached under my cotton blouse and before I could stop him, forced up my bra. His hands, cold and calloused, pressed against my breasts.
“Knock it off,” I yelled. I pushed him back away from me with one hand and slammed the trophy into his head with the other. He stepped back, dazed. I aimed the trophy at his face and swung again. Blood spurted from his nose. I hit him one more time on the side of his head by his ear.
He staggered backwards until he reached his desk. Leaning against it, he covered his hands with his face. Blood dripped through his fingers, down his arms, soaking through the blue and white stripes on his shirt and fell onto the expensive Turkish carpet. I dropped the trophy and ran. The receptionist was gone; the office was empty. I pushed open the glass door heading into the building’s foyer, pulling my bra and blouse back into place.
I could hear his footsteps following me.
As I bolted down the hall, I called out, “Hey, Larry, what’s up with the A’s?” The footsteps behind me stopped.
“National anthem time.”
I slowed to a trot and smiled weakly. I never looked back. I pushed the front door open and sprinted to the corner. I glanced over my shoulder. The street was quiet. I continued jogging to the car, slid in the front seat and locked the door.
With the cellphone shaking in my hand, I called Inspector Burrell’s number.
“Be there. Please be there.”
It went to voicemail. I hit zero then # and started talking as soon as I heard a human voice.
“I’m been working with Inspector Burrell. Is she still around? It’s important. I have to talk to her now.”
The line was quiet. Then Carolina Burrell picked up the phone.
“It’s me, Trisha. Justin is responsible for Waddell’s death. He told me as much. And the other accidents involving the swimmers…that was his doing, as well. I just left him at JL & Associates. Go arrest him.”
“Slow down. We can bring him in for questioning. Hopefully, he will tell us what he told you. Are you okay?”
“Rattled. That’s all. He tried to attack me. I hit him and ran.”
.
It was more than
14 hours since I tore out of JL & Associates and flew across the Golden Gate Bridge to the safety of my bedroom in San Rafael. Now, it was the next morning and my home phone was ringing. Three, four, five rings and it stopped. I put my head under the pillow. It started ringing again, another three, four, five rings and it stopped. Two minutes later my cell phone started chirping.
I didn’t want to talk to anyone or see anyone. My head felt like it was stuck in a bucket of cement. But now, I had solid information about what happened to the swimmers and why, from the person who did it. I hope Justin was in jail, nursing a splitting headache and a broken nose.
I checked my cell phone. There were three texts from Lena, saying, “CALL ME” in all caps. I looked at the caller ID on my home phone and saw that one call was from Inspector Burrell and two were from Lena. I didn’t play my sister’s messages, just hit the talk button and listened as the phone dialed her number.
“Trisha, where have you been?” she asked yelling into the phone. “I came to JL & Associates to work on their website and everyone is in a state of shock here. Justin is dead. He was killed last night.”
My hand went up to my mouth. I sat down heavily on a kitchen chair. I couldn’t have hit him that hard. I know he was moving. I heard him following me down the hall.
“What? What did you say?”
“Killed. Someone killed him.”
“Who told you?”
“Well, when I got to the building, the police were there. They had put that yellow tape across the door to his office. His body must have been taken out earlier this morning.”
I looked at the clock. It was 8:45 a.m. I wondered when the body was discovered and by whom. Maybe it was the police and I sent them there. My God, I killed him. I’m going to be arrested.
“I had a chance to walk by the office. There was blood on his desk, on the carpet. Some of the trophies from his bookcase were on the floor. It was awful.”
“Do they know who did it?” I really didn’t want to ask that question.
“No. Spencer found him last night. They are trying to track down the security guard, but he left early and seems to have taken off for a couple of days. Right now they don’t know who did what.”
There was a long silence on my end of the phone. I was thinking about the security cameras that Larry had been watching last night, along with the A’s game. I’d be on the tapes; walking in, running out. And the receptionist at JL & Associates, the women from the lab, everyone saw me with Justin.
“Trisha? You still there? Did you talk to Justin lately?”
Another long pause.
“Look. I know you’re upset. You saw him as a potential boyfriend.”
Potential rapist and actual killer, I thought.
My voice came from deep inside an empty well.
“I need to talk to you and Terrel today. Can you set that up? I’ll meet you wherever.”
“11:30 a.m., at the hospital. I’m meeting T for lunch. Trish, what’s wrong?”
“I’ll tell you when I see you.”
Terrel twisted around and looked at me in the backseat of his car, with a ‘you did what?’ expression on his face. “No. No way. From what you said, you couldn’t have killed him. Three halfhearted blows…no way.”
He, Lena and I were sitting in his Charger in the hospital parking lot. I didn’t want to talk any place where we could be overheard.
“What do you mean halfhearted?”
“Look, your first blow was probably more of a surprise to him than anything. Your arms had been behind you; there was no wind up, speaking in baseball terms. The second hit probably did the most damage, broken nose, maybe broken facial bones and you said the third hit grazed the top of his head. Unless he fell, hit his head on a desk, that shouldn’t have killed him.”
“Have you talked to Inspector Burrell?” asked Lena.
“Last night. Right after I left Justin.”
“Call her again. Talk to her, someone, anyone,” said Lena. “Once they find the security guard, he will describe you. I mean, you were even introduced to him. The people at JL & Associates know you were there. The police know you were there. They need to hear your side of the story immediately.”
“And then there are your fingerprints…in his office on the trophy,” said Terrel.
“I never thought about that,” I said. “I didn’t go there to kill him. I was cautious, I thought.”
“What were you doing home this morning?” Terrel asked. “You better tell your boss you need some time off. Where does he think you are?”
“Free time is not a problem right now. Yesterday, I was fired.”
“I don’t believe it,” Terrel said, sinking down in the front seat and putting his head on the steering wheel. “Who lives a life like you? Nobody I know.”
“What were you fired for?” asked Lena. “Never mind, I can guess…talking about the Waddell death, saying it was a murder. Right?”
I nodded.
“I heard some grumblings about your questions from different swim friends. They wondered what you were doing.”
I stared out of the side window of Terrel’s car. Nothing but cars around us and steel and concrete.
“I want to do one more thing before I talk to the police,” I said. “And I’ll need your help.”
Lena and Terrel glanced at each other and at me.
“Oh, no,” said Terrel. “I don’t mess with the police. I have seen what happens when you’re not straight with them.”
“This isn’t about the police. It’s simple…really. I need your help, Terrel, just for one more thing.”
Terrel shook his head. “No. I don’t care what it is.”
“Please. This is the last thing that I’ll do. I promise.”
“No.”
“Lena, help me here. After this, I’ll talk to the police.”
“Terrel?” asked Lena.
“Trisha, I thought you were the sensible sister.” He banged his head against the steering wheel a few times, then threw up his hands. “This is the last time, then it is over.”
“O—VER,” both Lena and I said in unison.
“What do you want me to do?” he asked with his eyes closed.
.
The waiting room of
the Turk Medical Clinic was cheery. Overflowing with people, but still cheery. That came as a surprise to me. I wasn’t sure what the reception area of a community clinic would look like, but this didn’t fit my preconceived notion.
I was here thanks to Terrel. I needed to find Holly Worthington and he knew how to get in touch with her. Holly received medical care at this SF clinic. Terrel had called his friend Tariq Kapoor, the physician-in-charge as well as the street drug expert, and asked him to help me find her. Dr. Kapoor was able to track her down through his outreach, folks he called ‘scouts.’ She was supposed to arrive at the clinic around 2:00 p.m. I was sitting there waiting. It was 2:10 p.m.
Dr. Kapoor came out, smiled at some of the patients in the waiting room. “Anything?”
I shook my head.
“Let me know when she gets here. The two of you can sit and talk in my office. It’s very small, but private.”
I picked up a magazine, put it down and watched patients sign in, disappear into the back with a medical assistant, reappear and leave. A half hour went by, then an hour. At 3:15 p.m., I caught Dr. Kapoor as he came out to talk to the receptionist.
“I don’t think she’s coming. Thanks for trying. If she arrives later, can you ask her to call me?” I wrote down my cell phone number.
“I doubt that she has a phone, but she can call from here if she wants,” said Dr. Kapoor. “Sorry, but it’s not unusual for appointments to be broken. It happens.”
We shook hands and I walked out the door, heading for my car parked at a meter two blocks away. Sitting on the pavement at the corner, holding a sign that said ‘Hungry, please help,’ was a woman dressed in a shabby long black overcoat. The oversized sleeves were shredded at the cuffs. My eyes turned away from the woman as if she wasn’t there. I pulled out some change and dropped it into the small cardboard box she was holding out.
“Bless you, miss,” she said while looking down the street, past the parked cars.
On a chance, I took out one of the pictures of Dick Waddell— the one that showed him and a young woman holding up swim ribbons—from my backpack. I squatted down beside her. She looked up at me, bit the inside of her cheek and tried to inch back against the wall. Her eyes were red rimmed. Her cheeks were hollow. Grey streaked her stringy brown hair. I held the photo up for her to see.
“This girl in the picture. Is this you?” I asked.
She took the faded color photo in her hand and held it close to her eyes. “Can’t see too well without my glasses,” she said. She squinted and a smile passed across her face. “Cute young things, aren’t they? But, no, not me, missy,” she said and handed the photo back to me.
“Are you Holly Worthington?” I asked.
“No, honey. I’m not Holly.”
“Oh, sorry to bother you.” I stood up. “You okay sitting here?”
“Sure, why not? I like it. This is my corner.”
I smiled and turned away, ready to walk back to my car.
“Do you want to find Holly?” She called out to me. I turned in a flash.
“Do you know where she is?”
“Sure. She’s over there in the park. Just don’t tell her I told you, okay?”
She thanked and blessed a man who dropped two one dollar bills in her cardboard box.
“I won’t say anything.”
I headed for the corner and waited for the light to change. The park was small with a black metal fence around it. Inside there were climbing structures and young Vietnamese moms watched their kids closely as they played.
Everyone in the park seemed to be connected to one of the kids. No one looked out of place. I scanned the whole park, but didn’t see what I would consider a homeless person sitting or standing in the area. Another strike out. Okay, it was O–VER. I had to tell Terrel that I was finished and would call Inspector Burrell again. I walked along the black fence and listened to the shrieks and laughter from the children in the park. Didn’t matter that they were in one of the most dangerous parts of the city, they were having a good time. I watched them run through the miniature playground; such unbridled joy and happiness.
I was about to head back across the street when out of the corner of my eye, I saw a flash of something shiny and red in the undergrowth behind the play area, outside of the fence. I walked slowly around the perimeter of the gated park and stood near the shrubs in the back. There, I could see a red and silver shopping cart that was packed to overflowing. White partially filled garbage bags were tied to either side. Two bigger black bags, normally used for yard waste, were tied to the rim at the back of the cart. I took a few steps closer.
“Stay away from me,” a woman’s voice shouted out. It attracted the attention of some of the mothers in the park. They looked toward the sound of the voice then looked away. From a distance I quietly said, “Holly? Are you Holly Worthington?”
The woman stuck her head out from behind her cart. “What if I am? I’m not bothering you. Go away.”
“Holly, I have some pictures of you. Or at least I think they are of you? I thought you’d like to see them. I’ll walk over to that flat tree stump and put them there. Then I’ll come back here.”
She watched me carefully as I moved slowly through the thick grass. I laid the photo of her and Dick and the swim team on the stump. Then I turned around and walked back to the spot where I had been standing.
“Move back more,” she said waving me to the corner of the playground. I moved back even farther and watched as she walked over to the tree stump, bent over and picked up the photos. She sat down heavily on the stump.
“Where did you get these?” she asked, never taking her glance away from the pictures.
“Pamela Matthews. You probably knew her as Pamela…”
“Waddell—I know. I know.”
“Is it okay if I talk to you? I’m not here to hurt you. I don’t even know if I’m here to help you. I just need some information.”
She gave a small nod. “Okay.”
“Do you want to go someplace and get something to eat?”
“Can’t. Someone could steal my cart.”
“How about if I go get us something and we sit over there on the bench? That way we can talk and you can keep an eye on your cart.”
She agreed and I walked down the street to a small grocery store. I ordered three turkey sandwiches, bought some bananas, two cartons of milk and two chocolate brownies. By the time I came back, she was sitting on the bench. I gave her the two sandwiches. She picked up the carton of milk and stared at it.
“Milk? What do you think I am, eight years old? I want a cup of coffee.”
“I didn’t get coffee, but I have water.” I pulled a water bottle out of my backpack. She grabbed for it. She laid everything in front of her on the bench like she was setting a table. Sandwiches in the middle, water at top right, napkins next to the sandwiches and brownies top left.
She bowed her head for a few seconds; then she started to eat.
She didn’t speak, concentrating only on the food in front of her. Even while eating, she sat and moved with a certain grace. There was an elegance and agility of movement that suggested a dancer or an athlete. She was about 5’5” and slender, almost to the point of being skinny. I expected her skin to be pasty, shallow, but she had color, like she’d been in the sun, which, of course, she had been since she’d lived on the streets. Her face was puffy, including the skin around her green eyes. Her shoulder length dark hair was tangled and needed to be washed and combed. Her nails were chipped and dirty.
Did I see the healthy young swimmer of years ago underneath the tattered and faded grey San Francisco sweatshirt and ripped jeans? Barely, but there was something there.
When she finished eating, she shook out the food wrappers and folded them carefully, slipping them into her cart. Then she sat up straight, looked directly at me.
“What do you want?”
I was looking at the picture of her in a swimsuit taken so many years ago. “So, this is you?”
“Yes,” she said.
“And the boy standing next to you?”
“Dick Waddell.”
“Your teammate, right?”
“Yes, we swam on the same high school team.”
“You were good friends, it looked like.”
“Too good,” she said handing me back the pictures. “What are you here for?” she asked.
“I don’t know whether you have heard or not. I’m sorry to be the one to tell you, but Dick Waddell died about a month ago.”
Her body stiffened and she stood up.
“No. I didn’t know. No one told me.”
She looked down at the ground and walked a few feet away from me. Then she retraced her steps back to the bench and sat down. Tears were in her eyes.
“How did he die?”
“That’s really why I’m here…to talk about it. His family first thought it was a heart attack. I have information that says he was taking some kind of illegal drugs and that it could be the cause of his death.”
Holly didn’t say anything.
“Would you know anything about that?”
She shook her head and stared back to the play area and the metal fence. Then, she looked at me with a grim expression on her face.
“I get it now. You think that somehow I’m connected to his death…gave him drugs…killed him. Fool,” she said.
“No. That’s not what I think. I know who gave him the drugs. It wasn’t you.”
“You’re right it wasn’t me. Then tell me, what do you want?”
“I’m not even sure anymore. I know that Dick moved to Northern California about a year ago. The articles I’ve read quote him as saying it was to be close to family. I thought originally it meant to be close to his sister, Pamela, and her husband, Spencer.”
Holly grunted. “Spencer’s an asshole.”
“But maybe the family he was talking about was you. You were married to him, weren’t you?”
There was a long pause. I could see her thinking it over, trying to assess what she could tell me.
“How did you know that?”
I told her about Dr. T from SF Memorial finding the weathered newspaper article announcing their wedding.
She shook her head in disgust. “My private stuff. People think that because I live on the street I don’t have a right to my privacy. I do. Makes me sick. No respect…no respect at all.”
“He was just trying to find out who you were. That’s all. From what he told me, you were incoherent, could hardly speak.”
She glared at me. “Yes, we were married after high school. Yes, to your next question. I was pregnant. Yes, to the question after that. He left me. His family let him leave. Leave me in that small town. And yes, to the question after that. I went after him.
“I found him, too. In a dorm room in Texas. He said he was sorry but he didn’t want to see me, didn’t want to be married and did not want to be a father. He had his swimming career to think about. He had a shot at the Olympics. He gave me what he said was all the money he had, $200. I kept the money and hitchhiked here.”
“Hitchhiked? From Texas? But you were pregnant. I know this isn’t my business, but what happened to the baby?”
“You’re right. This isn’t your business. It was so long ago. A different time. I was a different person, I guess.”
She stared off into space as if she was looking back through the years, at the teenager who found herself alone during the frantic and dangerous end of the flower-power days in San Francisco.
“It wasn’t that strange to be on the streets back then. When I got here I ended up at a clinic in the Haight. Nice people; nice doctors. They took care of me while I was pregnant. They helped me find a place to live, food to eat and kept me healthy. I gave birth to a little boy.”
“Really? That’s not what I was told Where is he now?”
“Don’t know. I held him once. I remember wondering if he would be a swimmer, too. Then I handed him to the nurse and signed a couple of papers saying I was giving him up. A few hours later, I left the clinic. That was that.”
“Did Dick know any of this? Did he know you were here?”
“Oh yeah. About four years ago, he hunted me down, just like you did. His first question, just like yours. ‘What happened to the baby?’ Not ‘how are you? What have you been doing for the last 30 years?’ Only ‘where was the baby?’ Did you come to find me to tell me that Dick was dead?”
“That wasn’t the original reason. Why I wanted to talk to you has changed—changed one, two, even three times. A few days ago, I overheard Spencer talking to someone else you probably know, Justin Rosencastle.”
She shook her head. “Another unfortunate blast from the past.”
“It sounded like they were talking about drugs. Last night, I confronted Justin, told him I thought the drugs he sold to Dick killed him. He didn’t deny it.”
Holly was staring at me. “Girl, you are so stupid. Don’t you know what Spencer and Justin do? Look at me. Look at my arms,” and she pulled up the sleeves of her sweatshirt to show the needle tracks.
“This is because of them. Back in the 70’s, I ran into Spencer at a concert in Golden Gate Park. We kept in touch. He offered me drugs, for free, and a place to crash and food. He wanted to help me so I wouldn’t be on the streets or so he said. But it was only so I’d sleep with him. Maybe it was the times; maybe it was me. What the hell did I care? I had nothing going on and I got free dope and a roof over my head. Justin took over when Spencer was tired of me.”
I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. Not only had Holly been in touch with Spencer and Justin, but they had been dealing drugs of one kind or another since the late 70’s. And they treated her like a disposable diaper. Use her and throw her away.
“I think I killed Justin last night. I hit him a couple of times with one of his swim awards.”
For the first time in our conversation, Holly started to smile. Then, she threw back her head and laughed and laughed.
“One of the best uses I ever heard of for a swim trophy.”
She laughed so hard, I thought she’d fall off the bench. She put her dirty hands up to her face and pushed the tangled hair back behind her ears.
“So let’s see—you hunted me down to tell me that Dick was murdered and that you killed Justin? Is that right?”