Forty-Four Box Set, Books 1-10 (44) (114 page)

I got in the Jeep and started it up. I hadn’t been up to Tumalo Falls in several years. But I knew it wasn’t too far from here.

In a few minutes I made it to the end of Skyliners and took the turn for the road leading to the falls. As my headlights fought through the fog, I could make out a car up ahead. A black BMW. The driver’s door was open.

The car was parked diagonally across the road in front of a gate that barred any further progress. I had never been here during this time of year. The road must be closed in winter.

I would have to walk the rest of the way.

I parked and got the flashlight from the storage console between the front seats. I hoped that the snow was firm enough to walk on.

I shivered as the cold hit my body, making me wish I had brought more than just a sweatshirt.

It didn’t take me long to find the path carved out by skiers and snowshoers leading toward the falls. Fortunately the snow was tamped down so I didn’t sink. I walked quickly through the icy fog and then started jogging as the sound of the tumbling water got louder.

I forced myself to be cautious. I couldn’t run full out and risk twisting an ankle or breaking something. That wouldn’t help anyone.

“I’m coming, Derek,” I whispered. “Hold on.”

CHAPTER 31

“Damn,” I said as the flashlight started to die out.

The falls were louder now. I soon was at the summer parking lot. I checked the viewpoint a few feet away, but there were no signs of Derek. He must have taken the trail to the top.

I remembered it wasn’t far. Maybe five minutes. Maybe he wasn’t at the top yet. Maybe he was just a few feet ahead of me.

The flashlight was completely dead now and the climb was slippery. Even taking short, choppy steps, I still lost my footing a few times in the icier sections. The fog and sweat had started to stick and freeze to the front of my sweatshirt.

“Derek,” I started calling. “Derek, it’s Abby.”

I had to be close now. I tried not to think about what I would do if he wasn’t there. The crashing water drowned out the sound of my breathing as I took the last few steps.

Suddenly the fog lifted and I saw him standing in the middle of the trail. But it wasn’t Derek.

It was the ghost dog.

His coat glistened and his strange eyes shone like diamonds in the moonlight. Then he growled, low and angry.

“It’s all right, boy,” I said. “Where’s your master? Where’s Derek?”

He started to bark.

I could see the falls behind him, a cascade of icy whitewater tumbling almost 100 feet down.

And then I saw Derek, his back toward me, sitting on top of the railing that overlooked Tumalo Falls.

He looked like he was about to jump.

“Derek, don’t!”

I wasn’t sure he heard me. I didn’t want to startle him, but I had to do something.

I shouted again, louder this time.

“Hey, who’s there?” he said.

“It’s me, Derek. Abby.”

“Hello, Derek Abby. My, what a strange name you have. What are you doing here anyway, Derek Abby?”

His nose was stuffy, like he had a cold or had been crying.

“Come down from there and we can talk all about it.”

“I like it here,” he said, holding out a bottle. “Maybe you should join me.”

I took a few steps closer. I was only a few feet away from him. But as I got closer to the railing, the ground became an ice rink. And with the snow pack as high as it was, the railing only reached up to my knees.

I could feel the mist from the falls like tiny pinpricks on my face.

“Okay, I’m coming over,” I said, crouching low and realizing I was still holding the useless flashlight. “Wait for me.”

“I’m not going anywhere,” he said.

I took a deep breath and inched closer.

“Oh, I get it,” he said. “You thought I was going to jump.”

He started to laugh.

“That’s just silly,” he said.

“Come on, Derek. I’m serious.”

I was kneeling behind him. I grabbed his arm.

“A few more minutes,” he said, taking a long pull from the half-empty bottle. “I want to drink myself sober.”

I tried not to look at the waterfall. I tried not to imagine the jagged rocks and chunks of ice in the darkness below. I just held on to his arm.

“I wasn’t going to jump. I was just up here remembering and thinking. Seeing you brought back a lot of memories. I started thinking about Jesse and what happened to him, and my own life. It left me feeling very empty inside. And then I realized that I have always had a big hole inside me.”

“I don’t know if that’s true,” I said. “I just remember you having a big heart.”

“Maybe you’re right, but I don’t have it anymore. I’m tired. Tired of doing the shit I do. I know it sounds like a bad Hollywood script, but it seems wrong. Like some crime against humanity or nature, for me to throw my life away knowing Jesse never got the chance to live his. I’ve been up here thinking about him. Just before you walked up, I had promised him that I would stop. The Daniel’s, the drugs, the selling. Working for my dad. All of it. It’s all shit.”

He threw the bottle behind him.

“I’m starting over,” he said. “I’m starting my life again.”

I pulled him in toward my side of the railing.

“Come on,” I said. “Let’s get the hell out of here. I’m freezing.”

Between my shivering and his drunken swaying, we made quite a team. I slowly led us away from the edge and back down the trail.

It was trickier going down than it had been coming up. The icy parts were super treacherous.

We had only descended a few feet when my legs went out from under me. But I hadn’t slipped. All the energy had suddenly left my body again, worse than that time at Brother Jon’s. I felt paralyzed with exhaustion.

I heard the barking again. My head and stomach felt like they had switched places. I could see Derek and the stars spinning above me. More growling and barking.

“Abby, are you oka—”

But Derek didn’t finish the sentence.

I watched helplessly as a dark shadow moved between us, blanketing Derek in blackness and pushing him back away from me. The dog kept barking.

Derek screamed.

I willed my hand out toward him. But I was too late.

A moment later I saw Derek fall and tumble over the cliff.

Down, down, down to his death.

CHAPTER 32

Knowing it was pointless, I still reached for my phone.

I somehow managed to hit the three numbers with my frozen, lifeless fingers.

“Someone’s fallen from Tumalo Falls,” I whispered. “No, this is not a prank.”

They kept me on the line for a while and finally told me help was on the way.

“It’s too late,” I kept mumbling. “It’s too late.”

I heard that beep that signaled my phone was almost out of juice. The ghost dog was still growling and barking in the background. I didn’t know how long I was like that, flat on my back in the snow. But the whole time the dog stayed with me. I wasn’t sure what he thought I could do at this point.

I finally heard the siren in the distance and found the strength to get to my knees. And then stand. I got down to the bottom of the trail about the same time the fire engine arrived.

“He fell,” I said, pointing up toward the falls. “Near the top.”

I saw them strapping on snowshoes and then head off in the darkness with a rescue stretcher. Except I knew there would be no rescue.

Someone brought me a blanket and some hot coffee. I finally had the energy and started to cry. I was still sobbing when I heard someone on the scanner.

“We’ve got a pulse,” the voice said. “It’s weak, but it’s there. We’re bringing him out.”

I couldn’t believe that Derek had survived that fall. But as filled with hope as I suddenly was, I couldn’t help but think that he had to be close to death. How could it be any other way?

They finally appeared with the first light of day and loaded him in the back of the ambulance. I was relieved to see that the blanket covering him wasn’t over his head.

As the paramedics pulled away a couple of police officers came up to me. One of them was holding a clear plastic bag with Derek’s whiskey bottle inside.

“We’ve got some questions for you,” the older one said.

I said I’d tell them everything they wanted to know after I went to the hospital.

They gave me a ride back to the Jeep and followed me all the way to St. Charles.

***

In the next few hours, I got a small taste of what Kate must have gone through with me.

I sat there in the waiting room, surrounded by people waiting to hear some news, one way or another. I watched as doctors and nurses came out, zeroed in on somebody or called out a name, and then walked over to them.

A man sat next to me with blood stains on the haphazard bandages wrapped around his hand. A young Hispanic family was in the corner, the little kids coloring pictures, the father holding his wife, who sat silently ripping the tissue in her hands.

At one point one of the firefighters who found Derek came up to me.

“We found him in a snowy patch between two large boulders,” he said. “The tree branches or something must have broken his fall. But if he had landed a few feet to the right or left…”

He shook his head slowly and smiled.

“He’s lucky is all I can say,” he said, before walking away.

After that the police officers came over.

The younger one said they realized this wasn’t the best time but that they needed to complete their preliminary investigation. The older one asked most of the questions, starting with my name, address, and phone number.

“Can you tell us what happened up there, Ms. Craig?” he said.

I told them that we were heading down and that I slipped on the ice and when Derek reached to help me up, he slipped too. And that that was how he fell.

“What were you doing up there at that hour?” he said.

“Talking,” I said. “Just talking.”

“Seems that there are better places to talk,” he muttered, almost to himself. “And you say that he slipped, that it was an accident?”

“That’s what happened, yes.”

“We found a mostly empty bottle of Jack Daniel’s up there, Ms. Craig. Can you explain that?”

I couldn’t lie about it. They would eventually find out the truth when they spoke to the doctors. His blood alcohol content would be there in black and white. And who knew what else he had in his system.

“Derek had been drinking,” I said, trying not to bite my lip.

“Was he upset?”

“He was trying to work some things out in his head,” I said.

“Was he upset?” he repeated.

“A little.”

“But you still maintain that it was an accident, correct? Mr. Callahan didn’t jump by any chance, did he, Ms. Craig?”

At that moment all the hours of practice I had put in with Felder came in handy. It hadn’t all been a complete waste of time after all.

I shook my head coolly.

“No, it was definitely an accident, officer,” I said, looking him right in the eye.

He wrote something down and then looked back at me.

“That’s all for now, but we’ll be in touch if we have any more questions.”

The younger one smiled and then they both walked away.

The minutes turned to hours as I waited there for some news. I tried to focus on the fact that at least Derek was in this part of the hospital and not in the morgue. He was alive after falling almost 100 feet off that cliff.

Having nothing else to do, I replayed the scene in my head. The dog. The shadow had been there. But did I really see it and remember it right? Did it really push Derek over the edge? And, if so, why?

The truth was that I couldn’t be sure of anything.

I checked the charge on my phone and saw that it was full. I unplugged the cord from the outlet and rolled it up neatly before putting it in my sweatshirt pouch.

I had stopped shivering long ago. At first I welcomed the heat in the waiting room, but after a while it became almost suffocating. And as the hours dragged by I got sleepy. Papers shuffled and babies cried and I fought to stay awake, but I caught myself dozing on more than one occasion, jerking up after my head rolled against the wall behind my chair.

Finally, someone came out and walked over to me.

“Are you a relation of Derek Callahan?” the young woman said.

Her scrubs had a few dark drops on them. Most likely the blood belonged to Derek. Her surgical mask was hanging below her chin and she was wearing a pair of extra large, round-rimmed glasses that seemed too cheerful for this place.

“He’s a friend of mine from California. I was with him when he fell.”

She nodded.

“I’m Dr. Drobinsky,” she said. “Your friend suffered a compound fracture of his left leg and he has a ruptured spleen. There’s some internal bleeding as well, so we’re sending him up to the O.R.”

I swallowed back the lump growing in my throat.

“But… can you tell me if he’s going to be okay?”

She reached up and took off her glasses and held them in both hands like David Caruso.

“It’s too early to say at this point,” she said. “But your friend is in good hands here. We’ll know more after the surgery.”

“Okay, thank you for what you’re doing for him.”

“Surgery is up on the second floor,” she said as she walked away. “You can wait up there if you’re sticking around.”

I found the cafeteria and bought a large coffee. I sat down at a table, forcing myself to drink. Then I called Kate. I told her what had happened.

“When I woke up and saw you weren’t home I figured you had gone to the gym,” she said. “I had no idea. I’m so sorry, Abby.”

She said she hadn’t been assigned the story, but that both the newspaper and the television station were already working on it. It wasn’t every day that someone fell from the top of Tumalo Falls and lived, especially in the middle of a winter night.

Then I called Mike and told him where I was and that I couldn’t make it into work. He said he’d cover my shift and that he hoped everything turned out all right.