Authors: Daniel Palmer
Delirious
Delirious
DANIEL
PALMER
KENSINGTON BOOKS are published by
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Copyright © 2011 by Daniel Palmer
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Library of Congress Control Number: 2010938699
eISBN-13: 978-0-7582-6809-9
eISBN-10: 0-7582-6809-2
First Hardcover Printing: February 2011
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Printed in the United States of America
To my wife, Jessica,
thank you for making our life the perfect place to be.
Prologue
E
ddie rode the 28-19th Avenue bus to the bridge. He carried with him enough change for a one-way fare. He had no identification. It wouldn’t matter if his death was properly recorded. Nobody would care about it, anyway. Through the wispy morning fog he strolled upon the walkway that linked San Francisco with Marin County. The bridge had opened to foot traffic two hours prior, and few pedestrians were out. The thruway, however, was a logjam of cars. He spent a few minutes watching the commuters as they went about their morning rituals—sipping coffee, talking on their cell phones, or fiddling with their radios. He burned their images into his mind and savored the voyeurism with the passion a dying man gives his last meal.
He walked to his spot. He knew it well. It was at the 109th light pole. He would face east, toward the city. Few jumped west, as most everyone wanted their final view to be something beautiful, like the elegant curves and hilly rise of the San Francisco skyline.
The fall, he knew, would last no more than four seconds. It was 265 feet down from where he would jump, gravity pulling him down at over seventy-five miles per hour. The water below would be as forgiving as cement. Perhaps a nanosecond of pain, then nothing. He always found it calming to know details. He was all about facts and logic. It was what made him a world-class software engineer. In preparation for the jump he had studied the stories of many of those who had gone before him. He had hundreds of sad tales to choose from. The stories were now his own. He would soon be part of the legacy of death that had been the Golden Gate Bridge since 1937,
when WWI vet Harold Wobber said to a stranger, “This is as far as I go”—and then jumped.
At his mark, Eddie hoisted himself over the four-foot security barrier and lowered his body onto a wide beam he knew from research was called “the chord.” There he paused and stared out at the seabirds catching drafts of warming air off the cool, choppy waters below and took stock of what little life he had left. Lifting his feet ever so slightly, until he was standing on his toes, Eddie began to push against the rail to hoist himself up and over the chord.
He closed his eyes tightly. Thirty-two years of his life darted past his mind’s eye, so vivid that they felt real—vignettes played in rapid succession.
The pony ride at his fifth birthday party. Weeping beside the graves of his parents. Seven years old, still in shock, sitting at the trial next to the sheriff who had apprehended the drunk driver. The orphanage, then the endless chain of foster homes. Studying, alone in his room, so much reading. Then college. His graduation. How he wished his parents had been there to see him. The business. A startup. The energy and hours. The first sale. The euphoria was fleeting; the sting from his partner’s betrayal would never subside.
He took a deep breath and lifted himself even higher. A part of him, the most secret and hidden part, was awash in a terrible, heavy sadness. It was overwhelmingly disappointing to him that he hadn’t had the courage to do what needed to be done. It would be his dying regret.
With an assuredness that seemed born of much practice, he pushed himself up and over the thin railing that ran the length of the chord. The moment his feet left the bridge, Eddie regretted the jump. He hovered for an instant in midair, as though he were suspended above the water by strings. The depth seemed infinite. Sun glinted off the rippling water, shining like thousands of tiny daggers. His eyes widened in horror. Was there still time to turn around and grab hold? He twisted his body hard to the right. And then he fell.
The acceleration took Eddie’s breath away. The pit of his stomach knotted with a sickening combination of gravity and fear. His light wind jacket flapped with the whipping sound of a sail catching a new breeze. The instinct for self-preservation was as powerful as it was futile. His eyes closed, unwilling to bear witness to his death.
Pitching forward, his arms flailed above his head, clawing for something to grab. His legs pumped against the air. Two seconds into the fall. Two more to go. He could no longer see color, shapes, light, or shadow.
Mother, please forgive me,
he thought. A barge he had seen in the distance before the jump faded from view. The sun vanished, casting everything around him into blackness. He could hear his own terrified scream, and nothing else. Time passed.
Two … then … one …
His body tensed as he hit, his feet connecting first, then his backside, and last his head. The agony was greater than he had imagined it could be. The sounds of his bones cracking reverberated in his ears. He felt his organs loosen and shift about as though they had been ripped from the cartilage that held them in place. Pain exploded through him.
For a moment he had never felt more alive.
Water shot up his nose, cold and numbing. He gagged on it as it filled his throat. A violent cough to expel the seawater set off more jolts of agony from his broken ribs.
Facedown, he lay motionless as he began to sink. From the blackness below something glowed brightly, shimmering in the abyss. He couldn’t see it clearly but wanted to swim to it. It rose to meet him.
It was his parents. They smiled up at him, beaming with ghostly white eyes and beckoning for him to join them.
M
onte eased himself out of his cozy bed, stretched while yawning, then crawled from underneath the expansive oak desk and lazily made his way over to Charlie. Charlie, leash in hand, looked down at his tricolored beagle and couldn’t resist a smile.
“Who heard me getting his leash, huh?” Charlie asked, scratching Monte in his favorite place behind his ears.
With his tail wagging full speed, Monte looked longingly up at Charlie, his inky eyes pleading for a quick start to their morning walk. Charlie, who didn’t even own a plant before he brought Monte home from the breeder, now couldn’t imagine life without his faithful friend. Named after jazz guitar great Wes Montgomery, and in honor of his lifelong passion for the art form, Monte wouldn’t have come to be had Charlie not been such a lousy boyfriend. It was Gwen, his last in a string of short-lived relationships, who suggested that Charlie’s rigid routines and dislike of, as she put it, “messy emotions” made him a better candidate for a dog than a girlfriend. She packed up what few things she kept at his loft apartment, and on one rainy Saturday morning she was gone.
Charlie, who had left as many girlfriends as had left him, wasn’t one to dwell on the past or wallow in self-pity. Instead, intrigued by her suggestion, Charlie spent the next several hours researching dog breeds on the Web, until he finally settled on the beagle. It was a good-size dog for an apartment, he reasoned. Short hair meant less shedding, tipping the scale away from the Labrador breed. He briefly contemplated a poodle, with its hair coat and cunning intellect, but couldn’t get the image of the groomed poodle pouf out of his mind.
He found a breeder only a few miles down the road, made a quick call, and minutes later was surrounded by a litter of feisty beagle puppies, each yipping for his attention.
Monte was an older dog and seemed to be above the attention-getting tactics of the young pups. He sat quietly in a corner of the breeder’s living room while Charlie picked up and put down puppy after puppy.
“What about that one?” Charlie asked, pointing to the quiet dog in the corner.
“Him?” the breeder replied, somewhat incredulous. “I rescued that little one from the pound. They warned me he liked to chew on things, but I never figured he’d gnaw enough of my shoes to fill up a Dumpster. Still, he’s been a good dog. You can tell by the eyes sometimes. The good ones, that is. We always hoped somebody would want to give him a home, but most of our clients are interested in the pups. Then again …” Her voice trailed off.