Trust Me (20 page)

CHAPTER 43

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It was a good thing, the water being so warm.
Jeff had run straight into the man from behind, knocking him aside, and gone over the rail without even thinking it through. He had landed feet first in the blackness, shot down to the bottom, and pushed up through the surface right next to the blond.

The thing was to get her away from the pilings. The wave was going to break right in front of them, and the nearest piling, encrusted with razor-edged barnacles, was only about six feet away. The only way to go was down. He wondered if she could swim.

When she saw him, an involuntary little shriek came out of her, but she wasn’t flailing, didn’t seem to be panicking. He just yelled, “The bottom—away from the pier.” Then, with a black wall of water the size of a house ready to crash right on top of them, he grabbed the fabric of the girl’s sweatshirt with his left hand, heard her take a breath as he did, and pushed her under the surface.

Her hand hit his ear when she took her first stroke, but it helped propel them downward and away from the pier. He kicked hard and stroked with his right hand, aiming for the bottom, out of the wave’s grip.

It was peaceful for a moment. He had a flash of an old familiar revulsion: he had always loved the ocean, and sandy bottoms or coral reefs in clear tropical water, but rocky bottoms that he couldn’t see had always spooked him. He had fished from this pier when he was a kid, and knew what lived down here. Crabs the size of dinner plates, sand sharks, stingrays, God knew what else . . .

Suddenly there was a sickening lurch as a current, unstoppable as a freight train, picked them up and whipped them, first out to sea, then sideways for a terrifying moment, before pulling them toward shore. The handful of sweatshirt was ripped out of his grip as he was catapulted into a somersault. For an instant he was out ahead of the soup, long enough to catch a breath before being pummeled under and thrust face first against the girl. He felt himself get driven down until his back hit the rocks on the bottom, the girl on top of him. His hand shot out and grabbed her arm—there was a brief tug as the wave tried to reclaim her, and then they were out of its grip. He kicked off the bottom, pushing the girl up ahead of him until they popped up through the surface and into the air.

He heard her gasping for breath—she probably didn’t get that extra lungful that he got. They were still close to the pier, but maybe twenty feet toward shore from where they had started.

“Can you swim?” he asked her.

“Yes.”

“Then swim fast, straight out, go under before you meet the wave.”

The next wave was already drawing water, pulling them outward, sucking against the barnacles and the pilings. They swam with the outflow, straight toward the towering face, bigger than the last wave, and when they met it dove hard for the bottom. They had momentum this time: he reached out and felt the smooth, slimy surface of a rock and waited for the iron grip of the wave to take him, but felt only a passing tug and then it was over.

This time when they came up, the sea was calm. He figured they had about two to three minutes before the next set hit; the main thing now was to get inside, out of the impact zone. If they could move away from the pier, then even if another set came they could just let it push them in toward shore.

He explained it to the girl and she just said, “Let’s go,” and broke into a steady stroke toward the beach.

CHAPTER 44

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Ron told the others from the meeting he would join them in a few minutes.
Sam, an old-timer he had known ever since coming into the rooms of AA fourteen years ago, came up to him and said, “What happened to your new guy?” Sam had bushy white hair and wild scraggly eyebrows. He stood about five foot six and seemed to find an element of humor in almost everything that happened around him.

“I don’t know,” Ron said. “He mentioned something about going out on the pier and watching the surf.”

“Well, I was just out there, saw some guy on a wave with a goddamn flashlight. Nobody on the pier though. Hope your kid’s not getting squirrelly on you.” Sam laughed and went over to the corner where the tables had been pushed together to accommodate the group from the meeting.

Too squirrelly. Actually, Ron thought, the kid was doing pretty well. Suited up, showed up, kept his attitude in pretty good check. Doing fine at his new job.

So, squirrelly didn’t fit, but where the hell was he? He had an odd feeling about it now—ten minutes had gone by. Sam said there was no one out on the pier. So now he could forget about it and go join the others, or he could take a walk, have a little look around outside.

There had been times, he thought as he stepped out onto the pier, when he hadn’t listened to his intuition, and each time there had been a price to pay. The AA book told him that, after taking certain actions, his thinking would function on the intuitive plane, and that he could rely upon it.

Now, his intuition told him to find Jeff.

He stepped out of the restaurant and begun walking toward the end of the pier when a huge wave broke. A solitary figure approached from the end of the pier; it was dark, but even at this distance he knew it wasn’t Jeff. He had seen the couple that had grabbed Jeff’s attention, barely catching a glance of them as they walked by. Where was the woman?

He broke into a jog down the middle of the pier. The man coming toward him moved to the south rail, walking briskly toward the shore. He had his hands in his pockets and was hunched forward, shoulders up, looking southward, as if he didn’t want to be seen.

Ron slowed to a walk and veered to his left, cutting the man off. He looked, in surprise, into the face of Art Bradley, co-founder of the SOL movement.

The man said, “Hurry, there’s been an accident,” then brushed by him and continued toward the entrance to the pier.

Another wave exploded as Ron took off at a run toward the end of the pier. Spray flew up over the railing. In the silence that followed, he thought he heard voices from somewhere ahead, hard to place in the misty darkness.

There was no one in sight. He walked around the gift shop on the one side, then the bait shop on the other—still nobody. It didn’t make sense: even if Jeff never came out here, where was the girl that had walked out with Art?

It wasn’t until he was halfway back, moving toward the entrance, that he heard rhythmic splashing noises and looked over the railing again. There they were, both of them, for Christ’s sake, Jeff and the girl, taking long, slow strokes, heading shoreward about ten feet from the pilings.

He leaned over the railing and yelled down at them. “Hey!”

Jeff stopped and looked up, treading water.

Ron called out, “You need help?”

“No. Meet us on the beach.” He sounded pretty good, like they were just down there goofing off or something. Like, no big deal.

What the hell was going on?

CHAPTER 45

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No, I don’t want the police,” the blond girl said.
She shuddered and then, as if by marshaling a huge reserve of will, she assumed a look and posture of self-assurance and composure, her eyes daring Ron to protest.

Her name was Holly. She looked good, even soaking wet, sitting there in the driver’s seat of the Land Rover, the door open and the water dripping off her into the car. “I’ve seen you before.”

“SOL, Franklin Street. And I saw you at the Beverly Hills seminar the other week.”

“That man’s insane, you know.” She hugged herself, trying to get warm.

“We know that.” Ron was putting it all together. It made sense, in the big picture, but it was still hard to accept. “So Art pushed you?” It was unbelievable, and yet so obvious at the same time.

“Yeah. I was standing on the pier, watching this guy surf with a flashlight. It was incredible! I wasn’t even thinking about Art. I had tuned him out, he was so full of shit, and then, boom! I’m over the railing—I’m flying. And then I’m in the water, like a bad dream.”

“I saw it happen,” Jeff said.

“You were watching us?” The blond—Holly—looked at him, eyes narrowed. “What were you doing out there?”

Jeff shrugged. “I don’t know. I saw Jack walk by the restaurant with you. It was so weird, I had to check it out.”

Ron asked, “Who’s Jack?”

“Jack’s the guy that pushed her,” Jeff said. “Who’s Art?”

Ron started laughing. “You got rescued,” he said to Holly, “because he thought he saw someone he knew.”

Holly turned to Jeff. “I guess you did rescue me,” she said.

Jeff shrugged.

Ron watched the two of them: Jeff simple and open, casual even while he stood dripping wet next to the car; Holly pressing her index finger from the top of her jaw toward her ear, then shaking her head, saying, “It sounds like I’m still under water.”

There was a moment’s silence.

“You know, I wasn’t so worried about the swim, but that wave—and the pilings—good God.” Holly yawned, then pressed once more at her ear. “There, that’s better.”

Jeff said, “You have to get to the bottom, where the wave can’t get you.”

“How did you know that?”

“I used to surf a lot. You get a sense for the ocean.”

“Why did you quit?” Holly asked.

“You have to get up early in the morning.” Jeff bent down and took off a tennis shoe. When he turned it over salt water poured out.

“So?”

“So, I was busy doing other things.” Jeff shook out his other shoe and then removed his socks. “Look, that guy that pushed you, I’m not mixing him up with anyone else. He might be calling himself Art, but his real name is Jack Stanley.”

Ron said, “Art Bradley’s been around here for a while. When did you know him?”

“I haven’t seen him in at least five years. He disappeared from the scene.”

“What scene?” If Jeff was right, Ron was curious what Joe could pull up on the man. How far back his history as Dr. Art Bradley went.

“The rock and roll dope scene,” Jeff said. “He was the rock doc up in San Francisco. Xanax, Valium, Dexedrine, Oxy, you name it and he would write a scrip for it. For a price.”

Holly combed back her hair with her fingers. Ron watched her shudder for an instant, shake her head, look down at the ground.

“You know what he always talked about?” she said. “How people needed to have faith in each other. ‘Trust me,’ he was always saying. God!” She stepped down from the driver’s seat and stood on the pavement in her bare feet. “I lost something out there.”

Ron wondered what it could have been. Her faith in a rational world? Her belief that people really are what they appear to be? He looked at her with sympathy, unable to formulate a useful response.

“What did you lose?” Jeff asked.

“My purse. And my keys.”

CHAPTER 46

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Sitting in the back seat of the Land Rover, heading south on the Pacific Coast Highway, Holly said, “You’re telling me Art is a serial killer?”

Ron, the older man, flicked his brights at an oncoming car driving with its lights off, and said over his shoulder, “It fits the puzzle pretty neatly.”

“That’s insane.”

“Insanity does come to mind.” Ron moved a switch on the dashboard and warm air started blowing from a vent. She was grateful. She was cold to the point of shivering and it intensified her feeling of anxiety. She wondered how the other guy, Jeff, felt.

“How many people? And what ties them all together, or to Art?”

“Eight that I know of,” Ron said. “All attractive, women in their mid twenties. All appeared to have taken their own lives by jumping from high places. At night.”

“Over what period of time?” she asked.

“About two years.”

“Couldn’t it be a coincidence? I mean, a lot more than eight people killed themselves in the last two years. You could probably arrange them into all kinds of little groups.”

Ron stopped for the light at Topanga Canyon. “At least three of them went to SOL meetings.”

Jeff turned and said, “Including my sister.”

She looked at him, shocked by the revelation. “I’m sorry to hear that,” was all she could come up with.

“You know what I think is strange?” Jeff asked. Then, without waiting for an answer, he said, “What I think is strange is that you just got pushed off a pier by a maniac, and you’re trying to dismiss what we’re saying as a bunch of coincidences.”

“Is that what I’m doing?” It dawned on her that at some basic level she still wasn’t accepting the fact that Art had tried to kill her.

“Listen, there’s no way my sister killed herself. Or that she was taking drugs.” Jeff turned to Ron. “What was that stuff called?”

“Halcion.”

“Yeah, no way.” Jeff shook his head in disbelief.

She couldn’t breathe. The sensation of being cold returned, more intense than before, even though the car’s heater had warmed the air. Drawing into herself, she could hear the pulse drumming in her ears. As if from a distance, Jeff’s voice continued, but she could not make out what he was saying. She held her arms crossing her chest and found that she was inhaling and exhaling rapidly through her mouth.

“Hey. HEY!” Jeff was yelling now. She saw him, turned around in his seat, a look of alarmed concern on his face. She felt the car pull over and stop.

“Are you okay?” Jeff asked. She still couldn’t answer. She heard Ron say something about shock and shook her head.

“I’ll be all right—” there, she had found her voice “—in a minute.”

“Christ,” Jeff said. “You scared me there. What happened?”

“It felt like I was falling again,” she said. She took a deep breath, then another. The icy feeling inside was subsiding. “Halcion—that’s not a very common drug, is it?”

“Why?” asked Ron.

“That’s what Art gave me during our sessions. He said it made me more receptive to hypnosis.”

“He hypnotized you?” Jeff seemed astonished.

“Twice. The third time I pretended to go along with it, but I didn’t take the pills.”

“Why not?” Jeff asked.

“I just had a feeling about it. On some level, I didn’t trust him.” It was crazy, she thought, how the whole picture was so clear now. After Art had left her place last Thursday night, she had been too furious at his betrayal to see beyond her anger. Even after he had thrown her into the water, the surprise and shock of it had clouded her thinking. But now it was perfectly obvious: that Art was a predator and she had been the prey since the beginning. That her caution, her protestations, and his reassurances had all been part of his game, a game he enjoyed. A game he had played before.

“I just want to go home now.”