Читать книгу Depth of Field - Michael Blair - Страница 7

I was dreaming of Reeny when the telephone rang. In that weird way of dreams, the ringing was integrated into my dream, interrupting our lovemaking on the roof deck of my house, which became Pendragon, the old sailboat Reeny had lived on until it had burned to the waterline the year before. Linda, my former spouse, said, “Aren’t you going to answer it?” as she sat naked on the ironing board in the kitchen of our first apartment, clipping her toenails. “No,” I replied, bailing the water from the bilge of my house with a cowboy hat. The ringing continued, so I tumbled out of bed and stumbled down the hall into my home office to answer it.

“H’lo,” I mumbled.

“Tom? It’s Greg Matthias.”

“Greg?” I peered at the clock radio on the bookcase under the window. It read 1:53 a.m. “What’s wrong?”

“It’s Bobbi,” he said. “She’s in Vancouver General emergency.”

A jolt of adrenalin seared away the cobwebs. “What happened? Is she all right?”

“She was found floating just offshore under the Burrard Street Bridge,” he said. “We’re not sure what happened, but it looks like she was attacked. She hasn’t regained consciousness.”

The Burrard Street Bridge spanned False Creek about a quarter kilometre west of Granville Island, a little more than a stone’s throw from the marina where she’d gone to photograph Anna Waverley’s boat.

“I’ll be there in twenty minutes,” I said.

Twenty-three minutes later I was standing with Greg Matthias beside Bobbi’s bed in the emergency ward of the Vancouver General Hospital. She lay on her side, a tube down her throat, connected to an oxygen feed, and an IV in her arm, connected to an IV pump and a bag of clear fluid. Her face was a mass of raw, red abrasions, purpling bruises, and deep lacerations, some of which were closed with butterfly bandages, some with stitches. There was a strip of tape across the bridge of her nose and dried blood at the rims of her nostrils. Her eyes were swollen shut and beginning to blacken, and her left eyebrow was shaved partly away so a cut could be stitched. I could see the ends of black threads protruding like tiny worms from between her cruelly distended and discoloured lips and dried blood caked the corners of her mouth. A big gauze bandage bulged behind her right ear. A bundle of coloured wires snaked from the loose neck of her hospital gown, attached to electrodes glued to her chest. More electrodes were affixed to her head. A sensor was clipped to the tip of the first finger of her left hand. All were linked to machines that beeped softly and displayed her vital signs on colourful LCD screens that looked more like video games than medical monitors. I wanted to take her hand, but the knuckles of both hands were like raw hamburger and two fingers of her right hand were splinted.

“It was touch and go for a while,” Matthias said. “She’s stable now.”

My gut was twisted in knots and my eyes burned. “When do they think she’ll wake up?”

“They say it could be minutes, hours, or days. She’s taken a terrible beating, Tom. There’s no indication of major internal trauma, but they’re worried about intra-cranial swelling. And there’s no way of knowing how long she was in the water or how long her brain may have been deprived of oxygen. She’s fortunate that it was an off-duty paramedic who found her. He was able to give her CPR right away and undoubtedly saved her life.”

“Excuse me, gentlemen,” a woman said behind us. Matthias and I turned to see a tiny Asian nurse who looked like a teenager but whose no-nonsense manner left no doubt about who was in charge. “Would you go back to the waiting room, please? The doctor would like to examine the patient. We’ll let you know if there’s any change.”

“Have you called her father?” I asked, as we walked to the waiting room. Matthias was out of uniform, in jeans rather than his usual suit and tie.

“I tried,” he said. “There was no answer. We asked the Richmond RCMP to send a car around to his home, but I haven’t heard if they’ve found him.”

There were two uniformed VPD cops in the waiting area. “When can we talk to her?” one of them asked Matthias.

“Obviously not till she wakes up,” he replied.

“How long should we wait?”

“Why don’t you go back out? Someone will let you know if there’s a change.”

The cops left. We were alone in the waiting area then, except for the triage nurse behind his Plexiglas window. I doubted it would be quiet for long. Matthias asked me if I wanted to risk a cup of coffee from a machine against the wall.

“Why not?” I said. “We’re close to medical attention.” He paid.

“Pardon me for sounding like a cop,” Matthias said when we were seated with our coffee, “but was Bobbi working last night?”

I told him about Ms. Waverley and her boat. He made notes while I talked, then asked me to describe Ms. Waverley, which I did.

“Do you know if Bobbi met her at the marina?” he asked.

“No, I don’t. She left the studio a little past seven and I haven’t spoken to her since.”

As I sipped the coffee, I remembered Bobbi telling me that she and Matthias were supposed to have had a late dinner to discuss their relationship. The coffee tasted awful, weak and bitter, but it was hot and I needed the caffeine. Obviously, Matthias and Bobbi hadn’t met, so I didn’t bring it up. I took another sip of coffee instead. It hadn’t improved.

“Do you have an address for her?” Matthias said.

“Eh?”

“Anna Waverley. Do you have an address for her?”

I shook my head. “Only that she lives in Point Grey,” I said. He made another note. “She paid cash up front,” I told him. “I was supposed to do the job, but I had to meet with one of our other clients, so Bobbi took it.”

“It’s not your fault,” Matthias said.

“Nevertheless, I feel responsible.”

“I understand,” he said. He looked as though he was having trouble framing his next question. I beat him to the punch.

“The client’s name is Jeanie Stone. I’ll have to get back to you with her contact information. She left a few minutes past nine. I got home around ten, watched a little TV, and went to bed at eleven-thirty. Not much of an alibi, is it?”

“I’ve heard better,” he said, smiling thinly. “Where did you meet with her?”

“At the studio,” I said. I took a breath and asked, “Was she raped?”

Matthias shook his head. “It doesn’t appear so.”

“From the look of her hands, she must’ve put up a hell of a fight,” I said. “Whoever attacked her wouldn’t have escaped unscathed. That’ll help you find the bastard, won’t it? And convict him when you do?”

“Perhaps,” Matthias said, in a voice like glass. “We ran an assault kit and took scrapings from under her fingernails, but the doctor who examined her thinks her hands were stomped on.”

Anger rose in my throat. I swallowed it and drank some more of the cooling coffee, but it just made me more nauseous. There was a water fountain by the coffee machine. I got up, drank some water, then dumped the coffee into the drain and refilled the cup with water.

“Sorry,” I said when I’d returned to my seat, not sure what I was apologizing for.

“It’s me who should apologize,” Matthias said, running his hand through his hair, which was the colour of wet sand. “I forget sometimes that not all my friends are cops.”

I found it strangely reassuring that Greg Matthias thought of me as a friend, even though I didn’t know him all that well. It made me feel as though my world was a slightly safer place somehow, until I remembered why I was sitting in the emergency waiting room of the hospital.

We turned at the sound of a commotion by the entrance to the ER. The two uniformed cops were confronting a heavyset, middle-aged man who was waving his arms and shouting, trying to push his way past them. It was Norman Brooks. He’d put on weight since the last time I’d seen him.

“That’s Bobbi’s father,” I said to Matthias.

“Yeah,” Matthias said. “Christ, is he drunk?” He got up and went to the entrance. I followed. “It’s all right,” Matthias said to the uniformed cops. “I’ll handle this.”

“Who the fuck are you?” Norman Brooks demanded.

“Greg Matthias. I’m a detective sergeant with the Vancouver police. I’m also a friend of Bobbi’s.”

Brooks glared at me. His chin was stubbly and eyes were bloody and a match would have ignited the alcohol on his breath. Did he drive to the hospital in that condition? I wondered, with a feeling of horror.

“McCall,” he barked. “Where’s my daughter? What the hell’s going on?”

Bobbi’s father and I had never got on. The very first time we’d met, he’d evidently taken an instant dislike to me. I had no idea why; I’d always treated him with deference and respect, but to no apparent avail.

“Mr. Brooks,” Matthias said, taking the older man by the arm, leading him toward the chairs. “Try to calm down, please. Would you like some coffee?”

“Take your hand off me,” Norman Brooks said, trying unsuccessfully to wrench his arm from Matthias’s grasp. “I want to see my daughter, goddamn it.”

“Then settle down,” Matthias said sternly. “Okay?” Brooks glared at him, face flushed. Matthias gave his arm a squeeze that made him wince. “Okay?”

“Yeah, okay,” Brooks said.

“Because if you don’t settle down, I’ll have these officers arrest you for being drunk and disorderly and you’ll spend the night in jail. Understand?”

“Yeah, yeah. I understand. Now let me see my daughter.”

“Wait here,” Matthias said to me, then led Brooks through the automatic doors into the examination area.

While I waited, the waiting room began to fill up. A man and a woman came arm-in-arm into the ER. They were in their fifties, I guessed, well-dressed and both more than a little inebriated. The knees of the man’s light grey trousers were torn and bloody. They spent a few minutes talking with the triage nurse, then took seats in the waiting area. The woman asked the man if he wanted a cup of coffee. He said, “Yes.” I wanted to tell him not to bother.

A few minutes later a scruffy-looking man came in, wearing filthy jeans, a ratty leather jacket, and a toque that looked as though it had been used to wash floors pulled down over his ears. He cradled his left hand, which was wrapped in a grease-blackened rag that dripped blood on the floor as he spoke with the triage nurse. He too was consigned to a seat in the waiting area.

A woman came in with her son, who looked about eight, and threw up twice while his mother shouted at the triage nurse. They were admitted immediately.

Matthias and Bobbi’s father came back into the waiting room. Norman Brooks looked as though he wanted to kill someone. I couldn’t blame him. Except that evidently the someone he wanted to kill was me. He lurched at me, lifted me out of my chair by the lapels of my jacket, and shoved me hard against the wall.

“You son of a bitch,” he snarled into my face, breath sour, spittle flying. “This is your fault.”

Matthias pulled him off me. Although he was shorter than Brooks, and not as heavy, he didn’t have any trouble handling the bigger man. “Mr. Brooks,” he said, marching him to a chair and pushing him down into it, while the middle-aged couple and the scruffy man watched cautiously. “I don’t care if you used to be a cop. I will have you arrested if you don’t pull yourself together. Mr. McCall had nothing to do with your daughter’s attack. If you lay a hand on him again, I will make damned sure he presses charges against you for assault. Do you understand me, sir?”

“It’s all right, Greg,” I said. “He’s upset. So would I be if it was my daughter lying in there.”

“No, it’s not all right. He’s not doing anyone any good acting like a drunken bully. Bobbi or himself.”

Brooks sneered. “I s’pose you think I should be grateful for your sympathy, eh, McCall? Well, I’m not. It’s your goddamned fault she’s in there.”

“How is it my fault, sir? I didn’t attack her.”

He jerked his chin at Matthias. “He said she was working. You should’ve been with her.”

“She’s gone on dozens of jobs on her own,” I said.

“Yeah, but it’s just this one that counts, isn’t it?” He waved me away. “Get out of here. Go. You’re not needed here.”

Anger boiled up in me. I wanted to hit him. “If anyone’s not needed here, it’s you,” I said, teeth clenched so hard my jaw ached, fists knotted at my sides. “When was the last time you saw her? When was the last time you even spoke to her? She told me the other day she hasn’t seen you in months and that the last time she did see you, you were drunk and feeling sorry for yourself.”

Suddenly, he was on his feet, in my face again, before Matthias could stop him. “She’s still my daughter,” he shouted as I backed away from him. “There’s fuck all you can do about that, you pissant faggot punk. Get out of here. You, too,” he added to Matthias. “Neither of you has any right to be here.”

I opened my mouth to tell him that I had just as much right to be here as he did, maybe more, but Matthias put his hand on my arm.

“Tom, there’s nothing to be gained by arguing with him. Let’s go. I know the staff here. They’ll call me if there’s any change in her condition.”

Brooks smirked as Matthias led me toward the exit.

“Does he know you and Bobbi are seeing each other?” I asked, still seething, as we left the hospital.

“No, I don’t think he does. Although I doubt right now it would make much difference to him.”

“He must’ve been a hell of a cop,” I said.

“Don’t judge a man till you’ve walked in his shoes, Tom. As you said, what if it was your daughter in there?”

My anger evaporated.

“What’s the problem between you and him, anyway?” Matthias asked.

“I don’t know what his problem is,” I said. “Mine seems to be him.”

We rounded the corner onto Oak Street. His personal car, a Saab 950 Turbo, was parked in a restricted zone. I couldn’t remember where I’d parked my Jeep Liberty, which I’d bought to replace my venerable old Land Rover. It was a few minutes after three. Sunrise was still two hours away.

“Do you want me to help you find your car?”

“No, it can’t be far away. I’ll just walk around till I find it.”

“You’re sure? I don’t mind.”

“Thanks, yeah, I’m okay. You’ll call me when you hear something?”

“Of course. The RAS — Robbery and Assault Squad — investigators will likely want to talk to you.”

“I’ll be available,” I said.

We shook hands. He got into his car and I went looking for mine. It didn’t take me long to find it. Or the parking ticket under the wiper blade.