But he had time enough to realize that he didn’t want to die, not now, not for a long time, and he had time enough to remember that the Golden Gate Bridge was a lot taller than the Blatnik Bridge, and people had been known to survive the big drop into San Francisco Bay, even when they didn’t want to. Not a lot. But a few.
And those that did went in feet first.
Feet first.
His brain began screaming at him. Feet first.
If he hit the water with his head or his shoulder or his chest, he would die hitting the water as if it were made of brick. His only hope was to cut a little tear in the liquid concrete and slip through. With his eyes open, and that odd, elastic time stretching out like a pink roll of taffy, Stride uncurled his body into the straightest line he could make it, pointed his toes toward the water, lifted his arms straight over his head, and tilted his chin toward the sky. In the lightning span of less than a second, he twisted himself into an arrow heading for a bull’s-eye.
Don’t tense. Let it happen.
You’re going to die.
No, you’re not.
He exhaled the last gasp of breath that was left in his chest and let his muscles go soft. He closed his eyes again, and just as he did, time finally caught up with him. His toes parted the seas. His body fired through the water like a rocket. He was conscious of pain, bones breaking, clothes ripped from his skin, water flooding his lungs. He saw the lights of the world wink out into night. He felt hot agony turn cold, felt himself descending and descending and descending, as if he could travel right through the earth and wind up in hell.
Except the deep channel was not bottomless, and after he had gone down as far as he could go, he hung suspended, a moth enrobed in a cocoon, before his body began to coil and climb. The bay that sucked him in found him hard to swallow and decided to spit him out.
Later, he would remember none of it. His last memory would be of running toward Rikke Mathisen on the bridge. There, the film ended. He would have no recollection of the car that hit him and drove him from the bridge, of falling, of time stretching out, of the impact that broke his left leg and collapsed both lungs, of bobbing to the surface on his back, of the searchlight of the Coast Guard boat bathing like a warm glow over his body. No recollection of ever thinking to himself that if he had made it this far, he was going to live.
51
When Stride saw the glass door open, he realized that the woman who had stepped out onto the restaurant patio was his late wife, Cindy.
For an instant, he felt as if he were falling again, long and hard toward the water. The enigmatic smile he remembered from years ago was the same. When she lifted her sunglasses, her brown eyes stared back at him with a familiar glint over the heads of the others in the restaurant.
It wasn’t her, of course. It was Tish.
She joined them at the same table where she had met them for the first time three months earlier. Stride sat with Serena and Maggie on either side of him. The heat of summer had yielded to September evenings, when darkness ate away the daylight. As he watched, the last sliver of sun dipped below the western hillside, and the lake grew gray and unsettled. Tish shivered as she sat down.
“How are you?” Stride asked her.
Tish sized up his condition. “Shouldn’t I be asking you that?”
Stride’s right leg was encased in a cast. His crutches were balanced against the railing of the patio. He fingered the brace on his neck. “Physical wounds heal,” he said. “Yours may be a little harder to deal with.”
Tish put on a brave face and smiled. “You know how they say you have to face your fears to overcome them? That’s a load of crap. I never want to cross a bridge again in my entire life.” She reached out and took Stride’s and Serena’s hands. “I haven’t had a chance to thank you both properly. I should be dead now. You saved me.”
“It’s over,” Stride said. “Try not to think about it anymore.”
It wasn’t really over, though, not for any of them. Serena had nightmares where she relived his fall from the bridge. She would wake up in a sweat and hold on to him. For himself, he was surprised and a little anxious that he had felt no emotional response to his own near-death experience. He felt strangely empty, as if the fall had happened to someone else. He feared that the emotions would build silently like an avalanche and someday overtake him with a roar.
“Seriously, how are you?” Tish asked him.
“It’s going to take me a few months to fully recover,” he admitted. “The doctors don’t want me to come back until the end of the year, but I’m not going to wait that long.”
Maggie winked. “I’m the interim head of the Detective Bureau. He’s afraid I’ll take over.”
“Be my guest,” Stride said.
“I already gave away your chair,” Maggie told him. “It was too big for my ass.”
“Go away, Mags.”
She laughed.
“Did you finish the book?” Stride asked Tish.
“I’m on the last chapter.” Tish tugged nervously at her hair. “I feel guilty writing it. Like it was partly my fault. I drove Laura into Rikke’s arms back then.”
Stride shook his head. “Rikke knew how to manipulate young girls. She was responsible, not you.”
“I know, but maybe if I had been more patient with her, Laura would have stayed with me all along. She would never have fallen into Rikke’s trap. I wish she had told me what happened between them.”
“She was scared,” Serena said. “Laura found out that Rikke was a murderer, and she ran away.”
“And when I came back for her, she died,” Tish said.
“Don’t blame yourself for surviving,” Stride said.
Tish’s eyes pierced him. “That’s good advice.”
An electronic alert chirruped under the table. Stride automatically reached for his belt, but he wasn’t wearing a pager. Maggie pulled out her own pager and studied it. “That’s me, boss,” she said. “We’ve got an armed robbery at a gas station on the south end of Michigan Street.”
“You want me to come with you?” Stride asked. “Unofficially, that is.”
Maggie sighed and looked at Serena. “Do something about him, will you?”
“I’ll try.”
Maggie pushed her chair back and got up. She waved at the three of them and headed for the restaurant door.
“I should be going, too,” Tish said.
Tish stood up from the table, but she didn’t leave. Her mouth became frozen and sad. Her eyes grew glassy, and she blinked back tears. She sat down again, but when she tried to speak, the words caught in her throat.