by R. J. Jacobs
And I was about to drown with a child in my arms.
* * *
That couldn’t happen. I thrashed my legs as lake water filled my mouth.
The three of us turned sideways over the seats. The passenger side door was close enough to the surface that murky light penetrated the window. My fingers found the gummy steering wheel, then pressed buttons, finally grasping and pulling a lever that released something. A clunking noise up front, a swarm of tiny bubbles rising. The hood must have popped open.
Within seconds, breathing room at the surface-side of the cabin had disappeared. Silver flailed violently below me, grabbing at the back of my shirt, my belt. I kicked him, stepping onto his shoulder as I reached for the door handle on the other side, trying to cradle Olivia and push up, out, fighting the suddenness of being enveloped, surrounded.
The lake, swollen with rain, wanted to swallow everything, it seemed. The truck cabin seemed to push inward as we slid along the bottom. Streaks of light from the flames penetrated the surface like angled bamboo stalks, dwindling into darkness. I fought the bulk of my clothes; cold, loose weights around me.
I pushed and my lungs screamed. I was blacking out.
But fully manic, blacked out doesn’t mean stop. There is no stop.
You act when there is no energy to do so.
You do the impossible.
My eyes strained. Shapes were barely visible through the murk. I couldn’t see my hands. The flow of water told me that the car continued to slide deeper. Silver’s grip around my leg slipped onto my ankle.
My hands searched the doors’ edges until I found a handle, then another, my lungs burning hotly. I found a plastic piece, the length I’d expected, then could feel the force of a door opening, whatever remained of the air escaping toward the light. I pushed with one foot against the dashboard.
Above, a shape appeared, and Olivia rose from my hands toward the surface.
Pain disappeared, eclipsed by oxygen’s singular absence. My head lightened. There was no more breath in me.
A few seconds passed. Silver’s grip released.
Then a hand wrapped around my wrist from above and pulled hard.
My eyes closed as I rose toward moonlight, until I found the world again and drew in a furious gasp.
Air.
Another breath, then another.
I was dragged until I found footing, my shoes pressing first through mud, then onto limestone.
I crawled through the silt to the edge, focused on two silhouettes.
Olivia’s feet dangled from a set of arms. Her head hung limp, hair elongated by the water, reaching to the ground like the twisted brown vines of some haunted, horrible tree.
The first red lights of emergency vehicles appeared along the road.
I struggled to stand.
And as I did, Olivia jerked, coughing, blinking in confusion. As if waking from a dream, she looked at the person who had just pulled her from the water.
With a shiver, she asked, “Paolo?”
THIRTY
Where the driveway met the road, a car—compact, American, maybe twenty years old—rested at an odd angle, more stopped abruptly than parked. In the dim light, I could see a haze of oxidation across its hood and that one of the rear doors was sadly dented in. I turned and stared at the water’s surface for signs that Silver was following, but there were none—only a steady gurgle as what remained of the air trapped inside the truck escaped.
A rush of red lights appeared at the end of the driveway. In seconds, uniformed EMT workers surrounded Olivia, wrapping her in a navy blanket as she answered their questions.
I was sure the first blue lights would appear soon.
Flames reddened the cabin’s roof. Overhead, the clouds were gray wisps, hovering in the distance as if looking on.
I approached the ghost who had pulled Olivia and me from the water. Paolo faced the woods. I knew him, but I didn’t. I understood now that I’d never known him, really. He’d been wearing a disguise all along. And yet, my heart lit with love when I looked at him, and I hated that. It was a lesser love, but still. Death and resurrection hadn’t cleared my feelings.
A door inside me opened, through which I glimpsed the maddening calculus of it all—how Paolo must’ve swum to shore, how he’d needed me as a witness to his disappearance to remove suspicion around him.
How long he and Silver had carried on.
How fucking long.
The falsehood, for lack of a better word, multiplied exponentially in my mind the longer I considered it. Silver’s inconceivable, limitless capacity to forge ahead. To act. To portray his obliviousness during the investigation into Paolo’s death, then into Sandy’s. To have the nerve to offer sympathy. To sit at a funeral, for God’s sake, knowing what no one else did, dabbing at his eyes with some expensive handkerchief all the while.
I wondered where he had left the rest of himself, or where it had left him.
Paolo wrapped his arms around his shivering chest as I studied the details of his face, how pale he’d become. His shape was the same, a little thinner. He’d grown a wispy beard that didn’t suit him. His black hair, longer now, caught the fire’s light like a raven’s wing. His skin was ashen, and a triangular chip was now missing from his front tooth—something he’d meant to have fixed, I was sure. His gaze narrowed with a sorrowful flintiness, eyebrows scrunched deep—maybe from the way he’d lived the preceding months, maybe from facing me.
In a blink, I saw him as he was on the dock the day he’d disappeared, the collar of his polo shirt popped, his Hollywood sunglasses on. His laughter and his cockiness and his enormous dreams. This man looked years older.
What to even begin to say? Part of me wanted to laugh—him being alive was so absurd.
The love I’d let rest returned to my chest with a stunning surge, like the reflexive insistence to breathe. It wasn’t right, was it? I shouldn’t have felt that way. But feelings aren’t thoughts; you don’t think them through. Self-awareness offered no disruption.
I remembered what he’d said on the phone, that he’d heard about Sandy and started back to Nashville that morning. That he couldn’t let what happened to her happen to me.
My heart pounded.
“Emily, I can’t stay here,” he said.
“You’re not going anywhere.” My jaw trembled. “Where did you go? Where have you been?”
His head bent down. “I was terrified, beside myself with what we’d done. I went from thinking I was breaking rules—like some kind of medical outlaw—to being an accomplice to murder in a matter of seconds. The bottom fell out of everything.” His voice cracked with anguish.
“Research is slow, even when the stakes are high. Silver worked at a different speed. The way he talked, rules didn’t seem to apply. I felt like I could do anything—no, more than that. I felt like not doing everything I could was squandering time. When he suggested we cut sample sizes in half to double them and run sequence variants we hadn’t declared, I agreed. He told me he would take responsibility. It was his lab. His plan was to start human testing now and make the success look like a home run on the first swing. He was a believer, like a cult leader, but for his own work.” Paolo was nearly breathless. He covered his face with his hands. When they dropped, his dark irises reflected the orange firelight. “If it had worked, it would be like finding a golden ticket. No more fighting for grant funding. He told me money would come our way, too.”
“Money?” I felt disbelief. Then I thought of Paolo’s tendencies toward nice things. I imagined Silver had noticed that about him, too.
He motioned with his hand. There was more.
“Everything in that lab was regulated to the letter. Silver got me to do things for him. He got me to sign for more and more samples. Then to say I destroyed them in an autoclave, when I didn’t. We’re talking about breaking FBI regulations.”
How much had he done? How much killing? Lying? Hiding? I needed to know, but didn’t want to. I shivered
from the chill of the air prickling up my spine.
I was shaking. I kept looking over my shoulder toward the lake as if Silver might emerge from it. My mind had hit the limit of how much trauma it could contain. An unreal sense of calm began to take hold amid the insanity.
A hundred feet away, Olivia was sitting up, then standing.
An EMT began toward us, then returned to Olivia when I waved him away.
“Then Gainer Ridge happened.” Paolo looked away, bit his bottom lip.
I pictured the image in his camera—the one that had made me suspect a connection in the first place.
“Silver had no doubt the vaccine was going to work. He said it was a shame that just he and I would see history. I set up a tripod in the dirt to record. When the symptoms started, Silver was devastated. He was sobbing when he ended that man’s life.” Paolo swallowed, wincing as if the memory itself had a terrible taste. “I thought I’d deleted every image from that day.”
He continued, “When I panicked, Silver told me he’d documented everything under Matt’s login. I checked it myself, logged into the computer Matt used. That’s what it took for me to see clearly who Silver was. I was living in a nightmare—only then realizing I’d been crazy to trust Silver.”
“Sandy thought Matt was making a weapon,” I said.
Paolo rubbed his eyes. “That’s reasonable, with the faked records. But no, Silver was obsessed with the opposite. Willing to do anything. He got to where he couldn’t see the risks. I think you’re supposed to feel something before that happens—disgust with yourself, maybe? But each rule I broke along the way I thought would be the last. Each lie became easier. Then it was too late. I’d taken part in killing someone.
“Then immediately Silver wanted to start again. He told me, ‘We can’t let that man have died in vain. We can’t let his death be for nothing.’ For just a second, I considered it. And then I knew I couldn’t. So I made a plan to disappear. I bought a car with cash. I thought when I got safely away, I would call the authorities. I wanted to contact you, so bad. The medication—I left it out in the Jeep, on the boat. I wanted it to look like I’d taken yours by accident and drowned. I swam to the other shore, a mile, more, climbed up using rocks, covered my footprints, drove east then south on a full tank of gas. I had no phone, only cash.”
He reached for my hand and I pulled it away. Silver’s frantic self-justification shouldn’t have surprised me—doubling down is what people do when their judgment proves bad. When cognitive dissonance hits, people push forward—like gamblers who know their next hand will win because it has to.
“But how could you leave me that way? A suspect in a murder? Then in two murders? He killed Sandy, for God’s sake.”
“I never, ever imagined that would happen,” he said. His voice was barely above a whisper but strained, raspy. “I’m sorry. I wanted to tell you when I got home. I was going to call the police and get in touch with you somehow. I prayed you’d forgive me.”
I closed my eyes rather than showing any resonance with those words. Once you’d saved your own skin, I thought.
He looked up at me. “Your new hair … it looks nice. Pretty.”
I kicked his shoe. “Stop.”
Paolo’s expression clouded with a child’s confusion—lost and desperate and selfish. He hadn’t understood the consequences for me when he ran, a part of me believed.
I loved you, I thought, but couldn’t say the words.
* * *
In that objective instant, I imagined how horrible it had been for Paolo, too—free-falling suddenly while his fate cruelly reversed. In minutes, he had gone from taking partial credit in medical history to becoming a murderer. It had been the last thing he’d wanted or even suspected was possible, even while he denied the obvious risks. He’d borne the weight of such treacherous secrecy. It might have driven anyone to run for home, I thought, for safety.
Blue lights appeared at the edge of the driveway. Paolo’s eyes shifted between me and the tree line. He rocked forward, wincing at the echo of car doors slamming. His eyes, wet and glassy, pointed upward, reflecting the last of the butter-colored porch light.
“I was afraid,” he said. “You don’t know what it’s like to start in a new country, alone. Everything riding on your work. I worked around the clock, took pills to work longer and longer, harder and harder. Pressure, exhaustion—it made me lie. Running, all the time, a gambler trying to pay debts. Cal noticed. I blamed it on you. I’m sorry—”
In the distance, the squeak of a truck’s air brake called, followed then by the distant calls of voices. The faraway sound of men devising solutions for large vehicles and an unmarked dirt driveway.
Bubbles rose on the lake’s surface above where the truck rested. Concentric circles rippled outward like rolling wrinkles in the dark. I thought of the shocked, yearning last expression on Silver’s face, and the horror of his drowned body. My head was dizzy with how close Olivia and I had come to death. I knew the tragedy of what had happened would extend over the coming weeks in the form of an investigation.
“Silver used to tell this story about Edward Jenner developing the smallpox vaccine. Did you know the first time he tested it, he used his gardener’s son? Silver couldn’t stop. Everything … it was too far.”
“Too far,” I said, my voice breaking. “I loved you with all my heart.” How’s that for too far?
The blue lights brightened, warbling sirens becoming clearer.
Paolo shook his head, as if rebuking himself, then rubbed at his eyes again. He looked up at me with a boy’s gaze. A boy who’d grown up in a shack in Argentina with two brothers and a single mother. Stealing to eat. Later, entranced by America. A scholarship student, like me.
“You and Cal?” he asked.
“Stop,” I said. A million thoughts. No time. “I mourned you.” I kicked his foot again. “You knew I didn’t swim.”
A flashlight found us. I shielded my eyes. Beyond it, I saw Cal’s form, sprinting toward Olivia.
Paolo had an expression on his face that I’d never seen before. It wasn’t sorrow, and it wasn’t fear.
“Emily, I have to go,” he said.
I’ll always wonder what he meant by that. From here at the cabin, facing arrest? Or from here, in this world, living as the person I thought he was?
Without his help, Olivia and I would have been killed. But then, without his involvement, none of us would have been in that position in the first place.
He’d never set out to be a killer.
Neither had Silver.
But was it possible for him to vanish again? The unfathomable shock of the unexpected visit stole away my words. I called Paolo’s name as he moved into darkness, shoes splashing through the edge of the water. An EMT’s flashlight followed his form until it became a shadow. Then the shadow dissolved, becoming nothing.
And then he was gone, again.
THIRTY-ONE
Light flooded the night until it no longer seemed like night. Half of everything was red, the other half blue—all of it flashing. The cruiser and ambulance windows reflected it all.
Paolo had told the truth—he’d called the police just after our call ended. Dark uniforms approached with guns drawn. Voices shouted over the rumble of large engines. How many? I had no idea. Toward the road, it looked like an army was invading. Hands on my shoulders, under my arms, two people in uniforms directing me away from the lake.
Across the yard, a flashlight shined in Cal’s face as he shielded his eyes. A team led him and Olivia toward the open doors of an ambulance, where white light and sterility waited.
Detective Mason appeared and moved toward me like a guided missile. With an arm around my shoulder, he took me to a police cruiser, deposited me in the back.
“Stay here,” he said, slamming the door. Then, momentary silence. I couldn’t tell if he meant to protect or detain me. The back of the cruiser smelled the way they all do—half like a locker room, half like chewing gum. I sat still,
blinking, stunned. In the rearview mirror, I caught a glimpse of myself. I looked like a meth addict who’d wrestled a bobcat.
Time passed, and Mason came back to the car. A shriek of noise from outside as he climbed in the front, then closed his door.
Silence again.
Here we are, I wanted to say. My old buddy. Another crime scene. Together again. But the part of me that joked had shrunken small, too tired to kid.
No cologne wafted over me from his direction. He must have figured something out, I thought.
He turned, arm draped over the seat. “Are you okay?” He squinted at the gash on the side of my head, though the lake had washed away much of the blood.
“I have no idea how to answer that. Are you arresting me?”
“No.” He shook his head. He sounded softer. He’d dropped some of the professional bravado from earlier. He sounded serious, almost sullen. Like he’d missed out on something or he’d lost a game and was trying to figure out what went wrong. “Cal filled me in on what you two were doing. I know you think you’re the only one who can figure things out, but we were in the process of getting a warrant to search that lab. You’re apparently not very good at—”
“At waiting,” I interrupted.
“You need to get checked out medically. There are going to be a lot of questions, but you’re not under arrest. Not right now.”
Neither of us spoke for a moment.
Mason faced forward, eyes on mine in the rearview. He rubbed his neck, right above the rose tattoo. “This isn’t a formal questioning, but I got to ask you something, okay?”
“Okay.”
“One of the EMTs said someone—black hair, six foot, someone who fits the description of Mr. Fererra—ran from here. You saw him, too?”
“More than saw. I talked to him. He saved our lives.” A part of me hated to say so, but it was true.
Mason chewed his gum silently for long enough that I wondered what he was thinking—about the gray deck shoe caught in the water grate, or the prescription pills, or if I was lying or crazy.