Protectors

by Kris Nelscott

  And the children…

  She sat up, knowing that the children tossing infants around in her dream had come from walking into the gym’s kitchen to find Strawberry holding that injured baby.

  Eagle let out a small breath. She had to shake off the image of that baby—all of those babies. The babies she had seen in much worse condition.

  The problem with all she knew, with all she had experienced, memories cascaded into other memories, becoming some kind of pit that could swallow her whole.

  She didn’t dare let it.

  Eagle eased out of bed. She had to shake off the events of the night before. As strange as everything was, it was better than it had been a year or two years before. She had to remember that.

  It took one scalding shower, some clean clothes, and some coffee with extra sugar to wake her up. She had to toss out the Raisin Bran because the baggy she’d hidden in it had sprung a leak, and she didn’t want to get high at breakfast.

  She treated herself to two eggs perfectly fried alongside bacon, made toast slathered in butter, and found some ancient jelly that actually looked edible.

  She couldn’t quite believe the appetite she had. If she hadn’t been keeping track of her pot use, she would’ve thought she’d gotten accidently high anyway. But she hadn’t. She actually felt okay this morning, not like she’d been beaten and robbed, the way she felt most mornings.

  Then she hauled out her notes from the day before. All of her calls, all of her notes, were about the missing young men. Why was it always easier to deal with boys?

  She bit into the last crisp piece of bacon, worried ever so slightly that the ancient jelly might make her ill—and then smiled to herself. That worry gave her an idea. A good idea.

  She finally figured out how to call various hospitals and give them the girls’ names. Then she looked up at the clock.

  Only 7:00. All that activity, and still too early to call.

  Unless she dealt with the boys first. If she used the military recruiter line, she might get some early birds in the records offices, and those folks would think it perfectly normal for a military secretary to be on the job before eight.

  She put her dishes in the sink, covered them with dish soap, and promised herself she’d get to them after she finished with the phone calls. Then she rinsed her hands, poured herself another cup of coffee, and sat down.

  She started with the hospitals whose records offices had closed before she knocked off last evening. She started those calls with, “Oh, good, you’re there. Wonderful.”

  She managed to sound chipper. She had no idea how she managed to sound chipper, since “chipper” was never a term anyone used to describe her—even when she was in a good mood, which she decidedly was not. She couldn’t remember the last time she had been in a mood she would have described as “good.”

  Just like the day before, she got no traction on the names. None of the young men had been to the hospitals she called. She wasn’t surprised. With only six male names on her list and dozens of hospitals, not to mention free clinics and local doctors’ offices, she was doing the equivalent of looking for a needle in a haystack—except she wasn’t even certain someone had put that particular needle in that particular haystack—or in any haystack for that matter.

  At 8:30, she switched to female names. With those names, she called the hospitals she had called the night before. She needed to call those hospitals early because she didn’t want to catch someone she had spoken to the day before, and with most records departments keeping business hours, the someone she had spoken to the afternoon before might actually be in the office this morning.

  She started with San Francisco General Hospital once again. Best to follow the same pattern, so she wouldn’t lose track.

  Fortunately, she reached a different person in records, a woman who answered the phone with, “Records. Monica DeSouza speaking.”

  Eagle put on her most official voice. “Hello, Miss DeSouza,” she said. “I’m Gertrude Anderson with the Berkeley Department of Public Health. May I have a moment of your time?”

  “Yes, of course,” DeSouza said. “What happened to Ethel? She’s usually the one I deal with over there.”

  Eagle hadn’t expected that someone from Berkeley would be in touch with someone at SFGH so often that they knew each other’s names. However, it made sense, given the fact that the hippies and drugs had moved from Haight-Ashbury in the past few years to Berkeley.

  “Ethel has finally been able to take that vacation,” Eagle said, hoping that was somewhat true. “I’m handling some of the details right now.”

  “Good for her,” DeSouza said. “It sounded like she needed some time off when we last spoke.”

  Eagle was suddenly curious when that was and what the two of them had spoken about. Her heart was pounding. That little bit of news—about the contact between the two departments—could have one of two results.

  It could mean that DeSouza and this Ethel woman were used to sharing information. But they might have been doing it without following the rules, rules Eagle was woefully ignorant of.

  And DeSouza might not be willing to play nice with someone else.

  “Ethel had told me that I wouldn’t need to contact you while she was gone,” Eagle said, hoping that sentence could cover all contingencies. “But something’s come up, and they want me to talk to San Francisco hospitals. I hope I’m not violating some procedure….”

  She deliberately let her voice trail off.

  “Procedure went out the window when LSD moved in,” DeSouza said. “What do you need, hon?”

  Eagle let out a small sigh. Her planned lie actually fit into the reality of what SFGH and the Public Health department in Berkeley actually dealt with.

  “Our hospitals here have contacted us with something they believe is some kind of food poisoning,” Eagle said, “but we can’t find any common food sources among the listed victims. No restaurants in common, no grocery stores, nothing really. So we’re thinking—”

  “Another bad drug reaction.” DeSouza did sigh. “This is where I would ask Ethel if she was as tired of this as I am. But you’re new, so I’m not going to burden you. How long has this been going on?”

  “Well, we have records for some cases going back to the beginning of the year,” Eagle said. “Back then, the hospitals here didn’t test for drug usage with food poisoning cases—”

  “Yes, yes, I know,” DeSouza said, “much to Ethel’s dismay.”

  Eagle was beginning to like this Ethel woman. She sounded conscientious.

  “So you understand the problem, then,” Eagle said, trying to tie this around. She felt uneasy. She had a series of questions planned, and she was being short-circuited on some of them.

  “I assume you’ve been cross-checking with police reports,” DeSouza said, inadvertently helping her.

  “The level of detail required is astonishing,” Eagle said, not answering that question exactly. “We’ve ended up with a list of names, people we think might have been treated elsewhere. Maybe SFGH has the right kind of records for us.”

  “Here’s where I get all official,” DeSouza said, and Eagle tensed. “You know I’m supposed to ask you to send someone to check the records yourself.”

  “I do,” Eagle said, and was about to make excuses for not being able to get to SFGH.

  “So consider yourself asked,” DeSouza said before Eagle could continue. “Now, I assume you have names you want checked?”

  “Yes.” Eagle felt a little light-headed. “We’re not entirely sure how these people are involved, but here are the names. And I hate to say this, but I have quite a few.”

  “Give them to me,” DeSouza said. “I’ll call you back.”

  “Um, here’s the thing,” Eagle said. “I—”

  “Your boss wants this yesterday,” DeSouza said.

  “I’m afraid so.” Eagle made herself sound apologetic.

  “I’m amazed that Ethel didn’t quit. Are you sure she’s comi
ng back from vacation?” DeSouza asked. “Because this is happening a lot.”

  Eagle wasn’t sure how to respond to that. “I—um—I—”

  “Don’t say anything, hon. It’ll just get you in trouble. Fire the names to me. I’m ready.”

  Eagle swallowed hard, blinked a little at how easy this was compared to how much she had worried about it, and then read the list of women’s names that she had.

  “All girls,” DeSouza said. “That’s odd.”

  “Sorority,” Eagle said, because it was the first thing that came to mind.

  “Oh, that makes sense,” DeSouza said. “Let me see what I have. I’ll be right back.”

  Eagle cradled the phone between her ear and her shoulder, then ran water in the sink. She figured she had a few minutes, and she was right. She managed to fill the sink with steaming hot water and finish her coffee while she waited.

  Then she went back to her chair, accompanied by the uneasy thought that this inquiry might take most of the day.

  Ten minutes after Monica DeSouza had left the phone, she returned.

  “You still there?” she asked.

  “Yes,” Eagle said, sitting up and grabbing her pen.

  “We have something,” DeSouza said, “but it’s not what you want, I’m pretty sure. Clearly not food poisoning. But it might be something the police can use.”

  “O…kay…” Eagle said uncertainly, as if she were a new employee who didn’t have a clue what any of this stuff meant.

  “We have records for Kelly MacGivers. She came in on March 18. Does that jibe with anything of yours?” DeSouza asked.

  “Yes,” Eagle said, hoping she wouldn’t have to elaborate.

  “Well, she wasn’t throwing up or having those kind of problems. She was beaten to within an inch of her life, and here’s the odd thing. The attending noted rope burns on her wrists and ankles. Not to mention that some skin around her mouth had been damaged.”

  “Damaged?” Eagle asked, because she truly didn’t know what that meant.

  “Like someone had put tape over her mouth,” DeSouza said. “At least, that’s what the attending speculated in his notes.”

  “My God,” Eagle said. Her shock wasn’t entirely an act. “Do they know what happened?”

  “Girl wouldn’t say. She came in with her parents. When the attending wanted to call the police, they refused, saying it had already been handled.”

  “No flag on the file, then.” Eagle knew how this usually went. It was considered private, something that the family would deal with, and if challenged, the family would simply deny that anything had happened.

  “No, none,” DeSouza said. “Although the attending did note that the family had a regular physician. When the attending wanted to give the files to the regular physician for follow-up, the family said they would make sure he contacted us. To date, no one has.”

  “Well, that’s strange,” Eagle said. “Did they check for drugs in her system?”

  Pages rustled. “Yes, and they found nothing. Only used a blood test, though, not a urine test because they didn’t think this was drug-related.”

  “Okay,” Eagle said. “Wow.”

  “So, I guess this means you don’t need the file,” DeSouza said.

  I wish, Eagle thought. She wanted it more than ever. But she couldn’t have it.

  “No, we don’t need the file,” Eagle said reluctantly.

  “Here,” DeSouza said, “let me give you the family’s phone number, just in case. Maybe they’re ready to talk to someone now.”

  Eagle doubted that, but she took the names and phone number anyway.

  “You know,” DeSouza said, “as I read this to you, I realize there’s one other strange thing here.”

  “What’s that?” Eagle asked.

  “You didn’t notice? The address? It’s in Daly City.”

  Eagle glanced at it, and then frowned. “That’s quite a ways from you,” she said. “Maybe yours was the closest hospital to the incident.”

  “Which begs the question,” DeSouza asked. “What really happened to this poor girl?”

  “I guess we weren’t meant to know,” Eagle said.

  “Huh,” DeSouza said. “The things I see in this job. And I work in an office, away from the patients.” She paused, then added, “Is that all you need from me?”

  “It would seem that way,” Eagle said, although she wished she could ask about the young men again. DeSouza sounded a lot more competent—and sympathetic—than that Waldon character whom Eagle had spoken to the night before. “Thank you.”

  “Any time,” DeSouza said. “You give my best to Edith.”

  “Will do,” Eagle said, but DeSouza had already hung up.

  Eagle tapped her pen against the legal pad, looking at her hastily scrawled notes. She wasn’t sure what she had expected to get from the hospitals, but this surprised her.

  Rope burns on wrists and ankles. Tape across the mouth. Parents who did not want to talk to the police. Parents with an address far from the hospital.

  Eagle looked at the address again. It wasn’t one of the wealthiest neighborhoods in the Bay Area, but it was affluent. Daly City was proud of its vast suburban neighborhoods. The address she was looking at was in one of the nicest areas of Daly City. She certainly couldn’t afford to live there.

  Wouldn’t someone with that kind of money go to a closer hospital, near their local doctor, with services that they expected? Or, if their daughter had been injured nearby, wouldn’t they tell the hospital staff to call the police, so that the perpetrator of whatever happened could be caught?

  She circled the information on the page, then made a little star next to it.

  This was too strange to be some kind of odd coincidence. She didn’t know what to make of it yet.

  But it had her fired up. She was ready to make more calls.

  She felt like she was onto something. What, exactly, she didn’t know.

  But she had the feeling she would know—if she just kept looking.

  34

  Pammy

  When the UC Berkeley admissions office opened promptly at 9:00 a.m., Pammy had been the only person waiting in the hallway. She had memories of long lines near the admission office, but apparently they had all dated from her time here as a student, not from any reality—at least what passed for reality on a Tuesday morning in July.

  The admissions office was in Sproul Hall, a thirty-year-old, four-story, white neoclassical building designed to look old. It smelled like chalk and cigarettes, even though very few classes were held here. Mostly, students sat in the wide hallways and waited for appointments while administrators, secretaries, and the occasional student assistant scurried up and down the marble stairs on some kind of important university business.

  This building had been occupied a few years ago during the Free Speech Movement, and it seemed like the administrators had been jittery ever since. Pammy had only been inside the building a few times in the last few years, but every time she was, someone had looked at her sideways as if they had known she no longer belonged.

  The admissions office itself had its own set of barriers to entry. She had made it inside the office with no real problems, and once she identified herself, saying she wanted to check enrollment figures, she had to wait. There were only a handful of chairs against a wall decorated with university flyers and pamphlets, all telling her how to improve her university experience or giving helpful suggestions on everything from applying for financial aid to getting the best student housing.

  The blond wood counter between her and the beehive that led to the offices beyond was clear of everything except a clipboard with a sign-in sheet. The sheet, with July 22, 1969, scrawled on the top in black Magic Marker, was empty.

  Pammy hadn’t signed in. Alice Sullivan, whom Pammy had known since her own freshman orientation years before, was the person who unlocked the door. Alice used to be tiny, but now she was growing square and solid. She had two children, and a husband
who couldn’t seem to hold a job, so Alice held hers with the university like a drowning woman clung to a lifeline.

  Pammy had lied to her, and the lie felt uncomfortable. Opening A Gym of Her Own to men seemed wrong, even in theory. But Pammy tried to sell it so that Alice would investigate every name on those lists.

  And, to Pammy’s surprise, Alice hadn’t even questioned it. She had taken the lists that Pammy had carefully copied, and disappeared in the back. Pammy paced the main room, waiting. She could just hear voices, and occasionally, her name mentioned.

  She could also see over the desks that stood between her and the area toward the back where the records were kept. One woman was visible through the glass in the door, leaning over a table, thumbing through a huge ledger book with, Pammy supposed, the names of that year’s registered undergraduates.

  It wasn’t until she got here that she realized she might have to repeat this process at graduate admissions as well, or at some of the specialized schools within the university, like the law school.

  She had less pull in those offices. She might have to ask Alice or someone here to request the information for her.

  The back door opened, and another woman came out. Olive Beiderman had looked old when Pammy had registered in 1956. Olive looked the same now. Her hair was a gunmetal gray, and it made her skin seem gray as well. She had never worn makeup, and her black, horn-rimmed glasses made her seem even older.

  Pammy had gotten to know Olive when they had both served on some committees before Pammy had opened her gym. Olive had always been a little skeptical of the gym. But she had been supportive, in her own way. She had been the one who had introduced Pammy to Irene Roth so that Irene’s students could study self-defense in Pammy’s gym.

  Olive strode past the desks, frowning. Her glasses rested on the edge of her nose, her faded blue eyes meeting Pammy’s over those black rims.

  “I don’t know if we should help you at all,” Olive said. No hello, no nothing.

  Pammy had seen Olive in this kind of mood before. Olive had a take-no-prisoners side, which was why she had become the de facto office manager for Undergraduate Admissions, running everything, no matter what the Dean of Undergraduate Admissions and his secretary seemed to believe.