Deadly Currents

by Beth Groundwater

  What is up with this guy? Why is he going south on me so fast?

  She blew two more breaths, then started compressions again. She repeated the cycle over and over and over again, until she fell into a zombie-like trance. Nothing mattered, not her pains, not her exhaustion, not the tears of frustration sliding down her cheeks, not the young woman’s worried muttering.

  Just two breaths, thirty compressions, repeat.

  A vehicle rumbled across the bridge. Another raft bumped hers.

  Two breaths, thirty compressions, repeat.

  Feet clattered down the rocks to the beach. Someone splashed onto the gravel from the river, knelt next to her and put arms around her. “Stop, Mandy.”

  It was Steve. He pulled her to her feet. When she swayed, he picked her up and carried her to another spot on the beach. “The EMTs will take over. You can rest now.”

  Lying back on the warm stones, Mandy lifted her face to the bright Colorado sun. She started to shiver and closed her eyes.

  “Will he live?”

  _____

  An hour later, Mandy sat hunched on a rock above the beach, a cup of untouched cocoa cooling in her hands. Someone had thrown a space blanket over her shoulders, and the shivering had stopped. An EMT had checked her over and declared her “shocky,” but not too bad off.

  Certainly not as bad off as the man she had tried to rescue, whose body was now being zipped into a bag by the county coroner and her assistant.

  Mandy’s gut twisted as memories of the wrenching grief she felt when her parents died washed over her. A drunk driver had plowed into their car in Colorado Springs two months before her senior year of high school. This man’s family would have to go through all the same heartbreaking emotions.

  Gonzo plopped his awkward, lanky frame down on a rock beside her.

  The two of them silently watched the coroner, her assistant, and two sheriff’s deputies carry the body up to the roadbed.

  Gonzo swept aside a chunk of bushy dark blond Rastafarian dreadlocks the wind had blown into his somber, sunburned face. “Bummer.”

  Mandy nodded. Bummer indeed.

  He shot a worried gaze her way. “Hey, it’s not your fault.”

  He picked up a pebble and halfheartedly tossed it aside. “If anything, it’s my fault.”

  “No, Gonzo. He was alive when he left your care. He died under mine.”

  A shadow fell over her. She looked up and saw Steve Hadley, his well-muscled frame backlit by the sun.

  He must have seen the devastation she felt in her face, because his expression softened. He knelt and put his hand on her knee. “Mandy, a death is hard for any of us. It was an accident, pure and simple. You could do no more than follow your training. If that wasn’t enough, then it was meant to be.”

  Mandy worried her lip. Did she? Did she follow her training? Should she have done something different? Something better? Her throat constricted. Rather than expose her emotion by croaking out a response, she just nodded again.

  “Hey man,” Gonzo said to Steve. “Thanks for handling the wife. After Dougie walked his passengers downstream to the road, and the wife saw the EMTs working on her husband and screamed, Dougie looked at me like, hey buddy, you’re in charge of this trip, so this is your scene. But I had no frigging idea what to do.”

  “Who does?” Steve said. “You just deal with it the best you can.”

  “I’d rather have a Boy Scout blowing chunks right on my Tevas than have to comfort some lady who’s gone all hysterical. At least I knew his son, Jeff, some. Though I couldn’t do much more than say I was really sorry, dude.”

  Mandy gulped down the knot in her throat. “Yeah, thanks, Steve. I probably should have said something to her. I know that’s the worst part of the job, when someone —” She couldn’t say dies, not yet. And the thought of trying to console that poor woman while Mandy struggled with her own resurrected grief had frightened her to the core.

  “You were too worn out to be coherent. And I’ve had to comfort relatives before.” Steve’s brow furrowed in a troubled scowl. “But no matter how many times you do it, it never gets easier. I’m glad that sheriff’s deputy volunteered to drive them back to your uncle’s place to get their vehicle.”

  Steve studied Mandy. “You still look exhausted. Why don’t you take tomorrow off? You were scheduled for only a half day anyway.”

  “Thanks. Sleeping in sounds wonderful.”

  “I’m bushed, too, after that swim,” Gonzo added. “And now I’ve got equipment to scavenge. Who knows where all the paddles ended up? Your uncle will owe a few beers to guides who pick them up downstream. I could sure use a beer right now. That was some wicked whitewater out there today.”

  Mandy shot him a look, then decided not to say anything. If babbling was his way to cope, let him babble.

  A swarthy middle-aged man in a Chaffee County Sheriff’s Department uniform stepped up next to Steve and held out his hand to Mandy. “Victor Quintana, Sheriff’s Detective.”

  Mandy shook his hand. “Mandy Tanner, river ranger.”

  “I understand your uncle owns the rafting company Gonzo Gordon works for.”

  “Right. I used to work for him myself, before I applied to be a seasonal ranger.”

  Quintana stroked his black mustache, a bushy complement to his short-cropped black hair. “You up to talking about this?”

  Not really. “Sure, I guess.”

  Steve signaled Gonzo with his chin that they should move on.

  After they left, Quintana took a seat on Gonzo’s rock. “Why don’t you tell me what happened after you saw the raft flip?”

  Quintana took copious notes while Mandy told her story, then asked, “Did you see his head hit anything?”

  Mandy thought back, remembering when the boat had shoved the man into a rock. “No, but …”

  “But what?”

  “Well, I feel a little guilty admitting this, but I hit him with the boat. It slammed his shoulder into a rock. Might have knocked his head, too.”

  Quintana scribbled on his pad.

  “But he was already unconscious then,” Mandy hastened to add.

  “It’s still good to note any injuries we know about—for the autopsy. What about before you reached him, when he might have still been conscious?”

  “He seemed awfully still the whole time he was in the water. But I didn’t watch him constantly, like when I was pulling the woman in.”

  “Hannah Fowler.”

  “I never got her name.” Mandy looked around for the young woman, but didn’t see her. “And I wanted to thank her again for her help.”

  “You’ll probably get a chance later. She’s local. Nate Fowler’s daughter, home from college. You heard his radio commercials?”

  “Is he the realtor who promises to find you a home in thirty days or less?”

  “That’s the one.”

  Mandy wasn’t sure she wanted to know the answer to her next question, but she felt compelled to ask. “Who was the victim?”

  “Tom King, developer of King Ranch Estates. At least his family won’t suffer financially.”

  “I didn’t see any blood or marks on him. Did he have a head injury under his helmet?”

  “Nothing we could see, but we’re trying to determine why he was unconscious when you pulled him out of the water.”

  “I wondered, too,” Mandy said, plucking nervously at the frayed friendship bracelet around her ankle. “I thought maybe hypothermia. That water’s still awful cold this early in June—mostly snowmelt.”

  “Cold enough to cause a heart attack in someone susceptible, too.”

  Mandy nodded. In training, she had learned that the most common type of death on the river was heart attack. Second was drowning—usually a fisherman or private boa
ter not wearing a PFD. Third was entrapment, when a swimmer got caught underwater by a fallen tree or undercut rock.

  “The man’s skin was grayish when I pulled him out, and he had a weak pulse.”

  Quintana wrote this down then sat quietly for a moment, as if trying to think of something else to ask. Finally, he slapped his notepad shut and stood.

  “The autopsy should give us some definitive answers, but that seems to be what we’re looking at.” He hesitated and looked Mandy over. “Not much a rescuer can do for a massive heart attack victim.”

  “Yeah, but I still had to try.”

  “Of course, but his death wasn’t your fault.” Quintana walked off.

  Why does everyone keep saying it’s not my fault?

  It is with rivers as it is with people: the greatest are not always

  the most agreeable nor the best to live with.

  —Little Rivers, Henry Van Dyke

  Mandy woke late Friday morning with a mouth that felt like she had been munching on cotton balls. Covers were bunched around her legs. She had fought the sheets all night, dreaming she was fighting the river for possession of Tom King’s body.

  And the river won.

  A cold nose nudged her elbow. She rolled over and looked into the pleading eyes of Lucky, her golden retriever. The dog’s whole back end wagged along with his tail.

  Mandy smiled, reached out, and scratched his head. “I could’ve used some of your luck yesterday, boy.”

  The dog poked his wet nose in her face and whined.

  “Oh, you think because the alarm didn’t go off that this is a running day, huh?”

  As if he understood the question, Lucky trotted to the bedroom door and looked over his shoulder at her.

  “All right, all right, I’m getting up.” Mandy pushed up on her hands, then collapsed and groaned. Every muscle in her body ached. She rolled to the edge of the bed and swung her legs over the side to lever herself into a sitting position. Her stiff back protested.

  “I’m only twenty-seven. I shouldn’t be hurting like this.”

  She stumbled into the bathroom and washed down three aspirin with a tall glass of water. After using the toilet, she pulled her shoulder-length blond hair up into her signature ponytail. She never had the patience to do anything else with it.

  She slipped a hooded sweatshirt over the large T-shirt and flannel pants she slept in and chafed her arms to warm them. At 7,000 feet altitude, mornings in Salida were chilly even in June, but Mandy kept the heat turned off in the summer to save on the utility bills. At least she never had to worry about paying for air conditioning.

  But she did have the water bill to contend with. The damn toilet was ghost-flushing again. Jiggling the handle had no effect, so she removed the tank lid. The chain was twisted. She reached in and straightened it out. Does some ghost swoop in at night and twist it just to yank my chain?

  After washing her hands again, Mandy padded in her fuzzy pink bunny slippers to her tiny kitchen. She opened the back door to let Lucky do his business in the fenced-in yard. The orange and yellow marigolds she’d planted along both sides of the tiny concrete patio nodded their sprightly heads in the slight breeze, looking agreeably healthy. The tiny lawn needed mowing, however, and quite a few piles of dog poop lay scattered about. More chores to add to her To Do list.

  Rubbing her sore arms, she turned the knob on the gas stove to heat water for instant coffee, but nothing happened. Wrinkling her nose at the rotten eggs smell of the gas, Mandy fished kitchen matches out of the cupboard, lit one and held it next to the burner. The fire started with a whoosh, making her step back.

  Maybe the toilet ghost had a friend who kept blowing out the pilot light.

  She put the kettle on, stuck a slice of whole wheat bread in the toaster, and sat down to wait at the folding card table that served as her dining table. The small cottage she rented consisted of two tiny bedrooms, one of which served as a storage room for her boating and skiing gear, one bathroom, a living room, and the puke-green linoleum-floored kitchen. Built in the 1960s, the cottage was definitely showing its age.

  The problem was that the landlord lived a two-hour drive away in Colorado Springs, never answered his phone, and never responded to her voice messages about problems. And Mandy had neither the skill nor the time to fix all the little things that go wrong in an old place.

  The cottage was her place, though, all hers. She didn’t have to share it with anyone or listen to anyone tell her what to do. And she’d added her own touches that stamped her identity on the house, like the marigolds, the few furniture pieces she’d saved from her parents’ house and augmented with garage sale finds, and her grandmother’s embroidered alphabet sampler that hung on the wall over the toaster. She savored every flaky wall, nicked floorboard, and pockmarked screen.

  She never regretted moving out of her uncle’s home a few years back and into this little world of her own. It had been past the time when she needed to be on her own, but she had stayed out of sentiment. Her uncle had done so much for her, and she didn’t want to seem ungrateful. And, she had to admit, it had been hard to leave after relying on him for so long. Lucky was the catalyst. Uncle Bill was allergic to dog hair, and Mandy couldn’t abandon the sloppy puppy she had bought for five dollars from a kid in front of the Safeway. Lucky was the last puppy in the wagon. It was getting late in the day, and Mandy knew what the heavy-duty trash bag and the brick lying in the bottom of the wagon were for.

  Her reminiscence was interrupted by someone rapping on her front door.

  Mandy opened it, and her heart gave a little trill. “Rob.”

  Dressed in faded jeans and a Dixie Chicks T-shirt, Rob Juarez stood with his hands splayed against the small porch’s walls on either side of him. He showed his pearly whites in a big smile and leaned his well-muscled frame toward her. His body owned every square inch of the porch. “May I come in?”

  “I’m not dressed.”

  He looked her up and down. “Everything but your hands and head is covered. How is that not dressed?”

  Mandy laughed and rolled her eyes. “You know what I mean. I’m a mess. I just got up.”

  But she stepped aside and ushered him in. She wanted to see him, very much so, and after all, they’d been dating for the last three months.

  “You look great to me, especially given what you went through yesterday.” Concern wrinkled Rob’s bronzed brow. He ran a hand through his wavy black hair, making the standing waves tattooed on his bicep dance. “I heard about King. You okay?”

  “Not really.”

  He closed the door. “Will a hug help?”

  “Oh, yeah. I’ve been wondering when you were going to get around to that.”

  When he gathered her in his arms, Mandy inhaled his familiar scent of soap, leather, and the grassy outdoors. Her head fit perfectly against his shoulder, with the five-inch difference in their heights.

  She clung to him, so his warmth seeped into her bones, and let her aching body relax. “This helps, more than you can imagine.”

  He rubbed her back, running his thumbs down either side of her spine. “I heard you managed to steer a cat with two people on board. That’s amazing. I bet you’re sore today.”

  “Um-hum. Keep on doing what you’re doing.” This man’s definitely a keeper. Rob usually seemed to know when Mandy needed some TLC and was generous in supplying it.

  “Anything for my little querida.” He massaged her shoulders and kissed the top of her head. Then he sniffed. “Is something burning?”

  “Oh, no, the toast!”

  Mandy ran back into the kitchen and popped the toaster. The bread was black and crispy. She tossed it in the sink. “Damn toaster doesn’t pop half the time.”

  “Want me to see if I can fix it?” Rob asked as he sank into a chair at the table. “I�
��ve got my toolbox in the truck.”

  Mandy put in another piece of bread. “No, I’ll just watch it this time. You’ve got to get to work, right?”

  “I finished the morning shuttles, so I have some time. It won’t be a good day, though, with word of King’s death throwing a damper on things—for everyone. It’s not like he’s going to be missed much. He rubbed a lot of folks the wrong way, slapping up shoddy houses and raking in the dough with no concern for the environment, his subcontractors, or his buyers. But, any death on the river is bad for business.”

  Mandy continued to stare at the toaster, but she nodded in understanding. Rob managed another small whitewater rafting company, one of over fifty in the Upper Arkansas River valley, tucked between the Sawatch Range to the west and the Mosquito Range to the east. The boating outfitters had a strange symbiotic relationship with each other. Sure, they competed for customers, but they also loaned each other equipment and guides. And they worked together on issues such as training and ethics through the Arkansas River Outfitter Association.

  When her toast was brown, Mandy popped it out manually and brought it and a huge, economy jar of peanut butter to the table. Given her pensive mood, she normally would have been fingering mouthfuls straight out of the jar by now, but Rob didn’t know that dirty little secret yet.

  She picked up the jar of instant coffee. “Want coffee?”

  Rob wrinkled his nose. “You know I hate that stuff. Someday I’m going to buy you a coffeemaker so you can brew the real thing.”

  “Don’t bother.” Mandy spooned coffee granules into her cup and poured in hot water. “The way things go around here, it’ll break, too.”

  She sat, slathered peanut butter on her toast, and took a bite. She savored the comforting smooth stickiness. “How much do you think the news will hurt business?”

  “It’ll scare off some customers—especially your uncle’s.”

  “And they’ll blame his company for the death.”

  “The man was in your uncle’s raft.”