The Dirty Secrets Club

by Meg Gardiner

  "I'm not giving the names to you. You'll have to take them from me.

  Scott backed against the railing. It was four feet high, barely high enough for him to feel it in the small of his back.

  "You washing your hands of this?" Skunk said. "You think if I take them instead of you handing them over, then what happens won't be your fault? Like it wasn't your fault what happened to that girl in college?" He waved his fingers, gimme.

  "No," Scott said.

  Skunk stood there, mouth half open, eyes mean. Behind him the river of traffic rushed past. Scott stretched his arms and put his hands on the cold railing. He had to hold his nerve. Stay still. Don't jump offside. Draw Skunk offside instead. His heart was racing.

  Across the road, a woman was running in his direction. Her dark hair whipped in the wind. She slowed, staring straight at him.

  Jo stopped at the center of the span, on the crest of the gentle arch in the roadway. Across the road Scott Southern stood facing her, backed against the rail, gripping it with both hands. The smaller man, Skunk, was six feet from him.

  Tang still had seventy yards to make up. She was weaving her way along the sidewalk, dodging through the crowd. A jogger with a dog on a leash blocked her path.

  The traffic on the road was ferocious. Jo couldn't run across, wouldn't get across one lane without being hit, much less six. Cars, a school bus, a big rig, vehicles going both directions. Her view of Southern and Skunk strobed in and out of sight.

  Southern pressed his back against the rail and drew into himself. He looked coiled. Like he was going to launch.

  She had to act. She couldn't just stand there and watch something appalling unfold. She saw Amy Tang closing from the south.

  She cupped her hands around her mouth and yelled, "Scott, the police are coming."

  At the sound of her voice, he looked across at her. Skunk stepped toward him.

  "No," she shouted. "Skunk, don't do it."

  Scott saw the woman put her hands to her mouth and shout. She acted like she knew him. Like she wanted to help. He heard her voice, swept away under the wind and the roar of traffic.

  A bus passed, he lost sight of her. Skunk was inching toward him with his hand out. It was now or never.

  There was no place for either of them to go. He held still. Four more steps, come on, Skunk, do it. Then we can both let go of this thing.

  Skunk's little eyes were sharp with mistrust. "What's wrong with you? You want me to lick your boots in gratitude for this?"

  Across the road, the woman yelled again. She poked herself in the chest with one hand and nodded. She was telling him who she was.

  It was the doctor.

  Skunk lunged at him. "Come on."

  She was too late.

  Jo saw Skunk charge at Southern. She screamed, "Don't do it!"

  Southern looked at her.

  "Oh, my God," she said.

  He was seventy feet away, but that look might have been a kiss. His whole bearing, the way the light fell on his face, the shift of his shoulders, were like a whispered assurance in her ear.

  He breathed deep, to the bottom of his lungs.

  Every nerve in Jo's body seemed to fire at once. Blessed God, no.

  She had to do something, do it now.

  She climbed over the thin railing and stepped onto the low separation barrier between the sidewalk and the road. It was hardly bigger than a railroad tie. She heard a car slam on its brakes. She looked quickly, saw a VW close and braking like crazy. She stuck her hand out like a traffic cop and jumped down onto the roadway.

  The car came shrieking toward her, honking, rubber scorching off the tires as it braked. She ran to the far edge of the lane. Directly ahead, the next lane was clear. Skunk grabbed Southern's collar. Southern leaned back.

  She brought in a breath and shouted, "Skunk, back here, asshole."

  Behind her the braking car squealed past. She dodged across the second lane. Heard more brakes, sensed another car coming from the left, kept her hand extended. She was nearly halfway across the road.

  More horns honked, brakes screeched. People on the east sidewalk were turning to look at the road. A man pointed at her. Another, with a camera, pointed at Southern.

  Skunk pulled Southern's jacket open. Southern raised his hands off the rail.

  She was in the middle of the roadway, heading for the center line. From her right, three lanes of northbound traffic streaked past. On the sidewalk, the man with the camera gestured at Southern, looking animated. The crowd was distracted by horns and brakes. She thought she heard somebody shout, "Crazy chick ..." She heard an air horn split the day.

  She stopped dead. An eighteen-wheeler swept past, blocking Southern from her sight. Half a second, and it sped past.

  Skunk and Southern were grappling. An SUV streaked by. When it passed she saw the two men in a frenzy of movement. Skunk was tearing at Scott. A school bus roared by, horn blaring. She was stuck on the center line.

  Skunk was fighting, suddenly frantic. Southern's face was focused. Their wrists were locked, as though swing dancing.

  "Scott, no—"

  As she shouted, she knew she was too far away. Scrabbling with Skunk's wrist, Southern launched himself into the air. His momentum was huge and assured.

  More shrieking brakes, and a gasoline tanker blared across her field of vision.

  It streaked clear, and she saw the railing. All the strength left her legs. Scott Southern was airborne. His red letterman's jacket looked vivid against the blue of the bay. He sailed into the empty space beyond the railing as though soaring across the goal line with a touchdown pass.

  He plunged like a stone.

  18

  A high-pitched tone buzzed through Jo's head. It was a din of horror. The crowd on the sidewalk had turned toward the railing. Red iron, an empty space. She thrust out her right arm and ran across the final three lanes of the roadway through the noise of horns and squealing tires.

  People clutched the rail and looked down. The buzzing sound intensified.

  "Oh, my God."

  "Jesus, no—"

  Amy Tang ran by her, breathless. "Police, out of my way. Police."

  Tang grabbed the rail and stared down, chest heaving, knuckles white. Jo hurdled the barrier, pitched across the sidewalk, and joined her.

  She saw him in the air. She squeezed her eyes shut and put her head down on the rail.

  A woman cried out in distress. Jo opened her eyes to see Tang spin away from the view.

  The voices came as sharp as splinters. "He fell?" "Shit, did he jump?"

  He. Tang looked at Jo and her eyes were wild, as though she'd just been poisoned. She sagged against the railing. She looked mentally unkempt, and almost desperate to purge herself of what she'd just seen.

  Jo straightened and grabbed Tang by both arms. She blinked hard, clamped everything down, spoke through gritted teeth. "What about Skunk?"

  Tang shook her head. "Just Southern."

  The buzzing was so loud she could barely hear herself. She could barely breathe. Her eyes were burning. "So where's Skunk?"

  They both looked around.

  A woman near the rail was hugging herself. She put a hand over her mouth and began to cry.

  Jo grabbed the man next to her. "Did you see what happened?"

  He waved his hand at the rail. "The guy was fighting with this other man, a short guy."

  Tang was still sagging against the rail. "Was he pushed? I saw them grappling. The man who fell—was he pushed?"

  The man shook his head. "No. The smaller man, he looked like— he was trying to stop the guy going over. He was pulling on him or—shit, I don't know. He was trying to save him, but the guy kept fighting. And the other one was too small."

  Jo pushed through the bubble that had formed around the spot near the rail. Looking north, she saw at least a hundred people on the sidewalk, all the way to the end of the bridge. But only one man was jogging.

  "Tang. There he goes."
<
br />   He was nearly a hundred yards away. She watched him run, feeling frozen.

  She heard Tang on the phone, calling in an emergency. Heard Man has fallen from the bridge. Heard Second man fleeing on foot. Saw Skunk sinking into the distance.

  She ran.

  Her boots felt heavy. Her mind felt numb, her thoughts blasted, like scattered buckshot. The high-pitched noise droned in her head.

  Four seconds: Once you fly beyond the railing of the Golden Gate Bridge, that's how long it takes to hit the water. An eternity, watching the deck of the bridge recede at terrifying speed. A few heartbeats, looking up at the people on the sidewalk, people who can't begin to scream loud enough.

  Skunk was the reason Southern had sailed over the railing. Skunk had no other reason to flee.

  He was running, hands shoved into his pockets, head down. Racing flat out, she closed on him. He grew larger in front of her, bunched and furtive, scurrying for the Marin side of the bridge.

  Though she was in shape, the sprint had her breathing hard. Underneath the north tower, hearing her, he turned, looked back, and stopped. His shoulders jumped. Then he accelerated.

  She was in full flight, closing fast. Ahead of them, a man was leading an unruly German shepherd on a leash. Skunk charged at him and yanked the leash from his hand.

  "Hey!" the owner said.

  Skunk spun around and glared at Jo. His eyes were sly. His lips drew back. He looked like a trapped animal, ready to strike. She caught a whiff of sickly sweet cologne and pungent BO. She wheeled to a stop, repulsed and abruptly frightened.

  Skunk punched the dog in the head. It went wild, barking and lunging. He kicked its rump, pointed at Jo, and shouted, "Get her."

  He took off. The owner grabbed the leash. Jo tried to dodge around them, but found herself entangled between the owner, the leash, and the frantic dog. She tripped and went down on all fours.

  The owner hauled on the leash. "Mongo, heel."

  Jo untangled herself, got up, and took off again. Skunk was sprinting into the distance like a fiend.

  She pulled out her phone and hit Redial, breathing hard. "Amy, he's heading for the parking lot at the vista point. Where's the Highway Patrol?"

  "Somewhere within a ten-mile loop," Tang said.

  "I'm trying to keep him in sight."

  But when she got to the vista point, she couldn't find him. She circled the parking lot, sweat trickling down her back. He was gone.

  She sank to the curb and put a fist over her mouth, fighting down tears and the cry that was lodged in the back of her throat. She sat staring at the glorious day, and at the shining bay that had just swallowed the city's golden boy.

  Jo sat on the hood of the Tacoma, parked at the visitor plaza on the San Francisco side of the bridge. The landscaped gardens were aglow with gold and red blooms in the late-afternoon sunset. Across the parking lot a plainclothes detective searched a gray Range Rover, parked overlooking the bay. It was registered to Scott Southern. Amy Tang stood next to it, talking to a CHP officer and two uniformed SFPD patrolmen.

  The plainclothes straightened, peeled off his latex gloves, and shook his head.

  Tang thanked him and walked over to the Tacoma. Stepping on the bumper, she climbed up and sat on the hood next to Jo.

  "Nothing worthwhile in the Range Rover." She nodded across the bay. "Coast guard sent out a boat from Fort Baker. If he surfaces, they'll bring him back."

  Tang had drawn into a prickly shell, like a sea urchin. Jo sensed that, inside, she was wilting. Her black T-shirt was rimed with dried sweat, like a salt lick.

  They stared at the bridge. Burnished by the sun, it stretched like a vast iron bow across the rough water between the headlands. It was magnificent and frightening, a bow powerful enough to shoot people into oblivion.

  "Before he went over," Jo said. "When you ran toward the sccne. Tell me exactly what you saw."

  The wind riffled Tang's spiky hair. "It was hard to see clearly with so many people on the sidewalk. I only caught glimpses. I saw Southern backed against the railing." She stared at the water. "I saw the little guy, Skunk, advancing toward him. One hand in his pocket like he had a weapon. I thought Skunk was going to kill him."

  Jo clasped her hands between her knees. "Go on."

  "But Southern tackled him. I was running by then. People blocking my view. When I got a clear line of sight, everything looked different. Southern and Skunk were scuffling. It looked like ..." She paused. Wiped her nose. "It looked like Skunk was trying to keep Southern from going over the rail."

  Jo said nothing. The wind was taking on an edge. Across the parking lot the SFPD uniforms climbed into their patrol car and pulled out. Tang raised a hand as they passed.

  She glanced at Jo. "Does that make sense to you?"

  "I think you're half right. Skunk wanted to prevent Southern from falling. But he also wanted Southern to give him something. He had his hand out."

  "I saw. But what?"

  "Describe the scuffle. Did it look like Southern lost his balance and pitched over the rail? Like it was a freak accident?"

  Tang shook her head. "He was a big guy, but not a giant. He couldn't have just toppled over."

  "Skunk couldn't have picked him up and dumped him over."

  Tang looked at her hands. "No. There's no way Southern fell accidentally. Skunk was trying to keep him from jumping." She frowned. "Or trying to grab whatever he was after before Southern fell."

  Jo's throat felt tight. "I think Southern drew Skunk to within arm's reach and grabbed him. But a tourist distracted Southern, and Skunk managed to break free."

  "Grab Skunk? Why?" Tang said.

  "Southern killed himself and tried to take Skunk with him."

  Tang stared at her hard and long. "You think it was another attempt at murder-suicide."

  "Yes."

  "Why?"

  "I saw Southern's face."

  "And?"

  "He knew he was about to die." She had seen more. But she couldn't explain. "That's why I ran across the road. He looked at me. I saw him make the decision."

  "You're freaking. That's hindsight. You can't know that."

  Jo turned to her. "I can. I've seen that look before. It's an absolute recognition of what's about to happen. It's the moment of truth."

  Tang didn't look away. Jo tried to suppress all her feelings but they rolled upward, through the cracks in her armor.

  "He knew he was seconds from death. He understood that absolutely."

  Tang frowned and bent toward her. "Hey. You okay?"

  Nowhere close to it. "I'm fine."

  She stood up, walked around the truck, and opened the driver's door. "You may not believe me, but I'm dead certain. Scott Southern lured Skunk to the bridge, intending to kill them both."

  She got in the truck and started the engine.

  Tang climbed in and shut her door. "What convinces you of this?"

  "He told me on the phone. Said I couldn't help him, that there was only one way to fix the problem. He said his solution was a sure thing." She put the truck in gear. "Surer than a bullet."

  She spun the wheel. "He was quoting the suicide statistics."

  "Oh, shit."

  "He'd done research on committing suicide, Amy. He knew that jumping from the bridge is an almost foolproof way to die." She glanced at the bridge, with all its splendor and portent. "Thirteen hundred people have jumped from there. Only a couple dozen have survived. You want to die, you don't take pills, you don't slit your wrists, you don't even shoot yourself. More people survive self-inflicted gunshot wounds than survive hitting the bay." She pulled out of the parking lot. "You want to die, you climb over that railing and you let go."

  Tang hunched into the seat. "Two dozen have survived?"

  Jo hated, more than anything, the sound of hopeless hope in someone's voice. But Tang was praying into a void. Jo knew what happened, physically, to people who hit the water.

  And Tang had seen that.

  "You did
n't look away, Amy."

  "I saw him hit." Her face drew tight. "It took forever."

  Jo was quiet for a minute. "You saw him in the air, reaching up toward us?"

  Like a stone, accelerating toward terminal velocity.

  "He knew it was too late," Tang said.

  "Wishing he had Skunk."

  "Or changing his mind."

  She saw him, telescoping down through the air, already falling at seventy-five miles an hour, hand stretched toward the bridge. Roughly she shoved her hair out of her face.

  "There's no fucking turning back from that. And he knew it," she said.

  She saw him surrender and spread his arms wide, as if welcoming a crucifixion.

  Tang looked at her. "You've watched people die."

  "Yes."

  Tang stared at her with wide eyes, an edgy elf. "Was it hard to watch patients go? Too hard? Is that why you switched to psychiatry?"

  A wave of compassion rolled over Jo. Tang was savvy and competent, and all thorns on the outside—but she was inexperienced at death. Even though she was a city cop, she hadn't seen people die.

  "It's why I try to help survivors understand what happened to the people they loved," Jo said. "It's all I can do."

  She didn't say the rest. That doing what she could wasn't always enough.

  They had failed today. And Tang's forty-eight-hour timeline was shot to hell. She turned onto the freeway. She thought: Who's next?

  Jo went home, but the house felt airless.

  Was it hard to watch patients go? Too hard?

  Dust motes winked in the light falling through the bay window. The clock ticked on the mantle. Counting off yet more seconds, carrying her ever further from her final moments with Daniel.

  That last day with him, she had climbed aboard the helicopter and strapped herself in for the medevac flight. The trip to Bodega Bay was a gut-churner. The wind chucked the chopper around and rain shredded horizontally across the windows.

  She held on tight while she and Daniel got the briefing on the patient. Emily Leigh, age six, ruptured appendix on top of Crohn's disease and a constellation of other chronic conditions. She was a fragile little girl who'd just been hit with a new dose of bad luck, and she, Daniel, and the pilots knew that if they couldn't get her to the peds surgical team at UCSF, she would die of peritonitis before the sun went down.