Dead in the Water

by Annelise Ryan

  “You figured right.”

  Down the hall in the master bedroom, I hear the sound of bedsprings creaking and Tux and Rubbish come flying out of the room, dashing past my feet and down the stairs. I hear Hurley’s familiar shuffling footsteps and know he is up, at least long enough to go to the bathroom. Whether he stays up or goes back to bed is anyone’s guess. I look over at Matthew, who is now on his knees, his hands on the side rail of his bed.

  “How’s my girl doing?” Dom asks. From the wistful, longing tone in his voice, it’s obvious to me how much he misses Juliana.

  “She’s doing fine. I’m just about to go downstairs and feed her breakfast.”

  “Can you put the phone up to her ear so I can say good morning to her?”

  I roll my eyes and suck in a deep breath. I don’t want to hold the phone up for Dom, not because I think his request is silly, or unnecessary, or even a hassle, but rather because I see Matthew squirming the way he does when he has to go to the bathroom, and one hand is grabbing through his pajama pants at his crotch. I’ve had some success at getting him to use his potty chair for peeing, though the number twos aren’t going quite so well.

  “Sure,” I say to Dom. “Hold on a sec. I need to get Matthew into the bathroom.” I place the phone against my chest, hoping to muffle things, and tell Matthew, “Let’s go potty, okay?”

  He clambers down to the bottom of the bed and onto the floor, and then follows me down the hall to the bathroom. Without further ado, he pulls down his pajamas and his nighttime pull-up and sits on his potty chair.

  “Good job,” I tell him with a big smile. A second later a stream of urine squirts out past the potty chair and up into the air, hitting the side of the tub and splashing onto the floor. Belatedly I notice Matthew has a tiny erection, and it’s pointed at the corner of the ceiling across the room. Matthew starts to giggle. With a weary sigh, I put the phone to my ear and tell Dom, “Here’s Juliana.”

  As I switch the phone to Juliana’s ear, Matthew looks over at me. “Tock,” he says, his word for talk. He stretches his arm toward the phone in my hand and opens and closes his fist in a gimme gesture. I nod at him and smile as I hear the slightly distant sound of Dom greeting his daughter through the phone. Then Matthew says, “Me tock.”

  “In a minute,” I tell him.

  Matthew pushes himself up from the potty chair, his pajamas and pull-up down around his ankles, and shuffles toward me. He has both arms extended, his hands doing the gimme thing. “Tock, tock, tock,” he pleads, his voice growing more urgent and a smidge whiny. I realize then that he’s still peeing, his stream marking the trail ahead of him until he is standing at my feet, his pleas growing ever more desperate, urine squirting onto my feet and legs.

  “Matthew!” I grumble, louder and more stringently than I mean to. This startles Juliana, who starts to cry. It doesn’t startle Matthew, but it does make him mad, so he also starts to cry. I put the phone to my ear. “Dom, I have to go. I’ll call you back later, okay?”

  The “okay?” is an automatic response, triggered by some subliminal vestige of politeness left in me, but it’s nothing more than a gesture. I don’t give him a chance to respond or agree before I disconnect the call and drop the phone into my pocket. Juliana is screaming in my left ear; my son is screaming at my feet, where we are both standing in a puddle of urine; then I see a sleepy-eyed Hurley shuffling his way down the hall toward me. I half expect Hurley to grumble something about the noise and his need for sleep, but instead he bestows me with a meager smile.

  “Good morning, sunshine,” he says in a loud voice so I’ll hear it over the clamor.

  I hold up my hand like a traffic cop. “You best stop there,” I tell him. “Your son didn’t quite get it all in the potty this morning.”

  That’s enough to make Hurley’s smile fade as he takes in the urine on the floor, on my legs, on Matthew’s crumpled pajama bottoms and feet, and on the side of the tub.

  Matthew stops crying long enough to release his death grip on my legs and try to waddle over to his father. The wet stuff around his ankles is too much of an impediment so he drops down into a crawl. Hurley bends down and picks him up, holding him out at arm’s length. The soggy pajama pants and pull-up slide off Matthew’s feet onto the floor.

  “How about I take care of this one and the bathroom,” Hurley says to me, “and you can take care of Juliana and yourself.”

  “Deal.”

  We pass each other, sharing a brief morning-breath kiss along the way. I head downstairs—urine-sprinkled pajamas and all—to the kitchen, knowing that feeding Juliana is my first priority. I turn on the coffeepot, which someone—I assume it was Hurley, though Emily has recently taken to having a cup in the mornings—thankfully had the foresight to set up the night before, and while the java is dripping, I put Juliana in her seat and start fixing her breakfast.

  By the time Hurley has a chance to join me with our son in tow, I have Juliana fed and drinking a bottle, half a cup of coffee in my body, and Matthew’s breakfast ready to go.

  “Here you go, Matthew,” I say, patting the chair with his booster seat on it. Hurley sets Matthew into the chair and scoots it up to the table. Hoover promptly trots into the kitchen and positions himself beneath the table at Matthew’s feet. In front of Matthew is a cereal bowl with some dry Cheerios topped with slices of bananas and strawberries. There is a glass of milk on the side. Matthew doesn’t like milk in his “co-cos” as he calls them, a point he drives home by tipping his bowl upside down onto his head every time we add milk to his cereal. So now he gets them dry with his milk on the side.

  Through a combination of saintly patience, taking turns, and solid teamwork, Hurley and I manage to feed, clean, and dress both children, as well as ourselves, over the next hour and a half. Then I get everything ready for hauling them off to Desi’s.

  I’ve considered letting Emily watch Matthew during the day, but haven’t done it yet. After the issues we had with her during the first few months of Matthew’s life—issues that have since been resolved, but were serious enough that my trust of her had to be built in stages—we’ve been slowly, but steadily, building our new family dynamic. My role in helping Emily through the incident a couple of years ago was instrumental in getting our relationship turned around and back on track. I feared my moving in with Hurley might upset the fragile détente we’d established, but if anything it helped, that and regular counseling sessions—for all of us in group and alone sessions—with our psychiatrist, Dr. Maggie Baldwin.

  Things are much better now . . . great, in fact. But Emily is a teenage girl, and as such there have been some disagreements, arguments, and a tantrum or two. We have engaged in talks and negotiating sessions that would impress heads of state, debating things such as curfews, acceptable clothing, and time spent on cell phones and computers. Oddly enough, one of the stabilizing forces in Emily’s life is her boyfriend, Johnny Chester, a local boy whose family tree tends to branch into correctional institutions with each generation. Somehow Johnny, thus far, has managed to avoid his legacy. Though I remained skeptical for a long time, I have to admit Johnny is a bright, friendly kid with good ambitions and a clean record. I don’t know if he and Emily will last throughout high school or beyond, but they seem quite committed to one another so far.

  The other reason I’m reluctant to have Emily sit for Matthew during the day is I don’t want her to feel like she’s built-in slave labor. She sits for us in the evenings quite a bit—a huge help for those nights when Hurley and I get called out in the evening or the middle of the night—and we’ve started up a fund we pay into for every time she does it. She taps into the fund now and again for spending money—she calls it her “funny money”—but she’s trying to save most of it so she can buy a car.

  By the time Hurley and I leave the house, Emily is still asleep upstairs, blessed with that depth of slumber only teenagers seem able to achieve. It’s her summer break and she has nowhere she needs to be for the day
, so we let her sleep. I agree to play chauffeur this morning, since Juliana’s seat is already in my hearse. After giving Hurley a longer, fresher kiss in the driveway, we part ways.

  My sister was born to be a mother, so much so that I sometimes fear Matthew won’t want to come home with me after spending a day with Aunt Desi. My thirteen-year-old nephew, Ethan, who adores and collects all things six- or eight-legged, is at some bug camp for the week. But my fifteen-year-old niece, Erika, is home for the day and thrilled about having both kids to play with.

  By the time I drop the kids off and head for my office, I’m exhausted and my day hasn’t really begun. Yet I’m jazzed and energized about going to work. I love my job. I adore my son and my state of motherhood, but I don’t think I’d make a very good stay-at-home mom. Part of me thinks it sounds wonderful, fulfilling, and rewarding. But there is another, far more realistic part of me that knows I’d be crazier than Arnie at a Men in Black Convention if I was stuck with a two-year-old kid all day, every day, even if Matthew is the smartest, handsomest, funniest, most amazing kid in the universe.

  I park in the underground garage and head up to the main floor. As soon as I step out into the hallway, I see a group of people congregated in the library, the room that also happens to serve as office space for both Hal and me. In the beginning, he and I shared a desk and a computer, but eventually we each got our own. I still have to share my space with Laura Kingston, the part-time evidence tech who splits her hours between us and the police department.

  Hal is seated at his desk and the rest of the group, which includes Arnie, Cass, Laura, Hal, and Dr. Morton, are assembled around him.

  “Mattie, thank goodness,” Hal says. “We’re all anxious to hear about Izzy. How’s he doing? Nobody here has heard anything since last evening. Do you have an update?”

  “I do,” I say with a smile. “He’s stable and doing well.”

  “Are they sure it was a heart attack?” Arnie asks, looking worried. Given his tendency to turn everything into a conspiracy, I’m not sure if his concern is for Izzy’s health, or his ongoing fear that we missed some horrible contagion present in one of our bodies. Arnie isn’t usually a hypochondriac—my mother planted her flag on that territory long ago, giving her a firm claim—but his paranoia does run deep.

  “It was a heart attack,” I assure him. “I saw the EKG myself. They took him straight to the cath lab last night and put stents in two of his arteries. Dom has been with him all night. I talked to him early this morning and he said Izzy was doing fine, complaining about the food and the bed.”

  “Classic Izzy,” Arnie says, looking a bit relieved.

  “The cardiologist told Dom if all goes well today, Izzy will probably be discharged tomorrow morning. But I imagine he’s going to be off work for quite a while.” I look over at Otto. “How long can you stay with us?”

  Otto cocks his head and shrugs. “As long as you need me. I’m semiretired at this point, so I choose the hours I want to work. I can fill in as needed.”

  “Good,” I say. “I’m sure Izzy will be relieved to know everything is covered for now.” I’m relieved, too. So far, Otto Morton has proven to be an easy person to work with, and having one person fill in all the time, as opposed to a series of temporary fill-ins, makes transitioning easier. Not to mention that some of the temporary docs I’ve worked with over the past two years have been difficult, picky, or just plain strange, like the guy from up north who was obsessed with the idea of a zombie apocalypse and insisted that all of our corpses have their ankles zip-tied together.

  Now that the drama about Izzy has been dealt with, the group drifts away from Hal’s desk toward something more important: a box of fresh donuts sitting at the end of the library’s conference table.

  “Do we have any autopsies pending this morning?” I ask Hal, eager to get things back on track.

  He shakes his head. “We had two calls during the night, but they were both expected deaths with known medical problems.”

  “Who brought the donuts?”

  “Doc Morton.”

  “Hunh. Good to know he’s not above ingratiating himself to the staff.”

  “And does it well,” Hal adds with a smile. “I like the guy.”

  “Me too. I’m glad he can stay to cover for Izzy.”

  Hal pushes back his chair, stands, and stretches. “Thanks for covering for me yesterday,” he says, pushing his chair back into place.

  “No problem. Did you get everything you needed done?”

  “Mostly,” he says with a furrowed brow. He pats his hand on his pants pocket as if checking to see if something is there, smiles, and says, “I heard you pulled a nasty one yesterday.”

  “It wasn’t pretty,” I say with a grimace. “And sad, too. She was young, only twenty-eight.”

  “What took her?”

  “We don’t know yet. There was no evidence of any trauma or any obvious medical conditions. We’re waiting on the tox screen to come back.”

  “Her medical records were faxed over last night. I gave the original to Morton and left a copy on your desk.”

  “Thanks.”

  He turns to leave, but then snaps his fingers and turns back. “I almost forgot to ask. How did your first time testifying go?”

  “Nerve-wracking,” I say, rolling my eyes. “But I got through it. I haven’t heard from Beckwith yet about how the case is going, but I can’t imagine the guy won’t be convicted.”

  “Let’s hope so. And on that happy note, I think I’ll head home.”

  “Got any plans for your days off?”

  “Tina and I are going out in the boat today,” he says, stifling a yawn.

  “Maybe you should go home and sleep,” I suggest.

  Hal shakes his head. “I’ll be fine. Got some fun stuff planned for the day.”

  Tina is Hal’s girlfriend. She’s in her mid-forties, with glasses and long, straight blond hair. Like Hal, she’s tall, thin, and lanky. To me, she looks like a stereotypical spinster. I’ve met her twice, both times at social gatherings, and she is a quiet, socially awkward, bookish type who works as a librarian and seems content to hide in a corner and be a wallflower. Since Hal is more or less the same way, I’ve found myself wondering on these occasions why they bother to attend at all. They don’t engage with anyone else unless they’re cornered and forced to. Hell, they hardly engage with one another.

  “Does Tina like to fish?”

  “Not at all,” he says with a wry grin. For a moment, I think he’s going to leave it at that, but then he adds, “She likes going out in the boat, though. She reads while I fish.”

  I envision the two of them together at opposite ends of the boat: Hal with his rod and reel cast off one end; Tina, with a floppy sunhat I’ve seen her wear and some hefty tome in her lap, seated at the other, bobbing on the waves, each in their own little world.

  “Well, have fun,” I tell him. “I’ll give you a call Friday evening to report off for your weekend call.”

  “Sounds like a plan.” With that, Hal finally leaves. I watch, amazed, as he walks right past the donut box without a hint of hesitation. I find this both admirable and puzzling because I know I could never do it. After a moment of internal debate and self-loathing, I walk over and survey what’s left in the box, helping myself to a glazed apple fritter, the first bite of which makes me forget everything else for a while.

  CHAPTER 10

  I spend the next few hours wading through the stacks of paperwork I have on my desk, starting with the oldest files and working my way up to the most recent addition: Carolyn Abernathy. Ms. Abernathy was young and healthy, and her medical file is a correspondingly small one. The only health issue I see mentioned is a type of psoriatic condition that makes her skin dry up and crack open when exposed to certain agents, like dish soap, which explains the rubber gloves we found in her kitchen sink. It might also explain why her fingertips showed more decomposition than the rest of her body did. If she had cracked, bleeding sor
es on her hands, the insects would have attacked those fingers the way I attack the all-you-can-eat ice-cream sundae buffet one of our local restaurants holds twice a year. Psoriasis aside, there is nothing else in Abernathy’s medical record to suggest she might have had any undiagnosed, catastrophic medical conditions. For now, her cause of death remains a puzzle.

  Curious, I give Hurley a call to see if he’s dug up anything on the girl that might be helpful. His phone flips over to voice mail, so I leave a message asking him to call me back. He does, a few minutes later.

  “Sorry I missed your call,” he says. “I was in the john, and unlike some people, I refuse to talk on a phone when I’m doing my business.”

  “That’s okay. It’s probably the only private time you get all day long. I know it is for me, at least when I’m here. Home is another story. My workday bathroom breaks have become very important to me.”

  Hurley chuckles. “This morning was a bit chaotic.”

  “You think? Mornings like this help reinforce my decision to stop with Matthew and not have any more children.”

  “I’m still keeping an open mind,” Hurley counters.

  “Well, you might have to call Rent-A-Womb then, because my mind snapped closed on the idea this morning.”

  “Tomorrow’s another day.”

  I shake my head and smile. We’ve danced around this particular topic several times lately, trying to decide if we want to have another child. On the days when my son is sweet and adorable and does everything I tell him to do, I think it might not be a bad idea to have another one. And if we decide to do the deed, it would be nice to do it soon so Matthew can have a sibling close to his own age. But on days like today, or days like the one where Matthew started screaming, kicking, and thrashing around in the grocery cart because I bought the milk with the red top as opposed to the yellow one, the idea of another child is out of the question.

  Hurley has pro days and con days, though the vast majority of the time he’s on the pro side of the fence. I’m surprised today was a pro day, given how the morning went.