by Dale Mayer
“Have you got any connection to her at all?”
“Nothing more than my feet racing in that direction,” he said in a dry tone. “I feel terrible about this. I thought she was safe.”
“I did too,” Kate said. “So either she didn’t tell us everything, or he found another way to get to her.”
“Yeah, I suspect it’s both,” he said.
“Did it ever occur to you that it’s possible she killed her sister?”
“I don’t know,” he said. “I couldn’t even begin to tell you.”
“I know,” she said. “It’s disconcerting to consider that he could have something like that on her.”
“How would he know though? That’s the question.”
“I don’t know. Maybe he haunts the newspapers. Maybe he’s haunting the suicide support groups and then researches them. Maybe he befriends them to gain their confidence and finds out their secrets, then uses it against them.”
“Of course,” Simon said instantly, “this is what he’s doing. Somehow, somewhere along the line Mali must have confessed something to him, either that she’s afraid she might have done something or that she’s such a terrible person and needs to die because she did do something.”
“But of course that doesn’t mean that she did.”
“No,” he said, “we all know what that mind-set is like. How far away are you?”
“We’re at least fifteen minutes out,” she said. “How about you?”
“I’m heading toward the bridge now.”
“Can you see her?” she asked evenly.
“No, not yet, and it’s getting damn dark out here.”
“What about anybody else?” she said. “Any lights or anything?”
“Nothing, just the traffic,” he said. “Never a shortage of that. I’ll let you know as soon as I see something.” With that, he hung up, and, all on their own volition, his feet started to run. He swore. “If you keep doing this,” he roared into the darkness, “I’ll need proper running shoes!”
He was in his loafers, not exactly the best thing for speed. He was fit and in good shape, but he hadn’t expected to sprint for a mile. By the time he hit the center of the bridge, he was wondering what the hell was going on. Because there was no slowing down, and his feet kept him running and running and running. Finally they came to a dead stop. He froze and looked at the railing. A man and a woman stood there, but they were arguing. He wanted to approach because something was ever-so-slightly familiar about her face, but he wasn’t exactly sure if it was Mali.
Underneath the bridge, he saw scaffolding. He frowned at that. He knew that the city was doing a lot of work on the bridge, topside and underneath, but did anybody realize what was going on? He wondered if he could get down there. Any way for him to get below where Mali stood. Could he stop her, or, if she jumped, could he help her?
He studied the construction work and pulled out his phone, calling Kate. “Work’s being done on the bridge.”
“There’s always work being done on the bridge,” she said. “So what?”
“It’s in same area where they are.”
“They?”
“I think it’s Mali, and a guy’s with her.”
“Oh, great.” Kate thought out loud. “I could get ahold of the construction crews, the city workers, and see just what the plan was and what was down there. Maybe they could get a helicopter here.”
At that point, Simon also noted that a lot of work had been going on right where he stood. He’d seen part of it before, but he’d been on the other side of the bridge. This time he was on the right side of the bridge for a change, where the scaffolding was underneath. They must have been doing some reinforcement work or maybe even just a paint job; he didn’t know.
He slipped over the side and made it onto the scaffolding, where the safety rail part of it had already been ripped off. Had some kids done that? It should never have been left open like this. Yet, since the scaffolding was closer to the water, the wind kept slamming one portion of it against the bridge, banging it over and over again. Simon crept his way down until he was as close as he could be, beneath where Mali stood with the man. The cold wind had a bite to it. Add in the growing darkness and the lonely spot, … talk about unnerving. He heard them arguing.
“You need to do this. You know that,” he said in that soothing tone.
“Oh, God, I don’t want to call my parents,” she said. “Please don’t make me.”
“But I’m not making you do anything,” he said, with that horrible snarky voice that Simon had heard time and time again. “This is all you. It’s got nothing to do with me.”
She started to cry louder and louder.
The man said, “You know it’s important.”
While he was under here, Simon saw some netting, which secured the portion of the bridge where they were at, probably for the workers, along with security ropes and leads. Everything was nicely tied up under the bridge for safekeeping, until the workers returned the next day. Simon quickly grabbed a safety line and put it on.
Just then, when his phone rang, he swore because the sound was horribly loud. He snatched his phone and whispered, “What?”
“A night crew is coming on right now.”
“They’re supposed to be here twenty-four hours a day. Yet they haven’t been any time I’ve been down here.”
“They’ve had a ton of breakdowns, and some of their safety gear was missing,” she said. “But a crew is on its way right now.”
“Well, I’m standing right below the pier, and I’m hooked up to one of the security lines that’s here.”
“What?” she shouted. “Are you serious? What the hell?”
“Exactly,” he said. “What the hell is right.” She was only echoing this sentiment on repeat in his head.
“Did you see all that construction before?”
“I did, I just didn’t think too much of it, as it’s on the opposite side of the bridge,” he said, peering upward in the gloom. “They’re arguing really badly.”
“We’re about eight minutes out.”
“I’m not sure we have eight minutes,” he said. “I’ve stayed out of sight, and I’m of two minds, wondering whether I should try to break up the fight or not.” Looking at the scaffolding all around the side of the bridge, he said, “I think I could get up there quite easily.”
“You stay where you are,” she said in a hard voice.
“Yeah, right, like that’ll work.” And, with that, he pocketed his phone. With the safety line still attached, he climbed from the scaffold onto the lip on the outside of the bridge. Almost immediately the woman turned, looked at him, and shrieked.
He held up his hands. “Hey, sorry, just doing traffic work.” Simon hoped that Mali didn’t recognize him, thinking that might just freak her out even more. She wrapped her coat around herself and tried to back away, but her companion grabbed her and held her close, saying, “It’s okay. Calm down. He’s just leaving.”
Simon smiled. “Well, not quite,” he said. “What are you two doing here?”
Mali looked at the man beside her and said, “We were just leaving.”
The man shrugged and said, “Yeah, sure, we can come back again.”
As they headed off, as if to walk away, Simon heard her saying, “I don’t want to.”
“Well, if it’s not tonight, we have to come back tomorrow apparently.”
“No,” she said. “I won’t.”
Simon called out, “Hey, is there a problem?”
The woman looked up and started to walk toward him, but the other guy grabbed her and said, “No, no problem at all,” he said, “just having a little disagreement, that’s all. Young love and all.”
“If you say so,” Simon said. He addressed the woman. “Look. If you’re in trouble, just come in my direction. You know me.”
She looked at him through the poor light and said, “Simon?”
He nodded. “Yes, it’s me,” he said. “You don’t
have to stay here with that guy.”
She looked at Simon, to the other guy, then back again, tried to step toward Simon, but the man grabbed her.
“Do you know who he is?” Simon asked.
“Yes,” she said, “he’s the one who’s been sending the emails.”
At that, a hand was slapped over her mouth, and she was jerked backward. “Don’t you say a fucking word,” the man said. “Don’t say anything at all.”
She groaned, struggling, but Simon couldn’t even hear a word.
He walked along the lip on the outside of the bridge, getting closer to them, and said, “Come on, Mali. Come over here to me.”
“She’s not going anywhere,” the man said, as he pulled her closer to the railing.
Simon said, “Hey, hey, hey, don’t you even think about throwing her over.” He was still on the outside of the railing, and he shuffled closer and closer, trying not to think about the cold inky churning water below. As he got nearer, the other man pulled back.
“You can’t keep going.” The guy laughed. “It looks like your safety line will only take you so far.”
That was very true. Simon was almost about out of rope here and knew he would have to decide if he would unhook himself and jump over onto the main portion of the bridge.
At that, the guy picked up Mali—making her scream in panic, fighting her attacker—and held her on top of the railing.
“You know, up until now,” Simon said, “I wasn’t even sure what charges they would file against you, but the minute you drop her off that bridge, it’s murder one.”
“What the hell do you know?” he sneered. “It wasn’t premeditated.”
“Well, that’s not quite true,” Simon said, “considering all the emails you’ve been sending to the people on the chat groups.”
“What are you talking about?” he said in shock. “And what do you even know about it?”
“Oh, let’s see. I know that you’re blackmailing these people into committing suicide. Thirteen times now, isn’t it? Mali here would be fourteen.”
The guy just stared at him, shocked. “Who the hell are you?”
“Someone who cares about your victims,” he said quietly, “but I don’t really give a shit about you.”
At that, the other man sneered. “You can’t say anything about me,” he said. “You know nothing about me.”
“I know that your twin died. I know that your mother’s dead,” he said, thankful Kate had shared that information moments ago.
The guy just stared at him in shock. “No, no, no,” he said, “no way you could know any of that.” Nervously he climbed a little bit higher, still holding Mali in his arms. She was frantic, trying to grab onto the railing.
Simon was almost close enough to snatch her out of his arms. “I do know that,” Simon said. “What I don’t know is whether you helped your mother and your brother die or if this is something you came up with afterward.”
“What difference does it make?” he said. “I’m all alone.”
“Of course you are, and being alone is not the easiest place to be, but you sure as hell didn’t have to make other families suffer by losing loved ones they care about.”
“Nobody in her family cares about her,” he snarled. “She’s better off dead.”
“I don’t believe that for a minute,” Simon said.
Mali was crying and screaming hysterically. By now traffic had backed up around them, as people stopped. Others honked and tried to weave around them because nobody wanted to get stopped on a bridge. Of course not everybody saw what was happening either.
In the distance, he heard sirens coming. “Oh, the cops are here,” Simon said. “What will you do now?”
He just laughed.
“Don’t you drop her—” Simon said, and, with that, the man tossed her off. Screaming, she went over.
Simon lunged forward and grabbed Mali by the leg, just as the laughing man threw her off. Her weight sent Simon flying off the bridge, knowing that, when they hit the end of the rope, the snap on his grip would be horrific. They plummeted down, and the safety harness jerked hard, but he hung on to her.
Mali screamed, as the rope came to the end of its line abruptly. They were dangling upside down, but she was safe. She reached out, grabbing for his hand, pulling herself up, until she was wrapped around him, both dangling upside down.
He held on to her and whispered, “Just stop moving. We’ll get help. See? Look.”
“My God,” she buried her face for a moment, then looked up at the deranged man on the bridge. “You’re nuts,” she yelled. “I didn’t kill my sister,” she said.
“You did,” the man said. “You said you did. The world is better off without you, you know that.”
“No,” she said, bawling her eyes out. “It isn’t. It isn’t.”
As Simon held her tight, he looked up at the would-be killer and asked, “And your mother?”
“What about her? She was weak. All she cared about was the fact that my brother was gone,” he said, leaning over and laughing at them. Then he held up something that glinted in the bridge light.
The fucking animal had a knife.
“He was always the favorite.”
“That’s not true,” she whispered, her breathing labored, still in Simon’s arms. “He told me that his brother committed suicide, and that ever since then he’d been lost. And his mother finally came around to seeing that life was better if she wasn’t here because she was responsible for his suicide.”
That made sense. Simon’s arms started to tremble. Where the hell was Kate? He couldn’t hold Mali for much longer. Then how long would it take for a knife to cut this line …
“Police! Hands up.”
Chapter 20
Kenneth Walker stared at Kate and swore. “I’m not going down with them,” he said, as he held the knife over the rope.
“That won’t cut through in one fell swoop either,” Kate said, her voice calm and controlled. “Do you really think they make safety lines out of twine?”
He stared at her and said, “I’m not going down for this.”
From below Kate heard a woman yelling.
“Why don’t you jump? You just wanted me to jump because you were too chicken, too scared to do it yourself.”
He yelled down, “Shut up. I’m out of here. I’m not jumping, so just shut the fuck up.”
“You’ve been trying to get the courage to jump yourself, to end your pain.” Mali cried out. “You’re the one who loved your twin. You’re the one who missed him so badly that you couldn’t go on without him, but you couldn’t do it. You didn’t have the strength or the confidence to do it. You spent all your time making other people feel bad, driving them to commit suicide, when it was really you who wanted to die. What is it you’ve been saying to me? Just do it.”
“Step away from the bridge and put the knife down,” Kate told Walker.
The man suddenly held up his hands. “Okay. Okay, don’t shoot.” He dropped the knife, grabbed the railing, and jumped off.
It was hard to see in the darkening evening; Kate raced to the railing, but she hadn’t heard even an audible splash. Kate looked frantically in the water below. There was no sign of him. The black water churned endlessly below. As she raced to Simon, he spoke to the construction crew.
Simon said, “Pretty damn sloppy that you left all this out here but a good thing for us.”
Hearing an odd sound, she watched the construction crew winch up an exhausted Simon and Mali. By the time they reached the safety of the bridge deck, traffic was stopped in both directions, plus cops and an ambulance had arrived. Rodney stood at her side.
“None of this gear should have been left here,” Simon said quietly, standing on the ledge of the bridge, hanging on, while Mali still clung to him.
“It wasn’t supposed to be,” the foreman said, “but we ended up with a problem with one of the crew. He had to go get medical attention fast, and we didn’t have anybody to g
uard this. What a shit show.”
“Yeah, you’re not kidding,” Simon said, as the construction guy helped Mali back onto the bridge. Simon scrambled over the railing, then stopped and took a deep breath. He looked at Kate, gave her a lopsided grin, and said, “I don’t think I’ll like bridges anymore.”
She snorted. “I’ve never liked bridges myself.” She walked over, gave him a hug, and said, “Good job.”
He shook his head and said, “If that’s what you call it.” As he turned to look at Mali, she stood there, staring down at the water, mesmerized. He immediately reached out and put a hand on her shoulder.
She turned, smiled up at him all teary, and said, “I’m okay. Honest, I am.”
“I don’t know about that,” he said. “You weren’t supposed to be here at all. You were supposed to stay home.”
She nodded and smiled. “I know, but then he called and said he would give me the proof he’s been holding over my head. I came down here to meet him, but it never even occurred to me,” she said, “that he would try to do this.”
“Well, people being people,” Kate said, “you really need to trust your instincts and get away from people like that. Don’t listen to what they say. Listen to how they make you feel.”
“I know,” Mali said. “I get it now. I’ll call my mom and talk to them.”
“Now that sounds like a grand idea. Maybe you should tell them of the trouble you’re having dealing with all this.”
She nodded slowly and said, “I really didn’t kill my sister.”
“I’m glad to hear that,” Kate said quietly. “Maybe now you can go get some help and deal with your loss. I’ll get somebody to take you home and also see that you get somebody over there to spend some time with you.”
Teary-eyed, Mali was led away to a cruiser, where she was put into the back seat and driven off.
*
Simon smiled at Kate, then downward. “Apparently I’ll need some new shoes.”
She looked down at his fancy dress shoes with worn-out soles. “Well, you ought to get some running shoes,” she said, with a chuckle, “instead of those five-hundred-dollar-dress shoes. Maybe they would hold up better.”