There was a moment of quiet. “You didn’t see the article.”
“I did too. Audrey Vance, sixty-three years old. Two grown kids and she was engaged to some guy. I have the newspaper right here.”
“Fine, but she didn’t die of a heart attack. She jumped off the Cold Spring Bridge.”
“What?”
“The Dispatch. Front page of the second section, just below the fold. If you have it handy, I can wait.”
“Hang on.” I tucked the receiver against my ear and secured it with one shoulder while I dragged my bag from under the desk and pulled out the paper I’d brought from home. The obituaries were uppermost. The photograph of Audrey still occupied center stage. I put the phone down on the desk and used both hands to flap the pages back to their original configuration. I leaned close to the mouthpiece, saying, “Sorry about that. Hang on a minute.”
First page, bottom left. There was no photograph of the victim and Audrey’s name wasn’t mentioned. According to the article, a Santa Teresa man was coming over the pass Sunday afternoon when he noticed a car parked on the berm. He stopped to investigate, thinking the vehicle was disabled and the motorist might need help. There was no sign of a flat tire and no note on the windshield indicating the driver had gone in search of the nearest service station. The car was unlocked and he could see the keys in the ignition. What caught his attention was the handbag on the front seat. A pair of high heels had been placed neatly on the seat beside the bag. This was not good.
He’d walked to the nearest call box and notified the county sheriff’s department. An officer arrived seven minutes later and assessed the situation in much the same way the motorist had. He called for backup and a ground search was instigated. The chaparral below the bridge was so dense that both the Santa Teresa County Sheriff’s K-9 unit and a search-and-rescue team were brought in. Once the dog had located the body, it was a forty-five-minute struggle across treacherous terrain to bring it out. Since the bridge was completed in 1964, seventeen people had made the leap and none had survived the four-hundred-foot drop. The victim’s driver’s license was in her handbag. Identification was withheld, pending notification of the next of kin.
“Are you sure it was her?”
“I am now. When I first read the article, I didn’t put it together with the obit. The police made the connection when they ran her name through their computer system. They called and talked to Mr. Koslo, who’d filed the charges against her. Mr. Koslo mentioned it to the guy who monitors the closed-circuit security cameras. Ricardo rang me up as soon as Mr. Koslo was out the door.”
“This is terrible,” I said. I could see where someone in the throes of mental or physical anguish might view suicide as a form of relief. The problem was, there was no backing up. The remedy was harsh and precluded alternatives. Life might have looked better in a day or two. “Why would she do such a thing? It’s just so weird.”
“I guess she wasn’t faking the hysteria.”
“No kidding. And here I was feeling so gleeful.”
“Hey, me too,” Claudia said. “I mean, what if I hadn’t notified Security? Would she be alive today?”
“Oh, man. I wouldn’t head down that road if I were you. I wonder what her accomplice is going through.”
“Nothing good,” she said. “Anyway, I gotta scoot. I’m on my break. I’ll give you my number and you can call me later if you want to talk.”
I made a note of the number, though I couldn’t imagine having anything more to say. For the moment, I was hung up on the idea that the woman had killed herself. Built into bad news is that sense of profound disbelief. The mind struggles to absorb the bare facts, defending itself against the larger implications. I didn’t feel responsible for what had happened, but I did feel ashamed that I’d wished the woman ill. I harbor a huffy dislike of scofflaws, unless the breach is mine, of course, in which case I find ways to justify my bad behavior. Who was I to judge? I’d pointed a pious finger and now the woman I’d so heartily condemned had hurled herself off a bridge.
I spent the remainder of the morning and half the afternoon organizing my files, a self-inflicted penance that pulled my attention down to the mundane. Where did this receipt go? Which of these folders could I relegate to the box I was retiring to storage? Whose phone number was this scratched on a stray piece of paper? Keep it or toss? I’m not sure which I hate more, the pig piles on my desk or the task of dismantling the mess and setting it to rights. By 4:00, the surfaces in my office were clear and my hands were filthy, which seemed appropriate. I washed up, and when the mail was delivered I busied myself sorting the bills from the junk. There was a notice from the water department, letting me know the water to the office would be shut off for eight hours the following Monday to replace a leaky water main. I made a mental note to work from home that day so I wouldn’t be stranded in an office with no working toilet.