Spiral

Jake kept flashing to the last time he’d seen Liam-yesterday, lunch at Banfi’s. They were both in a hurry. They’d chatted about a recent experiment; a guy at Caltech had come up with a way to make a strand of DNA assemble itself into a smiley face only fifty nanometers across. Not just one but billions and billions, all floating around in a single little test tube. “The most concentrated solution of happiness ever made,” Liam had joked. Liam was beaming. His own discovery, someone else’s, Liam barely seemed to notice the difference. He loved every new development, every step up the scientific ladder.

There was no way that Liam Connor had jumped from that bridge.

DOZENS OF PEOPLE PUSHED AGAINST HIM, CROWDING FROM all sides. Jake’s stomach churned. He hated death, despised it. Not in the way most people did, ones who mostly feared it. Jake hated it as an enemy. Hated what it took, what it left behind. Jake was in the Army for four years, a time that included the First Gulf War. No soldier spends time in a war zone without getting to know death’s sight and smell. But familiarity had bred contempt. Jake found death to be a colossal waste. Someone’s alive, and then not. It was sudden. Stark. Irreversible.

An unmarked helicopter swept in from the west, dipping down over the dorms of West Campus and pulling up directly over the gorge, hovering dead still. The door was open, and Jake saw a cameraman hanging out on the skids, lens pointed straight down. The local station must have hired the pilot to bring them over.

“Check this out,” said a student to his right. He had his phone out, showing it to a friend. “It’s on CNN.”

Jake took out his iPhone, carved himself out a little space up against a parked car. He pulled up the CNN website, found the footage rolling. The view was from directly overhead, the suspension footbridge maybe a hundred yards below, a thin ribbon of blue metal hanging over empty space. The bridge was empty except for a lone policeman. Crowds on either side were held back by yellow police tape and a phalanx of officers.

The camera view zoomed into the gorge. Jake counted seven people: an officer taking pictures, two more watching, two EMTs, and two more in plain clothes that Jake guessed were also police. Their movements were choreographed, professionals going about their jobs.

The view from the camera pulled back, then panned over to the waterfall upstream from the rescuers, the remnants of an old hydroelectric station clinging to the walls of the cliff. The water was running hard, plunging over the waterfall, cascading downward.

The sound of the broadcast was inaudible in all the noise around him. Where the hell was the volume? It was a new phone; he hadn’t had it more than two weeks. He found the volume, turned it up. Nothing. The mute? Where’s the mute? The itchy dread in Jake’s stomach was building, his initial disbelief eaten away by the acid of information coming in. If this was on CNN, then-

The camera swung back, zoomed in on the accident scene. In close on the victim.

There.

The image was grainy, but there was no doubt. The old brown coat. The shock of white hair.

Jake felt as though he’d been punched in the chest. He lowered his phone, hardly believing it. He looked up to the helicopter suspended in the sky.

Around him, people were yelling, struggling to be heard over the noise of the helicopter. Everyone was packed in tight, jostling him, elbows in his sides. The crowd surged, knocking Jake against an empty police cruiser. He barely noticed. All he could see was Liam and Dylan a week before, laughing their heads off, running Crawler races in the gardens of decay.

6

AT THE POLICE STATION, MAGGIE WAS FURIOUS. THEY KEPT saying her grandfather killed himself, but she was certain they were wrong. “It’s impossible,” she said for the tenth time, pacing the room.

“I know this is a terrible shock. I’m very sorry. But please try to calm down, Ms. Connor,” the police chief said. His name was Larry Stacker. He was neatly dressed, short brown hair, a blue tie over a white shirt. Maggie thought he looked like a banker.

“No way,” she said, shaking her head. “He had no reason. He was healthy. He was-” She looked away, trying to regain control. The office was modest, the painted concrete walls bare, save for a couple of diplomas and a picture of the Cornell campus from above. She expected the head of the Cornell police to have fancier digs. She wanted him to have a palatial office. She wanted to believe that he had every resource in the world at his disposal.

“When did you last see him?” Stacker asked.

“Last night. Around nine p.m. Outside the Physical Sciences Complex. He was fine. Making jokes. He and Dylan were going letterboxing this afternoon.”

“Dylan? Who is Dylan?”

“My son. His great-grandson. Please listen to me. There was absolutely nothing wrong with Liam. He loved Dylan. He loved me. He loved his work, his friends-everything. He was the most goddamned content person I’ve ever known. He had a big talk coming up next month at the AAAS meeting. He was getting ready for it. Why do all that if he was about to kill himself?”

Stacker was silent. He was waiting her out, Maggie thought, wearing what must be the face he used for the bereaved, projecting equal parts steadiness and sympathy.

“There’s no suicide note, right?”

“That’s correct. But most suicides don’t leave a note.”

She shook her head. “I don’t care. I’m telling you, he did not jump from that bridge.”

“Ms. Connor. I know this is very difficult to accept. But there’s no question. Your grandfather jumped.”

“How could you possibly say that? How could you know? Were you there? Did you see it?”

“In a manner of speaking. We have a security camera on that bridge.”

Maggie was stunned. “Oh my God. You’re serious.”

“I’m so sorry, Ms. Connor. There were witnesses as well. They saw a woman on the bridge with your grandfather. We’re looking for her now.” He opened a manila file, removed a printout, and passed it over. “Do you recognize her?”

Maggie studied the image. It was grainy, a pixilated image of the woman from the waist up, clearly a blowup of a longer shot. It caught the woman in profile, dark hair pulled back, long forehead, thin cheeks. Asian. She looked to be in her mid-twenties. She wore a black coat and gloves.

Maggie shook her head. She was fighting back tears. “I’ve never seen her before. You don’t know who she is?”

“Not yet. But your grandfather had said a woman that matches her description was following him. He’d reported it a week ago.”

“Following him? Why?”

“We don’t know.”

“Could she-”

“She wasn’t close to him when it happened. Professor Connor seemed to run ahead of her.”

“Did she try to stop him?”

“It’s hard to say for sure.”

“Let me see the video.”

“I don’t see what good that will do, Ms. Connor.”

“I don’t care. Show it to me.”

After five minutes of fighting, Stacker reluctantly opened his laptop.

Maggie watched, her heart pounding. The scene was grainy. The bridge was empty, swaying ever so slightly in the wind. A time stamp at the bottom said nine-thirty-two a.m.

“Oh, God. There he is.” The tears ran down her cheeks. She fought the urge to cry out loud.

Liam was slowly shuffling along, the unknown woman beside him. He had on his old brown overcoat, the one with the big wooden buttons. She could barely make out his face. “Oh, Pop-pop.” She put a hand to her mouth.

He continued to progress along the bridge, the woman beside him. She couldn’t tell if they were talking.

They approached the middle of the span.