Charlie shot me a new look, one within an inch or two of respect. 'If you're right, Jake, they're panicking. They know you still have the videotape. And that you must have gotten it from Susan.' He thought about it a moment. 'You might step on it a bit.'
I was already doing seventy-five, but we were still half an hour from Susan's place. The rain came in gusts, sweeping out of the Glades, washing across the blacktop. Airboats were tied up in canals along Tamiami Trail, the operators sitting on the bank under thatched roofs, waiting for a break in the weather to head out for nighttime frogging. The Olds 442 roared eastward, the wet pavement hissing under its tires. I took my eyes off the road long enough to turn toward Charlie. 'What's their next step? What will they try? Put the data into that computer on top your shoulders and give me a printout.'
Riggs shrugged and sucked on his pipe. 'I haven't the foggiest.'
'Not a clue?'
'Nothing besides mere guesses. What I do is figure out things that already have happened, the hows, whos, wheres, and whens of death. Not even the whys. And you want 'What happens next.' No can do. Look at this sudden storm. Science can't even accurately predict the weather past seventy-two hours. How can we predict what men and women, perhaps psychotic men and women, will do when we have so little information compared to the data we have about pressure systems, winds, moisture, temperatures?'
I was quiet again, and Charlie blew some cherry-flavored smoke at me. 'If I had to guess,' he said, 'it's that you're in some danger. You're the one unraveling the web they've spun. But then again, if you lose the trial, they're home free. Why should they risk it all by going after you?'
'But I know they'll try something. Melanie won't let it rest. I can predict that with virtual certainty.'
'Your intuition tells you that, but your data is woefully insufficient. There is no way you can know thousands of incidents in her life that make her what she is so as to predict what she'll do.'
'Whatever they are, they've made her evil.'
Riggs smiled. 'Correct. Nemo repente fuit turpissimus. No one becomes wicked suddenly. But knowing the woman is evil adds little to the equation insofar as predicting her behavior. Take my analogy to the weather. You would think that with our satellites and computers and sensitive equipment, we could gather enough data to predict the weather. Well we can't because our instruments don't collect enough information. We'll leave something out, millions of somethings out, and our predictions will be catastrophically wrong even if we leave out only a minuscule bit of data. The scientific name for that is sensitive dependence on initial conditions.'
'But theoretically,' I mused, 'if you had enough wind gauges and satellite pictures and electronic doodads, you'd know all there is to know about the weather, and if you knew it enough times, you could see what it did the last time conditions were just the same, and you could predict weather for all eternity. So if you knew enough background about a person, you could predict his future acts.'
Charlie Riggs paused to relight his pipe, an academic's trick of buying time. 'For a human being, there are far too many events and no way to record them objectively. Even with the weather, Jake, you would need to know everything, the size and location of every cloud, the measurement of every bird's flight, the beat of every butterfly's wings.'
'Butterflies, too?'
'The flap of a butterfly's wings in Brazil can set olf a tornado in Texas.'
'Metaphorically speaking,' I said.
'No. Literally. It's part of the basis for the new science called chaos.'
'Butterflies and chaos?' I said doubtfully. 'An infinitesimal action radically affects mammoth events.'
Charlie Riggs smiled, the teacher happy when a slow student catches on. 'That's right. Just like the poem:
For want of a nail, the shoe was lost;
For want of a shoe, the horse was lost;
For want of a horse, the rider was lost;
And so on.'
'I remember,' I told him. 'The battle and then the kingdom. All lost.'
'Indeed.'
I looked out at the rainswept street. 'Then I'd better find the damn nail.'
Except for the spotlights and the gentle roar of the waterfall, the Corrigan house was dark and silent on its hill. The rain had stopped just east of the Turnpike. In Gables Estates, not a drop had fallen. We jogged around the lighted path to the cabana. The screen door was unlocked, lights on inside, but no Susan. I walked into the small bedroom. Pale blue shorts and a faded Northwestern T-shirt had been flung onto an unmade bed, running shoes and socks tossed into a corner. In the galley kitchen, the oven was on four-fifty, a frozen vegetable platter was defrosting on the counter. An open can of Diet Pepsi sat on the counter. Half-empty and still cool to the touch.
We hurried onto the patio. The Cory was tied to the dock, lines tight, cabins dark. The pool lights were on, blue water shimmering in the night air.
The pool.
I don't know why I ran. 1 don't know what I felt. I don't know how I knew, but I knew.
Susan Corrigan was floating near the far end, facedown, wearing a black racing suit. I ran along the side and dived in. The taste of salt water filled my mouth. In three strokes I was beside her. With one hand, I grabbed a shoulder and turned her over. In the eerie light reflected from the water, her face was an unearthly blue, her features plastic. Her eyes were open but lifeless.
I carried her up the steps, her head slumped limply on my shoulder. A thin layer of white foam covered her lips. I gently set her down on the pool deck, Charlie helping with his hands under her back. I tore off the goggles, and my left hand lifted her neck to clear the air passage. My right hand pinched her nostrils to keep the air from escaping. Then I took a deep breath and sealed my mouth over hers. I blew hard, emptying my lungs, filling hers. Several short bursts, then one breath every five seconds. I looked for signs of life and saw none. Her breathing might have been stopped for two minutes or two hours. I couldn't tell.
Charlie knelt alongside me, letting me know with his silence that I was doing the right thing. My movements were automatic. Acting without thinking, doing what could be done. A volcanic mixture of anger and desperation fueled me. 'Don't die!' I shouted at her. 'Don't you die on me.'
I covered her cold lips again with my mouth. I blew into her mouth again and again, trying to infuse her with oxygen, to give her some of my life. I leaned my ear to her lips.
Nothing.
I tried to find a pulse.
Nothing.
I sat on my haunches, placed one hand on her chest, just above the sternum, and pushed down hard with the other hand, trying to kick-start the heart. I kept pushing, up-down, up-down.
Nothing.
My heart was hammering. Hers was still. I paused long enough to choke back the helplessness that rose inside me. Charlie had run inside the cabana to call Fire-Rescue. I prayed for any sign of life, for a spark I could light. Still nothing. I went back to the mouth-to-mouth but it didn't work, so again I worked on the chest. I pushed harder and two ribs cracked under my hands. It didn't matter. Dead women feel no pain.
When we both knew it was over, Charlie Riggs put an arm around me and guided me to a chaise lounge. He brought two blankets from the cabana, covered Susan with one and me with the other. A numbness hit me, nailing me to the spot.
My body unable to move, the mind took over, rocketing past a hundred scenes, a thousand regrets. I had never told her what she meant to me. Why hadn't I just said that I'd never met anyone like her, a woman who was smart and sassy and strong and who thought she loved me. And died thinking I was a macho jerk. Thinking right. Dying because of me.
The numbness turned to pain.
She had been right about everything and died without knowing it. She had fretted for me, big dumb lucky stiff me who goes into the swamp and comes out wet but whole. I could have told her how much I cared, could have looked into those dark eyes and said, 'Susan Corrigan, I love you and cherish you and want to be with you, now and always.' But I'd held it back. And now she would never know. A step too slow, Jake Lassiter, then and now.
Charlie Riggs found a switch and turned on a set of mercury vapor lamps. The patio was doused with a
