Spider Bones

Desperate, I lifted the handle and pushed upward with both palms.

My angle was off. Or my arms were too weak. The door wouldn’t budge.

A gurgling sound filled my ears. I looked down.

Eight inches.

Think!

My eyes scanned the small space in which I was trapped. Floating sunglasses. A map. No purse.

Yes!

Yanking the keys from the ignition, I wedged the door handle in the up position. Then, panting from exertion and fear, I arm-wrapped the steering wheel and seat back, flexed my knees, and kicked out with both feet.

The door arced upward, swung back. Moving like lightning, I caught it before the lock could engage.

The passenger seat was now half submerged.

Muscling the door wide, I scrabbled through the opening and launched myself upward and outward.

Free fall, then I hit. Salt water filled my mouth and ears. Closed over my head.

I came up, gulped air. A wave broke, first battering me forward then sucking me back.

Blinking and treading, I gauged the distance to shore. Only a few feet, but the surf was gonzo.

Frantic, I swam a few strokes. Lost ground.

Don’t fight the current! Go with it!

Ignoring every instinct commanding me to swim, I rolled to my back. Aware that waves come in sets, I waited for lulls. Tested.

Too deep.

Too deep.

Too deep.

Finally, my feet touched bottom.

I tried to stand, lost my footing on the algae-covered stones. A breaker threw me. Pain fired across one cheek and up one knee.

I tried again.

Again was tossed, this time pinned to a boulder. Waves pounded my body. I couldn’t break free. Couldn’t breathe.

From nowhere, a hand gripped my arm. Strong.

Another.

With rubber arms and legs, I pushed from the rock. Stood in water up to my waist.

Two strange faces. Male. Young.

“You OK?”

I nodded, gulping air.

“Can you walk?”

I nodded again.

“Man, lady. That was quite a show.”

“Mahalo,” I croaked.

We picked our way shoreward.

Once ashore, my rescuers insisted on calling an ambulance. I told them I was unhurt. They pressed. I refused, requested they phone the cops to report a single-car accident with no injuries.

When the young men had moved off, I sat, willing control over my trembling limbs. My pounding heart. My harried adrenals.

Again and again I asked myself what the hell just happened. How had a chain of events that started with an autoerotic death in Montreal almost gotten me killed on a highway in Hawaii? Was the accident linked to the Hemmingford pond victim? To Plato Lowery in Lumberton, North Carolina? To a case at the CIL? If so, which one? Lowery? Alvarez? Lapasa? To the fired anthropologist, Gus Dimitriadus? To the work I was doing for Hadley Perry? To the Halona Cove victim with the traction pin, Francis Kealoha? To his unknown companion? Or was the collision with the SUV just that, an accident? A case of wrong place, wrong time?

When composure returned, I moved toward the gawkers. A young woman lent me her phone. Susie. Nice hair. Very bad teeth.

Katy had no car. Danny was tied up at his arrival ceremony. Perry was being grilled by the powers that be.

Hating it, I dialed Ryan.

He went apeshit. As anticipated.

“You think these tools forced you off the road on purpose?”

“Probably. I felt three separate hits spaced apart.”