L.A. Mental (2 page)

Two

I
t was mid-May, but the night was chilly and damp with fog rolling in from the Pacific. Even at three o'clock on a Saturday morning, the Santa Monica Freeway was a rushing conveyor belt of electric glare, thousands of mist-blurred headlights. Turning off to the relative quiet of Highway 1 was a relief.

I drove as fast as I could, but my ride was a boxy '84 Land Cruiser that was basically a Jeep, designed for the Australian outback instead of the urban fast lane; I'd bought it used when I was lifeguarding through college, and now it had a quarter million miles on it and looked every one of them. On top of that, the fog kept getting thicker until I felt like I was fighting my way through the swirls dancing like ghosts in my headlight beams. The long glittering arc of the coastline was almost wiped out, blanketed down to flickers that seemed to move.

I tried calling Nick again every couple of minutes, warring with myself over whether to call 911 instead. The sheriffs could get to him sooner, but that would almost certainly mean a drug bust. He'd already had his share of those, to the point where another one was an excellent bet for serious jail time. Then there was the deeper fear that he'd freak out when they showed up, and do something that really
would
get him hurt.

It was a bad choice to have to make. I ended up deciding to keep on going alone. He'd seemed all right physically, and there were explanations for why he wasn't answering—he was too paranoid; he'd wandered away from his phone; he was busy trying to kick through a door and reclaim the home he still thought was his.

I slowed as I passed through the posh enclave of Malibu—traffic was usually so backed up that speeding was impossible, but right now cops might be on the watch—but got on the gas again until I turned off the highway at Point Dume.

Then I started driving into a part of my past that I would have erased if I could have—in a word, money, and a hell of a lot of it. My great-great-grandfather and namesake, the first Thomas Crandall, hadn't technically been a robber baron but was of that stamp. He and his descendants had created one of the private empires in Southern California, rivaling others like the Dohenys, Crockers, and Huntingtons.

I'd started getting uncomfortable with that as soon as I was old enough to understand what it entailed, and the older I got, the less I liked it.

That Thomas Crandall—Tom the First, as he was known in the family—was particularly astute about foreseeing the potential value of real estate and buying it for next to nothing. We still owned a lot of choice turf, and one of the jewels was this place in Malibu—almost four acres of oceanfront headland on the cliffs, sheltered from surrounding development by rows of windswept trees. The only drawback was the ramshackle old house, and that was about to be torn down and a new one built by my other brother, Paul.

That left a real sour taste in my mouth.

The security gate at the driveway entrance was hanging open. As I drove in, my headlights caught the glint of Nick's parked car, a carnival red Jaguar XK8 that he'd bought brand-new, five or six years ago. Now it was dirt-caked and dinged up, the leather interior trashed, and it ran with a sound like there was gravel in the crankcase. In a way, it was like Nick himself—once beautiful and high-powered, but he'd hammered them both into the ground.

At least it meant that he
had
been here, although I couldn't be sure he still was. He might have left with someone else or taken off on foot, making his way across the headlands to the beach or going the other way to the highway.

I parked beside the Jag and stepped out into the misty breeze and the boom of the breakers against the cliffs, a giant slow pulse that I could feel through my feet.

“Nick?” I yelled. “Nick, where are you? It's me, Tom. I'm here.” I waited ten seconds, listening hard. The offshore wind was strong enough to muffle my shouting—maybe he just didn't hear me.

Then again, maybe he did.

I got a Maglite from my car and checked his Jaguar first, just in case he was passed out in there. He wasn't, but he'd left tracks. The console was streaked with white powder, and a small paper bindle was lying on the driver's-side floor.

I grimaced at this new bad choice. Just touching the shit would constitute tampering with evidence. But if I left it and had to call for help, sheriff's deputies would spot it right away. I couldn't dump it, either; Nick might need medical attention, and the doctors would want a sample to analyze. But they weren't legally required to inform the police, at least short of a serious crime or autopsy, and I'd learned from experience that if I said the magic words
patient confidentiality
, that would raise the demonic specter of lawsuits and keep hospitals quiet as clams. I found an unused Taco Bell napkin in the litter strewn around, collected the loose powder and bindle into it, wet my sweatshirt sleeve on the car's fog-damp fender and wiped down the console, then stowed the folded napkin in one of my Land Cruiser's storage compartments. I took a quick look around for more dope but didn't see any, and I couldn't take the time to search thoroughly. At least it wouldn't be right in front of the cops.

From there I started with the house, striding around the outside to see if he might have gotten in. But the doors and windows were covered with plywood screwed on tight and undisturbed. As I went I swung the flashlight in arcs to search the surroundings, but came up empty there, too. That left the stretch of headlands out toward the cliffs. If he wasn't there, he was gone, and I didn't see any reason why he would be. Nick was not given to nature walks, day or night.

By now I was coming up against the fear that I'd made a crucial mistake—I should have called 911 right away.

I started zigzagging across the rocky ground, swinging the flashlight beam and shouting his name. Then, finally, I got an answer that cut into me like a razor slash.

A high-pitched keening howl, wild and desperate, came swirling around my ears with the wind. I'd only ever heard anything like it a few times before—back when I was working as a clinician with seriously insane, and often dangerously violent, patients at the state mental hospital in Napa.

I broke into a run.

I still couldn't see him, and the wind made it hard to judge the sound's location—all I could tell was that he was out toward the cliff. But a few seconds later another howl came, and this time I got a better fix.

He wasn't just
at
the cliff—he was on the brink. The drop-off beyond it was almost sheer, sloped like a church steeple, eighty feet down a rock face to the ocean below. I slowed back down to a cautious walk. If a shape suddenly appeared out of the fog charging toward him, he might panic and take off in the wrong direction.

When Nick came into sight, my first instant impression was of a caricature madman in an old black-and-white movie, like Jekyll after drinking the potion that turned him into Hyde—bent forward and pacing with one hand clenched in his tangled hair. His other hand, waving around frantically, was holding something, but I couldn't tell what it was.

I edged closer, hugely relieved that he was alive and at least physically intact—but now facing the problem of how to deal with this. It crossed my mind to tackle him and get him away from that edge, but he was too near it; and for all the damage he'd done to himself, he was still a big, powerful man. We'd been about the same size as we matured, around six-one, one-eighty, but while I'd stayed at that weight, he was well over two hundred by now. It wasn't
good
extra weight, and would make him harder to handle still.

He hadn't seen me yet, and I decided it would be best if he heard me first; he'd recognize my voice instinctively, before he even had time to react, and with any luck, it would start soothing him.

“Nick, it's Tom,” I called, trying to sound upbeat and free of the strain I was feeling.

He spun around toward me. His face was pale—he must have been cold, wearing just a T-shirt, below-the-knee shorts, and flip-flops—with staring eyes and bared teeth.

“Stay calm, brother,” I said. “I'm here for you, like we talked about a little while ago. Remember?”

His stare stayed riveted on my face.

“There. Are.
Worms
. Eating my brain,” he declared in a chilling hoarse croak—the kind of flat-affect certainty I'd seen in psychotics whose inner voices goaded them to sudden assaults, arson, or murdering their infant children.

“Come on, Nick. Let's head to my place, have a beer, and figure this out.”

“That's just feeding the worms, Tommy,” he said in the same distant but definite tone, like he was explaining something I was too dense to get. “All I
am
now is worm food.”

He unclenched his hand from his matted hair and smacked his palm against his temple.

“You just need to smooth out a little,” I said. “Hey, how about a Valium? I've got some in my car.”

Quick as an eyeblink, he made a stunning change, with his face turning shrewd and snarky.

“Is that the next step on your how-to-deal-with-wackos list,
Doctor
Crandall?” The words sprayed out of his mouth like piss in my face. “I crawl into a cage, pull a lever, and a pill pops into my mouth like an M 'n' M? Don't talk down to me, you motherfucker.”

Worse than the viciousness was his suddenly being very much in control—and very much more the real Nick. I was slammed by the thought that this whole thing was an act, something he'd cooked up to jerk me around or just vent his free-floating rage. It sickened me and brought my own anger flaring up, and I damned near gave in to the urge to walk away and leave him there.

Then, just as fast, the situation took another 180-degree spin. A new sound burst out of nowhere, so abrupt and jarring it made my body jerk—the loud pounding beat of rap music.

It was the ring of Nick's cell phone—
that
was what he was holding in his hand.

I stared in disbelief while he raised it to his ear, as if the reality of what was going on here had stopped dead and we were standing on a golf course. He listened for maybe five seconds.

Then he threw back his head and let out another of those howls. They'd been bad enough from a distance. This close, it was outright terrifying. He flung his hands in the air, flailing wildly around his head like he was trying to fight off a swarm of wasps. I glimpsed the cell phone slip out of his grasp and go sailing over the cliff.

Next thing I knew he was lunging at me, snarling like a pit bull.

From there, everything became a desperate blur. His clawing hands got hold of my shirt, and he rammed his head forward to butt me. I jerked my face aside just in time, brought my knee up into his groin, and stomped on his instep. That slowed him down, but he kept his grip with manic strength. We wrestled around in circles, slipping on the treacherous pebbly soil and gasping for breath.

Every time Nick exhaled, it sounded like he was huffing, “Worms! Worms! Worms!”

Then a chunk of the cliff edge broke loose under my right foot and my foot went with it, kicking helplessly in space. I managed to get my other knee onto solid ground and drag myself back inland, digging my fingers into the earth to pull me along.

“Nick,
no
, we're gonna die!” I yelled, rolling away from him.

And he stopped, just as suddenly as he'd attacked—let his hands fall and stood there inert, as if somebody had jerked his plug.

I scrambled to my feet, sucking air into my aching lungs and trying to think of a way to get on top of this, fast. He could light up again in another eyeblink.

Nothing came to me in those few seconds, but it didn't matter. Without a hint of warning, Nick simply crumpled, like he was falling full length onto a bed.

Right over the edge of the cliff.

Three

I
took off in an all-out sprint to the only place I could climb down after Nick, a narrow switchback trail that we'd played on as kids. The slope was gentler here but still damned steep, and I was no kid anymore. My footholds kept breaking loose, sending me into gut-wrenching slides. Sheets of spray lashed up from the pounding surf, slickening the rocks I clutched at and stinging my eyes. Then my feet found the small ledge we used to jump from.

Close to two minutes had passed since Nick had gone over. If he even survived the fall, he was probably unconscious. In the three summers I'd spent lifeguarding at Newport Beach I'd hauled out a fair number of drowners, revived some by CPR and lost others, and I'd been present at many more such incidents.

Two minutes underwater was a long time.

I jumped, aiming for the clear spot I remembered among the rocks and hoping to Christ that memory was right.

The numbing cold shock of the water washed over me as I hit, landing in a waist-deep trough but the next second swamped by a breaker. The incoming waves clashed with the rebounds off the cliff base, turning the surface into a maelstrom. I dropped down below it, tore off my sneakers, and came up off the sandy bottom in a lunging dive and another and another, each time swimming a few strokes through the roiling surf with my head up to scan for Nick.

Then I spotted his white T-shirt, tossing like a sack of trash that wouldn't quite sink.

By the time I got my hands on his clammy flesh, we were pushing three minutes.

He was facedown, arms and legs hanging limp and hair floating like kelp. With a fall like that there was serious risk of central nervous system damage, and even touching him risked aggravating it, but nothing else was going to matter if I couldn't get him breathing. I rolled him over gently, supporting his neck and trying to shield him from the breakers with my body, and jammed my fingers into his mouth to scoop out anything he might have hacked up. Then I pinched his nostrils shut and clamped my own mouth over his, forcing air into his lungs. Kissing a drowner was another thing I hadn't done for many years, but that taste was something you never forgot. It came from deep within them and right through the salty overlay of brine—fetid, metallic, and hinting at death. Sometimes they were already there.

I started towing him, bucking the surf and blinding spray, digging my toes into the sand for traction when I could, and blowing air into him every few seconds. The only place anywhere nearby where I could get him out of the water was one of the big rocks that jutted above the surface, still splashed by the waves but not as much, and I could do heart massage.

I eased him up onto it and got down to a steady rhythm—thirty presses on his sternum with the heels of my hands, two breaths into his lungs, and then again. He twitched and made croaking sounds every time I shoved down on his chest. When I'd first done CPR, I thought that meant the victim was coming around. It didn't.

But then Nick's lips twisted in a sputtering cough that sounded real. I touched my fingertips to his carotid artery and felt the bump of pulse, thready but definite. I hovered there with my ear close to his mouth and my own heart hammering. Nature usually took charge once the lungs started working, but it was something else you couldn't count on.

The coughs kept coming in spasms, his body fighting to blow out the water he'd inhaled and suck in air. My hands could almost feel him coming back to life as his breathing gradually got less ragged and more regular, his pulse stronger.

Now the problem was getting him out of here, and it was going to be a whole lot trickier because he showed no signs of coming back to consciousness. We couldn't just wait until somebody came along and saw us. The closest accessible beach was a quarter mile away, and especially with the water so rough, I couldn't risk towing him—avoiding spinal damage was top priority now, with internal injury also in the mix. The only choice I could see was to leave him here, call for help—I'd left my own cell phone in my car, thank God—and get back as fast as I could. I wrung out my sodden sweatshirt and covered his torso with it, hoping it might stave off hypothermia a little longer, and stayed with him another half minute to make sure his breathing and pulse were steady. Then I slid back into the ocean and raced for the switchback trail.

With the beating Nick had taken on his fall, it was no surprise that he was still unconscious. Concussion was almost a given, and it might be far worse. But there was another grim possibility I couldn't ignore. Victims who came around after prolonged submersion sometimes suffered brain damage from oxygen deprivation.

Even if he survived his other injuries, I might have resuscitated a living corpse.