Swimmer (23 page)

‘Was she involved with any other boys?'

‘Not really. But there was this real creepy dude who used to follow her around all the time and send her notes saying how much he adored her. What was his name? He had so much acne we used to call him the Human Pizza. I know – Chris Bayless. I shudder even now. He was always sniffing and wiping his hands together like they were wet, which they probably were.'

‘I remember Chris,' Jim nodded. ‘Poor guy's mother contracted MS and his father ran off with another woman. He had to do everything at home – cook, clean, take his mother to the bathroom. Then he had to study too.'

‘Now you've made me feel so
mean
.'

‘Well, you weren't to know. But I can see why a guy like Chris was attracted to Jane. She was always so full of life, wasn't she?'

‘There were a couple of girls that Jane didn't particularly get along with.'

‘Oh, yes?'

‘Vickie Albertyn was one. They had some argument about a dress that Jane had lent her, and which she never gave back. And, like, Vickie always denied that she still had it. And there was another girl, I never found out who it was, but Jane said that she was always flirting with George. Apparently this girl told George all kinds of lies about Jane –like she was incredibly promiscuous and that she had two abortions before she was sixteen. Real nasty stuff, none of it true.'

‘Jane didn't give you any idea who she was?'

‘Unh-hunh. She only told me about it the morning before she died. When I asked her, all she said was something like “Can't you guess?” and then George came over and whisked her off and she didn't have the chance to tell me. But she was real mad about it, I can tell you that.'

‘Hmm … I wonder who that was.'

‘I guess you could ask George. He'd know, wouldn't he?'

‘Good idea. Meanwhile, how about selling me a pair of those dangly earrings? I know somebody who'd really go for those.'

He chatted to Mary a little longer and then walked back to his car. As he unlocked the door, he paused for a moment to watch two girls who were roller-blading in figures of eight. In between them, he was sure he could see an unnatural shimmer of light – a shimmer that could have been another girl, in another existence.

He climbed into his car and backed out of his parking-space. After all, he was only a hundred yards from the seashore here, and, if the shimmer of light was Jane Tullett's spirit, the ocean would give her all the water she needed to drown him and half the people on the boardwalk.

K
aren was pleased with her silver-and-amethyst earrings, and with the huge bunch of lilies he bought to go with them. ‘You're not trying to bribe me now, are you?'

‘I'm just trying to show you that I'm a reformed character. I'm no longer a slob. My sock drawer is still ship-shape, I've hoovered the car, and I haven't eaten anything directly out of a can since yesterday morning.'

‘When do you think you'll be going to Washington?' she said. They were sitting at a sidewalk table outside the Hungry Harlequin, drinking coffee and eating cinnamon donuts. Karen was wearing tiny sunglasses with very dark lenses so it was difficult for Jim to read her expression.

‘I'm still aiming for Sunday evening … my flight's booked and everything. But I'm not going to go until I've exorcized this water spirit, or whatever I have to do to put her to rest. She might try to drown
you
.'

‘I think I can look after myself.'

‘Unh-hunh. Not against this thing you can't. I only wish I could find a way to give her some peace.'

‘She wants justice, doesn't she?'

‘Sure. But there's justice and justice. Somebody might be a murderer, but you don't punish him by killing his friends and relatives, do you?'

‘Did you talk to George Opal?'

Jim shook his head. ‘He's in Tokyo, at some business conference. I might be able to catch him tonight, when he's having breakfast.'

‘What if Jane's making a mistake? What if she
did
drown by accident? How are you going to convince her that it was nobody's fault but her own?'

‘I don't know. If I can't persuade her to stop drowning people – you know, voluntarily – I'll have to find some other way to get rid of her.'

‘Such as?'

‘Search me. But Susan Silverstone's doing some research into vengeful elemental spirits, and so is Laura.'

‘You'll be careful, won't you?'

‘Sure I'll be careful. I want to live long enough to twist your arm into coming to Washington with me.'

Karen smiled, and held his hand. ‘You never give up, do you?'

He was paying the check when his mobile phone warbled. It was David DuQuesne. ‘Jim – I hope I'm not disturbing you, but after we talked about the Swimmer I started to think that it might be worthwhile doing a little research into it. I've come up with something that you'll be very interested to see.'

‘Okay … give me a half-hour, and I'll be up there.'

Karen said, ‘Don't tell me, you have to rush off.'

‘I'm sorry – but after I've sorted out the Swimmer we can spend a whole day together. Two whole days. A lifetime, if you want.'

‘Jim – there'll always be a Swimmer. Well, maybe not a Swimmer, but some other spirit that you have to deal with.'

‘I told you: when I go to Washington I'm going to be through with all that. I don't care if spirits come knocking on my door all night, I'm not going to answer any more. I can't accept the responsibility for every supernatural manifestation I see – even if I
am
the only one who can see it.'

‘And if they threaten your friends and the people you love, like the Swimmer?'

‘Well, that's different.'

‘No, Jim, it's not different. It's just more of the same. Don't you realize why I can't go with you? It's not really your untidiness or your taste in music. It's your gift. Or your curse, or whatever you want to call it. How can I live with somebody who feels he constantly has to fight against dangers the rest of us can't even see? You were almost drowned today. What happens if you come up against a spirit that's much too powerful for you to cope with?'

‘Karen, you have to trust me.'

‘I do trust you. But not to ignore ghosts and demons when you see them.'

The car-hop drove up in Karen's Saab convertible, and she climbed into it. Jim gave her a kiss and said, ‘I'll call you later. Watch out for anything watery, won't you?'

She drove away and he stood outside the café watching her go.

‘Sir?' said the car-hop, after a while.

‘What? Yes, sure, you can bring my car around.'

‘I'd like to, sir, but the muffler's fallen off.'

It cost $27 for a taxi to take him up to David DuQuesne's house in Hidden Valley. The air-conditioning wasn't working properly and by the time they arrived he was slithery with sweat.

‘You want me to wait?' asked the taxi driver.

‘No, but next time I feel like a Turkish bath I'll know who to call.'

David DuQuesne came out on to the verandah to greet him, his dogs scrabbling on the deck as bloodthirstily as they had before. ‘You look hot,' he remarked. ‘I'll have Amy bring you a beer.'

He released the dogs and for a split second Jim thought they were going to pounce on him, but they tore straight past him, almost knocking him over, and bounded off into the grounds. ‘They smell rabbit,' said David DuQuesne. ‘Much more exciting than cat.'

He ushered Jim inside and through to a cool and elegant study with a large desk of limed oak and a collection of twisted sculptures made from driftwood. On the desk were arranged about a dozen color prints, five-by-fours, and six or seven black-and-whites.

‘Whenever I'm investigating an urban legend, I always find that one photograph is worth a million words. What do we all remember about Bigfoot? Not the sworn testimony of the men who saw him walking through the woods, but that one blurry picture.'

Jim picked up one of the black-and-white photographs. It showed a crowd of young people in a swimming-pool, waving their arms. At the foot of the photograph was the typed caption: June 9, 1991: Hi-jinks in the pool at West Grove Community College to celebrate the year's end.

‘A friend of mine works in the photo library at the
Los Angeles Times
,' said David DuQuesne. ‘I asked her to dig up every picture she could find of the day when Jane Tullett was drowned.'

‘And? Do they tell you anything?'

‘I think they do, yes. I've placed them in chronological sequence. Here – look: this shows Jane being lifted out of the water after she was drowned. She's wearing this distinctive navy-and-white swimsuit with diagonal stripes. That's how I was able to identify her in this first picture in the sequence. Here – in picture one – we have a general view of the pool, with everybody jumping around and splashing … but in the background Jane is making her way toward the diving boards. You can't see her face but there's no mistaking that costume.

‘In this second picture we can see her climbing the ladder to the top board … and there she is, that's a very good shot of her just before she dived … arms spread, back straight – excellent posture.'

Jim picked up the fourth picture. ‘I can't see her in this one … there's just a whole crowd of students.'

‘Ah, but you can see her if you magnify it. I put it through my computer scanner and zoomed it up. Here … those look like nothing but waving arms underneath the diving board, but right
there
you can see Jane's legs as she disappeared into the water.' He drew a circle with a red marker. ‘As you can see, it's a clean dive, and she doesn't appear to have struck anybody else.'

‘The coroner said that she could have hit her head on the bottom.'

‘I don't think that's likely, when you consider that she went into the water at the proper angle, and the water was certainly deep enough to prevent her from striking the floor of the pool.'

‘What am I looking at in this next picture?'

‘This is the most interesting picture of all. Again, I had to enlarge it to make sense of it. But if you look right down here in the bottom left-hand corner you can just make out a swimming cap and a pair of eyes breaking the surface of the water, close to the side. That's Jane, coming up after her dive … and you can see from her eyes that she doesn't look at all concussed.

‘Now look at all the students around her. They're wildly splashing each other, and so many of them have their eyes closed or half closed, it's not surprising that they didn't see Jane coming up.'

Jim examined the photograph carefully. He recognized Piper and Mary, not far away from Jane's emerging head, but they were facing the opposite direction. However, there was another girl, much nearer to Jane, and she actually had her face turned toward her … so she must have seen her.

‘Do you know who that is?' asked David DuQuesne.

Jim took off his glasses and peered at the photograph even more closely. ‘She looks blonde, doesn't she … but all you can see is the back of her head.'

‘I've located her in four other pictures, but you can't see her clearly in any of them. But look at this.'

The next picture showed the same girl even closer to the side of the pool, holding on to the rail with her right hand. Her left hand was out of sight below the water. The water was so churned up that it was impossible to see clearly below the surface, but David DuQuesne produced an enormous blow-up of the area where the girl's left hand would probably have been. And just below it, there was a distorted pattern of diagonal stripes.

‘This isn't conclusive proof, by any means,' said David DuQuesne. ‘But it looks to me as if Jane executed a perfect dive and came up safely. But this girl in the photograph struck Jane's head against the side of the pool and then deliberately held her under water until she drowned.'

David DuQuesne showed Jim the next and last picture, which showed Jane lying at the poolside while the swimming coach was trying to revive her. Jim recognized a much younger version of himself, in sunglasses, and most of the rest of Special Class II.

‘I think these pictures are unique,' said David DuQuesne. ‘They show the actual moment when an urban legend came into being. I've made my whole living out of urban legends, but there's rarely any incontrovertible proof that they actually happened. But this one, my friend – this is something special. Not only that – if you can identify the young lady who's holding Jane underwater, then you've got yourself a halfway decent chance of appeasing Jane's spirit, and putting her to rest for ever.'

‘Why do you think Jane herself didn't tell me who it was, at Gabriel Dragonard's seance?'

‘My guess is that she doesn't know. She came to the surface –
bang
! – her head was knocked against the side of the pool, and she was pushed back under before she had the chance to catch her breath. It's obvious from the random way that the Swimmer is drowning your friends and your students that she blames
all
of you … and especially you. She considers that you were ultimately responsible for her safety, and that you let her down. Or even that you and your class were actually part of a conspiracy to drown her.'

‘That's crazy, why should she ever think that?'

‘Vengeful spirits get some pretty strange ideas into their heads, Jim. Especially when they died so young.'

‘Can you make me some copies of these pictures? I can show them to Piper and Mary and some of the other students who were there at the time.'

‘Sure. I'll print some off now. There's one important thing you have to think about, though.'

‘Oh, yes?'