The Reveal: A Detectives Seagate and Miner Mystery (Book 6) (25 page)

I pulled into the parking area just as Martin
punched Abby in the gut. She doubled over and sank to the ground. He looked up
at the sound of my car, then bent back over her and half pulled her to her
feet, dragging her toward the rock outcropping over the edge of the reservoir.

I was out of my car, my gun drawn, running toward
them. I shouted. “Police. Stop.” Martin looked in my direction for a moment but
kept dragging Abby by her upper arms. She looked conscious, but just barely. He
ducked under the handrail, dragging her out to the edge of the rocks. I shouted
at him again to stop but he ignored me.

As Ryan’s car screeched to a halt in the parking
area behind me, Martin lifted Abby and thrust her out over the rock
outcropping. Her arms and legs flailing, she seemed to hang in the air for the
longest time before she disappeared into the green-black water fifty feet
below.

Chapter 29

As he rushed past me toward
the outcropping, Ryan shouted, “You take care of him.”

I pointed my pistol at Martin Hunt. “Down on your
knees. Hands above your head.”

He complied. Now that he knew a couple of cops had
seen him throw a person into the reservoir, his usual smirk was gone, but his
face showed no fear or anxiety. His decision to kill Abby told me he thought
whatever penalty he now faced was less than he would have faced if she
lived—and talked.

I grabbed him by the back of the collar and pushed
his face into the dirt. I pulled his arms behind his back and cuffed him. “On
your feet.” I pulled him up and marched him over to the handrail, unlocked one
of the cuffs, and locked him to the handrail.

I ran over to Ryan. “What are you doing?” I said.
He had slipped his shoes off. His sweatshirt lay on the dirt, his keys, wallet,
and phone sitting on it.

“Get over to the powerhouse,” Ryan said. “They’ll
have some life rings.”

“Don’t do it,” I shouted to him.

“I saw where she went in.” He ran over to the
outcropping and leapt off, arcing out over the rock face in a graceful swam
dive. I stood there, paralyzed, watching Ryan slide into
the dark water. Twenty yards beyond where Ryan went in, I could
just pick out Abby’s blond hair rising out of the water, then sinking back down
below it. I couldn’t tell if she was alive, but she was face down, drifting
toward the barrier line with the orange basketballs.

I didn’t see Ryan emerge. “Shit.” I grabbed his
stuff and ran back to my Honda. I started it up and floored it. It pinged like
crazy, but it got me to the powerhouse in ten seconds. I slammed on the brakes
and ran inside. A woman sat at the reception desk, working on a computer. Her
name tag said Susan.

I had my shield around my neck. “This is an
emergency. There’s two people in the water, headed for the input. Turn off the
water.”

“Oh, my God.” She leapt out of her chair and ran
toward the far side of the room, where a door led into the interior of the
powerhouse. “Come with me.” We ran down a dimly lit tiled corridor that seemed
to go on forever. We passed all kinds of doors on both sides of the corridor
before she threw open the one marked Control Room.

A young man sat at a desk built into a wall.
Looking up from a bank of monitors full of graphs and readouts, he wore an
expression halfway between alarm and resentment. “What is it, Susan? Who is
this?”

“She’s police.”

I pushed her aside. His ID badge hanging around
his neck said Wayne. “Listen to me, Wayne. There’s two people in the water.
Turn off the intake to the dam.”

“What are you talking about? Where are they?”

I pointed. “They’re on the input side. One of
them’s
injured. The other one dove in to get her. I can’t
see him. He didn’t come up. They’re headed toward the intake tunnel.”

“When did this happen?”

“Listen to me.” I was shouting now. “I’m a cop.
There’s two people being pulled toward the intake. Turn off the fucking water.
NOW.”

“I need more information before I can do that.
This is a crossflow turbine. If I turn off the water now, it’s going to damage
the turbine. I don’t have the authority to do that.”

I
unholstered
my pistol
and held the barrel against his nose. “Here’s your authority. Do it right now
or I will shoot you.”

Susan screamed. The guy got out of his chair and
rushed over to a panel of dials and buttons to his right. He looked back at me
to see if I was serious.

“NOW.”

He pushed a red button marked Emergency Shutdown.

I felt a shudder and then a little shaking, like
when a washing machine starts spinning in the other room. “Do you have life
rings or something?”

“Follow me.” He hurried out of the control room,
with me and Susan following him. We ran down more corridors. He opened a door
marked Flotation and came back out with three life rings with long lengths of
rope attached. He ran farther
down the
corridor, then pushed open a door marked East Exit.

We emerged into the bright sunshine. After the
dimly lit corridors, the sun reflecting off the water blinded me. After a few
seconds, I could look over the handrail down at the green-black water.

“Why is it still swirling?” I could hear I was shouting.

“It takes a while for the emergency gates to lower
and stop the water input.”

“Look for them.” I was shouting at Wayne and
Susan. “A young woman, blond hair. A man, dark hair. Look for them, now.”

With the breeze kicking up whitecaps and the currents
and whirlpools whipping the surface, it would have been nearly impossible to
see them, even though we were standing only fifteen or twenty feet above the
water.

“Do you have a boat or something?” I shouted to be
heard over the roar of the output water spraying from the other side of the
dam.

“We have a small boat, but it’ll take a few
minutes to get it set up here. It takes two people.” He pointed toward the
handrail. “There’s some rescue poles there you can use if we see them.” He
turned to Susan. “Call the Fire Department. The Rescue Team.” She pulled out
her cell.

I glanced at the three life rings on the concrete
next to me. Thirty yards away, hanging on the handrail, was the rescue pole.
“You two get the boat set up. I’ll stay here. Do it, now.”

They ran off to get the boat. I scanned the
surface, which was still full of whitecaps and whirlpools. It must have been
almost two minutes since Ryan hit the frigid water. A pain began in my stomach,
a stabbing pain that turned sharper and sharper. My knees buckled and I doubled
over and sank to the concrete. I heard myself groaning and felt the hot tears
streaming down my cheeks. As a feeling of dread swept over me, I closed my eyes
to shut out the pain.

Then I realized I was the only one here to look
out over the water. I struggled to get control of myself, wiping my eyes with
the backs of my hands. Grabbing onto the handrail, I pulled myself to my feet
and tried to focus on the dark water gleaming in the sunshine. But I saw
nothing.

I gripped the handrail with all my strength,
forcing myself to stay standing and do the only thing I could think to do. I
told myself I could fall apart later, but I knew it would be only a few more
seconds before it was over. I cried out Ryan’s name, but nobody in the water could
have heard me. I was weeping and groaning, a wave of remorse and panic crushing
me as I struggled to stay standing, to keep thinking, to keep breathing.

Out of the corner of my eye I saw some motion over
to the side, right up against the wall of the dam. I ran over to it. It was a
hand emerging from the green-black water. It gripped the bottom rung of the
steel emergency ladder bolted to the side of the dam.

I cried out, “Ryan.”

I saw the back of a figure emerge from the water.
I recognized Abby’s white T-shirt and dark blue skinny jeans. Her arms and legs
were still invisible. I needed a second to understand what I was seeing. Abby’s
trunk rose out of the water, her arms and legs still submerged. Then I saw
Ryan’s other hand grab the second rung of the ladder. He had Abby over his
right shoulder and was lifting the two of them out of the water.

I climbed over the handrail and started down the
ladder. Normally, this would have scared the shit out of me, but the shit was
already scared out of me. I made it down the twelve rungs. Hanging on with one
hand, I wedged my arm between Abby’s waist and Ryan’s shoulder.

“You got her?” Ryan said.

“I got her.” With Ryan pushing and me pulling,
rung after rung, we climbed the ladder. When I made it to the top, I didn’t have
the strength to heave her over the handrail.

Ryan said, “Just hold onto her, one more second.”
He got one foot onto the concrete walkway and grabbed the handrail. Grunting,
he hoisted Abby onto the handrail, her legs dangling out over the reservoir, her
trunk, head, and arms over the concrete walkway. I pulled myself up and over
the handrail and collapsed onto the walkway. Ryan climbed over the handrail,
scooped up Abby, and lowered her to the walkway.

As he stood there, hands on his knees, breathing heavily
and shivering, I began CPR on Abby. Her skin, normally pale, was ghostly white.
She was unresponsive.

I did the thirty chest compressions, then closed
off her nostrils and breathed into her mouth as hard as I could. Three time,
five times. Nothing. “She’s gone.”

“Keep going, Karen. You’re doing great.” I worked
for another minute.

Ryan could see me getting winded and discouraged.
“Let me try it.” He knelt beside her and started the rescue breathing. He kept
at it for two minutes.

I heard the whine of a small outboard motor
cutting through the roar from the output spray. I looked over the side of dam.
Wayne and Susan were in a small rubber dinghy. I called out to him, “They’re up
here.”

He shouted “Okay” as Susan tethered the dinghy to
the bottom rung of the ladder. The two of them pulled themselves up the ladder.

Wayne said to me, “I’m going to get the system
back online. Susan, can you stay and help them with whatever they need?”

“Of course.” We were both looking down at Ryan,
bent over Abby’s mouth. Susan turned to me. “What do you want me to do?”

“Call the Fire Rescue team. Tell them we got both
the people out of the water, but one of
them’s
nonresponsive. We’re gonna need an ambulance.”

She nodded and pulled out her phone.

I turned to my partner. “Any reason to keep going
with that?”

He pulled his head up to answer me. “Any reason
not to?” He was breathing hard. His tone was angry and frustrated. Ryan really
doesn’t like to lose.

“Let me take over.”

“I got it,” he said. He returned to the rescue breathing,
harder than before.

Susan said, “The Fire Rescue team is almost here.
They’re all EMT-certified. They’ve called in for the ambulance. Three minutes.”

I looked down at Abby. She was a big girl, I’d say
five-eight or nine. Wide shoulders, narrow hips. Her blond hair was hanging
over her face. I brushed it back. The exhaustion caught up with me and I began
to weep softly. Not out of control, like a few minutes ago. I pictured myself
sitting in the chief’s office with Abby’s parents. The mother would be weeping,
the father sitting there, his head bowed. They’d be asking about why that young
man did that to her.

Suddenly, Abby’s trunk shuddered, and her chin
thrust in the air. Ryan pulled his head back just before the water blew out of
her mouth. He rolled her onto her side. “That’s it,” he said, reaching into her
mouth to make sure her tongue was out of the way. She started to groan,
convulsed again, and vomited more water onto the concrete walkway.

I heard the sirens in the distance.

A minute later, when the two EMTs with a gurney
rushed over, Abby’s eyes were open. She wasn’t talking yet, but she was
conscious. She didn’t seem to understand Ryan when he talked to her. Her eyes didn’t
follow his finger as he moved it in front of her face.

The two EMTs loaded her onto the gurney. One of
them said to me, “We’re gonna put her in the ambulance and take her in.”

“Is she gonna be okay?”

“Don’t know. Maybe.”

One of the EMTs had given Ryan a blanket, which
was
draped over his shoulders. “Well, that was
exciting.” He managed a small smile.

I shook my head.

He said, “Did you get my things? At the cross?”

“I got your things.” I started to cry again. “Why
did you do that?”

“To protect and serve.” He pointed to my shield
around my neck. “That’s what it says.”

I walked over to him and slapped him as hard as I
could on the arm.

“Ow.” He rubbed his arm.

“Don’t ever do that to me again.”

He smiled. “To you?”

“That’s what I fucking said. Don’t ever do that to
me again.” I collapsed onto his chest, still shuddering. His heartbeat was
strong beneath his ice-cold shirt.

He laughed, patting me on the back like a big
brother.

The EMTs had finished strapping Abby in. “One of
you two want to ride with her? Is she in custody or something?”

Ryan said, “I’ll ride with them. You going to be
okay?”

“Yeah, I’ll follow you over to the hospital.”

“One other detail, Karen.”

“What’s that?”

“Martin Hunt. You cuffed him to the handrail at
the cross.”

“Yeah, so?”

“You going to let the animals take care of him?”

The EMTs started to wheel the gurney down the
walkway toward the elevator. Ryan followed them.

I called headquarters and told them to send out a
couple of uniforms to bring Martin Hunt in and drive Ryan’s car back to
headquarters.

I turned to Susan. “Thanks for your help. Would
you tell Wayne I hope I didn’t break his dam?”

She smiled. “I’ll tell him.” She paused. “Your
partner—he dove in after the girl?”

“Over at the cross. Took his shoes off and dove
right in.”

“He’s something.”

“Yeah, he’s something, all right.” I shook my
head. “Not exactly sure what.”

I drove back to the cross, where Martin Hunt was
sitting in the parking lot, legs crossed, his left arm handcuffed to the
railing.

“How you
doin
’, Marty?”

He scowled but didn’t reply.

“Great news. Your classmate—Abby? the one you beat
up and threw into the water?—my partner grabbed her. She’s gonna be fine. But I
don’t blame you for trying to kill her. What a pain in the ass.” I rolled my
eyes. “Talk, talk, talk. That girl just won’t shut up.”