Lisa Unger - Black Out

The dive instructor I have chosen is very patient with me. She’s a pretty young redhead who I think is used to dealing with children. She talks to me in soothing tones, coaxes me into the water with bland assurances, holds my hand when necessary. The dive equipment, the buoyancy control device, the regulator and tank are somehow comforting in spite of their weight and awkwardness. It’s as if I’ve brought a little of the land with me. Once I learn how to control my buoyancy and measure my breathing, after just two mornings, I find I can float effortlessly in the deep end of the pool. It feels like flying. I’m still afraid, but I’m starting to have it under control.

“You should be proud of yourself,” she tells me when I’ve completed the classroom-and-pool portion of my instruction. “Most people with so much fear could never do what you’ve done. You’re ready for your open-water certification.”

I thank her and tell her I’ll be doing my open water with another dive master, an old friend. She tells me to come back if I ever need a refresher. I shake her hand and wonder what she’ll say to investigators if I die.

She was so frightened of the water, I imagine her telling them. Prone to panic.

Everyone knows that panic kills, especially at seventy-five feet deep.

In the parking lot after my last lesson, I see Detective Harrison’s Ford Explorer parked next to my car. I notice that it’s dirty, the bottom covered with mud as though he has been off-roading. My insides drop with disappointment and fear. I was starting to think we’d heard the last of him. I walk over to his window. He rolls it down, and a wave of cool, smoky air drifts out.

“Hello, Annie.”

I don’t answer him. He takes a photograph from the passenger seat of his car and hands it to me.

“Do you know this man?”

It’s a picture of Simon Briggs, his face pale and stiff, eyes closed. Dead. I think of the envelope I am still carrying around in my car. I haven’t looked at it, in an effort to preserve the false sense of security I’ve been nursing over the last few days.

“No,” I say.

He gives me a sideways look, a kind of lazy smile. He knows I’m lying. I don’t know how.

“Okay,” he says. “How about this guy?”

He shows me another photograph. It’s a mug shot of a middle-aged man with pleasantly gray hair and a mustache. He has a kind face. It’s the man I know as Dr. Paul Brown.

“Your doctor, right?”

I nod.

“His real name is Paul Broward. He was wanted in three states-New York, California, and Florida-for insurance fraud, malpractice, and operating without a license. It was revoked for sexual assault of a patient.”

The information takes a second to sink in. The detective and I engage in a staring contest until I eventually lower my eyes.

“‘Was’ wanted?” I say finally.

“His body was found by fishermen in the Everglades yesterday. Or parts of it, anyway. Enough to identify.”

I feel a roil of shame and sadness. I hadn’t really believed he was dead, had almost convinced myself I’d imagined everything that night that felt like so long ago. Whatever he was, he had helped me. I didn’t want to think of him dying that way. And then I had to ask myself, did Ophelia kill him? Did I kill him? Gray destroyed the bloody clothes I wore home that night. I look down at my own hands. They don’t seem capable.

“You sure know how to pick ’em, Annie.”

I have decided not to reply to any more of his antagonistic statements.

“So,” he says when I don’t answer, “I have two dead bodies and one live woman lying about her identity connected to them both. I ask myself, what is it about you that encourages people to turn up dead?”

“I don’t know that other man,” I say, gesturing toward the first photo.

“Then why did he have your picture in his car?”

And why did Gray shake his hand and then shoot him in the head? Why did he leave the car there to be discovered by the police? Too many questions, no good answers.

“I have no idea,” I say. I want to walk away from him, to get into my car and drive. But something keeps me rooted. In a weird way, Detective Harrison has become the only person I’m clear about. I wish I could tell him what I saw, show him the envelope, ask him what else he knows about my doctor. But of course I can’t do any of that.

Instead I say, “My husband paid you off, right?”

“Yeah,” he says with a shrug. “But I still have a job to do.”

“What makes you think I won’t report you to Internal Affairs or something?”

He gives me a pitying look. “The way I see it, Annie, we’ve got each other by the balls. You squeeze, I’ll squeeze harder. Makes us even, doesn’t it?”

He has a point.

“Look,” he says. He seems suddenly sincere, concerned. “I think you’re in big trouble, and not just with the law. Maybe the police are the least of your problems.”

My heart starts to thrum. I know he’s right. Ever since that first panic attack in the grocery store’s parking lot, I have known that Annie Powers was not long for this world.

“A guy like Briggs, he’s just the hired help. He’s dead, but there will be someone else right behind him. Someone wants to find Ophelia March, and it ain’t because an aunt she didn’t know about left her some money.”

“And you know who that is?” I find myself moving closer to him involuntarily. My hand is resting on the window edge.

“No,” he says, shaking his head.

“You said-” I start.

“I lied. I was just trying to scare you.”

I walk away from him then, go back to my car. He rolls down the passenger window of his car. I notice the shock of white hair again.

“Start by asking yourself this question,” he calls after me. “Who referred you to that doctor? How did you find him? Whoever it was should be considered suspect.”

I don’t answer him as I get into the driver’s seat and start the engine.

“Are you too stupid to know when someone is trying to help you?” he asks.

“For a price, right?”

“Everything has a price, Annie. This is a material world. You should know that better than anyone.”

I shut the door, back out of my parking space. Before I pull out of the lot, I turn and look behind me at the detective. He points to his eye, then points to me. I’m watching you, he’s telling me. He probably didn’t mean for it to be comforting but, oddly, it is.

When Victory and I show up at Vivian’s unannounced later that afternoon, I see a flash of something on her face that I’ve never seen before. It happens when our eyes connect through the thick glass of her front door. It’s just the ghost of an expression, and in another state of mind I might not even have noticed it. It’s fear. Vivian is the strongest woman I’ve ever known, and when I see that look on her face, my heart goes cold.

“What a surprise,” she says with a bright, warm smile, swinging open the door. But it’s too late; the secret has passed between us. I walk through the door with Victory in my arms. She immediately reaches for her grandmother, and I hand her over, stand back as Victory bear-hugs her and then begins to chirp happily about her day. Vivian makes all the appropriate confirming noises and exclamations as we walk to the kitchen. I sit quietly, sipping a glass of water as Vivian makes a grilled cheese sandwich and cuts it into tiny squares the way Victory likes it. I stare out the double glass doors at the glittering blue waters of the infinity pool, thinking all variety of dark thoughts as the most important females in my life chatter, light and happy, like two budgies.

After her snack Victory runs off to the elaborate playroom they keep for her here, and Vivian sits down at the table across from me. She folds her arms on the table in front of her and waits. I tell her everything.