The drive home is, as always, twice as long as the commute in. The roads are packed, the commuter congestion I’d avoided in the morning now at its predictable height. To emphasize the plight, the woman’s voice on the National Public Radio affiliate for the Bay Area suggests there’s no hope for improvement ahead. I settle passively into the time set out before me.
I have a water bottle in the cup holder at my left, its flimsy plastic only slightly sturdier than the interior of the car itself. The myth that water eases headaches is a lie, but it does make popping the ibuprofen easier. Another two are down before I’m fifteen minutes into the drive, leaving their lingering, slightly sweet taste on the back buds of my tongue. It’s too familiar. Advil’s parent company should offer me some sort of loyalty card.
The details of what I’d read during the day peck at my attention as I play tap-dance between the accelerator and the brake.
My spine tingles again with the memory of the headline that had captured my attention. An ice cube projects itself up my back.
This woman in the river.
It had been on the computer, not in print, which meant it was fresh. Probably only became known after the papers had gone to press for the day. I’d looked through them again, just to be sure, but found nothing there.
I’d gone back to the Internet, oddly enthralled, and chased up what few details were available. Age, 40. The woman who’d been found was just a year my elder. Her body had been discovered at approximately 9.45 p.m. by an advocate of late-evening walks who reported his find to the local authorities. It was situated on the Russian River – the 110-mile-long gentle beast that stretches out from near Lake Mendocino, twisting and turning south and west until it joins the Pacific Ocean in Jenner, two hours north of San Francisco. I know the river as well as anyone does who lives in the area, more by simple proximity than first-hand experience. I’ve driven along stretches of its length that run near the highways, that’s about all I can say. At places it appears mighty, at others barely more than a stream.
As I drive, now, I recall the process of searching for these facts on various police websites. It had taken over an hour. Maybe several. The day, as I say, had kind of slipped away from me.
The details, though, continue to cycle through my mind.
A hiker coming upon the body, still floating in a gentle bend in the water.
It wasn’t an overly bloody find, or particularly terrifying or grotesque. This wasn’t a dismemberment or chainsaw attack. What was disturbing was, in fact, the simplicity of the whole situation. The fact that it was almost … scenic. The river water, flowing. The mention of someone out for a casual stroll. ‘Rambling’, as the English would say, which seems appropriate as I drive towards a Californian town called Windsor.
A foolish song I knew as a child tussles at my memory, its tune playful and ridiculously out of concert with the topic of my thoughts.
Rambler, brambler, with rushes at my knees,
Walking, talking, to bushes and to bees …
I shake my head in protest. It seems inappropriate that my mind should wander to such things at this moment. I try to push the tune out of my thoughts.
Beyond the victim’s age, none of her private details – name, residence, so on – have been released to the media, except to indicate that she was a Caucasian female and apparently in good physical condition.
I fidget. But it’s not a fidget, it’s a squirm. I’m uncomfortable. The air in my car is too hot, I realize all at once. I switch on the A/C and turn the knob as far as it will go towards the little snowflake symbol. It lights up with a reassuringly blue glow – blue having at some stage become a colour we all associate with being refreshed and cool. For a moment, this meaningless fact distracts me.
The tune, though, won’t leave my head. Rambler, brambler, with rushes at my knees …
I stomp my foot beside the accelerator to shake the melody from my mind. Enough!
The cause of death I’d found was listed only as that ambiguous ‘suspected foul play’. Any further detail is apparently under embargo. Hardly surprising, as the case is so new, but it doesn’t close the door to informed speculation. As a woman who reads the news religiously, I know that ‘suspected foul play’ usually means there’s some physical evidence of additional trauma – maybe a gunshot wound, maybe stabbing. Something more than simple drowning, which would be the more obvious cause of death in a river. Drowning could indeed be murder, of course, but it could also be just a fall. Or suicide. ‘Suspected foul play’ hints there’s something more.
My temples are starting to throb. Stinking, ineffectual pills. And the air con is doing shit, blue snowflake or not. I can feel my blouse clinging to the sweat on my back.
I recite the details over and over, making them almost a chant.
A thirty-nine-year-old woman’s body.
Found at the river’s edge.
White.
Cause of death – unannounced.
Foul play.
Sinister.
I’m sure there were other things I looked at in the news today, other happenings that will have attracted me at the bookshop. But my mind is stuck on just this. On this, and …
Rambler, brambler, with rushes at my knees …
The song won’t leave my head. My breathing has become heavier, and for some reason my right leg is starting to ache. I can’t think of any reason for that. I try to reposition myself on the seat.
The lane to my left suddenly shifts to life. I click on the indicator and push myself into the moving traffic at the first opening. Distraction from the odd sensations. Triumph. We clock a stellar seven miles per hour before the motion slows again, and within a few seconds we’re back at a standstill. The lane I left is moving. I clench my fists tight on the wheel. The urge to unleash a satisfying barrage of profanities is almost overwhelming, but I try not to recite the curse words David describes, with mock old-world flare, as ‘so awfully unwomanly’. Though, to be honest, he always says it with a very un-old-worldly grin, which makes me think he half-likes those moments when I lose verbal control.
I blink heavily two or three times. There are trails there, again, following my eyelids as they move.
The traffic starts to flow once more, and I attempt to distract myself, shifting my attention to the hillsides and vineyards alongside the road. All the locals along this particular stretch of Highway 101 refer to it as the Redwood Road, though I’ve yet to spot a Redwood tree anywhere near it. An enormous growers estate, entirely modern but designed to look ancient and historical, sits off in the sweeping green hills to the left of the highway. It’s a winery, of course, as most things are around here, but I can never remember the name of it. It’s built like a castle, complete with turrets and triangular flags. An odd way to sell wine. But the visual effect is dramatic, and the delivery trucks pulling in with supplies could as easily be wagons with mounted drivers, their diesel horsepower replaced with the actual thing. It wouldn’t look the slightest bit out of place.
But then there’s a Beyoncé cutaway on the radio and a new update on the refugee crisis in Eastern Europe, and the world again seems so very, recognizably, modern. Even the vineyard castle suddenly looks pallid and uninspired. Just another hoaxy specialty shop along the roadside, different only in size from the shed a few miles back and the Safeway warehouse at the next intersection.
That’s how quickly the world changes. A soundtrack, a flash of circumstance, and it’s a different