“Uh, look at the time,” I said. “You’d better saddle up.”
“Right,” Bobbi said.
I helped her lug her gear down to the van, although she didn’t really need my help, then went back upstairs, got a Granville Island Lager out of the film fridge, another thing digital photography had made more or less obsolete, and put my feet up to await the arrival of Jeanie Stone. I hoped she wouldn’t be too put off by the mess — and that she brought more beer.
chapter two
I was dreaming of Reeny when the telephone rang. In that weird way of dreams, the ringing was integrated into my dream, interrupting our lovemaking on the roof deck of my house, which became Pendragon, the old sailboat Reeny had lived on until it had burned to the waterline the year before. Linda, my former spouse, said, “Aren’t you going to answer it?” as she sat naked on the ironing board in the kitchen of our first apartment, clipping her toenails. “No,” I replied, bailing the water from the bilge of my house with a cowboy hat. The ringing continued, so I tumbled out of bed and stumbled down the hall into my home office to answer it.
“H’lo,” I mumbled.
“Tom? It’s Greg Matthias.”
“Greg?” I peered at the clock radio on the bookcase under the window. It read 1:53 a.m. “What’s wrong?”
“It’s Bobbi,” he said. “She’s in Vancouver General emergency.”
A jolt of adrenalin seared away the cobwebs. “What happened? Is she all right?”
“She was found floating just offshore under the Burrard Street Bridge,” he said. “We’re not sure what happened, but it looks like she was attacked. She hasn’t regained consciousness.”
The Burrard Street Bridge spanned False Creek about a quarter kilometre west of Granville Island, a little more than a stone’s throw from the marina where she’d gone to photograph Anna Waverley’s boat.
“I’ll be there in twenty minutes,” I said.
Twenty-three minutes later I was standing with Greg Matthias beside Bobbi’s bed in the emergency ward of the Vancouver General Hospital. She lay on her side, a tube down her throat, connected to an oxygen feed, and an IV in her arm, connected to an IV pump and a bag of clear fluid. Her face was a mass of raw, red abrasions, purpling bruises, and deep lacerations, some of which were closed with butterfly bandages, some with stitches. There was a strip of tape across the bridge of her nose and dried blood at the rims of her nostrils. Her eyes were swollen shut and beginning to blacken, and her left eyebrow was shaved partly away so a cut could be stitched. I could see the ends of black threads protruding like tiny worms from between her cruelly distended and discoloured lips and dried blood caked the corners of her mouth. A big gauze bandage bulged behind her right ear. A bundle of coloured wires snaked from the loose neck of her hospital gown, attached to electrodes glued to her chest. More electrodes were affixed to her head. A sensor was clipped to the tip of the first finger of her left hand. All were linked to machines that beeped softly and displayed her vital signs on colourful LCD screens that looked more like video games than medical monitors. I wanted to take her hand, but the knuckles of both hands were like raw hamburger and two fingers of her right hand were splinted.
“It was touch and go for a while,” Matthias said. “She’s stable now.”
My gut was twisted in knots and my eyes burned. “When do they think she’ll wake up?”
“They say it could be minutes, hours, or days. She’s taken a terrible beating, Tom. There’s no indication of major internal trauma, but they’re worried about intra-cranial swelling. And there’s no way of knowing how long she was in the water or how long her brain may have been deprived of oxygen. She’s fortunate that it was an off-duty paramedic who found her. He was able to give her CPR right away and undoubtedly saved her life.”
“Excuse me, gentlemen,” a woman said behind us. Matthias and I turned to see a tiny Asian nurse who looked like a teenager but whose no-nonsense manner left no doubt about who was in charge. “Would you go back to the waiting room, please? The doctor would like to examine the patient. We’ll let you know if there’s any change.”
“Have you called her father?” I asked, as we walked to the waiting room. Matthias was out of uniform, in jeans rather than his usual suit and tie.
“I tried,” he said. “There was no answer. We asked the Richmond RCMP to send a car around to his home, but I haven’t heard if they’ve found him.”
There were two uniformed VPD cops in the waiting area. “When can we talk to her?” one of them asked Matthias.
“Obviously not till she wakes up,” he replied.
“How long should we wait?”
“Why don’t you go back out? Someone will let you know if there’s a change.”
The cops left. We were alone in the waiting area then, except for the triage nurse behind his Plexiglas window. I doubted it would be quiet for long. Matthias asked me if I wanted to risk a cup of coffee from a machine against the wall.
“Why not?” I said. “We’re close to medical attention.” He paid.
“Pardon me for sounding like a cop,” Matthias said when we were seated with our coffee, “but was Bobbi working last night?”
I told him about Ms. Waverley and her boat. He made notes while I talked, then asked me to describe Ms. Waverley, which I did.
“Do you know if Bobbi met her at the marina?” he asked.
“No, I don’t. She left the studio a little past seven and I haven’t spoken to her since.”
As I sipped the coffee, I remembered Bobbi telling me that she and Matthias were supposed to have had a late dinner to discuss their relationship. The coffee tasted awful, weak and bitter, but it was hot and I needed the caffeine. Obviously, Matthias and Bobbi hadn’t met, so I didn’t bring it up. I took another sip of coffee instead. It hadn’t improved.
“Do you have an address for her?” Matthias said.
“Eh?”
“Anna Waverley. Do you have an address for her?”
I shook my head. “Only that she lives in Point Grey,” I said. He made another note. “She paid cash up front,” I told him. “I was supposed to do the job, but I had to meet with one of our other clients, so Bobbi took it.”
“It’s not your fault,” Matthias said.
“Nevertheless, I feel responsible.”
“I understand,” he said. He looked as though he was having trouble framing his next question. I beat him to the punch.
“The client’s name is Jeanie Stone. I’ll have to get back to you with her contact information. She left a few minutes past nine. I got home around ten, watched a little TV, and went to bed at eleven-thirty. Not much of an alibi, is it?”
“I’ve heard better,” he said, smiling thinly. “Where did you meet with her?”
“At the studio,” I said. I took a breath and asked, “Was she raped?”
Matthias shook his head. “It doesn’t appear so.”
“From