who looked about eight, and threw up twice while his mother shouted at the triage nurse. They were admitted immediately.
Matthias and Bobbi’s father came back into the waiting room. Norman Brooks looked as though he wanted to kill someone. I couldn’t blame him. Except that evidently the someone he wanted to kill was me. He lurched at me, lifted me out of my chair by the lapels of my jacket, and shoved me hard against the wall.
“You son of a bitch,” he snarled into my face, breath sour, spittle flying. “This is your fault.”
Matthias pulled him off me. Although he was shorter than Brooks, and not as heavy, he didn’t have any trouble handling the bigger man. “Mr. Brooks,” he said, marching him to a chair and pushing him down into it, while the middle-aged couple and the scruffy man watched cautiously. “I don’t care if you used to be a cop. I will have you arrested if you don’t pull yourself together. Mr. McCall had nothing to do with your daughter’s attack. If you lay a hand on him again, I will make damned sure he presses charges against you for assault. Do you understand me, sir?”
“It’s all right, Greg,” I said. “He’s upset. So would I be if it was my daughter lying in there.”
“No, it’s not all right. He’s not doing anyone any good acting like a drunken bully. Bobbi or himself.”
Brooks sneered. “I s’pose you think I should be grateful for your sympathy, eh, McCall? Well, I’m not. It’s your goddamned fault she’s in there.”
“How is it my fault, sir? I didn’t attack her.”
He jerked his chin at Matthias. “He said she was working. You should’ve been with her.”
“She’s gone on dozens of jobs on her own,” I said.
“Yeah, but it’s just this one that counts, isn’t it?” He waved me away. “Get out of here. Go. You’re not needed here.”
Anger boiled up in me. I wanted to hit him. “If anyone’s not needed here, it’s you,” I said, teeth clenched so hard my jaw ached, fists knotted at my sides. “When was the last time you saw her? When was the last time you even spoke to her? She told me the other day she hasn’t seen you in months and that the last time she did see you, you were drunk and feeling sorry for yourself.”
Suddenly, he was on his feet, in my face again, before Matthias could stop him. “She’s still my daughter,” he shouted as I backed away from him. “There’s fuck all you can do about that, you pissant faggot punk. Get out of here. You, too,” he added to Matthias. “Neither of you has any right to be here.”
I opened my mouth to tell him that I had just as much right to be here as he did, maybe more, but Matthias put his hand on my arm.
“Tom, there’s nothing to be gained by arguing with him. Let’s go. I know the staff here. They’ll call me if there’s any change in her condition.”
Brooks smirked as Matthias led me toward the exit.
“Does he know you and Bobbi are seeing each other?” I asked, still seething, as we left the hospital.
“No, I don’t think he does. Although I doubt right now it would make much difference to him.”
“He must’ve been a hell of a cop,” I said.
“Don’t judge a man till you’ve walked in his shoes, Tom. As you said, what if it was your daughter in there?”
My anger evaporated.
“What’s the problem between you and him, anyway?” Matthias asked.
“I don’t know what his problem is,” I said. “Mine seems to be him.”
We rounded the corner onto Oak Street. His personal car, a Saab 950 Turbo, was parked in a restricted zone. I couldn’t remember where I’d parked my Jeep Liberty, which I’d bought to replace my venerable old Land Rover. It was a few minutes after three. Sunrise was still two hours away.
“Do you want me to help you find your car?”
“No, it can’t be far away. I’ll just walk around till I find it.”
“You’re sure? I don’t mind.”
“Thanks, yeah, I’m okay. You’ll call me when you hear something?”
“Of course. The RAS — Robbery and Assault Squad — investigators will likely want to talk to you.”
“I’ll be available,” I said.
We shook hands. He got into his car and I went looking for mine. It didn’t take me long to find it. Or the parking ticket under the wiper blade.
chapter three
I drove home, undressed, and got into bed. I was exhausted, but I couldn’t sleep. My eyes kept sliding open and it was too great an effort to keep them closed. I got out of bed, went downstairs, and out of desperation made a cup of camomile tea from the box Reeny had left behind. After the first sip, I poured the vile stuff down the drain. I trudged upstairs and climbed back into bed, to lie staring into the dark for another hour, unable to erase the image of Bobbi, battered and bruised, surrounded by muttering machines, with tubes down her throat, needles inserted into her veins, and electrodes glued to her head and chest. I didn’t know what frightened me more: that she might die, that she might never wake up, or that when she did wake up she wouldn’t be Bobbi anymore.
I finally gave up trying to sleep, got out of bed, showered, dressed, and at ten past six was standing on the quay by the main entrance to Broker’s Bay Marina. The sun was rising over the coastal mountains. The fog of the previous day had moved out and the cool morning air was so clean and clear it had an almost surreal quality, like cut crystal. Gulls wheeled and shrieked, squabbling over the carcass of a big fish in the water by Fisherman’s Wharf. Above and behind me, thirty metres over Anderson Street and the entrance to Granville Island, morning traffic hummed and rumbled on the Granville Street Bridge, the deeper notes resonating in my chest cavity.
It hadn’t been difficult to locate the Wonderlust. She was a fifty-foot-plus motor yacht, easily the largest pleasure boat in the marina, occupying the full length of the T at the end of the fourth and longest of the marina’s eight floating docks, almost directly opposite Fisherman’s Wharf. Although she was a bit dowdy and her chrome was dull and her hull grungy from neglect, she was a sturdy, well-equipped boat that would sleep eight without crowding. Although I was no expert, I guessed she would easily fetch a quarter of a million or more if she was cleaned up. It struck me as odd that Ms. Waverley had wanted photographs of the boat before she was shipshape. A few dollars invested in sprucing her up would have added considerably to the price.
The marina entrance was gated, but the gate was propped open, despite the sign that read “Do Not Prop Door” in large white lettering. I walked down the ramp and out to the end of the floating dock to where the Wonderlust was moored. I climbed the short, portable gangway onto the afterdeck, and knocked on the hatch to the main cabin. A few seconds later, I knocked again, harder. Then harder still. The hatch rattled in the frame. If Ms. Waverley was aboard, she was a very sound sleeper indeed. I tried the handle; the hatch was locked.
From the afterdeck of the Wonderlust, through a thick forest of masts
