Time Release (19 page)

He tucked his scarf into his jacket and zipped up the front. The thermometer at the parking attendant's booth said 40 degrees, but it was in the sun. The morning air felt 15 degrees colder with the wind whipping off the river and moving like a jet stream down the Boulevard of the Allies. He walked straight into it, headed for the Point, leaving behind the street roar for the strange, hollow silence of the city's sprawling urban park.

Why had he just assumed Sonny trained at one of the local indoor pools? Hell, what reasonable person would assume otherwise? In almost any other context, swimming daily in the frigid Ohio River would have seemed unthinkable. The more he mulled it, though, the more it almost made sense with Sonny. For every action there's an equal and opposite reaction. Extreme trauma can lead to extreme behavior.

What he didn't understand was the physiology of it. The human body isn't designed for prolonged exposure to cold water, which leaches heat many times faster than cold air. To survive more than a few minutes, the body's core organs would either have to be evenly insulated by a considerable amount of fat, or the body would have to generate heat as quickly as the water leached it away. The swimmer would have to keep a furious pace, or die.

He passed underneath the Fort Pitt Bridge overpass, his footsteps echoing off the once-white walls that arched over his head like a gray cavern. Except for a few tourists, the park was nearly empty. The fountain had been drained for the winter. The symphony stage was shuttered until spring. On Mount Washington, the electronic aluminum clock read 10:32 a.m. Downing said Sonny usually finished between 10:30 and 11. He walked faster, even though Sonny couldn't get out of the park without passing him. He needed to see to believe.

Sonny's towel, backpack, and thermal blanket were where Downing said they would be, stowed in a hedge to the right of the fountain. But there was no sign of Sonny. Christensen pulled on his ski gloves and waited, watching downriver, looking for proof. He took the glove off his right hand and lay down on the cold concrete rim of the Point, reaching, trying to touch the water. The Ohio was high enough that his fingertips grazed the eddying surface. The river was all but ice.

He stood up and looked again toward the arch of the West End Bridge. As impossible as it seemed, a solitary swimmer was moving upriver, maybe twenty yards off the north bank. Christensen squinted, guessing the swimmer was about three-quarters of a mile away.

“My God,” he said.

He felt helpless, found himself retrieving Sonny's things from the hedge. At least he could have the towel and blanket ready. He stood there, still not believing, imagining the pain, watching the swimmer moving arm over arm over arm, closing the distance in a surprisingly short time. The pace was frenzied but still graceful, a hypnotic rhythm, as though the swimmer were pulling the entire city toward him. Even with the swim cap and goggles, who else could it be?

Sonny didn't slow even as he neared the Point. His shoulders were neither in nor out of the water, but skimming the surface, as though he'd achieved perfect zero buoyancy, was at one with the water. In a single motion—a final, powerful dolphin kick—he thrust himself up to the concrete rim and pulled himself out of the river about fifteen feet away. He stood there, bent at the waist, hanging his arms straight down and shaking his hands, like he was trying to restore circulation. River water pooled at his bare feet. His skin was bone white.

Christensen walked to Sonny, holding the towel and blanket out for him to choose. Sonny pried the goggles and cap from his head and noticed him for the first time. With a weak smile, Sonny took the towel and managed a “Thanks.”

Christensen fought for words. A queasy feeling crept over him, like the time he'd glimpsed the wrist scar from a client's recent suicide attempt.

“Blanket,” Sonny said. He was breathing hard, but not nearly as hard as Christensen had expected considering the exertion of a miles-long swim. With the goggles and cap still in one hand, Sonny wrapped the blanket around himself, an Indian chief in reflective silver.

“Jog with me,” he said, setting off toward the city skyline.

“Jog?”

“To the car,” Sonny shouted over his shoulder. “Before I get cold.”

Christensen grabbed the backpack and towel and took off on a dead run, trying to catch up. This was Sonny's idea of jogging? Sonny was still barefoot, moving away fast.

Christensen pulled alongside him as they neared the underpass. “You get cold
after
you get out of that water?” he said.

Sonny nodded. “Body temperature starts to drop.”

“Explain that to me sometime,” he said.

They passed through the dim underpass, then crossed into daylight on the other side. He knew the sensation. The city's annual Great Race 10K finished here every year. But instead of reliving his steadily improving finishes of the past two years, Christensen found himself imagining the damage its rough pavement might do to Sonny's numb feet. They caught the traffic light at Commonwealth Place and crossed in front of the State Office Building and the squat brown
Press
plant.

The parking-lot attendant looked up from his comic book as Sonny approached. “Hey,” he said, pressing a set of keys into Sonny's free hand.

“Thanks.” Sonny dropped the keys as he tried to guide one into his car's door lock. Then he dropped them again.

“Let me,” Christensen said.

When the door was open, Sonny folded himself into the driver's seat and slammed the door. Then he reached over and pulled up the lock on the passenger's door. Christensen circled the Toyota and got in. Sonny was starting to shiver underneath the thermal blanket. His face was still pale, but not nearly as pale as it was when he'd climbed out of the river. Blood was slowly circulating back into his skin. Sonny closed his eyes as the shivering got more violent.

Christensen watched, helpless. “Want me to start the car and turn on the heat?”

“No.” Eyes still closed. Body quaking.

“Call an ambulance?” He was serious, but Sonny laughed, an awkward, sharp thing Christensen found reassuring.

“It'll stop in about ten minutes. It's normal.”

Christensen thought back to his impression of Sonny that day they first met in his office. How normal he seemed, considering what he'd been through. How apparently unaf­fected he was by the train wreck of his childhood. He'd suspected after that first meeting that Sonny had an outlet for his rage, some way to deal with the pain, but he couldn't imagine then what it was. Now he knew. But why this? If you wanted to punish yourself, why not just drive nails into your hands? He answered his own question: If you survived, cold-water swimming did no visible damage. Like electro-convulsion therapy.

Sonny flexed his hands, then draped them over the steering wheel like wet socks. The car rocked with his shivering. The windows fogged over, erasing the city, leaving them alone in a slate-gray mist. Christensen watched, horrified, fascinated, as Sonny's body struggled back from the brink, doing everything it could to survive.

When the shivering finally stopped, Christensen waved his hand in front of Sonny's face, thinking he was asleep. He'd read a lot of Jack London stories as a kid, and seemed to remember hypothermia victims just drifting off to sleep. The seat back was fully reclined, and Sonny hadn't opened his eyes for at least five minutes. Then his body had become very still.

“I'm okay,” Sonny said without opening his eyes.

Christensen exhaled. “Sorry.”

“The shivering's part of it. No way around it. Thing is, there's not usually anyone around to watch.”

“They make these things called wet suits, you know.”

Sonny finally blinked. “Sort of defeats the purpose.”

“Which is?”

Sonny, eyes open now, stared straight ahead. Christensen rushed to fill the silence.

“Can you explain it to me? The thing about your body temperature dropping.”

Sonny pulled the seat back upright and flexed his hands. “As long as I'm swimming, I'm generating enough heat to maintain temperature. As soon as I stop, the temperature starts to fall.”

“So your problems don't really start until you're out of the water?”

Sonny turned the key, wiggled something under the dash, and the Toyota coughed to life. He set the heater on low. “Basically. The other thing is, capillaries in my skin start to open up once I get out of the water. But since my skin is so cold, it cools down the blood that starts flowing back into them, like a car radiator. So it drops a few more degrees. But physiologists tell me they're important degrees. That's why I needed to keep moving.”

Christensen took off his gloves and reached to the floor, thawing his fingers at the heater vent. Sonny threw the blanket off his shoulders, apparently comfortable now in only his dark blue Speedo. Christensen figured the temperature inside the car was probably 45 degrees.

“You do this how often?”

“Four days a week. Sometimes less. But there's a crossing I want to try in late February, early March. And I need to stay acclimated. So I try to swim whenever I can get down here.”

“A crossing?”

Sonny hesitated. “Lake Erie.”

“In winter?”

“Nobody's done it.”

Christensen shook his head. “With good reason. Can't you pretty much walk across at that time of year?”

“In parts. This place I want to cross, near Buffalo, should be okay.”

“How far?”

Sonny hesitated again, then said something under his breath.

“Come again?”

Sonny cleared his throat. “Fifteen miles.”

On the one hand, it was a goal. Goals are good. Goals are forward-thinking and positive. On the other hand, it was suicide—not a goal most psychologists consider healthy.

“Nobody's done it,” Sonny repeated.

Nobody's ever climbed into a vat of molten steel either, Christensen was tempted to say, at least nobody who expected to climb out again. But he knew that confronting Sonny would complicate things, that it was best just to leave it for now.

“I came down for a reason,” he said. “I think we should keep talking.”

Sonny turned the heater down, then reached into the backseat for a pair of sweats. He opened his door, stepped out and pulled them on, then got back in. “Okay,” he said.

“That's it? I figured you'd put up a fight.”

Sonny held his hands up, palms facing the windshield. “It's getting worse.”

“The numbness?”

“All the time now. And I don't sleep much. When I do, it's really weird.”

“Still having the dreams?”

“Whatever they are.”

Christensen waited, seeing which direction Sonny wanted to take this, gauging his need to talk. Sonny closed his eyes again.

“My father shoved my aunt Rachel down the stairs once.”

“This was a dream?”

“I'm not sure. But I can see it. She's lying at the bottom of the stairs in our house on Jancey Street, holding her head. He's standing over her. Ever see that picture of what's his name, Muhammad Ali, standing over some bleary black guy flat on his back?”

“Clay Defeats Liston.” Christensen remembered the head­line.

“Whatever. Like that. He's screaming ‘Bitch' over and over. And she's screaming back at him.”

Sonny's hands suddenly curled into tight fists, like they were cramping. His eyes were still closed, but he clearly was in pain. He shoved both fists under his knees as they started to shake.

“What provoked it?”

“She wouldn't take his shit like my mother did. Just the usual.”

“What happened then?”

“I don't know. It's like I see these things so clear, but just parts of them. Just scenes. As soon as I try to figure it out, it's gone.”

Christensen took a chance. “Maybe you don't want to see the rest.”

Sonny didn't seem to hear. “There was one dream about a book. He went off on my mom when he found it.”

“On your mother? What kind of book?”

“Ore? Gold ore? Just some book.”

“And it made him angry?”

“He beat her with a broom handle and left. David and I cleaned her up.” The image seemed to trigger something in Sonny. He shuddered.

“There's something else,” he said. He reached across the car, his hands still curled, and opened the glove compartment with one extended finger. “See that envelope?”

Christensen peered into the jumble of maps and repair receipts. “The one on top?”

“Came in the mail a couple days ago. Scared the shit out of me, but I don't know why.”

The letter inside was a single typewritten paragraph, centered on the page:

I am baptizing you in the water, but there is one to come who is mightier than I. His winnowing-fan is in his hand to clear his threshing floor and gather the wheat into his barn; but the chaff he will burn in unquenchable fire.

It was attributed to John the Baptist. Christensen read it again. “This mean anything to you?” he said.

“Not really.”

“No idea who sent it?”

“No.”

“And you don't know why?”

“No.”

But it scares him, Christensen thought. Maybe it was meant to. Like an innocuous videotape. Like a threat.

“Can I take this? I think Grady Downing should see it.”

Sonny turned toward him. “Why?”

He ignored the question and didn't wait for Sonny's permission, figuring he'd just slip it casually into his jacket. Remembering the care Downing used in handling the video, he became suddenly worried about destroying evidence with his fingerprints. He pulled his ski gloves back on and tried to fold the paper back into the envelope. It looked about as casual as open-heart surgery. Sonny watched, saying nothing.

Christensen tried to divert Sonny's attention from the note. “How do you feel about all this stuff?”