Swimmer Read Free Page A

– but there was nobody else there. Tracey tells me that she didn’t see anybody, and by the time the police arrived the footprints had all dried up. The detective told me I was in shock. Well, I
was
in shock. Of course I was in shock. But I know what I saw.’
    â€˜So … uh … what do you want
me
to do?’
    â€˜I want you to find out who murdered Mike, Mr Rook. I want to find out who pushed him under the water, and why.’ She was crying now, and she was so grief-stricken and exhausted that her voice acquired a deep throaty undertone, as if she were starting to sing an aria in a tragic opera.
    â€˜Jennie, I’d love to be able to help you. But this sounds like police business to me.’
    â€˜I told you. The police don’t believe me. They’re going to say it was an accident, or parental neglect, or whatever.’
    Jim sat down on the arm of his couch. Outside the window, the sun was gradually sinking over Venice and the evening sky was the color of boysenberry jelly. ‘Jennie, I’m packing up to leave. I’ve been offered a job with the Department of Education in Washington, D.C.’
    â€˜You’re
leaving
? What about Special Class II?’
    â€˜Well, we all have to move on. This is going to give me the chance to help students all over the country, not just LA.’
    â€˜When are you going? Do you think we could meet?’
    Jim looked toward Tibbles Two, but all she could do was yawn and dig her claws into the cushions. Either she was provoking him into making a decision, or else she was trying to tell him that he was wasting his time. She was only a cat, for sure, but he had seen what she could do before. Her nose was more finely tuned for fortune-telling cards than any of the so-called ‘psychic sensitives’ that he had ever met.
    The day before he had been offered his new job in Washington, she had scratched out of his Grimaud pack the eight of diamonds, signifying ‘delay’, and the ace of diamonds, which represented ‘a wicked woman’. Then – haughtily – she had stalked back to the couch, curled herself up and sat there watching him to see what his reaction would be.
    Jim said, ‘I’m packing now, as a matter of fact. I’m supposed to be flying out Wednesday morning.’
    â€˜Mr Rook – I’m sorry, Jim – I know this is an imposition. But I know that Mike didn’t drown by accident, and I don’t have any other way of proving it.’
    Jim raked his fingers through his tousled hair. In the mirror on the other side of his apartment, another Jim Rook, with his face back to front, did the same thing. The Jim Rook in the mirror was thinking, When you take on a student, when you teach her how to write and how to talk, and how to make her own impression on the world around her, when does your responsibility end? All of that poetry you taught her, all of those plays, all of those hours struggling with Shakespeare and Emily Dickinson and Kenneth Patchen: ‘Have you wondered why all the windows in heaven were broken?’
    The trouble was, he knew what the truth was; and the truth was that a teacher’s responsibility never ends, any more than a parent’s or a priest’s.
    â€˜Okay,’ he said. ‘Do you know the Café del Rey, on Admiralty Way? I can meet you there at – what, maybe eight o’clock?’
    â€˜I’m sorry,’ Jennie told him, and he could tell that she was crying. ‘I’m so frightened – I’m so scared – and I couldn’t think of anybody else to turn to.’
    After she had hung up, Jim sat on the edge of the couch with his head bowed. He had promised himself that he would never again answer an appeal for help from anybody who was troubled by supernatural events – or seemingly supernatural events, anyhow. He had nearly died from pneumonia at the age of nine, the same age as Mike, and ever since then he had