An Eastern-Oklahoma Murder Mystery

I’ve decided to share some of my short stories with you directly in my blog.  The first one is called “A lesson in Drowning,” and this is the first time I’ve published it anywhere.

I’ll be posting these stories in installments–not all at once.  Here is the first installment.

A Lesson in Drowning

© 2011 by Horton Deakins

 

        “Dad, why do you think they call this ‘No Head Hollow’?” The boy pounded the water and slapped the resulting splash toward his father.

        “Keep that up, sonny boy, and you may find out,” the boy’s father replied, as he swung his open palms across the surface of the stream and executed his river-water retaliation.

        “Dad, wait.”

        “No prisoners — no quarter!”

        The boy pointed upriver. “No, look, Dad. Someone’s floating in the water. They’re coming this way.”

        The boy’s father broke off his counterattack to take a closer look. He saw a man clinging to woman with one arm and to a makeshift raft of life jackets with the other.

        “Are you okay?” Dan shouted. “Hey, are you okay?”

        The man floating in the river raised his head slightly and moaned, “Help! Please help. My wife — I don’t think she’s breathing.”

        The river was not too terribly deep where father and son were playing together, and as the floating pair passed, they were able to get close enough to them to snag their makeshift raft.

        The woman indeed appeared lifeless. “What happened to you?” the taller of the two rescuers asked.

       “My name’s Michael, Michael D’Angelo. And this is my wife, Tina. Oh, God, can you help her?” he sobbed.

       “Michael, I’m Dan. I’m going to see if I can’t get her breathing again. Son, go get your cell phone and call nine-one-one.”

       Dan tried in vain to resuscitate Tina, and then he started chest compressions. After about three minutes, he gave up. “I’m sorry, Michael. I think she’s gone.”

       Michael knelt in the river rock where his wife lay and hugged her tightly, rocking back and forth and wailing. “Tina, oh God, Tina, Tina, no, no, no, Tina … you can’t be gone … no!”

       The boy came running back with his phone.  “Dad, they said the sheriff was nearby and he would come. I didn’t tell them she might be dead.” The boy noticed the pallor on the woman’s face and her husband’s distress. “She’s dead, isn’t she?”

       “I’m afraid so, son. Why don’t you go back up to the car, okay?”

       In about ten minutes a sheriff’s car bearing Cherokee County markings rolled up, and a uniformed law enforcement officer came running up to the lifeless body.

       “It’s too late,” Dan said.

       The sheriff turned on his personal radio. “This is Sheriff Gray. I’m down at No Head Hollow and I’m going to need an ambulance.”

       “Sheriff, I’m Dan Fremont. I pulled the woman and her husband out of the water.”

       “Cyril Gray. Were they swimming?” He looked at Michael. “Sir, were you trying to swim in the river?”

       Michael was too distraught to respond.

       “Sheriff Gray,” Dan said, “the man’s name is Michael D’Angelo. He said his wife’s name was Tina. They came down the river with life jackets, but they weren’t wearing them.” Dan pointed to the pile of personal flotation devices. “Over there.”

       “I’m going to need to get a statement from you, Mr. Fremont, so don’t go anywhere.”

       Sheriff Gray gave Michael a few moments to collect himself, and then said, “Sir, do you feel like answering a few questions? There’s an ambulance coming, and I’d like to try to make some sense out of all this before it arrives.”

       Michael wiped his eyes and nose, coughed a few times, and nodded.

       “All right. The other man said your name was Michael. Is that right? And this is your wife, and her name is Tina?”

       Michael nodded again.

       “Whereabouts did you get into the river? How far upstream?”

       Michael looked up at the sheriff. “I don’t know how far, it had to be a long ways. It was Comb’s Bridge. We dove off.”

       “Mister, that was a foolish thing to do, and I think you know that. What possessed you to dive off that bridge with all the warnings about people dying or getting paralyzed?”

       Michael sighed and buried his face in his hands. “We were celebrating our tenth anniversary. We partied back in Oklahoma City last night, but we wanted to make it special. We dove off that bridge the day we got engaged and thought we would relive the moment. The plan was to toss the jackets off the upstream side of the bridge and then meet up with them after we dove off the downstream side.” He started to cry again. “I don’t know what happened. After she surfaced, she never moved again.”

————————–   End of installment #1 —————————————