Excerpt of The Drowning Spool by Monica Ferris

CHAPTER THREE

Tuesday morning, so early it was still dark out, Pam came
through the main entrance of
Watered Silk Senior Complex, nodded at the sleepy-eyed night
guard, and went down the
broad hall to the therapy complex at the far end of the
building. Shucking off her
long down-filled coat, revealing a pink t-shirt and skinny
jeans, she flipped on the
lights in the small exercise room. She turned on the
machine that measured pulse and
blood pressure – it needed time to warm up. She hung up her
coat, locked her purse in
her office desk, and unlocked and went through the door that
led into the therapy pool.
She turned on the bright overhead lights. The air was warm
and moist and she could
feel her winter-dry skin joyfully opening to it.

She turned on the underwater lights that illuminated the
interior of the pool – and it
was then she saw something large at the bottom of the deep
end. She stared in
disbelief. Oh, my God, it was a person, arms out and legs
apart, not moving. She took
two steps closer. Yes, it was really there, a naked woman,
with lots of long blond
hair, face down. Pam waited a few seconds for whoever it
was to come up for air, but
the person was motionless.

Her training clicked in, overriding her instinctive freeze.
She pulled her winter
boots off, dropped her keys and cell phone on the floor, and
jumped into the water.
She ducked under, grabbed the woman by one arm and pulled
her to the top. The arm was
warm - the same temperature as the water - the skin rubbery,
the joints stiff. Pam
turned her over, noting with a sick feeling the half-closed
eyes and foam-filled mouth.
She did not recognize the woman, who was young, petite, and
really pretty, and could
not imagine how she came to drown here.

Pam had taken a lot of life-saving classes, but this was her
first experience with an
actual death by drowning. She grasped the woman under her
chin and floundered with it
to the shallow end.

The body's rigidity made it a clumsy thing to get out onto
the apron. Pam pushed a
thick wet length of pale hair out of the way to press into
the carotid, seeking for a
pulse. She was not surprised to find none.

She ran around to pick up her cell phone, picked it up and
dialed 911 with trembling
fingers. When an operator answered, she said, too rapidly,
“There's a drowned woman,
in our pool. A young woman, I don't know how she got in
here, no one's allowed in here
at night; in fact, I don't know who she is and she's naked
and she's dead, no pulse - ”

“Hold on, slow down,” said the operator in a slow, soothing
voice. “Where are you?”.

“Oh, gosh, yes, this is Pam Fielding and we're at Watered
Silk, that senior retirement
community on twenty-seventh in Hopkins, in the therapy pool,
and I don't know who the
victim is, I've never seen her before, she's way too young
to be a resident - ”

The operator, still in that calm voice, interrupted her with
questions and made her
repeat the information until Pam was nearly screaming into
the phone. She finally
tossed it down, ran back and began futile resuscitation
efforts. After a minute, she
was shocked to find herself sobbing.