“Can they even do that?” she asked, looking at him.
“Hey, you’re the one with the strange friend. Ask him.”
“God, I don’t want to,” she said, with a frown.
“I can’t imagine he’d want you to either,” Rodney said, with a laugh, “but I was just checking.”
With that disquiet in her mind, she started searching the traffic cams, trying to figure out how many people might have even been in the location.
“Do we know when they jumped?” she asked. Starting the evening before, she was on the Second Narrows Bridge, and it didn’t have the most ideal placement of cameras. It was great for traffic jams or breakdowns on the bridge, but it wasn’t necessarily any good for some of these pedestrian positions. “I wonder if anybody even looks at the cameras to decide this is a great place to jump. That they’d be on the six o’clock news as a cameo or some such thing.”
“You know what? For people looking to jump, I doubt they really care where the camera placement is.”
“Unless they’re really determined to make sure nobody can come and stop them,” she muttered. “I mean, seriously”—she looked over at him—“if you would jump, would you go just anywhere?”
“Once you are committed to that act, there is no going back, which is why bridges are so popular.”
She nodded slowly. “And I get that. However, if you were choosing a public bridge like this, wouldn’t you want the cover of darkness?”
“I would imagine that could be true, but what is the problem with that?”
“Well, the problem,” she said, “is the cameras.”
“Ah. For some reason I think people jump in the daylight,” Rodney noted. “Yet I wonder if any studies have been done on that.”
With that logic, she hunkered down to take a look. She saw people walking, more than she had expected, which surprised her, but apparently it was a favorite spot for romance too. After they’d looked for hours, finally sitting back, she said, “I can’t even see the jumper.”
“No?” he said. “Mine’s clearer.”
She pushed her chair over to his and took a look. When he pointed out where the jumper was, she saw somebody standing there, but it was in the early hours of the morning. “What’s that, five o’clock?”
“It’s 5:10 a.m., according to the time stamp.”
She nodded. “And that makes sense to me, although I’m usually in a positive frame of mind first thing in the morning, so I don’t know that I personally would commit suicide at that time.”
“If you had a shitty night,” he said, “maybe you wake up and want it to stop.” He shrugged.
“I can see that.” And, with a nod, they kept looking, watching other pedestrians up and down on the bridge. There were definitely some, though most people didn’t seem to be aware of what was going on, and others didn’t even look. Some seemed to avoid people, as if this whole world we’re in meant that they shouldn’t have any contact. One couple stopped just past the woman about to jump, and they stood there for a long moment, their arms around each other, talking quietly, and then they kept on walking and didn’t even see when the woman went over the bridge. They never turned and looked.
“Jesus, it’s as if everybody is blind.”
“I don’t know if it’s that they’re blind or whether they’re just so focused on themselves and not on other people.” Rodney continued. “It’s almost like we’re geared not to be nosy and taught not to intrude, that we should keep to ourselves. It’s a scary world out there. Maybe they ignore it all, unless bullets or bombs are going off. Then that would cause them to turn and look,” he said, as if by explanation.
She struggled as she searched through the people. Some were walking and looked to be dressed for work, heading to the other side of the bridge, which would be a hell of a commute, but it wasn’t out of the realm. Some people were jogging, and there were cyclists all over the place. “I didn’t think,” she said, tapping the monitor, “but a cyclist could get there, and faster, to keep an eye on things.”
“Sure, but which one?” Rodney asked. “Look at all of them.” At that, they watched some more. One stopped and took several photos, as if picking up on a beautiful sunrise. Then he went forward a little bit and took more photos. Even as Rodney went to skip past and go forward again, she said, “Stop. I want to see this guy.”
With a careless shrug, Rodney said, “Fine, I don’t know that he’s got anything to tell us though.”
But she watched as he took more photos, and then slowly he would turn to look behind him and take a few more.
“Look at that. See? He’s looking at her.”
“Looking but doing nothing. But then why would he? Why would he even contemplate that she’s about to do something to herself like that?”
Kate frowned and nodded. “It’s still pretty upsetting. There, she’s taking off her shoes. There she goes.” And, as they watched, the guy took another photo, completely unconcerned that she went over the bridge.
“Instead of running to help,” she cried out, “he took off.”