Old Chaos (9781564747136) Page 7

He couldn’t remember what the basement level of the kitchen wing held, but it didn’t matter, because the floor above had slumped, blocking downstairs entry. There was a door on the southwest side, a safety exit, probably from the kitchen, and the metal stairway that led down from it looked intact. He tested it. It creaked but held.

  “I’m going up. Shine your light for me.” It was getting close to dawn, but overcast and still raining, so it was dark. He made his way slowly, step by step. When he peered in the door, his flashlight shone on chaos.

  Surely no one could live through that. Roof tiles, ripped dry-wall, cross beams, and ceiling fixtures had rained down on burst cabinets and fallen appliances. A big refrigerator lay on its front, cooling cables exposed. And that was just the kitchen. Beyond it, the dining area had taken the brunt when the enormous flagstone chimney fell.

  “Beth!” he called. His voice was swallowed by the darkness. He shouted her name again, and this time he thought he heard something. He cocked his head, listening.

  “Help…” A reedy cry, barely audible.

  Rob rattled the door. It was stuck. He looked down at Linda’s anxious upturned face. “Get Jake and Todd, with a pry bar and the jack. Call for an ambulance.”

  “One is already coming.” She trotted off.

  Rob turned back to the door. “Beth, it’s Rob. Can you hear me?”

  A moan.

  “Hold on, sweetheart. We’ve found Mack and the baby. They’re on the way to the hospital. Are you all right?”

  “I hurt…head…legs.” She whimpered.

  “Where are you?”

  “Under…butcher block.”

  Rob had never gone into the kitchen. He tried to visualize what she was talking about and failed. He decided to distract her. “Do you know where Peggy is?”

  “Sleeping.” She hiccuped on a sob. “She was… downstairs, sleeping. Skip’s not here. Oh God, hurts.”

  He talked soothing nonsense to her. It was hard to keep it up. After what seemed ages but was probably less than five minutes, Linda returned with Jake and Todd. They pried the door open, and Rob entered cautiously. He made the others wait outside. Everything was wet because most of the roof was gone, broken tiles on every surface.

  Boots crunching the fallen shards, he kept to the edge of the room, inching down toward the far wall. Tiles fell as he walked. When he reached the wall, he found Beth almost at once, knelt, and took her hand. She whimpered but clutched at his fingers with surprising strength.

  A roof tile had struck her head a glancing blow. A lump was forming, and there was a lot of blood. He touched the area gingerly, and Beth moaned. He felt no fracture but couldn’t be sure.

  She was stuck beneath a cart with a butcher-block surface, which she must have dived under when she heard the slide. A falling roof beam had jammed it against the electric stove. Really a small table on wheels, the sturdy cart had protected her head and upper body from the beam, but her left arm was now pinned between the stove and one cart leg. A big square piece of what looked like granite had fallen onto Beth’s legs. The counter? He heaved the slab off and examined her. Both legs were badly bruised. He thought one was broken, and there might be injuries he couldn’t see. That she was alive at all was a miracle.

  He smoothed her pink plush robe over the bruised legs. Her feet were bare. “Beth, we have an emergency here.” No kidding. “Can you tell me who lives in these houses, who’s likely to be at home?”

  She gave a distracted moan.

  “The Gautier house?”

  “Um, four.” She drew a ragged breath. “Husband, wife, teen-aged boy.” A gasp of pain. Her hand gripped his. “Mother-in-law. That’s the wife’s mother.”

  “Good. And the others?”

  “Hurts!”

  “I know, Beth. The medics are coming.” He felt like a torturer. “Am I right in thinking there are two empty houses to the west?”

  “Yes. And house sitter.”

  “What?”

  “House on the creek. Friend is house sitting. They’re in Palm Desert.”

  “Okay. What about the other house?”

  “Family of three.” She began sobbing with pain, so he let it go. A tile fell too near them for comfort.

  Linda was summoning the newly arrived EMTs and a stretcher, but there was still the problem of freeing Beth without bringing the rest of the roof down. At that point, as in noir comedy, one of the search and rescue vans drove in. Rob hated to leave Beth, even for a few minutes, but he needed to talk to somebody who knew what he was doing. Beth said she understood. As he left, he heard her crying. Against his better judgment, he sent Linda into the wreckage to hold her hand.

  The rescue leader turned out to be a prize. He not only had an extra supply of hard hats, he’d also brought the site plan Fred Drinkwater had filed with the county. He’d got it from Earl. Drink-water was still incommunicado.

  Rob explained what he knew to the search leader, whose name was Bat Quinn—as in Bat Masterson, he said. Bat was a high school teacher and a hiker. He knew the area. He also had three burly construction workers on his team. They agreed to take a look at the kitchen and see what could be done, while Bat, his dogs, and the rest of the team searched for survivors. Rob suggested starting with Peggy McCormick, because he knew roughly where she was. After that, the Gautier house. Then the house sitter and the family of three. He’d heard nothing from that direction. He hoped they’d all gone off to Mexico for the winter. It was unlikely.

  Bat set off toward the bedroom wing, eyes sparkling. One of the dogs, a beagle, was already snuffling the ground. Her trainer, a young woman in heavy hiking boots, let the dog pull her along. Rob felt his tension ease a little. He took a hard hat for Linda and put one on himself.

  Bat’s construction workers rigged supports so the EMTs could go in to Beth with their gear. Shortly after sunrise, Rob heard shouts from the bedroom wing that suggested the dog had found Peggy. He stayed with Beth—partly from affection, partly cowardice. He was afraid to know what had happened to Peggy.

  Whatever they’d given Beth had eased her pain and made her drowsy, but she was thinking enough to start to fuss. By the time the medics manhandled her stretcher down the metal staircase, she was in a fine state.

  “I’ll see that somebody calls your kids and Skip,” he promised. She’d said Skip had gone back to Portland.

  “And Mack. What about Mack? You said he was on the way to the hospital.”

  Rob’s throat tightened.

  “Is he hurt? How is he? We quarreled.” She was crying again. Rob hadn’t thought of Beth as a crier.

  He couldn’t speak.

  The paramedics picked up the stretcher—a gurney would have been useless on the uneven ground. Beth twisted her head with its turban-like bandage and glared up at him. “Tell me the truth!”

  He cleared his throat, stumbled on a broken tile, and regained his balance. “He’s hurt, Beth. I don’t know how bad it is. He shielded the baby.”

  She cried harder. “I wish we hadn’t quarreled.”

  Rob shoved aside his own guilt. When he had started the investigation, he’d been thinking in terms of correct police procedure. Common sense had taken a back seat. Meg was right. These people should have been warned, but there was plenty of blame to go around. When he thought of Drinkwater and the tame geologist, his hands itched.

  Beth drowsed now, murmuring Peggy’s name and Mack’s, like a litany.

  As they straggled up to the road, the young woman with the beagle bounded up to Rob. “Bat says to tell you Wienie found Ms. McCormick.”

  “I heard shouting.” Wienie must be the dog.

  “She’s trapped in bed with a beam across her chest, not conscious, but she’s still alive. Bat got to her!” Her face shone with hero worship. “Her pulse is strong.”

  “Thank you, uh—”

  “Mindy.”

  “Right. That’s Peggy’s mother in the ambulance. I’ll tell her the good news.” If Peggy was unconscious and trapped, it
was mixed news at best.

  Mindy went happily off with the dog. Rob sent the three construction workers to see what they could do about freeing Peggy, then reassured Beth and sent her off, too. He called about ambulances. One was on the way. It sounded as if Earl was getting things organized at long last. Rob checked his watch. He told himself to be fair. It was seven-fifteen and barely light.

  It was just possible to see the extent of the slide. The Gautier house and Mack’s had taken the worst of the damage, but debris had rolled down around the two houses that lay to the east and on into the creek bed, which was dammed to about the height of a one-story house. The structures to the west looked untouched. Rob thought they were the ones no one had bought. Headlights bounced down the horse pasture on the south bank of the creek. He hoped the driver was an engineer, not just a sightseer.

  Rob caught Linda as she headed off with Jake and Todd toward the Gautier house. “Get your camera.”

  Her mouth formed an O of surprise.

  “Time to document property damage.”

  Her eyes narrowed. “Crime scene.”

  “Believe it.” Among the defendants would be the County Board of Commissioners. He thought of Fred Drinkwater. If there were deaths, it might well be a murder case—at the very least wrongful death. On impulse, he called Judge Rosen and asked for search warrants for Drinkwater’s office and house. He wanted to document the approval process every step of the way. The judge was sleepy, shocked, and ultimately responsive.

  As Rob turned to go down to the McCormick house again, Charlie drove up in his camper, closely followed by another van full of rescue volunteers. They had brought digging tools and more hard hats. After he told them where to find Bat, Rob grabbed a hat for Charlie. It surprised him how glad he was to see his cousin.

  Charlie stared at him.

  Rob handed him the hat. “Did you call Kayla?”

  “Right away.” Charlie settled the hat over his red hair and scowled at the scene before him. “She was organizing a mass evacuation, last I heard. I told Bellew to close down the campground.”

  “Good man.” Rob meant Charlie, but his cousin took the comment as a reference to the campground manager.

  “Nice guy, interested in his customers. He says you investigated a murder out there last fall.”

  Rob didn’t intend to get pulled into history, so he just nodded. “He was helpful. Deputies will go door to door along the creek, but the sooner Bellew gets out of there the better. Now what about the creek, will it push through the blockage any time soon?”

  “No idea. Let’s go have a look.”

  As they did, they heard the yip of dogs and the shouts of searchers. Both rescue teams were swarming over the site of the Gautier house. Then they heard the house sitter’s calls for help from the place on the creek bank. She sounded as if she’d been calling a while.

  Madeline Thomas clicked her cell phone off. “That was Nancy Hoover. Landslide at Prune Hill. She heard it on the radio.” A high school senior, Nancy was one of Maddie’s corps of activists. She had also been Beth McCormick’s student. Nancy was dyslexic; Beth had taught her to read when she was a sophomore. Maddie thought of Beth and the unperformed purification ritual.

  Jack blinked sleepily and took a gulp of coffee. “She say Prune Hill for sure?”

  “County Road 12. It’s Prune Hill.”

  “If you say so, Chief.”

  She sniffed. She didn’t like it when Jack kidded her. She was sure. Her dreams said so, and besides it stood to reason. Frowning, she stood at her kitchen window and looked out at the sodden village of Two Falls. She knew it wouldn’t impress tourists, but she was proud of it because she remembered how it had been, a slovenly mass of decayed government housing and junked cars.

  Tribal cooperation and pride had cleaned it up, repaired and painted the houses, and arranged credit for the new manufactured homes, some of them, like her own, double-wide. She was glad she’d had a hand in the regeneration, but there was still a lot to do. A casino might not be the only answer, but it was an answer. She consulted her list of phone numbers and rang Cate Bjork.

  “You’ve heard about the landslide at Prune Hill?”

  “The acting sheriff notified me.” The woman’s voice was cool. “We are all very concerned for Sheriff McCormick and his family.”

  Acting sheriff. That would be Minetti. Maddie felt a twinge of distaste. “Is Mack badly hurt?”

  “The hospital said he’s in surgery. The baby’s fine.”

  Baby? Sophia. Anxiety swept through her. “And Beth?”

  A pause. “I don’t know, Chief Thomas.”

  “Have the commissioners conferred?”

  The woman gave a yelp of laughter. “There’s hardly been time. What can I do for you, Madeline? I’m afraid I don’t function well until my third cup of coffee.”

  Maddie apologized and rang off. She did not like Cate Bjork, but the new commissioner might be useful. She was also an unknown quantity. No point in offending her.

  “Wheeling and dealing?” Jack poured himself another cup of coffee and started to rummage in the refrigerator for breakfast makings.

  “I’m just trying to find out what happened.” There were three commissioners. Maddie had had confrontations with both of the other two, but she thought they respected her.

  Karl Tergeson, the chairman of the board, was a dentist; Hank Auclare a realtor. She was about to call Auclare when she remembered her conversation with Rob about possible corruption on the board. His questions had been circumspect, but she owed him, so she’d been frank. She wished she knew the exact nature of his concern. She didn’t think either commissioner was foolish enough to take a bribe. All the same, one hand washes the other.

  Hank was always interested in new construction. People knew he would be when they voted for him. She didn’t doubt that the developers sent business his way. Karl, a fiscal conservative and a stout Lutheran, was suspicious of change. He was pompous and susceptible to flattery, if not bribery. She didn’t think he was smart, but he hid his defects well. If he skirted the edge of the law, it would be by accident. Karl was a straight arrow, and his daughter, Inger Swets, was the often-elected county clerk.

  Maddie tasted the phrase “straight arrow” and made a face. Better not call the commissioners. Better call the hospital, then think about what it would mean if Sheriff McCormick was no longer a player.

  No, she thought. Better drive to the hospital. By the time she got to Klalo, someone would know what had happened to Beth. And someone would know how Minetti was handling the disaster.

  “Want an omelette?” Jack said. “There’s smoked salmon.”

  Meg tuned the radio in her office to the local station and pretended to do paperwork to the music of Country Favorites. Her staff were busy exchanging rumors as they shelved books and greeted patrons. She’d seen Jackman at the information desk deep in conversation with one of the regulars. They glanced at Meg’s office. She shut the door.

  At eleven, the radio reported that the sheriff, his wife, daughter, and granddaughter had been taken to the county hospital. Mack was in surgery, Peggy unconscious but stable, Beth conscious but in serious condition with a broken leg and a head injury. The baby was well and would be released to her father when he arrived from Portland.

  Karl Tergeson, chairman of the Board of Commissioners, made a brief statement assuring county residents that the disaster management team was out in full force and that the governor had been apprised of the situation. “Our prayers are with the sheriff and his lovely family on this tragic occasion,” he intoned. He said the search for survivors was continuing. Nobody said anything about Fred Drinkwater.

  When she heard Beth was alive, Meg indulged in a brief spurt of tears, but her relief soon gave way to anxiety for Rob. Not only was she concerned for his safety—he was bound to plunge right into the rescue operation—but she knew his fondness for Sheriff McCormick ran deep. Though Rob was aware of Mack’s faults, the sheriff was more than a
mentor, he was a father figure.

  She knew she would be worse than useless at the site of the disaster, but there must be some way she could help Rob. Maybe she could find something to clear Mack.

  Professional constraint would make it impossible for Rob to approach the matter of the missing survey that way, but Meg was not subject to the same limits. She decided to look sideways. She Googled Cate Bjork, and when a search of recent sites delivered nothing more than what had come out during the election campaign, she took a more extensive look at Lars. She used Dogpile, a metasearch engine.

  “Flash Bunsen is missing.”

  Kayla groaned. Mr. Bunsen, a sweet man in the early stages of Alzheimer’s, had earned the staff nickname for his ability to disappear in a flash under the very eyes of his care-givers. And also because he sometimes showed up at breakfast in a state of nature. Kayla was fond of him.

  It was almost eleven. They had sent off five of the livelier patients with dementia to a nursing home in town and were preparing to send ten more on the second bus. The other nine were waiting in the bus in varying degrees of confusion. She counted them. Flash was indeed missing.

  She met the bus driver’s eyes. A phlegmatic man, he nodded when she asked him to wait fifteen minutes before leaving. The two aides sitting with the agitated patients looked less resigned, but they didn’t protest.

  She had organized a search of the sprawling building and was about to return to the bus when the general manager, Patrick Wessel, caught up with her outside his office.

  “Ah, Kayla, still here.”

  She bared her teeth. “Shall I go home, Pat?”

  “No, no.” Dismay froze his salesman smile in place. He cleared his throat. “Good news, my dear.”

  “Less with the ‘dears,’ Mr. Wessel.”

  “Sorry. Uh, the acting sheriff phoned. The hydraulic engineer managed to ease the water pressure somewhat. A ditch, I believe, and wide pipe.”

  “A temporary culvert?”

  “Just so, but it is temporary.” He cleared his throat. “He thinks we can stand down.”

  “No evacuation?”