Old Chaos (9781564747136) (11 page)

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?”

“He’s not absolutely sure, but he believes the building won’t be flooded. The grounds, yes. There may be a surge. Water is already eroding the ditch they’ve dug.” Patrick beamed. “I checked the creek bed. The flow looks normal for this time of year.”

Kayla frowned. Normal meant high. But the creek was at least partially dammed. She wondered if Wessel had actually left the building. If so, it was unprecedented exertion. Kayla gave him an encouraging smile, but not too encouraging. “Shall I unload the bus?”

“Oh, er, yes, maybe you should.”

“Maybe?”

“Definitely.”

She headed toward the bus. “Mr. Bunsen is still missing.”

He
tsk-tsked,
his face sad. “We must expand the search then. When you’ve unloaded the other patients. Spare no effort.” He meant that
she
should expand the search.

“Double overtime,” she murmured. She was now halfway through a second shift and bone-tired. She would search for Flash Bunsen anyway, but organizing the entire evacuation effort was not in her job description.

After a pained moment, he nodded. “Double time.” He checked his watch. “From now—”

“From the beginning of the shift.”

He heaved a sigh and strolled back to his office, no doubt to revise the monthly budget. Salisbury steak for all hands. Oddly enough, most of the residents liked it.

Kayla and the two aides took the nine patients back to their rooms, two at a time, with soothing commentary. The blessing was that by dinner half of them would have forgotten the interruption to their routines.

She called the facilities to which the first five patients had been taken, then sent a bus and two aides for them. They would be back in time for dinner. That would save several thousand dollars. Patrick would be pleased.

She kept thinking about Mr. Bunsen. By that time, the building had been thoroughly searched to no avail. It was still raining. Surely he wouldn’t have gone outside.

Her cell rang. “Hi, Charlie. I hear they lowered the lake.”

He chuckled. “I thought I was going to give
you
the good news.”

“It is good, but we have a patient missing. I think he’s outside.” She peered out a window that overlooked the creek and saw movement on the bank. Maybe it was just something in the water, a log. Wind whipped a squat rhododendron in the foreground and tossed a plastic bag into the air. “Uh, how’s the search?”

“All the McCormicks are accounted for, and so is a house sitter whose cat disappeared.”

“They’re alive?”

“They are. Rob is pretty sure the people who lived up near the road are gone, though. He’s at that house now, helping with the digging. Listen, Kayla, there’s going to be a surge of water in the creek bed—”