“I’ll call her first, tell her to wait there. She won’t want to leave if there’s trouble. After I’ve checked on her and Bellew, I’ll drive to Prune Hill.”
“I don’t think it’s a hill anymore.”
He had already hung up.
Meg went to her office in the back bedroom, booted the computer, and called up her staff directory. She rang Annie Baldwin and told her not to take the bookmobile out on County Road 12. Annie thanked her, sounding scared. Her brother was a deputy.
On impulse, Meg also called her assistant, Marybeth Jackman. She explained what she knew and asked her to notify the rest of the staff, so they wouldn’t drive into trouble coming to work. For once, Jackman didn’t argue. There was no branch library to close near Prune Hill. Meg decided she’d done her managerial duty.
Then she tried calling Beth. The first time she got a busy signal. She went to the kitchen, brewed more coffee, and tried again. A mechanical voice informed her that the number was not responding.
She turned on the radio and heard the local station announcing a serious mudslide on County Road 12. Drivers should avoid the area, details at six. It was ten to six. She ran upstairs, took a shower, and was dressed with a mug of coffee in her hand when the news came on again. Details? They had no details. She wondered if Rob had any. He probably hadn’t got there yet.
She turned the dial and caught the end of a newscast from The Dalles. Mount Saint Helens had let off a steam plume that rose to 30,000 feet. The eruption, clocked at 4:58 a.m., was accompanied by a series of small earthquakes, the largest of which registered 4.2 on the Richter scale.
“Why didn’t they call me?” Minetti demanded.
Rob gritted his teeth. “I am calling you.”
“Immediately!” Earl went on as if Rob hadn’t spoken.
The county car roared up the steep turnoff from River Road, light flashing. Jake Sorenson hit the siren, and an oncoming car slowed and pulled off.
“They called me to investigate the damage and Corky to deal with safety and traffic.” Rob clutched his seat belt with one hand and the cell phone with the other as the car raced on. There were some conversations that should not occur on the police radio, which was crackling with calls.
He could hear Earl taking long, calming breaths. A plaintive female voice murmured in the background. Earl was newly married.
When he thought Earl would listen, Rob said, “I suggest that you go over to the courthouse. Phone the state disaster management people. Call in reserve dispatchers. Contact County Roads for earth movers—”
“Don’t tell me what to do.”
“Okay, I won’t.” Rob swore and clicked off the phone. Mack would have been sorting things out as soon as Rob opened his mouth. But Mack was not responding to calls.
Jake took a corner on two wheels and roared into the straight stretch. At the Y, he veered right without stopping.
“Better slow down. Might be rocks on the road.”
Jake slowed to seventy. The radio crackled. “Isn’t that your code?”
Rob identified himself. Teresa, still in control, patched him through to Corky Kononen, head of the uniform branch. Laconic as always, Corky said he’d sent a car around to the north end of the slide to see if the creek was backing up. If it was, the people upstream would have to be warned to leave, and should he give the order?
“I think so, Cork. Call Minetti.”
Kononen assented and signed off. Ahead, Rob could see the blue light of the first responder—Todd Welch, according to Jake. Todd was Maddie Thomas’s nephew.
Rob couldn’t see anything much. It was blacker out than the sewers of hell, and raining. When Jake squirreled his car in beside Todd’s, Todd and Linda Ramos jumped out, Todd in uniform, Linda in a purple rainsuit. Rob got out, too, leaving Jake to tend the radio.
He glanced at his watch as he turned to look at the slide. Five-fifty—almost an hour before it would start to get light, sunrise well after seven. Then what he was looking at registered. He stepped back.
Debris sloped up in front of him higher than his head. “Move these cars. Now. Fifty yards that way, assholes. What makes you think it’s stopped sliding?” Something rustled, and dirt and pebbles clattered down as far as Todd’s car. They all jumped back.
Engines roared. Jake squealed away in reverse. Todd followed. Rob ran to Todd’s car. “Point it so the lights shine that way. The houses are…were down there. Use the spotlights.”
As Todd maneuvered, Rob strode to Jake’s window and repeated the order. He straightened and peered into the dimly lit landscape. When Jake’s spot came on, Rob thought he glimpsed something brighter than the chunks of ruined hill and upturned root balls that stretched down toward the creek. Roof tiles maybe. The first house they’d come to the night of the dinner party? All the houses had had roofs like California haciendas.
Todd’s light wobbled, steadied. A boulder the size of a Volkswagen sedan rested downslope about a hundred yards. What did they call them, glacial erratics? Rob was no geologist, but that boulder had to have lain beneath the cinder cone. The whole damned hill had fallen down. Jesus, Charlie, he thought, you’re a fucking prophet.
He was still clutching the cell phone, so he redialed Minetti. The wife whose name he couldn’t remember answered. “He’s in the shower, Rob. Is it important?”
“Get him.”
“Well!” She banged the phone down. After a good thirty seconds, Minetti came on, protesting.
Rob cut him off. “It’s a massive slide. I need the lights.” He meant the crime scene lights. “Send the SOCO van. We’ll need Drinkwa-ter’s site plan, too, so we can find the houses. Send somebody into the Records office.”
Minetti squawked.
“The closest house is buried up to the roof—over the roof. I’m afraid the slide hit Mack’s place, too.” He swallowed. “Call Drink-water. I need to know who was in what houses. Don’t forget lights, earth movers, shovels. Fast. And the creek’s probably dammed. I don’t see how it can’t be. We need an engineer. Try Roads.”
“What about dogs?” That was the first intelligent response Minetti had had. Rob had not thought of them.
“Yeah, dogs, and the search and rescue volunteers. Look, Earl, you’re acting sheriff. Organize it. I’m going down there and dig.”
Kayla had been on her last rounds when the medical assistant told her Charlie O’Neill was on the phone. “Tell him I’ll call later.”
“He sounds urgent, Nurse Graves.” The medical assistant was a squat Bosnian with a droopy mustache and a formal manner. In the old country, he had been a doctor, he said.
She picked up the phone at the nurses’ station. “What is it, Charlie? This better be serious.” Kayla had made it clear that the relationship between her and Charlie was to be strictly landlady-to-tenant, and he had agreed. She was no longer sure that was what she wanted.
“Landslide upstream from you. Can you see the creek?”
“In the dark?”
“With this rain, it should be in spate.”
She was peering out the nearest patient’s room window. “I can’t see a thing. No lights.” That was odd. The interior lights were on.
“If you can’t see white water, the slide dammed the creek.” He sighed. “You may have to evacuate.”
“What!”
“Not right away, but today, before noon I’d guess.”
“You’re guessing?”
He said with audible patience, “I’m giving you a heads-up, Kayla. Call your supervisor. If the slide did dam the stream, there’ll be trouble both directions, flooding upstream followed by a surge when the creek breaks through, which it will.”
The care facility’s creekside location was one of its major amenities, with a wheelchair-accessible path following the stream bed. The lights along that path had gone out.
Charlie was saying, “If the county road crew has a decent engineer on tap, they may be able to siphon water off through a pipe or culvert, in which case you’ll
be okay, but it’s a bad slide, according to Rob and the radio.”
Kayla’s mind skittered in four directions. He waited. At last she said, “Thanks. I’ll call the boss. When will I see you?”
“No idea. I was going to come over to you, but I’d better drive on out to the site when I’ve warned the people at the campground.”
She felt an absurd degree of disappointment. “Okay. You take care, and next time call me on my cell phone.” When he hung up, she listened to the dial tone awhile. Then she called the general manager.
The facility had two buses with wheelchair lifts, capacity fifteen apiece. There were two hundred fifty-three residents, some of whom should not be moved if a move was avoidable. The Alzheimer’s patients would be the most difficult, because many of them were mobile, but they were all fearful of change. In contrast, the patients on oxygen could be shipped to the hospital in ambulances—if the hospital had room, if there were enough ambulances. And where could the others go? As she talked, her mind began to spin out solutions.
“I hear something!” Linda Ramos cocked her head.
Rob and Jake Sorenson froze and listened, too. They had reached stable ground near where Rob thought the McCormicks’ house had stood—exactly where was hard to tell. Rob had left Todd in his car to mind the radio.
Wind moaned and rain spattered. It was pitch black, still, with the power out and no sign of dawn, and their lights didn’t reach far. They had already taken a look at the churned mass of brush, mud, pumice, timbers, and clay tiles that had been the Gautier residence, the house closest to the road. They’d heard no human sound there. Rob hoped the family had gone south for the winter.
“¡También! A baby.” Linda was the single mother of one, attuned to a child’s cries.
Rob heard it then, a thin wail, barely audible in the rushing darkness. He remembered little Sophy. Surely Peggy and Skip had taken their daughter back to Portland by now. The sound came again—ahead and to the right.
“Careful, Linda,” Rob called.
Linda crashed ahead, heedless. “Here!” She yanked at tiles and rocks and splintered boards with her bare hands. The wailing continued.
Rob picked his way to her and grabbed her by the shoulder. “Take it easy. We don’t want stuff falling on the baby. Back off.”
Panting, Linda obeyed. Jake joined them, catfooted. Rob closed his eyes, trying to visualize the house. He’d seen the plans several times now, but he wished he and Meg had got to the dinner party in time for the grand tour. Jake and Linda were babbling. The baby whimpered. Rob ignored the sounds.
“It faced west. The entrance. This has to be the bedroom wing, one story above ground, daylight basement.” Basement wasn’t the right word. That level had held three bedrooms, one en suite and two with a connecting bath, hallway on the north, this side. The rooms had looked south, downslope, toward the creek.
“Master bedroom suite up here—bedroom, dressing room, bath, hall. This wing took the brunt of it. I hope—” He squinted to the right, shone his flashlight over the heaped-up ruins of the Great Room. “Yeah, the chimney fell that way. We’re at the edge of the upper hallway.”
Where were Mack and Beth? If Sophy was here, where was her mother? He beat back panic. They should wait for the rescuers, people with experience, but what kind of experience? Around here, Search and Rescue dealt mainly with lost hunters, private planes that went down in bad weather, car wrecks in obscure canyons— not buried houses. And there was the matter of elapsed time. The sooner they reached Mack and his family, the better.
Where was the damned ambulance? Rob opened his eyes. “Jake, go back to the cars. Tell Dispatch we need an ambulance—now.” The light from Jake’s flashlight bobbed as he went off.
“Okay, Linda, let’s do it together, slow, piece by piece. You hold the flash, I’ll do the lifting. Talk to her. Her name is Sophy.”
Linda began crooning, half in Spanish. Glancing at her, he saw tears streaming down her face. She jiggled with impatience, and the light wobbled. The child sobbed. The sound was muffled but not far away.
He scooped off mud, stones, and broken tiles, then began untangling the shattered wall joists and torn drywall. It was like a hideous game of pick-up-sticks. Pulling the wrong piece would send the rest crashing down. At least there was little glass. The north-facing hall had had only a few slit-like windows.
A fallen roof beam creaked and swayed. He jammed a piece of wall joist under it to steady it, then another. The beam was heavy laminate. He wondered whether the floor was intact, but it couldn’t be. The whole mess sloped downward. He could hear material he’d dislodged sliding down. A tile clattered on something.
He pulled back, fearful he’d trigger a collapse that would take the baby with it. Linda gave a small shriek. “No, don’t stop!” She swung the light, and Rob saw something, a purplish fragment, like a piece of cloth. He ducked under the beam he had propped up. A second beam had fallen sideways when something, maybe a boulder, smashed through the wall. Holding his flashlight in his left hand, he touched the fragment of cloth, and his finger came away damp. The color was drying blood.
He looked at the heavy beam with despair. It would have to be shifted. The baby howled almost at his feet.
“It’s an arm,” Linda whispered.
“Yes.” An adult’s elbow. Rob found another two-by-four, splintered at one end with protruding nails. He crept down past the patch of blood-soaked fabric and slid the joist under the beam to prop it so it wouldn’t smash flat.
With small levers men have moved mountains.
“Jake,” he yelled. “Bring a car jack!” The light skittered wildly as Linda turned to relay the message. Rob was already kneeling by the bloody arm, feeling carefully under and beyond it. Something wriggled, warm and wet. The baby. She whimpered.
“Little Sophy,” he whispered. “Little Sophy.” The arm had to be Mack’s or Skip Petrakis’s. Probably Skip’s. He had shielded the child with his body. The baby gave a wail. She had enough room for that.
Rob tried to visualize as he felt along the arm. Right arm, crooked around. He touched the baby’s head and another head, wet with blood. The man’s body was pinned beneath the beam. Somehow he’d managed to twist sideways so that his shoulder took the blow, leaving the baby’s head free in the small space between shoulder and chin. The child was stuck beneath his body and the heavy beam. Her cries and the fact that she was wriggling vigorously suggested she was unharmed.
The beam gave a heavy creak. Without thinking, Rob thrust himself under it and took the weight on his bent back. “Pull her out!” he gasped. “Ramos!”
Linda dropped the flashlight, scrambled to the protruding arm, and reached under. “I can’t!”
Gritting his teeth, Rob strained upward. “Pull!”
Linda pulled. After what seemed minutes, the baby popped out, yelling. Linda scuttled away. It seemed safer not to move, though the strain on his back was hideous.
“What the hell?” Jake, arriving with the jack, dropped it with a clatter, squirmed to Rob’s side, and the two of them shoved the beam sideways. With a crash, it toppled against the boulder that had smashed the wall, exposing the upper part of the man’s body. Debris rained down, quieted. Jake’s light focused on the body. Mack. He was wearing pajamas, and both of his legs were pinned. He didn’t move.
WHERE WAS PEGGY? Where the hell was Beth? Rob watched the ambulance bearing Mack and his granddaughter leave for the hospital. The siren gave a single yelp.
He was standing by the cars waiting for the search and rescue team with its dogs. The Scene of Crime van had arrived, and he’d ordered the crew to string light cables over to the Gautier place. He’d tried to call Drinkwater, to find out about the other houses, but got voice mail. He left another message, then called Minetti, who was busy looking for a hydraulic engineer.
Rob took a swallow of Meg’s coffee and eased his sore shoulders. He’d eaten half a muffin someone offered and probably ought to finish it while he waited.
It hadn’t taken him and Jake long to free Mack’s legs with the jack, but Rob was afraid to move his old friend. The injuries looked too terrible. So they’d rigged a shelter with Jake’s slicker. Mack wasn’t bleeding a lot by then, and Jake claimed he’d found a pulse, but Rob wasn’t optimistic. When they arrived, the medics looked grave.
Rob tossed his muffin into the darkness and headed back to Mack’s house. Dogs or no dogs, he had to find Beth. He was not surprised that Linda, bereft of Sophy, tagged along.
“Somebody should stay with the radio,” he said.
“I told Thayer to do that.” Thayer Jones had driven the SOCO van.
“Where do you think the women are, Linda?”
“I don’t know. It was a big place. The bedrooms downstairs? The bathrooms?”
“The slide hit around five o’clock. Mack was in the upper hall with the baby. It doesn’t make sense.”
“The baby, I think she has…”
He glanced at her. It was just light enough to see her face. She touched her stomach.
“Stomach ache?”
“Colic!” she said, triumphant. She was proud of her command of English idioms. “When Mickey cried like that, the doctor called it colic.” Mickey was her son, Miguel.
Rob tried to remember if his daughter had suffered from colic. “I suppose it’s possible.” He turned his ankle on a rock and swore.
“So the mama’s asleep. She’s been up two nights in a row. The grandpapa is walking the floor with the baby and, um, the abuela is fixing coffee.”
“In the kitchen?” They hadn’t looked in the kitchen area at all. The Great Room had fallen on it. “You may be right.” He quickened his pace.
They edged around the ruin of the three-car garage. The roof had collapsed, and the door had sprung. The mashed cars inside reflected glints of light. The ground beyond was not covered with much slide debris, just roof tiles, but it sloped down sharply, treacherous underfoot.
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