When the Flood Falls

by J. E. Barnard

  “Phone me, too, please,” said Jan. “I may not be much use, but I can start tea and spread blankets. She’ll be chilled to the bone if she’s been sitting on wet grass all this time.”

  “Thanks. Both of you.” Lacey hurried down the hill in the deepening gloom, extraordinarily relieved that she wasn’t alone with this situation. She had always been self-assured on patrol. Why now did she feel like a panicky civilian?

  Wilderness, that’s why. No handy paramedics or nosy bystanders, no security cameras recording every back alley. Dee was her only friend in Bragg Creek, and she was missing. Was this how all those frightened people who reported missing persons felt? They would usually be a little bit calmed and reassured as soon as she, the officer, said she would look into it. Imagine, having to leave the Force to gain insight into the value of a calm presence to a frightened civilian.

  She drove down the hill and turned left onto the river road, watching the shoulder even though Dee would surely have been helped if she’d been stranded along this busy stretch. Unless the Beal brothers had found her. Nothing in their history suggested an attack was likely, but then, nobody had a criminal history until they got caught committing a crime. No obvious sign of a riverbank washout along here, but the churn and rumble of the water ate at her nerves. In the depths of her mind the riverbank moment with Dan played on a loop. She ignored it as best she could, concentrating instead on scanning the ditches and bushes for red dogs, pale clothing, and the chrome gleam of bicycle parts. Nothing.

  Around the bend, the white fence of the boarding stables glared in her headlights. Left onto the dirt road, around the toe of the hill. The road rose and fell more than she remembered, forcing her to slow down, keep her eyes on the ditches and not on the dark wooded hillside. Slowly, slowly, with the windows down, she strained to see past the tall grasses or to hear a setter’s howl. She stopped and got out, hoping to hear better with the engine off.

  “Dee? Beau? Are you out there? Boney? Dee?”

  Nothing.

  She got back into the car, drove down into the little dip and up the next ridge, and repeated the performance. Nothing but the sound of the wind in the trees.

  “Boney? Beau?” she called again.

  A familiar howl curled faintly along the rain-scented breeze. She jumped back into the car and drove until the dog appeared in her headlight beams. He stood belly-deep in the weeds, facing the car. Blue collar meant Boney. Where was the other dog? The bike? Where was Dee? She pulled the car half across the road so its headlights lit up the tall grasses. “Quiet, Boney. Dee? Are you there? Dee?”

  No answer, and the dog, as usual, didn’t obey her. She went back for her flashlight and played it across the overgrown roadside. Even with the light, she almost missed Beau, crouched in the tall grass beyond the ditch. He was growling softly toward the trees. Almost unseen in his shadow lay a pale streak that looked unnatural in the environment.

  Lacey turned the flashlight full on it. Starting with a jogging sock on one end — no shoe — the white light played along a calf unnaturally twisted, and above that, a lax thigh that ended in the hem of Dee’s faded Mem U running shorts.

  Chapter Nineteen

  “Dee? Dee, can you hear me?” Lacey scrambled down the ditch and stopped abruptly as Boney sprang in front of her, teeth bared. “Oh, you idiot, get out of the way.”

  She took another step. Boney growled. Beau turned from the woods to add his threat. After a couple more attempts, Lacey retreated to the road and groped in her bag for her cellphone. Terry couldn’t be far away now. Maybe the dogs would listen to him.

  “Terry? I found her. She’s in the ditch along the back road. Unconscious, I think. You’ll see my car headlights. Hurry. The dogs won’t let me near her.”

  “Call 911. I’ll be there in three minutes.”

  The minutes she stood there went on forever, her flashlight shining on Dee and Beau while Boney blocked her path. The last soft light of twilight vanished behind the clouds. The wind rippled along the treetops, sounding too much like rushing water. Rain scent hung in the heavy air. It wasn’t here yet, but soon Dee would get wet. A devoted dog was no substitute for a raincoat. What an idiotic thing to be thinking of. Shock was taking hold of her brain. God, just like a civilian.

  A bike light bobbed into the road not far away. Terry dropped the bike beside her car. “Boney. Here, boy! Beau. C’mere, old fella.” Boney growled. Beau stayed where he was, looking from them to the trees. Terry pulled out his cellphone. “They’ll move for Jake if anyone. Jake? Hi, it’s Terry. Dee’s hurt and we need you to call off the dogs … Up past the boarding stable. Ambulance is on its way. Try not to run them over getting here.” He shoved the phone in his pocket. “I’ll ride to the intersection to direct the paramedics. Unless you want to go?”

  Lacey shook her head. She was not leaving this spot until she had Dee safe. As Terry pedalled down the hill toward the main road, she shivered. What if she was too late? Dee had been out here for hours, unconscious or worse. Had Neil ambushed her as she came off the trail? Had the Beals? They were witnesses to the earlier accident. They must live nearby. But why would they hurt Dee? There was no answer to that question, nothing she could do for Dee until Jake and the paramedics arrived.

  Nothing except think like a cop.

  There would be traces of the perpetrator: tire tracks on the shoulder, maybe footprints. Standing here staring at Dee would not find and protect those traces. She forced herself to pull the light away. That small act felt like an overwhelming betrayal, like she was leaving her best friend to the wild animals, even though, technically, the headlights’ glare was more than sufficient to scare them off.

  Edging around the car, staying in the hard ruts where no tracks would show, she shone the flashlight along the softer shoulder. Not far from her front fender were deep gouges in the dirt. A car, moving fast, had swung out of the ruts almost into the ditch and been violently pulled back.

  Hit and run.

  Failure boiled up in Lacey’s throat. It tasted of vinegar and ashes. If Neil had done this, she would kill him.

  No. The law was the law. She would see him convicted instead. She stabbed a couple of long sticks into the ground beyond each end of the raw earth, marking the evidence. Dee had been flung forward, landing on who knew what rocks or stumps. Her odds of survival weren’t high. And where was her bike?

  Lacey played the light over every piece of ditch, looking for a gleam of chrome, but didn’t dare leave the gravel lest her foot crush a vital clue. Did she just hear Dee moan, or was that only the wind? Knowledge of the odds duked it out with hope and denial until the first sirens wailed in the distance. Still a long way off, they bounced between the hillsides all the way, making the distance difficult to estimate. Eventually, the cherry lights came bobbing up the road, the welcome revolutions splashing along the treeline. A fire truck stopped first, its siren dying mid-wail, and immediately washed the scene with brilliant white from two rooftop spotlights. Two men jumped out and ran toward her. She pointed toward Dee.

  They stopped at the dog, tried to flank him. He lunged whenever either man got close. EMTs bounded from their vehicle, saw her pointing, started over, and got the dog treatment. The patrol constable, following them, pulled his radio out. If they had to wait for dog handlers this far from Calgary, it could take another hour to get to Dee. She might not have that long.

  Someone hopped out of an SUV behind the cruiser. Boney stopped barking. Beau raised his head. In under a minute, they were both sitting beside Lacey’s car while Jake Wyman talked softly to them, his arms around their necks.

  The EMTs bent over Dee. In the surreal white glare they performed the rituals Lacey had seen countless times on patrol, but never from this distance. They could be on a stage and she in the audience. The air crackled with messages, but no words were clear past the pounding of her pulse. Was Dee alive? The impatience to rush over and se
e warred with a fear of disrupting the delicate dance of lifesaving procedures. An EMT strapped a mask over Dee’s face, and a wild surge of hope wiped out the ashes in Lacey’s mouth before she remembered she was not a civilian and knew better. Paramedics rarely called someone “out” at the scene unless they had injuries clearly inconsistent with life, such as decapitation. In all other cases it was the doctor’s job to make that decision at the hospital. How could the system make bystanders wait? It was inhumane. How had she never realized that before?

  When they moved Dee, it would be clear. If they thought she’d survive, they would stabilize her and be as careful as possible getting her out of that ditch, maybe call in a chopper for air evac. If they thought she was going, diesel fuel was their best friend. They’d get her in the rig and work her on the way in. How long had they been down there? She tore her eyes from the stage play and looked at her watch, which told her nothing. She had no idea what time she had found Dee, much less how long it had been since the first responders arrived.

  A fine mist touched her bare arm, sending goosebumps along her skin. In the ditch, someone looked at the sky. Rain would complicate all their jobs, and getting soaked would be really bad for Dee. If she was alive to feel it.

  The constable came over to take a preliminary statement. When pressed, he admitted Dee was alive. Lacey could have cried on his shirt. Instead, she blinked hard and answered his questions.

  “Yes, I found her. She’s Dee — Deandra Sharon Phillips.” She gave Dee’s address and then identified herself. “McCrae, Lacey. I’m a guest staying at Dee’s. You’d better see what’s back here.” She led the way around her car, pointed out the two sticks and the gouged earth between them. When the cop went back to his car for another light, she stayed on the dark side of her car and squeezed her eyes very tight, not moving until the tears retreated. She had never broken down at a crime scene, not even that bad night in Surrey when Tom had bled all over her shirt during a drug bust gone wrong. The night that had cemented their friendship beyond shift buddies and brought her all these years later to Calgary and Bragg Creek and this wilderness road that Dee might not leave alive.

  As she rounded the car again, Terry headed for her, followed by a burly young man who promptly draped her in a soft leather jacket several sizes too big. “Best sit down,” the youngster said and opened her car door for her. Lacey slumped against the seat, snuggling the jacket around her. So this was what it was like to be a civilian. A bystander wrapped in a warm jacket. Terry put his hands on her cold ones.

  “I guess you’ll want to go to the hospital. I’ll drive you in. Jake will settle the dogs for the night. Don’t worry about a thing here.” He went off to scrounge for news and soon reported back. “They’re pretty sure she’s got broken bones — legs and ribs. Her head is the big concern. A stump caught the back of her head, just below the helmet, and may have cracked her skull. Her blood pressure’s steady, so they’re not talking internal bleeding. Which is a miracle, considering.”

  Extra patrol cars arrived to close off the intersection below, waiting for a crime scene team from Calgary. Lacey hadn’t yet mentioned Neil, but the police would want to know Dee was being stalked and that she was recently divorced. The two things were paired in thousands of police reports annually. How long before Dee was alert enough to give a statement on her own account? Tonight? Ever?

  Against the brightly lit backdrop of forest, the EMTs moved Dee onto a stretcher. Lacey stood up to get a better look. Firemen clustered around and lifted. As they shuffled carefully through the briars and grasses, one person bagging and the other holding a fluid drip, the tight ball in her chest began to expand. Careful meant alive, and likely to stay that way. The dogs sat beside Jake, but watched the EMTs every step of the way as they carried their mistress up to the road. When Boney started to stand up, a word from Jake stopped him.

  Lacey said, “They sure listen to you.”

  Jake nodded. “I walked ’em when Dee-Dee sprained her ankle. Took ’em out with the horses, too, so they had to learn to obey whistle signals. Can’t control the reins with leashes in your hands. That pair could have pulled me right outta the saddle at the first deer crossing the trail.”

  “Terry said you could take them home tonight?”

  “I’ll put ’em in their kennel and do the usual, and come down in the morning if you’re not home yet. We’ll stay until Dee-Dee’s taken away, though. They won’t want to leave her out here.”

  “Thanks, Mr. Wyman. I’m sure Dee would be very relieved.”

  “I owe her. Anything she needs, you let me know.”

  As the ambulance lights spun up, the mist thickened into serious rain, battering the car roof, the ditch, and the trees, kicking up small dusty puffs where it splattered on the road. Lacey scrambled back into her car to wait for the emergency vehicles to move. Feeling as if her nose was pressed against the invisible barrier between cop and civilian, she watched as the first responders beyond it succoured the friend she had abandoned last night.

  Chapter Twenty

  Terry returned in the drenched dawn, his borrowed SUV’s headlights sweeping up the hill into Dee’s driveway. Jan, wrapped in a comforter in the sunroom, watched through the last of the thunderstorm as Lacey McCrae went up the steps. When the living room windows glowed, Terry pulled away. She met him at the front door, submitting to a hug so intense it hurt. “You’re so cold,” she said when he let go. “Do you want a hot drink? How’s Dee?”

  “Out of surgery. Stable.” Terry yawned. “Hot choc would be great … with booze. Man, what a night.” He followed her into the kitchen and slumped on a stool while she put the kettle on. “Did you sleep?”

  “Not a chance. All my stress hormones went into overdrive, and that thunderstorm was intense.” Not to mention the quarter pill she’d taken when Terry and Lacey first left on their hunt, so as to be functional if Dee needed her. “I’ve been lying awake wondering if Dee would survive and wishing I weren’t such a wimp. I was useless last night, and I won’t be able to visit her in hospital.”

  “You’re not a wimp. Charging around the trails would not have helped Dee. And it’s not your fault that you can’t tolerate the hospital smells or those endless corridors.”

  Jan stirred cocoa and sugar and cream into a paste. “I didn’t mean to beg for reassurance. I just feel really useless. She’s my only friend, besides Rob. How bad is it?”

  “One leg fractured below the knee. Lacey said that likely means a car, not an SUV, an older model since the bumper had a narrow impact point. Rounded bumpers diffuse the damage more and an SUV hits higher up the leg.”

  Jan brought the kettle and filled their cups. “Is that it?”

  “I wish.” Terry waved the Kahlúa bottle. “You want?”

  “It’s poison to me, but yeah, give me one spoonful. What else is wrong?”

  “Broken ribs. Might get pneumonia. They’ll treat for that. The real concern is her head, a depressed skull fracture behind her ear. Two inches different and the helmet would have taken the blow. They fixed it already, but there’ll be swelling. Might mean more surgery. They’re keeping her sedated for at least twenty-four hours. I brought Lacey home so she could get some sleep. She can take Dee’s car into town when she wakes up.”

  “What’s the matter with hers?”

  “Hers is surrounded by crime scene tape. She said they won’t move it in the dark in case it runs over evidence.”

  “Good point. It must have been in broad daylight, the hit. Some yahoo hunting out of season, or driving drunk?”

  “If they were heard hunting near the Beals’ land, they’ll already be sorry. Those guys are big on gun safety, especially on a weekend, when their kids are in the yard.” Terry yawned and shook out his shoulders. “Here’s a weird thing: Lacey knows Eddie Beal. He called out to her by name as we were creeping out through the police barricade. She just glared at him and kept moving.�
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  “She glares at lots of people.” Jan stirred her cooling cocoa and took a cautious sip. “So what happens next?”

  “Police try to find the driver, I guess. For now, I need to sleep for a week.”

  “No work today?”

  “Jake wants me handy for whatever Dee or Lacey might need. Makes sense since I’m the only one Lacey knows. He’s edgy about dealing with her himself. Maybe he thinks she’s a gold digger.”

  “He’s made enough bad choices with women that it’s almost a sign of good character if he doesn’t like one.”

  “He likes you.”

  “Brat.”

  Terry fell asleep almost immediately, but Jan, spooning against his back, lay awake as birds took up their morning chat fest beyond her blackout curtains. Who in their mellow, rural area could crash into a cyclist and keep going? It was tempting to blame someone from outside, a transient or joyriding kids from Calgary. Respectable, responsible women like Dee were unlikely to be deliberately targeted. Camille, now, there’d be drivers bidding for the privilege. Not that a person would wish that on Camille. Well, maybe Mick would, although he was too nice to ever say so.

  The phone rang soon after noon, catching them at breakfast. Jan picked it up. “Rob. What’s up? Yes, she did. Yesterday, but she wasn’t found until late. Broken leg, broken ribs, and they operated on a depressed skull fracture last night. We’re waiting on more news now, but it will be a long haul any which way. What? Sure, come on up. Bring extra coffee and milk.” She hung up. “The river’s rising again. Rob wants to sleep here so he can be sure to get to work tomorrow. You’d better tell Lacey. She might want to stay in Calgary overnight rather than risk getting stuck on this bank.”

  “How’d you know she was paranoid about the river? I only realized after the gala. She kind of freaked out about the bridge maybe closing.”