by P. J. Tracy
He braked hard, pulled to the side of the road, and cranked the wheel to reverse course. His tires slipped and squealed, then finally caught and propelled him forward to Lentz Road at seventy miles per hour.
Deputy Nagle, there’s a note in your file from your time in Kansas. Seems you’re a bit of a thrill seeker and we don’t hold much truck with that here.
I was young and wild, Sheriff Emmet. But they took that out of me in a hurry.
That had been a line of bullshit, but Sheriff Emmet had hired him anyhow, and he’d been a good and loyal cop ever since. But the truth was, the adrenaline rush had always been his lure to a life in law enforcement, and Cottonwood County was a ho-hum place. Most of the cops not born and raised here moved on pretty quickly to big cities that promised high-speed car chases and TV time, and lately, he’d been thinking about doing the same thing.
Lentz Road turned to gravel after the first mile as roads tended to do in the Midwest, so Ryan slowed his squad, but not by much. He liked to see the gravel spewing a tumbling cone in his rearview mirror and he liked the rear-end fishtail when he swerved around the only curve on this nowhere road. Surely the single exciting moment he’d experience on this ride.
His radio crackled. “Dispatch to all cars. Upgrade of tornado watch to warning. Touchdown reported by spotters in Haversfield. Heads-up, guys and gals. Be careful out there.”
Ryan looked in his rearview mirror. The sky was getting black and clouds were starting to boil in the distance. He’d spent some time with storm chasers in Kansas, and he knew something about tornadoes and how to avoid them, so he put on some more speed.
He only slowed down when he hit a patch of loose gravel and almost skidded into a deep ditch, which would have probably been the end of his tenure as a Cottonwood County deputy. Keeping his job was a hell of a lot more important than feeding his inner daredevil, especially now that he had a real sweetheart and a down payment on an engagement ring.
Besides, this was probably an exercise in futility. No way that guy was still anywhere near Cottonwood County after killing Greg Trask, a favorite son. So he’d drive these country roads all day long, looking for a truck that had either been dumped or was already out of state. What killer in his right mind would kill someone and hang around so close to the murder scene? Christ. He liked Sheriff Emmet, but this was just plain pointless in his mind.
The rain began gently, just a few drops on his windshield, but in a matter of minutes, it started coming down in heavy white sheets, forming instant puddles on the parched dirt road. Since the thrill of speed was definitely out of the question now, he amused himself by doing a few practice pit maneuvers, all the while imagining heroic scenarios if he ever caught the guy.
Ryan’s fantasies were always detailed, well plotted, and rich with thrilling action and scintillating dialogue. At the core of it, he was a good cop—aced every test, scored tens at the range, and laid down every instructor in self-defense class—but Ryan was made for better things than driving aimlessly around, looking for an actor long gone. He had a much grander destiny. So he let his imagination run loose.
He’d see the black Ford parked on this very road, pulled off to the side, and he’d ease the squad up behind, run the plate, call it in, clear his weapon from his holster, and walk casually up to the driver’s door; ready, so ready to shoot the bastard if he didn’t buy Ryan’s excellent acting.
Good afternoon, sir. Trouble with your truck?
Overheated, the perp would say.
He was Hispanic, with tattoos of playing cards clearly visible, of course—obviously the killer—but Ryan would not be afraid and would not break character.
Sorry for your trouble. I can give you a lift to Fulmer’s gas station, it’s not too far from here.
How clever he would be to mention the gas station where this monster had just murdered Greg Trask. He would watch carefully for his reaction. . . .
Ryan had been so deep in his fantasy, he almost missed the stark reality of a black Ford 150 pickup truck stopped on the side of the road just ahead. It was parked slightly off center, just enough to show a large dent in the driver’s-side door.
He hit the brakes and rolled his cruiser up slowly until he could see the plate number. As he punched it into his onboard unit, he felt sweat carving a path from his brow down his face, slicking his hands, drenching his uniform. He suddenly realized that there was a very big difference in adrenaline: there was the good kind you got from pit maneuvers, driving fast, and tornado chasing, and then there was the bad, sickly kind you got when you just happened upon a vehicle that potentially belonged to a deranged killer who might be inside, waiting for you.
FORTY-NINE
Gino and Magozzi were thirty minutes from the Cottonwood County border when things started looking ugly. Thick, dark clouds were eclipsing a sky that had been clear not so long ago, and a fierce wind churned up out of nowhere, buffeting the car.
“Jesus,” Gino muttered. “Would you look at that sky? It’s black. What the hell are we driving into?”
“Check the radar on your phone.” Magozzi had been maintaining a steady eighty-five miles per hour since they’d left the city limits, but he took it down a little because the wind was making the car squirrel around.
Gino started scrolling his phone for weather just as the first raindrop hit the windshield with a loud splat. Magozzi heard the sound first, thought it was probably a big, hard-shelled June bug, until he looked and saw spidery tendrils of water creeping across the windshield in all directions. It had been one big raindrop.
“Oh, man, Leo. There are severe thunderstorm warnings and tornado watches for the whole lower half of the state, and we’re driving straight into a big, red blob, according to radar. Right into the eye of the storm.”
“It’s supposed to be calm in the eye of the storm.”
“That’s hurricanes,” Gino snapped. “The eye of a thunderstorm is where you get washed off the road. Or blown off the road. Or killed by lightning. Or impaled by flying debris.”
“How many thunderstorms have we lived through? It’s nothing to worry about. Look, there’s blue sky over there. . . .”
And then suddenly, the sky opened up and sheets of pounding rain started hammering down on them. It steamed as it hit the hot surface of the freeway, which was collecting pools of standing water at an alarming rate. Magozzi tightened his grip on the steering wheel and slowed down to fifty, then forty, then thirty, because visibility was almost down to zero. It was like driving into a white curtain. He dodged taillights as the few cars ahead of him started pulling over to the shoulder.
The rain was deafening on the metal shell of the car, and suddenly the sky started flashing like a strobe, forks and filaments of lightning chasing one another across the horizon.
Gino grabbed the dashboard when the car hydroplaned, bringing them perilously close to the ditch. “Pull over, Leo, like every other sensible person on this road. This is some serious shit.”
“Our exit is only two miles away. We can make it. We’ll stop there.”
Gino punched on the radio and put it on auto-tune until it finally found a local station.
“. . . tornado reported on the ground in northeastern Sylvester County. If you are in the area of Franklin, Chippewa, or Haversfield, seek shelter immediately. . . .”
“Goddamnit,” Gino huffed, punching at his phone. “Where the hell are we? I think I just saw a sign that said Chippewa.”
And then, as soon as it had started, the rain stopped. Magozzi took a deep breath and punched the accelerator. “See, nothing to worry about. We got through it.”
“Oh yeah? Oh yeah? The sky is fucking turning green. You know what a green sky means? It means there’s a tornado. And that’s a wall cloud.” He poked his finger against the windshield. “Jesus, we have to stop somewhere. . . .”
Magozzi saw his exit sign and pushed the ca
r hard to the ramp so he could get off the freeway before Gino had a heart attack. He pulled onto the gravel shoulder of a two-lane country road just as pea-sized chunks of ice started battering them, pinging and thunking against the roof.
Gino was looking as green as the sky. “Hail. You know what happens before a tornado? It rains like hell, then it stops and the sky turns green, and then it starts to hail. When this hail stops, we are fucked, because that’s when the tornadoes move in.”
Magozzi was a little concerned himself. He’d lived here his whole life and he knew, just like Gino, that there were storms, and then there were storms that birthed tornadoes. By all accounts, this was one of the latter, especially in the flat farmland they were in now.
The radio chatter crept back into his conscious, punctuated by the beep-beep-beep that always preceded a doomsday weather warning.
“. . . two more tornadoes have reportedly touched the ground in the vicinity of Waterville and Chippewa. Seek shelter immediately. This storm is moving northeast at a speed of thirty-five miles per hour, accompanied by damaging winds, hail . . .”
Magozzi slammed the car out of park and hit the accelerator. “I’m going to keep driving until we find someplace to shelter. We’re still in the wide open here.”
Gino squinted through the torrent of hailstones bouncing off the windshield and road. “Looks like there’s one of those blue informational signs just up ahead. Maybe there’s a McDonald’s that’s in a concrete bunker.”
There was no McDonald’s in a concrete bunker listed on the sign. Just Fulmer’s Gas and More—2 mi. Dairy Queen—15 mi.
And Eagle Lake Casino—24 mi.
FIFTY
Grace, Annie, and Charlie were sitting on the faded rose sofa in Walt’s living room, which he’d explained was a front room if you were under seventy, a parlor if you were older than that. Charlie had commandeered most of the sofa and his wet nose was pressed against Grace’s leg.
“Tell him to get down, Walt,” she’d said the first time the dog had staked his claim next to Walt on the sofa. But Walt had simply smiled and stroked Charlie’s head.
“This is an excellent dog, leave him be. I’ve missed having a dog. Didn’t know how much until now.”
It was quiet in the house, dim, and breathlessly close, and Annie reached over the sofa arm to turn on a side table light. “I don’t like the looks of things outside, Grace. It’s as still as a cat out there and the sky is getting blacker by the minute. Harley and Roadrunner had better hurry up. And for that matter, Walt. How long does it take to get cows in a barn?”
“A question for the ages.”
Annie stood up and started pacing nervously. For all the years they’d known each other, Grace still marveled at her ability to navigate any terrain in high heels as if she were wearing track shoes. “I think we should go down to the storm cellar to check out the accommodations. If we get stuck down there for any substantial amount of time—God forbid—I want to make sure it’s well stocked. Men think of flashlights and storm radios but they don’t think of water and food.”
Suddenly Charlie’s head shot up out of a deep sleep, his neck corded with tension, his eyes focused out the door. He made a little sound deep in his throat, then bounded from the sofa to the floor.
Grace wouldn’t have been surprised to hear the rumble of thunder that preceded most summer storms. What she heard was somehow more sinister. Tap, tap, tap, like little marbles timidly hitting the roof. And then just like that, it stopped. The leaves on the oaks still hung motionless, and there was no sound at all.
Suddenly, without any warning, the world seemed to take a deep breath, sucking the air from the house, and the screen door exploded outward, banging against the siding.
—
Walt had just gotten the last of his herd into the barn and was closing up the tractor door when the rain started. It was slow at first, but it didn’t take long for it to start coming down with a vengeance. Rain was a blessed thing, especially in the kind of drought conditions they’d been enduring in this part of Minnesota, but the sky had a devilish look to it; suddenly day had turned into night and the heavens were angry.
He started jogging toward the Monkeewrench RV, rubber paddock boots squeaking and splashing in the puddles that were instantly forming on top of the dry, thirsty earth. Their rig was a fair distance away, and somewhere in the back of his mind, he wondered if he’d have to carry that Annie woman to the house, or if he even could carry her, because apparently she didn’t have any sensible footwear, not that he’d seen.
The lightning and thunder were starting now, and it was close, flaring in the sky with blinding brightness, crashing in the woods, sending percussive waves through his body. There were no better fireworks, unless you were out in it, which was when it stopped being theater and started being life or death.
“Walt!”
He slowed, then stopped, wondering if he was hearing voices, because it was too damn loud to hear anything but Mother Nature raising hell in all kinds of ways, and all at once. He looked around, felt cold rain sluicing off his cap and down his shoulders, but he couldn’t see anything through the curtain of water in front of him.
“Walt!” Jacob appeared out of the tree line near the cornfield, rain-drenched, muddy, and pale in the darkness of the storm.
“Jacob?”
“Get Monkeewrench inside,” he panted. “We’ve got tornadoes on the ground southwest, moving up toward Buttonwillow.”
“I’m on my way. Where are your deputies?”
“Searching the whole damn county, which is where I’m going after I call in an all-units, damn radios aren’t working out there . . .”
“Hell if you’re going back out there, Jacob. Get down to the storm cellar.”
“We think he’s here, Walt, and close. Deputy Nagle found his vehicle broken down and abandoned on Lentz Road. You take care of things on your end, I’ll take care of things on mine. And make sure you have your shotgun at the ready, just in case.”
—
Walt was taking a battering from the wind and the hail that was turning his yard white as he held open the screened porch door for Harley and Roadrunner, who were making a last mad dash up the steps. They looked like a couple of drowned rats, shivering and dripping rainwater on the wooden floor. Thank the good Lord the two women had had the good sense to get safely to the house earlier, before all hell had broken loose.
“Down to the cellar,” Walt shouted over the howling wind just as a fierce gust pulled the door from his hands, ripped it off its hinges with an unholy screech, and tossed it out into the yard like a toy.
Annie suddenly appeared in the dark rectangle of the storm cellar door and started waving her arms. “Hurry up!”
FIFTY-ONE
Magozzi had pulled over in a gravel turnaround by a wicked S curve and a foaming creek, hoping the overhanging tree limbs would protect them from the gargantuan hail that was pouring down out of the sky. Or maybe one of those overhanging tree limbs would snap off and crush their car with them inside—there just weren’t a lot of choices at this point.
Gino had his face in his phone, giving minute-by-minute updates courtesy of the National Weather Service feed. “Goddamnit, Leo. We’ve been following this thing the whole way. We drove into it, and we’re still driving into it. If we’d stayed on the exit ramp, we’d be getting a suntan right now.”
“So we stay put until it passes.”
“Yeah. I guess, and hope to hell we don’t get sucked up into a funnel cloud while we’re cooling our heels.”
Ten minutes later, the hail slowed, then stopped, and the black sky lightened, just slightly. Gino’s face glowed in the ambient light of his phone’s screen. “I think we dodged a bullet, Leo. Looks like this thing is breaking up and veering north.”
“Great. Then we can drive through it again on the way home.” He pulled back ont
o the road, which was littered with shredded leaves and twigs that the wind had ripped off the trees. A mile up, a big toppled oak blocked most of the road and had taken power lines down with it. They were still live, throwing sparks.
“Jesus Christ,” Gino muttered, bracing his arms against the dashboard. “Can you get electrocuted in a car?”
“I hope not.”
“You hope not?”
“I can get around it if I ride the shoulder, it’s clear.”
Gino pinched his eyes shut, so Magozzi saw the lights first, pulsating red and blue just beyond the crest of a hill on the other side of the fallen tree and the spitting power lines that were dancing erratically across the tar. “Cops,” he said, tapping Gino on the arm, and he opened his eyes.
“Fire up ahead.” Gino pointed to a boiling column of smoke rising above the farmland.
Magozzi stared at the smoke for a minute, and then simultaneously, he and Gino both realized that they weren’t looking at smoke rising—they were looking at a descending tornado, coiling and twisting across the horizon like a sidewinder rattlesnake headed right for them.
“Ditch!” Magozzi shouted.
If you find yourself in a vehicle without immediate access to a proper shelter when there is a funnel cloud within sight, or a tornado has been reported on the ground in your general vicinity, do not attempt to outrun it, and do not seek safety beneath bridges or freeway overpasses. If you have no other options, immediately exit your vehicle, find the lowest spot available, such as a ditch, lie flat . . .
And kiss your ass goodbye, Magozzi thought, feeling the cold, muddy water soak into his suit. He and Gino had been lucky—the ditch was deep, and there were no live power lines supercharging the water they were lying in facedown. Which didn’t mean they were safe, it just meant they had avoided electrocution for the time being.
And then he heard a crashing in the woods, and a deafening, all-encompassing roar. Every eyewitness report of a tornado he’d ever heard over the years played like a broken record in his mind. “It sounded just like a freight train.” That had always puzzled Magozzi, because he’d never once thought of a tornado when he’d heard a train.
