“How many cats have died?” I asked.
Aunt Marge wasn’t sure, not that it mattered. My godmother respects all forms of life from her bone marrow out. One dead cat was 20 cats too many in her opinion. And mine.
Aunt Marge went on to tell me that Roger Campbell had put every solvent, fluid, and petroleum product into a locked storage cabinet to which he alone had the key. He had also spoken to the manager of the Food Mart, Shiflet Hardware, and Bob Shifflett at the service station. They were under threat of death if they sold any cat-killing products to Eileen.
I admired his approach. That is the kind of thing I wish I could do but is forbidden to me because I wear a badge.
I glanced over at Aunt Marge, and noticed she was smiling in a soft, suspiciously misty way. I had a terrible sense of destiny deep in my intestinal tract. That, or my body was rebelling against the three Oreos I had snuck from Kim that morning.
***^***
Hurricane Fiona was supposed to make landfall around the North Carolina-Virginia state line, as a category 3. Whether Fiona skirted north or south, we’d catch wind and rain, and I didn’t have time to fret over anything else.
Like me, Maury had a gut feeling of danger, and he had the volunteer fire department, and everyone else he could grab, throwing sandbags. Two days before Fiona was to make landfall, the sandbag dike stood three feet high all up and down Elk Creek. Kids played on it. After the hot, dry summer, the creek was a sluggish shadow of its usual self, and I heard people laughing at Maury’s caution.
Too bad stupid isn’t a crime. I could’ve filled some jails.
The next project was to sandbag along Elk Branch, and to get me some volunteers to help with flood watch. Donny Tucker volunteered, surprising the hell out of everyone; Maury signed up. So did Seth Campbell and so did Mr. Shiflet from the hardware store. I knew the Ellers would watch Stoney Branch, since it crossed their property, but I didn’t think they’d warn the rest of us, so I got Reverend Wallace from First Baptist to stand ready on that front. By the time Fiona was a day away, we’d sandbagged just about everything we could.
I was eyeing the bridge over Elk Creek, up at Spottswood Park, when Mrs. Rush approached me. “Sheriff? I need to talk to you.”
I slapped on my professional smile, nose itching from the cloying miasma of floral perfume that preceded her by a good six feet. Boris twitched in disgust and scampered away. I envied him.
“Someone lost this,” she announced, holding an item between two fingers. “Looks like one of those trashy things from the drugstore, but I suppose someone might want it back.”
I took it, nose wrinkling. It was one of those bracelet watches you can get in boutiques, that look expensive and tarnish at the drop of a hat. I deposited it safely into a Ziploc baggie I’d normally have used for evidence, just to keep the dirt contained, and tossed it into the cruiser. “Where’d you find it?”
“Over there,” she waved airily. “You know. There.”
There. Not too far from where Lisa’s body was found.
I stilled my excitement. It’d been weeks, and people came and went along that stretch ten times a day. Still…
Fiona first.
“How’d you find it?”
“It was in the ditch. Caught the light.”
I nodded absently, gave her my thanks, and examined the ditch briefly. With the dry weather, not a drop of water remained. I could see marks of decay and slime that told me there’d been about half an inch in there, at least until the last week or so.
My conscience told me to hand it over to Rucker. Proper procedure.
“Lil?”
I grabbed my radio by reflex. “Yeah.”
“Shiflet’s Hardware. Dispute.”
The watch could wait. Would have to wait. I called Boris, who finished sharpening his claws on a pine, and got on with more immediate problems.
***^***
Everyone in Crazy was glued to the Weather Channel that last day. The cloud cover started to build in at dawn. It edged in from the southeast in sullen bands, dropping a warm drizzle that I swear smelled of the ocean. Everything had gone quiet, from birds to squirrels to insects. Just waiting, sensing the wrongness looming out over the Outer Banks and pressing in our direction. We all studied the Weather Channel maps, trying to calculate in our heads what would happen.
The eyewall made landfall around ten in the morning as predicted, as a solid category 3. It weakened within an hour to a category 2, pushing steadily west-northwest at fifteen miles an hour. The eye would pass over us around midnight. The main rain bands would begin hitting us by lunch. And just to make our lives more interesting, the forecasters pointed out that the low pressure system pulling it northwest would feed the damn thing. Our rainfall prediction jumped from a total of eight inches to a probable total of twelve to fifteen.
“We gotta evacuate everyone along Elk Creek, and everyone along Third and Fourth,” I argued to Maury as we strode through the gray oppression we called air right then. “I’m telling you, the animals know, they’re all up on high ground.”
“We can’t evacuate them. Where’d we put ‘em?”
Good question. The only houses big enough belonged to Ellers or Littlepages. “Town Hall? My office? I don’t know. But if we get that much rain…”
“I know,” cried Maury, rubbing his bald spot even balder. “Listen, go get some sleep, anyone’s got a problem they can call the county. We’ll need you tonight. I’ll see if I can talk people into budging.” He grinned lopsidedly, showed teeth in need of cleaning. “At least Delbert’s listening. We got our trucks and all moved out to Dad’s barn.”
Good for them, I thought, scowling as I slumped into my cruiser. Boris did not acknowledge me. His mismatched eyes were fixed on the sky, and he was trying to make himself small. I didn’t blame him. I wanted to shrink, and I knew what was coming. What was it like for him? For all the animals?
I went home, tried to sleep. The air was stifling, warm, thick with menace. I tossed and turned, finally resorted to a double dose of Aunt Marge’s chamomile infusion. I dozed off, woke to find Aunt Marge shaking me. “Time to get up, dear. I made you something.”
I gurgled my thanks, stumbled to the bathroom to revive under a quick shower. I’d gotten dressed before I thought to look for Boris, and I found him huddled on the rocker amid my dirty clothes. He’d adjusted so easily to being with me that I’d almost forgotten he was feral, had at least a couple of years of life in the wild under his furry belt. I saw it in him at that moment, his eyes dark with apprehension, his tail twitching anxiously, his body tense and compact against the unseen threat. Yet when I’d finished eating my soup and toast, and drank down Aunt Marge’s fruit tonic, he went to the cruiser with me. His fur stood on end all down his spine.
Aunt Marge gave me two thermoses of her fruit tonic, and startled me with a kiss on the cheek. “Be careful, dear. And don’t worry about me. This mountain’s not going to come down on a Turner.”
I’d have to hope she was right. I plodded to my cruiser in a steady rain, what farmers call a good soaking rain. I glanced at the sky, saw the darkness looming to to our southeast. The wind was gusting pretty high on the mountains, not so much in our little valley, and I gave Boris a kiss between the ears. “I’m glad you’re with me,” I whispered to him. He snuggled his head against me, with an expression of trust and affection that just about broke my heart. I wanted more than anything to take him home, but the idea of leaving him cut me to pieces.
I had my knee-high waders, my slicker, and a plastic cover for my hat. I still got soaked in the time it took to splash from car to office to glance at the radar and see the yellow-orange bands pushing at us. Once against the spine of the Blue Ridge, those clouds would drop their loads fast and hard, and I shuddered deep inside myself. By the time I had driven up and down Main Street, my fear had coalesced into a hard knot in my stomach. I drank more fruit tonic to wash it away. Thank God for Aunt Marge and her holistic foods. I don’t know what fr
uits go into that juice of hers, or what herbs, but it’s always delicious and always gives me a glow of good energy. Exactly what I needed as the rain began to come down harder, first in spurts, then in a low roaring downpour. My windshield wipers couldn’t keep up. I flicked them to high, and kept driving.
Not many people were out on the roads. I saw Maury in his pickup, splashing through the water puddling in low spots on the road. He waved at the ditches; they were filling fast. I cruised gently up Third to get a look at Elk Branch, and saw it was already running yellow-muddy and hard. Boris huddled deeper into his seat, purring unevenly in his anxiety. I rested a hand on him briefly. “Don’t worry, baby,” I told him. “I won’t let anything hurt you.”
I kept my bubble lights on, using the bullhorn to get people off the streets. I saw a couple of kids playing, drove them home with a few pointed words, and gave their parents a brief lecture on child neglect that won me no friends. I didn’t care. The rain had become the kind of downpour that defies the best defenses, thick, tropical, dense. Gutters overflowed everywhere, and by sunset, the ditches were running high. The water would start covering the road before long, and we still had the worst of the rain to come. And the wind was picking up, gusting down the mountainsides at speeds I’d guess to be upwards of forty or fifty miles per hour.
Around eight, Kim called me on the radio. People had broken into Shiflet’s Hardware. I found some cousins of Maury’s skulking out with tarps. The wind had risen to a steady droning forty or so miles per hour, the gusts capable of knocking a person flat. They protested about trees knocking holes in their roof, but I took them in anyway, then ran to their house to retrieve their dog and a locked box that held their important papers and documents. They became the first refugees to spend the night in one of my cells, being fed muffins and coffee by Kim.
At nine, I checked the weather gauges at town hall. The wind gauge during a gust whipped up to seventy miles per hour. The rain gauge had topped out at six inches, and was now overflowing. I knew Aunt Marge’s gauge went to twelve inches, and prayed it, too, did not overflow before the night was over.
Driving was getting impossible. I had to keep at it, though, happy enough that I was the only dumbass out on the roads. I found Maury at his post at the end of Third, his spotlight turned on Elk Branch. He gave me a thumbs up through the window, and I rolled on to Donny Tucker, posted at the end of Main, and let Mr. Shiflet know about his store when I visited him up at the other end of Main, at the bridge over Elk Creek. Seth Campbell, watching Stoney Branch, waved that all was well. The creeks were running high but not devastatingly so. The sandbags might hold.
It was Boris who warned me. We’d parked for the moment on Spottswood, and I was trying to decide whether or not to run out Turner’s Gap Road. Boris’s head popped up, ears painfully pricked, and he merowled with more fear than I thought he had in him. I followed his gaze to the upper reaches of Elk Creek, which starts up the mountain behind Aunt Marge’s house, and frowned. I didn’t hear anything, yet Boris was scrambling madly from his seat, over me, trying to get out. His panic was contagious. I slammed the car into drive, hit my siren, and called the Crazy VFD. Hugh Rush was there, and he activated the emergency siren. I could barely hear it over the torrents dropping from the sky. I called Kim next, told her to tell the volunteers that we had a flash flood or landslide on Elk Creek, and to get everyone west of Main out who hadn’t already gone. Then I eased along in agony, announcing over my loudspeaker, “Flash flood warning. Flash flood warning. Flash flood warning. Get to high ground immediately. Flash flood warning.”
I felt the rumble myself as I approached the office. A sort of shiver in the ground that made the tires slip on the wet pavement. I floored it all the way up to 20, the fastest I dared to go in that weather, and turned onto Main in time to see the floodwall hit the bridge. Mr. Shiflet and his truck were on the town side of the bridge, and by our headlights we saw the wall of brown-black slam the bridge in a roar of thunder. The floodwall passed, and the bridge was gone.
I got on the CB. “Donny, Maury, go high!”
I got no reply. I took that to mean they were busy getting to safety. My stomach roiled. I swallowed acid, got turned around, and went down Main as fast as I could manage. I saw Maury’s pickup and Donny’s next to it outside the Emergicare, and pulled under the portico. They were standing outside their vehicles, by the doors, ashen under their summer tans. “Anyone hurt?” I called.
“No one hurt. Everyone got out.”
I sagged, thanking God more sincerely than I had in years.
“Sandbags are gone.”
I nodded, didn’t care. I rested a few minutes, listening to the subsiding growl of the creek, and knew it wasn’t over. Especially when a gust of wind came screaming down the mountain and peeled the metal roof of that portico clean off like it was paper. Boris, still in a state, bushed his fur and disappeared into his litter box. I watched in shock as the metal roof flew merrily away, and decided maybe there were safer places to be. As I turned onto Main, my headlights showed me a tree across the road. I swore to myself, grabbed Boris, and decided it was better not to sit in the car while the worst of the wind and rain hit.
Boris protested. Loudly. He squalled when I scruffed him—got him by the scruff, I mean—and writhed inside my slicker like a demon. He forced his head out at my neck, got his teeth sunk into me, and hung on growling bloody murder. His hind feet were stuck in my shirt, his front claws sunk into my breasts and hooked in my bra, and his tail was lashing hard enough to leave welts. Tears of pure pain sprang to my eyes, but I didn’t waste my time cursing or trying to convince him. The sheriff’s office is cinderblock. It’s probably the safest building in the valley. And that’s where we were going.
Once we got out of the car, Boris scrabbled to get back into the car. He managed it somehow, before I could shut the door, and vanished under the driver’s seat, hissing at me with betrayal gleaming through his hate.
“Sorry, baby,” I lied. I shut the door, popped my trunk, pulled out my duffel of spare clothes. I discarded the clothing, returned to the front of the car. After a bit of a fight, I got Boris shoved in. I left it a tiny bit unzipped so he could breathe, and headed for my office. My flashlight didn’t make much impression on the night, and the wind had taken on an eerie howl. All around I heard the crack and thump of branches and trees toppling, some close, most far. The rain hit my head so hard it hurt, felt as if it was raising bruises when it hit my face. The wind staggered me, and I nearly lost my balance twice. I got over the fallen tree without much trouble, no thanks to Boris, but by the time I reached my office I was shaking from exhaustion and tension.
The wind slammed open the door under my hand. Kim rushed to shut it behind me, exclaiming at my condition. I was plastered with leaves torn from trees, dripping wet, and trembling too hard to unzip my slicker. She got me out of the wet gear, screeched. “It moved!”
I’d forgotten Boris. I unzipped the duffel bag and he vaulted out, yowling his displeasure. He sprinted to his corner of my office, where he now had a small cat condo (only three feet high, unlike the six-footer at home), a litterbox, and a feeding station. He slithered into the drum-shaped part of the condo, showed me only his angry green and gold eyes.
“You’re welcome,” I snapped at him, letting Kim push hot cocoa at me. With marshmallows. It was strangely comforting. I got some alcohol swabs out of my desk, started cleaning up my injuries. The bite on my collarbone ached like hell, and I felt blood oozing from the scratches on my torso.
For all that, I was better off than I would have been if I stayed in my cruiser.
“Donny and Maury called in. They’re staying at the Emergicare.”
“Mr. Shiflet?”
“Home, he said.”
With that, I could actually relax. Seth Campbell was at the turnoff to his restaurant, and no fool. He’d scamper if he had to. I was still thinking I should call him when I fell asleep.
***^***
Elk Creek crested six feet over flood level. Both Third and Fourth streets flooded out, houses up to their windowsills in murky, fast-flowing water. The bridge over Elk Creek by Spottswood Park had been demolished. The one near Dr. Mitchell’s remained intact, but the road to the Country Rose had been washed out. A landslide on Little Mountain had changed the course of Stoney Branch. We had eighteen trees down just in Crazy, and three roofs badly damaged. And, as Mrs. Taylor and Roger Campbell both called to let me know, all the feral cats had emerged unharmed.
Aunt Marge, serenely smug, informed me that she and Natasha slept through the night, and not a shingle on the house had been so much as ruffled. She also told me the weather gauge at the Reynolds farm showed we’d received sixteen inches of rain in twenty-four hours, with a maximum wind gust of 82 miles per hour up on Johns Mountain.
I was sitting in the office, savoring our escape from real harm, when my cousin Jack Littlepage banged through the door. A real Littlepage, mousy hair, cold eyes.
“I want to know what you’re going to do about Lisa.”
“It’s not my…” I began.
“No,” he said, fists clenched at his sides. “I want to know what you are going to do about it. It’s obvious Chief Rucker intends to do nothing.”
“It’s his call, I can’t…” I tried.
My cousin leaned on my desk. Boris, abashed by his storm behavior, huffed up and gave a snarl that my cousin ignored.
“Cousin Littlepage,” he said slowly, “I understand you have no family feeling for us, nor we for you.”
“That’s not…”
“I am asking your help,” said Jack Littlepage formally. “If I must beg, I will do so. My sister and I have not been close in some time, but the idea that her…death… is in Chief Rucker’s hands… profoundly disturbs me.”
“It disturbs a lot of people,” I assured him numbly. “But…”
“Do you think Chief Rucker performed his duties adequately?”
Crazy, VA Page 6
