Old Chaos (9781564747136) (12 page)

“I see him!” Kayla interrupted. “My patient! He’s heading for the creek. Talk to you later.” She stuffed the phone into her pocket and ran toward the nearest emergency exit. “It’s Flash!” she yelled to a passing aide.

She burst out into drizzle that made everything dim and indefinite, but she kept her eyes on the blue jacket. Mr. Bunsen moved fast for a man of eighty-seven, and he had gone fairly far upstream. What was he doing?

“Chester!” she called. That was his given name. He paid no attention or perhaps didn’t hear. The creek was roaring. Kayla took pride in her fitness, but she was panting by the time she reached him. He looked at her with mild blue eyes. So intent was she on not alarming him, she didn’t see the wall of water coming.

A
BOUT THE TIME searchers at the Gautier place uncovered the first body, the sheriff’s office got a phone call from a David Vanderbrook to say that he, his wife, and their ten-year-old daughter were skiing at Timberline Lodge. The Vanderbrooks owned the last house in the Prune Hill development to be accounted for. Rob didn’t find that out until noon, when he called to tell Earl about the body.

Earl sounded almost exuberant. Rob was so relieved to hear of the Vanderbrook’s survival, he felt as if someone had knocked the wind out of him.

He gathered his wits. After he let Earl know they’d found a dead woman, perhaps the Gautier mother-in-law, the undersheriff assumed a properly solemn tone. “I’m sorry to hear it. You don’t know for sure it’s the mother-in-law?”

“We’re sure it’s a woman, but not sure of the age.” And it would be nice to know her name.

The corpse had been found at the point of maximum impact, where tumbling boulders, mud, and broken tree limbs had exploded the two-story house. Still queasy from what he had helped to uncover, Rob watched an ambulance drive away with the mangled body.

The rescuers paused and watched, too. Linda and Jake were still comforting the uninjured house sitter. Todd had gone off duty. Thayer was minding the radio. Earlier, Charlie had raced off in his pickup to see what was happening with Kayla downstream, now that the “dam” across Beaver Creek had given way.

As Bat Quinn and his team turned back to work with their shoulders drooping, Rob filled Earl in on the flood, too, though he knew the engineer from the Roads Department had already sounded the alarm.

Earl assured Rob that everyone who lived on the banks of the creek had been evacuated, or at least invited to leave. Corky Kononen was on top of things.

“That’s good.” Rob scratched his unshaven chin. “I need a crane.”

“So you can be on top of things, too?” Earl chortled at his own wit.

“For lifting roof beams. The tow truck you sent isn’t heavy enough.”

Earl said everything that could be done was being done. Rob doubted it.

“How’s Mack?”

“Well, you know hospitals. They aren’t saying. The surgeons operated to relieve the pressure on his brain.”

Rob felt his stomach churn. “And Beth?”

“They put pins in her leg. I guess her head’s okay, no fracture. The daughter has a skull fracture. I’ve got another call here, buddy.”

“Right.” Rob signed off. He sent Jake and Linda to town with the house sitter and told them to go off duty. They’d done enough on top of a full night shift. Jeff Fong could take over Linda’s camera. So far they hadn’t been swamped with media ghouls, though the Channel 6 news helicopter had braved the rain for a flyover.

Exhaustion dragged at Rob’s bones. Now that they knew how many people they were looking for, Jeff could take over, period. While he waited for his sergeant to show up, Rob went on digging, though he was pretty sure he shouldn’t. The muscles of his back had begun to cramp.

Charlie O’Neill called Meg around 2:30. She was in the middle of a staff meeting. Since patrons were told to turn their cell phones off in the library, the head librarian was embarrassed when hers rang. She apologized and ducked out into the hall to answer.

“What’s wrong, Charlie? Is it Rob?”

“His back seized up. A deputy just brought him in to the hospital. I didn’t call about that.” His voice sounded muffled. “It’s Kayla.”

Meg’s heart was jittering. “What happened?”

He cleared his throat. “She went out to look for a runaway patient just before the flood surge hit the creek. She tried to save him.” He gulped, and Meg realized he was crying. “One of the aides spotted her and got to her, pulled her ashore. They lost the patient. The thing is, something hit Kayla’s face. Her cheekbone’s smashed. They think she’s going to lose her right eye.”

“Oh, Charlie, honey.” The thought of Kayla disfigured sickened Meg. “I’m so sorry.”

“Her eyeball was just lying on her cheek.”

She swallowed nausea. “What can I do for you?”

He took a ragged breath. “Her family, do you know anything about them?”

“No, but I have a key. I could go into her house, look for her phone book. Wait, wouldn’t her employer have next-of-kin records?”

“I can call the bastard who runs the place, I guess. Sorry to interrupt you at work.”

“You phone the nursing home. I’ll come to the hospital. Are you in Emergency?”

“Yes. Thanks, Meg. I’ll stay here, and I’ll tell Rob you’re on your way. Uh, he’s kind of dirty. Can you bring him some clean clothes?”

“Yes.”

Charlie hung up.

Rob’s back had seized up. What did that mean? Meg returned to a cloud of chatter in the staff room. Silence fell. Everyone looked at her with the blank expression of gossips in the presence of their victim.

Meg turned to Marybeth Jackman, who looked even blanker than the others. “My neighbor has been seriously hurt. I’m going to the hospital.”

Jackman raised her neatly penciled brows.

Meg turned back to the other staffers, meeting their eyes. “You’ve reached item three on the agenda. I’m sure Marybeth here is capable of taking you through the rest.” She bared her teeth in a smile. They nodded. One or two smiled back. Meg turned to leave.

“Which neighbor?” Somebody tittered.

Meg stopped at the door and turned back. “Two of my neighbors and several of my friends are in the hospital right now. Elizabeth McCormick, for one, is a long-term Friend of the Library, so that should be of some concern to you. And surely, at a time like this, everyone is your neighbor.” She shut the door neatly behind her, but she was trembling, whether from this small confrontation or from anxiety for Rob and Kayla, she couldn’t tell. Unfortunately she couldn’t punch Jackman in the nose.

When she’d found Rob some clothes, she drove to the hospital and followed an ambulance to the Emergency entrance. It went on past the brightly lit area—to the county morgue, Meg supposed. She parked with careful attention, locked the car, and ran to the waiting room. Charlie was there, red-eyed and haggard. She grabbed as much of him as she could reach and hugged. He hugged back.

“Kayla?”

He sniffed and shook his head. “They couldn’t save the eye. They’re flying her to Portland for reconstructive surgery on her cheekbone.”

Meg consoled him as best she could, herself mourning Kayla’s beauty. Finally, she said, “What’s this about Rob?”

He rubbed his face. “Sorry, you must be worried. He hurt his back. They took him in for an MRI.”

“That will take time.” Relieved that the news wasn’t worse, she patted Charlie’s arm. He had a lab to teach in Vancouver, more than an hour away, so he left almost at once, looking wretched.

Meg had never been good at waiting. She made up her mind to check on the McCormicks while Rob was undergoing what she knew could be a slow procedure. She handed his clothes to an aide and had found the door of Beth’s recovery room when the surgeon came in to tell the sheriff’s wife and children he had died on the operating table during a second surgery. He had suffered a massive coronary.

Maddie went to the hospital twice. The first time was shortly after Beth was brought in. The harassed hospital spokesmen were not giving out information. Maddie knew at least three nurses and half a dozen aides, however, so she was able to assure herself that Beth was not in immediate danger. The sheriff and his daughter were in critical condition, both in surgery. It was not the time to intrude on the family, all beginning to assemble, all stunned and bewildered, so Maddie went off to her favorite café in search of coffee and rumors.

After a late lunch with Hank Auclare, who was depressed at the prospect of lawsuits and irritated with the acting sheriff for holding an impromptu press conference, she decided to return to the hospital. She was in time to catch Earl Minetti’s second press conference of the day.

Ablaze with television lighting, one end of the hospital lobby rang with urgent media voices—clearly not an impromptu P.R. exercise. The acting sheriff sat at a table with Commissioner Karl Tergeson on his right hand and a man in surgical scrubs on his left. Reporters occupied a row of folding chairs. Minetti, his hair slicked back and his glasses polished, wore a suit and tie. Madeline did not approve of the ostentation—he wasn’t in court, after all—but she had conducted enough press conferences herself to take a critical interest in the setup.

When he had caught everyone’s eye and the shouted questions subsided, he said, “I have the sad duty to announce that Sheriff McCormick died about an hour ago during a second operation. He had a long and distinguished career. I’ve summarized it for you on the green fact sheet. Our sympathies go to his family on this sad occasion.” He paused as a deputy handed out the sheets of pale green paper. Maddie took one with numb fingers. So Mack was dead. The king is dead, long live the king, wasn’t that what the Bostons said on these occasions? A sad way of looking at things, she thought.

She looked around the lobby. Despite the chatter, she saw only half a dozen reporters she knew and one video camera. Relatives of patients and passing staff were taking fact sheets. She wondered if Minetti realized that the press turnout was less than spectacular.

Minetti said, “I’ve asked Dr. Powell of the Latouche County Hospital to explain what happened.”

Maddie tuned out as the surgeon began to speak in tongues. It was clear that Mack’s injuries had been hopeless. A mountain had fallen on his head. Why are they doing this, she wondered, staring at Minetti’s tight face. It’s like something off the TV, like the time that nut shot Reagan. But Mack was not president of the United States.

Like a lot of white men, Minetti had an almost lipless mouth. Every once in awhile, as the doctor spoke, it quirked in a smile. Maddie had not loved Sheriff McCormick, but Mack had been a human being, not some kind of…

She was a scrupulous woman, so she searched the archives of her own culture first for the right term for Minetti—witch, shape-shifter, ghost? Not really. Robot? No. What Minetti reminded her of was the superheroes of kids’ electronic games, the kind who solve everything by going
Shazam
! and zapping the bad guys. He had that kind of cartoon reality. And he was taking over.

As Karl Tergeson launched into pious platitudes, Maddie edged away from the pool of light. She was shaking with rage. It took her three tries to speed-dial the governor.