Storm Front

CHAPTER 1

When the first clouds began to cluster and then thicken over the Gulf of Mexico, the satellites tasked with observing that part of the world’s weather duly noted the fact and went on to more important things. They relayed the information to computers, which opened it to human analysts who assessed the data and began to make their own predictions.

First, both men and computers quickly determined that it was not an embryonic hurricane. It was March and well before hurricane season, making such a major event extremely unlikely. It was determined to be nothing more than a large but not particularly intense storm front. It would not be given a name, or even a number. It was just to be watched. It was also noted that a line of similar, but smaller, storms followed like ducks following a mommy duck.

As the main storm moved north, it continued to grow in size but not intensity. Its winds stayed in the twenty- to thirty-mile-per-hour range, while its clouds sucked up and retained copious amounts of moisture from the Gulf and the rivers below. The computers and analysts agreed that it was going to result in a very big rainstorm and nothing more. All continued to track it, though with no sense of urgency. People along the Mississippi and in the Midwestern states were going to get very wet, but that was about it.

Although there were some variances in the individual predictions, there was a great deal of similarity, even harmony, as they were all dealing with the same data, the same or similar computer models, and with human forecasters who had all received similar training. There was nothing in the storm to indicate any kind of an aberration from the data on file or historical records. Yes, they agreed that the climate was getting more dramatic and violent, but this was still nothing more than a giant rainstorm and not the end of the world.

As predicted, the storm and its trailing children headed north on a line that took it up the Mississippi River. Again, the computers and their human masters noted the fact. Its course was checked against records and tendencies of hundreds of previous storms, and it was determined that the unnamed dark and thick mass of clouds would continue north until it was over Ohio. Then it would veer east through Ohio and on into Pennsylvania. When it hit the Appalachians, it would diminish and cross into the eastern seaboard where it would die and be forgotten. Analysts noted that the heavy rains would be welcome by the farmers who were constantly complaining about drought.

The analysts were confident that the worst effects would be massive rainfalls and flash flooding. They would be damaging where they fell, but intense rains often happened in late winter or early spring. With the temperature along its intended route well over freezing, rain was the worst that would befall anyone. Tornados were extremely unlikely given its configuration. The various weather services prepared their standard warnings. Floods could kill, especially flash floods, and there was genuine concern for both human casualties and the likely loss of property. The forecasters would sound the alarm and try to save as many lives as possible, and, as usual, would be fairly successful. They would not, however, be entirely successful. At some point, waters would rise more quickly than planned for and trap the unlucky or the unwise. Or some damn fool drunk would try to drive his pickup truck across a bridge already awash in swiftly flowing water and be swept away, never realizing just how little quickly flowing water it took to float a truck.

The forecasters could only do their best, as always. Television forecasters and news directors licked their chops at the thought of nice, dramatic flood scenes. But if no river turned into a raging torrent, they would have plenty of flooded-out homes to show and distraught occupants to interview. Maybe they’d be blessed with a helicopter rescue of a family, preferably with a dog, from some otherwise placid creek’s raging waters. Worst case scenario: they’d be stuck interviewing people whose sewers had backed up and were now dealing with stinky muck in their basement.

North of the storm’s intended route, other forecasters read their printouts, checked their models, and were silently thankful that the storm front, now almost astonishingly saturated with vast amounts of water, would pass south of them. The Great Lakes states of Michigan and Illinois, along with their Canadian counterpart—the Province of Ontario—had received more than their share of wet weather this winter, but it had been in the form of snow, not rain, and large amounts of snow still remained on the ground. Two heavy snowfalls in three weeks had left an accumulation of the white stuff that remained in dirty piles several feet tall alongside suburban driveways, and, in larger parking lots, snow mounds resembled mountains.

They were thankful that winter was almost over and that the worst of a bad year was probably past. So said the calendar, at least. Reality told them that the wind and snow of winter could hang on into the early part of April.

Regardless, the storm was full of rain and not snow, and would be headed east, which meant it was of only passing interest to anyone north of Ohio.

Thank God it would only be rain, the Michigan and Ontario forecasters thought as they concurred with the evidence provided by their computers. The storm would pass to the south. It would rain, and perhaps there would be some flurries along its northern edge as the storm lurched eastward, but it couldn’t snow.

Could it?

* * *

Old, brittle snow crunched under the wheels of Mike Stuart’s four-wheel-drive SUV as he pulled into Maddy Kovacs’s driveway. Maddy owned a three-bedroom detached condo that she shared with two close girlfriends. Thanks to the recession it had been in foreclosure and she’d bought it for a very low price. It needed work, and she was planning on doing a lot of it during the coming summer. She did feel that the huge whirlpool bath in the bathroom and the hot tub on the patio were almost worth it. The hot tub was connected to the house by a private door and had one-way glass. Mike had often thought of the two of them in the tub. It hadn’t happened yet, but hope springs eternal, he thought.

Mike got out of the car and took a deep breath of the moist air. The early March evening was dark and overcast, damp and without a hint of spring. He looked skyward and saw nothing but clouds hanging thick and low and not at all friendly. It had been several days since he’d seen either the stars or the sun, although he had it on good authority that they were still up there someplace. He shivered. It was clammy. Pneumonia weather, as his mother used to say. Old snow was piled several feet high alongside the driveway and he had to step carefully. He’d feel truly silly if he managed to slip and fall on his keister in front of his new girlfriend.

He walked to the passenger side of the car and opened it for Maddy. He’d figured out that she appreciated the little courtesies that so many guys either forgot, never learned, or didn’t think were important. Their loss, he thought as Maddy got out and smiled radiantly at him.

It had been a surprisingly good Sunday afternoon with her teacher friends. “Are you coming in?” she asked.

“Sure. I’m not on duty until eight tomorrow morning,” he said as he automatically checked his watch. “Just about the same time you start.”

Mike Stuart was a sergeant in the traffic division of the Sheridan Police Department. At thirty, he was young for the rank, but had a bachelor’s degree in Criminal Justice and was finishing his master’s from Madonna University in Livonia, Michigan. He’d also spent four years futilely fighting crime in the sewers of Detroit before hiring on at Sheridan, a growing city about an hour’s drive north of Detroit.

In Detroit, he’d seen more crime than he could imagine and more brutality than he thought existed. Because his was a young, fresh face, he’d been drafted—coerced—into working the Vice Squad. There he’d seen the lowest of the low: prostitution, drugs, cruelty to children and animals, and beggars stealing from beggars. Detroit, he was told, wasn’t the worst city in the world, although it sometimes seemed like it. Instead, it was rather typical of a large metropolitan area in which the more affluent families had departed to the suburbs, leaving huge pockets of poverty, thousands of abandoned homes and buildings, and resentment, even anger, at authority. White cops were considered an occupying army, while black cops were thought of as traitors to their race. After four years, he’d had enough. Many young cops just used Detroit as an internship, and Mike joined the steady exodus to the suburbs, where he regained his equilibrium and the realization that not all the people he dealt with were the enemy.

In comparison, Sheridan was an oasis. Crime was present, but in numbers and percentages well below the nearby larger and older cities. Much of the crime, as the local weekly advertising newspaper liked to point out, was imported from those older cities, or was drug-related. Sheridan was just far enough north to discourage casual forays by the criminal element in Detroit. Sheridan tallied just one murder in the previous year in a liquor store robbery gone bad, and a couple of domestic violence manslaughters. Still, hiring in at Sheridan was a good career move for Mike, as his new rank indicated.

Madison—“Maddy”—Kovacs was twenty-six and a fourth-grade teacher at Patton Elementary in Sheridan. They had met a few months earlier when Mike was called to her school to investigate an accident where a school bus hit a student and broke the boy’s leg. Maddy had witnessed the whole thing and been understandably shaken. It hadn’t been the driver’s fault, she’d insisted, and further investigation confirmed it. For some reason known only to him, the boy had crossed back from where the bus had let him off and after it had started moving. The kid was lucky to be alive. Mike had sat her down in his squad car and calmed her to the point where she’d agreed to go out with him.

Mike was just under six feet tall, had dark hair, brown eyes, and weighed one-seventy. He was athletic without being muscle-bound like so many young cops liked to be. He’d been a wrestler in high school and had tried it in college, where he found out that intensity and determination were no substitute for talent. After licking his wounds, he’d concentrated on his grades and graduated with honors.

Maddy had been a successful college athlete, as well as scholar. At five-eight and one-forty, she’d been a starter on Michigan State’s volleyball team before tearing up a knee and wasting her senior year. Although not what some would consider a classic beauty, whatever that was, she had sandy brown hair that reached her shoulders, green eyes, a warm smile, and a healthy athletic figure that Mike considered striking. So what if she thought her nose was a little big, even hawkish. Her mother called it a typical Polish nose. Mike liked it, and that’s what counted. Among other things, they’d been working out together at a gym and the thought of her all sweaty in a sports bra and shorts made him feel more than a little warm this cold, wet evening.

For her part, Maddy was still shocked that she’d agreed to go out with him in the first place, and even more shocked that it had worked out so well so far.
So far,
she thought. There’d been one terrible disaster in her past that she still couldn’t quite put out of her mind. She’d never thought she’d fall for a cop. In fact, she thought about giving up dating for a decade or two. Instead, she now wondered if Mike Stuart was part of her long-term future. Her parents had been quietly wondering if and when she’d marry. They wouldn’t mind a cop, particularly a good-looking one with a couple of college degrees. Hell, she thought, in a few years they wouldn’t mind if she married a circus clown, or the guy who swept up after the elephants in the circus parade. Then she recalled that at least one boyfriend had qualified for the position. Someday, she’d forget about Dirk and what he’d done to her, but not yet.

They entered her living room and Mike took their coats. “Wine?” she asked.

“Yeah,” he said with an exaggerated sigh. “A glass would be great. I need something after an afternoon with the Harrises.”

And one glass is all it would be, he cautioned himself. He’d had two glasses of merlot at the Harris’s and, even though he felt great, he wasn’t going to chance drinking more and getting pulled over by one of his own men. Unless he killed someone, they’d let him go. Still, he had too much to lose. He’d become a joke on the force and maybe even get fired if he got pulled over for driving under the influence and God help him if the local media got wind of it.

Maddy laughed and poured them each a glass of Chardonnay. Mike preferred red, but the Chardonnay was open and she wasn’t going to waste it. “There, that wasn’t so bad, was it?” she chided.

Donna Harris was a fellow teacher at Patton, and her husband Tom sold insurance. Both were in their forties and Donna had taken it on herself to be Maddy’s protector and close friend. It had been the first time Mike had met them. It had been a sort of test and he thought he’d passed. The Harrises were likeable people, although Donna was a little pushy. Tom was quiet, and did not seem at all like someone who peddled insurance.

“Nah, it wasn’t bad at all,” he admitted. “At least they didn’t ask me to fix any tickets for them or to see my gun, or ask how fast you can drive in a crowded church parking lot without getting pulled over.” Dumb questions were the bane of police officers everywhere, which was one of the reasons they tended to hang together.

“Well, just how fast can you drive in a church parking lot?” she asked with mock innocence.

“God only knows, yuk, yuk.”

“You left the gun in the car, right?”

Maddy didn’t like guns, although she understood that a cop had to carry one, even off duty. “Yep, I was a good boy.” He stretched. It felt good to not be on display. “Paybacks are hell, you know. In May there’s a picnic with my buddies I’d like to take you to. By the way, where are Tweedle-dee and Tweedle-dum?”

Maddy quickly agreed to go to the cops’ picnic, wondering if she and Mike would still be seeing each other in a couple of months. She hoped so. She sat on the couch beside him. “Be nice, Mike. Lisa and Vicki are probably out for a bite to eat. They may be college graduates, but simple cooking, even with a microwave, confuses them.” Lisa was also a teacher, but in another district, while Vicki was a systems analyst for General Motors. Of the three, Vicki made the most money by far.