TWENTY-SEVEN Un-Natural Disaster
I t took almost an hour to hear from the cops, and then it wasn’t just to tell me that it was safe to return to my home, but to demand that I get there. Bluster was nowhere near big enough to support a police force of its own, so the sheriff’s office was our law enforcement. It was Cameron Durbin, Del Norte County Sheriff, who called. He wanted to talk to me, on the scene.
He wasn’t from Bluster; he was from Crescent City, the county seat. The sheriff was a stranger to me. However, I remembered how Darryl Manfred had made a show of being golf buddies with ‘Cam’ Durbin. I didn’t know how much of that show was real and how much was pretend, but seeing as I suspected Manfred of whatever chicanery had been perpetrated on the Sea-Mist, I wasn’t enthusiastic about meeting with the sheriff.
Roman drove me over at nearly four o’clock in the morning. Though the Sea-Mist was tucked up from the road and had a long driveway, it was obvious there was trouble before we reached the turn-in—bright work lights and flashing emergency lights turned my corner of the forest into a scene like a demented rave.
“Oh god,” I muttered, staring at the chaotic flash and glow through the trees.
Roman slowed the truck to a stop right before the turn. He squeezed my hand. “Whatever it is, we’ll deal with it. Us. Together. Okay?”
Turning from the glow of disaster, I found his eyes on mine, beaming sincerity at me. It was precisely what I needed: reassurance that I wasn’t alone.
I nodded and squeezed his hand back. “Okay.”
With that settled, he turned onto the drive and headed toward trouble.
Despite Roman’s presence, despite his reassurance, my stomach did an Olympic gymnastics routine as we arrived on the parking lot. It was full of emergency vehicles and their flashing lights—a fire truck, a paramedic van, two cruisers from the Sheriff’s office (the word SHERIFF sprawled across the driver’s door of one), and a utility truck from the Bluster Community Water District.
The flashers on the paramedic van went off, and the van headed toward the exit. At least there was no need for paramedics here.
“Jesus,” I muttered as Roman parked along the far edge of the lot, out of the way of all that commotion.
“I’m with you,” he said before we climbed out of his truck.
For a minute, we stood on the parking lot, hand in hand, trying to understand what was going on. I didn’t see anyone who looked like the sheriff or any other law-enforcement type—but then Roman tugged on my hand and, when I looked his way, nodded at a man in jeans and a hoodie heading toward us.
“That’s Cam Durbin,” Roman said.
“That? Him?” I asked, surprised. The man coming our way didn’t look any older than me. Also, he was good looking. I guess television and movies had led me to expect some old dude with a doughnut belly and a grey buzz cut to be a sheriff. Also, I’d expected a sheriff’s uniform, but probably that was a lot to ask at four in the morning.
“Mrs. Braddock?” Durbin asked as he reached us. “Hey, Roman.”
“Cam,” Roman murmured back. He clearly wanted to fade back a little and let me lead here, as was right.
“It’s not Mrs.,” I corrected. “Ms.—or just Leo.”
“Alright, Leo,” Durbin said and offered his hand. “Sorry to make your acquaintance this way.”
“Yeah, me too. We saw some of it on the camera feed, but it was hard to tell—what happened, and how bad is it?”
Durbin tilted his head toward the path that led to the cottages from the parking lot. “Let’s head back, and we’ll talk.”
Still holding hands, Roman and I followed the sheriff. We got as far as the back wall of the main cabin, before I drew up short and dropped Roman’s hand so I could use both of mine to cover my mouth.
The thing about the Sea-Mist? It’s in a little valley. The forest rises up anywhere from six to twenty feet around the part of the property where the cottages sit. That little valley is a major selling feature. It’s why the cottages aren’t visible from the road, why the land is so lush, why the area is so secluded.
As it turns out, it also makes a pretty good basin.
“My god,” Roman breathed.
The whole area was a swamp. No, not a swamp. A lake. The picnic tables seemed to be actually floating . Every cottage I could see from where I stood—and our cabin— was at least a foot deep in water. Worse yet, water rushed from under the doors, making waterfalls down porch steps. The cottages themselves were flooded as well.
Several people, probably deputies and utility workers, moved about, trying to get the flood abated, but it seemed a fruitless endeavor to me.
“They busted the main, and broke the pipes into the cabins too,” the sheriff said.
The human brain is a weird machine, and maybe mine is weirder than most. While I stood there in dumb shock, surveying the utter ruin of the one thing I had that could give Wyatt and me a new start—the thing I had only hours ago managed to save from foreclosure—a scene from an old movie popped into my head, and I actually laughed and quoted it aloud.
The old movie was Bull Durham . One of Micah’s, and Wyatt’s, favorites, so I’ve seen it often enough to have it memorized. It’s about a minor league baseball team, and there’s a scene where the team, demoralized from a string of losses, wishes for a rainout. The lead character, Crash Davis (a young Kevin Costner) makes a rainout by opening the sprinkler pipes and flooding the field.
“Oh my god,” I quoted, chuckling darkly, “we got ourselves a natural disaster.”
Sheriff Durbin and Roman both turned and gave me the looks my word vomit deserved. Durbin looked almost offended. Roman looked worried. Both were confused.
“Sorry,” I said. “I don’t know where that came from.”
“It’s from Bull Durham ,” Roman said, and I wondered if he’d been thinking about the same scene before my outburst. “You okay?”
I shook my head. “I think I am very much not okay.”
“It’s Bonfire Night,” Durbin said, pulling the moment back on track, “and there’s always a little bit more mischief, but the damage here is too much to be a prank, I’d say. We got a look at the footage from the security company. Four people did this, men by the look of ‘em—they were camouflaged pretty well, though. Still, they didn’t act like dumb kids looking for trouble. They acted like they were on a job. So I gotta ask, Leo—you got any enemies? I know you were raised up around here and left for a long time—anybody mad you’re back? You burn any bridges?
Those questions all sounded like victim-blaming to me, but I didn’t get my hackles up. Making an enemy out of the sheriff would do me no good. If I wasn’t already on his enemies list.
I had a name for him, and I was eager to see how he’d react to hearing it. Was Sheriff Durbin really best buds with Manfred? If so, would he protect his friend and fuck me over?
“The only person I can think of who I might call an enemy is Darryl Manfred.” I focused all of my attention on the sheriff.
It was quickly clear that he did know Manfred, possibly well enough to call him a golf buddy. Durbin sucked in a long breath, held it, and sighed. “Right. The deal he was working before you came back. Are you accusing him of doing this?”
Oh, I was sure Manfred was behind it, but I stopped short of making an accusation to the sheriff. “You asked me if I have enemies. As far as I know, I have only one: Manfred.”
Durbin shook his head. “But he wants to buy this property—what makes you think he’d try to destroy it?”
“Two things,” I answered at once, trying to ignore the word destroy . “First, he wants the property, not the business, so flooding me out probably wouldn’t get in his way. Second, just today—or, yesterday, I guess, I cleared the back taxes, so my ownership is ...” I tried to think of a good legal word to use there—surely there is one—but I don’t know it, so I finished with, “secure. Manfred was banking on me getting foreclosed on because my mother left a big tax bill behind.” I didn’t know if, or how, Manfred would have heard that I’d paid the tax bill he'd so smugly called out at the town council meeting, but he was slimy enough to have people on the take all over California government.
“Actually, there’s another thing,” I added before anybody else jumped in. “Manfred showed up here a few weeks ago, made himself comfortable like he owned the place while we weren’t home, and when I got here and threw him out, he threatened me.”
That got Durbin’s attention. “Threatened you how?”
Now that I’d said it, I thought back to that encounter, when Manfred had been standing in Cottage 12 like it was his. I’d thought I’d remembered the scene vividly, and it was a clear picture in my head, but a silent one. I couldn’t remember the words we’d exchanged. I remembered only how I’d felt.
“I don’t remember exactly what he said, but it was clear he meant to get me out of his way.”
Roman chimed in now, backing me up. “He was obviously angry at the last town council meeting, when the issue of the Sea-Mist came up. I don’t suppose he said anything there that would look like a threat in a transcript, but his tone and the way he looked at Leo were definitely threatening.
Clearly dissatisfied with my answer, and Roman’s addition, the sheriff sucked his teeth. “Let’s not start throwing accusations around until we’ve got some facts.”
“That’s fine,” I said. “You asked if I have any enemies, and that’s the only name I have for you.” Then my weird brain spit something else out: “I’m sorry you’re friends with such an asshole, but an asshole Manfred is. I wouldn’t put this past him for a second.”
Durbin squinted at me. “If you’re implying that I won’t do my job because I know a possible suspect—”
“I’m not,” I cut in. “When he was trespassing, I told him I’d call you if he didn’t leave. He laughed and said you two were friends. Golf buddies. He’s the one who made that implication.”
That seemed to have the desired effect on the sheriff. His mouth drew in tight, as did his brows. “For the record, I don’t traffic in favors for anybody. I do my job, friend or foe.”
“I’m glad,” I said, not sure I believed him.
Durbin’s brisk nod put a period on that topic. “Okay. Well, let’s let these folks work so they can clear out of here. Let’s you and me go back up front and talk details. We need to get your official statement.”
THE MAIN CABIN HAD apparently been an early focus of the emergency crew. Though the damage was obvious from the moment I stepped onto the porch steps, the pipes had been closed and the flooding there was pretty much over. Durbin took Roman and me on a tour of my own house so I could start to process the mess.
The perpetrators, those mysterious people in dark hoodies, had not only broken the pipes at the house, they’d come in and broken them in the kitchen and bathroom as well, just to make sure to do maximum damage, get every last bit of water. Everything was a soupy mess.
After I saw the ruin of most of Wyatt’s and my personal belongings, Durbin, Roman, and I sat on the porch, and I answered the sheriff’s questions. He pressed me hard on my suspicions about Manfred, but I had the sense that his insistence was more about having all the information than in finding holes he could exploit. I can’t really explain why I didn’t feel defensive around Durbin—it was just a feeling I had, that he was sincerely interested in the facts.
He asked me about why I’d left Bluster and why I’d come back. He asked about my life while I was away, and about my financial situation then and now. I didn’t know the relevance of some questions, but I didn’t challenge him. I wanted him to know I had nothing to hide, and also that there was only person alive who bore me enough ill will to do something like this.
One of my answers seemed to draw him up short for a moment. He asked if the Sea-Mist was insured.
Twenty-four hours ago, I would have had to answer no. It simply had not occurred to me; I guess I assumed that my mother would have insured it and that would still be in effect. Which was stupid, of course—the place had been abandoned for years. Obviously the premiums hadn’t been paid.
But Cheryl Jenkins-Conway, loan manager of the Bluster Community Credit Union, had bundled insurance in with the loan I’d gotten. As of the previous afternoon, the Sea-Mist was insured.
That timing, coupled with the fact that Wyatt and I had been away that night, made Sheriff Durbin pause, sit back, look hard at me, and ask several clarifying and repetitive questions. I think I finally convinced him that the fact that I took out insurance at the same time I took out a home equity loan made the whole thing the opposite of suspicious. Why draw from the value of the place and then try to destroy it?
His curiosity finally exhausted, Durbin turned on its side the tablet he’d been using to take notes and faced the screen to me. A piece of the security footage was on it, showing two hooded figures in night vision. “I want you to take a real close look at this footage from last night—”
“We looked at the footage already,” I interrupted. “All I can see is man-shaped black blobs.”
The sheriff gave me a weary look and tapped the screen. The hooded figures began to move, and I again watched someone take a sledgehammer to the pipes at the side of a cottage. As the pipe broke, a torrent of water sprayed up in a massive plume, and the figure ducked and jumped clear.
Durbin tapped the screen to pause it, then slowly reversed the video. It wouldn’t go frame by frame, so he went back and forth a few times, turning the screen fully to him, and then, finally, showed us a frozen moment.
Sledgehammer Boy’s face pointed directly at the camera. For probably a split second, he’d looked up at the moment the water burst forth. It was still blurry and night-visiony, but I could see that it was a young man, probably early twenties. He was blond and bearded. The way the camera made his eyes glow, I was pretty sure he had light eyes. If I’d known him, I would have recognized him. But he was a stranger to me.
I shook my head. “I don’t know him.” Turning to Roman, I asked, “Roman?”
He was staring hard at the tablet, his brow furrowed, and for a moment I had hope that he knew the guy. Then he sat back, still frowning, and sighed.
“Roman?” I asked again. “Do you know him?”
He turned that frown on me for a second. Then he shook his head and turned to Durbin. “Sorry.”
Durbin gave Roman a long look. So did I. It felt like there was something not being said, but that didn’t make any sense. If Roman knew Sledgehammer Boy, why wouldn’t he say so? I couldn’t believe he’d withhold something like that.
Just as I was about to ask what was going on, Durbin closed the topic. “Okay. Well, at least we got a lead here. It’s not a great capture, but I’ll see what we can make of this. I got a couple computer geeks in the office, and I’ll see what they can do to clean it up ... or whatever it is they do. The water did a number on the value of this crime scene for evidence, so this is our strongest piece. Let’s hope we can make an ID off it.”
Yeah , I thought. Let’s hope.
I looked at Roman again. He smiled reassuringly. No hint of anything but concern and support for me.
THE FIRE CREW LEFT as soon as the flood was no longer a danger. The sheriff and his deputies pulled out just past dawn. Only the workers from the water utility were still on the premises as I got my first true look at what the night had wrought.
For the most part, water is a harmless, healthy thing. We need it—a lot of it—to live. We use it to keep ourselves and our world clean. It’s refreshing. It’s recreational. It’s soothing; there’s nothing in the world that can calm me like sitting on the beach or a riverbank, or hell, on a bench near a fountain. The sound of moving water is like a mantra for me.
But water is a killer, too. Under certain conditions, a full-grown adult can drown in six inches of water. Monsoons, tsunamis, hurricanes, even just too much rain at once, can decimate whole communities and kill hundreds, thousands.
In that context, the soupy mess that had been made of the Sea-Mist was nothing. But to me it was a disaster.
I remember one camping trip we’d taken with Micah, when Wyatt was just a toddler. We’d gone into Missouri, to some campground near good climbing areas, and we’d set up camp at a pretty site along the banks of a tiny stream, less than a foot across. Just enough water, and just enough movement, for a gentle burble to be the soundtrack of our weekend.
For a day or so, it was perfect. While Micah climbed, Wyatt and I walked around the campground. We played with Legos and we drew pictures. We played in that little stream, looking for minnows and salamanders. Then, in the evening, we all three had a nice camp meal and cuddled together in the tent, making up stories for Wyatt until he fell asleep.
It was the kind of perfect little getaway we’d loved best.
Until the middle of the second night. The ‘intermittent light rain’ that had been forecast for two to six a.m. was instead a full-fledged thunderstorm that broke all at once. And that cute little burbling brook became a mighty river in minutes.
Our sleeping pads were almost floating by the time the storm woke us. By the time we had Wyatt up and could get out of the tent, water was to my knees—and rushing like we were camped in the middle of the Colorado River. Virtually all of our gear washed away, but we didn’t care; we barely made it to the Jeep ourselves.
But we did make it, and we found a room at the nearest motel to finish out the night. When the storm was over and the emergency had passed, we went back to the campsite to see if there was anything left of our stuff—particularly Micah’s climbing gear, which he was superstitious about.
Nothing was left. In fact, the very terrain of the campground had changed. In six hours, the forest floor had become something like a war zone. The vehicles of less fortunate campers had been slammed into trees so hard they’d bent. Lots of trees had fallen. And the shape of that streambed was different. The stream itself was mostly back to its gentle burble, but the water that had pushed through its banks so forcefully had moved those banks.
I will always remember my feeling in that moment, standing on the new, soft bank of the stream I’d been playing in with my two-year-old the day before. It was the kind of feeling people who believe in a higher power probably feel: breathtaking awe and bone-chilling fear in equal measure, combined in a puree of existential dread.
So close we’d come to real disaster. From a tiny stream and a single storm.
I felt that same existential dread as I stood beside the barbecue pit and surveyed the destruction from water from the pipes , water meant to hydrate and clean us.
“What can I do, querida?” Roman asked, and I winced. Here, now, that romantic endearment felt out of place. There was no romance here.
“Mom?” Wyatt’s voice, full of shock and worry, burst from behind me. Forgetting Roman, I spun and ran toward the parking lot. Wyatt, also running, met me beside our cabin, and we crashed into a hug together.
“You’re okay, you’re okay, you’re okay!” he cried, sobbing as he clung to me. “I thought—”
“I’m okay, buddy, I’m okay. Everything’s gonna be okay.” For Wyatt, it wasn’t a lie, and thus it became a truth for me as well. Everything would be okay. I would figure it out.
I held my son until he calmed—then, when he showed no sign of wanting to let go, I held him some more.
I saw Catherine and Bailey Allman standing at the edge of the lot, watching us with concern. Obviously, they’d brought Wyatt home to me.
Catching Catherine’s eye, I mouthed Thank you .
Catherine put her fingertips to her lips and sent me a kiss.