Creatures of the Storm Read online

  The kids oohed in spite of themselves. Nothing like messing up school property to get their attention. I should have opened by kicking the podium to pieces. Then they’d love me.

  “In this one handful of local soil, there are thousands of seeds,” she said as the last of the dirt fell to the floor. “In a cubic meter of Dos Hermanos soil – think of a box about this big, by this wide, by this tall – there are over one hundred thousand seeds. Flowers, plants, cacti, all of them in seed form. They’re not dead; they’re not alive. They’re what’s called dormant.”

  “What’s that mean?” said one dark-skinned little girl from the third row. Lucy recognized her type. In fact, she recognized herself in that suspicious, challenging glare. Hang on, darlin’, she thought. You’re in for a bumpy ride. “What’s your name?”

  “Kerrianne,” the girl said.

  “Okay,” Lucy said, wondering why she’d ask. “It means sleeping…and waiting, um, Kerrianne. Kind of a combination of the two. And there’s only one thing that will make these seeds come to life.” To the whole group again: “Anybody know what that one thing is?”

  Now half a dozen of them from all over the room said it at the same time: “Water!”

  “Right!” She knocked on the podium of emphasis. “Water. These seeds are all examples of xerophytic adaptation – a big phrase, don’t bother writing it down. It means they’ve all adapted themselves to really, really dry climates. They can wait for months or years or even many years for the water to show up. Desert Sand Verbena – you know, that wide-leafed plant with the little purple flowers that’s out in front of the school?” Lots of nodding heads now. “That’s one of them. Its seeds can go dormant for years, until the right combination of rain and temperature comes along. So can the desert paintbrush, and the ocotillo. Some desert animals can do the same thing – snakes and mammals and even fish, who live only in hot water pools in the middle of the desert. If those pools dry up, though, the fish don’t die; they go dormant. They wait.”

  She looked down at them, silent again for a moment. Then the memory of Frannie made her say, “You know…you guys can be like that, too. You could be waiting for the right breaks at the right time, and then you could turn into something completely…unexpected.”

  Christ. Who am I supposed to be, Deepak fucking Chopra?

  She straightened up and slammed her palm against the podium – a sharp fast whack! – and everyone jumped again. “Okay!” she barked. “Lecture’s over! Mr. Pratt…?”

  “Thank you, Dr. Armbruster.” The school principal, a short, narrow-shouldered, flat-headed fellow with a well-groomed mustache and a self-satisfied expression, ducked into the mike as Lucy stepped aside. “Children, let’s thank the doctor for taking the time to speak to us today …”

  The applause was louder than she expected. She waved at them halfheartedly. “Yeah, yeah,” she said under her breath. “Whatever.”

  “All right,” Mr. Pratt said, “It’s three-oh-five now, and your rides home have started to arrive. Remember to tell your parents again about tonight’s Security Meeting, 7:00 in the Martin Luther King Conference Center Main Ballroom. Now, when I say so, you children can go out the back doors…” There was a great clattering stir as the kids snagged backpacks and lunchboxes –

  “WHEN I SAY SO!” he bellowed into the mike.

  Everybody froze. The students stood suspended for a long, long moment, while Pratt glared down at them.

  Finally, slowly, he said: “Class…dismissed,” and they all jumped back into action, surging for the doors as fast as they could move.

  In that instant, Lucy Armbruster put Douglas Pratt on her long list of People Worth Hating, even as he put out a large, flat-fingered hand to be shaken. “Thank you, Dr. Armbruster,” he said. “Most informative.” He glanced distastefully at the floor. “Although we’ll have to get Flaco out here to clean up your mess, of course.”

  Lucy let his hand hang there. “Then I guess it’s good I didn’t let loose the scorpion and tarantula displays,” she said innocently. “Imagine that mess.”

  For one instant Douglas Pratt looked absolutely appalled. Then his face folded into something like a smile.

  Okay, Frannie. That’s it. I have done my bit for humanity. Now where the hell did I park my car?

  Principal Pratt took a small walkie-talkie from his belt and whispered into it.

  “Well,” she said, feeling more awkward than ever, “I’m glad I could help out, given the, um, circumstances. It was good for the children to have some distraction during the questioning. Frankly, I don’t think anyone, including the police, was taking this very seriously until… you know, until now. I get it,” Lucy said. “I mean, one missing girl is a runaway, but two? In a town this size? In a week? That’s something else.”

  Everyone had heard the stories. The rumors about The Little Girls were the hottest topic in town. Little Jennifer Toombs, age eleven, was the first to disappear, but by all accounts she was a hateful little brat who many were glad to see gone. No one knew very much about the second girl, and the local cops…well, no one expected much of anything from them.

  “We’ve cancelled regular classes,” Principal Pratt said, “but we do need to do something while the, um, interviews are taking place.”

  In other words, Lucy translated, we needed someone to keep the kids occupied while the cops ask a lot of hard questions. And here I am, Straw Woman Number One.

  “It would be nice if they could crack the case,” she said, eying the exit with something like desperation. “I guess it's not that easy, though.”

  “Never is,” said a new voice. They both looked up at Sheriff Donald Peck sidling onto the stage.

  Peck really did look like a TV-movie version of a smart cop: broad-shouldered, strong-jawed, steely-eyed. “Not that I would mind cracking the case,” he said. “I always wanted to solve one like that Columbo guy.”

  They all chuckled politely. The cell phone clipped to the Sheriff’s belt warbled. He held up an apologetic finger and turned away, looking for a little privacy, as he said, “Peck,” but there was something taut and hard in his voice that made Lucy want to eavesdrop.

  “When?” he asked. “Where are they taking them? Okay, I’ll meet them at the Clinic, and – no, don’t let her talk to anyone. No, god–”

  He looked up and caught Lucy watching him… and for one moment she saw something hard and dangerous in Donald Peck’s eyes, something that scared the hell out of her. “Just do what I told you to,” he said into the phone, his eyes still on her. He clicked it shut and switched on his warm, comforting smile, only for her.

  “Sorry,” he said to her. “When it rains it pours.”

  Lucy made herself smile. “Sure does,” she said. She swallowed hard.

  It took a long, long moment for him to release her, like a cat releasing its prey. “I’m afraid I’ll have to excuse myself,” he said. “There’s been a fairly serious car accident up–”

  “Mrs. Greenaway?” Pratt said, talking past Lucy's shoulder to a woman in the center of the Cafetorium. “What is it?”

  Sharon Greenaway was standing in the doorway to the parking lot. Lucy knew her; Sharon and her husband Jeff owned the only organic market in town, and Frannie had gotten her addicted to decent cooking, so she was a regular customer there.

  Normally Sharon was a sunny, pleasantly plump woman; now she looked as if someone had punched a hole in her. Her eyes were three times their proper size. Her skin looked like warm tallow, moist and yellowish as she crossed the multipurpose room to the Sheriff and the knot of teachers.

  “She didn’t come out,” Sharon said. Her voice was trembling. “I’ve been waiting.”

  “Oh my God,” Lucy said.

  Sharon was having trouble breathing. “All of her friends–” gulp “—came out fifteen minutes ago.” Gulp. “But…”

  Sheriff Peck took charge in an instant. He pulled out his phone again, barely took a pause, and began to hiss into it. “Jimmy?” he said into the phone “Get up here. Now. No, let Bo follow up at the Clinic; I’ll meet him there. I need you– no, goddamn it, don’t argue, get here!” Lucy could see the anger in him. If he could have slammed the phone down or thrown it across the room he would have.

  He pointed to a group of teachers off to one side and began to bark orders. Then he turned to the stricken, trembling woman beside him who was staring wordlessly at him. “We’re going to find her, Mrs. Greenaway. Hang tight.” He didn’t wait for a reply; he went back to snapping into his cell phone and his shoulder-mounted police-band radio at the same time.

  No we won’t, Lucy said to herself. She knew it, even as she heard the little girl’s name being called across the campus. We just...won't.

  “I think I'll make myself scarce,” she mumbled to no one in particular. She moved quickly across the room and pushed open the double doors –

  – to be hit in the face by a sheet of warm, slimy water.

  “Gah!” She staggered back a step, thinking some adolescent prankster had planted a full bucket over the entrance. When her eyes cleared she looked outside for the first time in hours.

  It was pouring rain.

  Pouring.

  Lucy stared at the sky, at the ground, then at the water already choking the gutters. The hand-painted signs about the Security Meeting were running and unreadable, like badly applied mascara.

  Oh, Jesus, she thought as she stared into the iron sky. Oh, jumping Jesus in a handcart.

  Lucy Armbruster had made herself into the country’s single greatest authority on this particular desert’s microclimate. She had almost singlehandedly built a research station on the crater’s north ridge to study it up close. She knew the origin and meaning of every breeze, every flower bloom, every cloud in the sky. And all she could do was stare at the swelling rain rushing across the schoolyard and try to not scream.

  “This is bad,” she said aloud. “This is very bad.”

  Three

  Rose Mackie sat by her mother's bed and tried not to scream.

  They had been fighting, as usual, when the accident happened. Neither one of them seemed to able to stop themselves.

  “Look,” her mother had said. “It's not my fault you're here.” Rose hated it when she started the conversation with “Look,” that way. It was bitchy and hard and said, I know more than you do about whatever it is we're talking about. “Look, I didn’t make you take that shit into your body. I didn’t force you to break your probation and go to that party and get arrested again. That wasn’t me.”

  Rose had smiled bitterly. “You’re right, Mom,” she said very quietly. “You’re right. I’m all alone in this. I know that. I figured that out a long fucking time ago.”

  The rain was rattling and sizzling all around the car, turning everything distant and soggy and gray as they forced their way into Dos Hermanos. Of course they got completely lost. They even had to stop and ask directions from a total stranger so they could get pointed the right way. It felt like hours before they finally came to a set of twin pedestals made from river stone that supported a wrought-iron archway.

  With the car paused in front of the gate, her Mom turned in her seat and said, “We’re here.”

  “No kidding,” Rose muttered.

  Her mom steered through a deep dip in the road, the water thundering around them, and started talking again, as if the gate gave her some kind of permission. God, why did she have to talk all the time?

  “You be good to your father,” she said as she drove up a second hill and into a new wave of rain.

  “Oh, sure,” Rose had snorted.

  “Rose, you need to give him a chance.” They surged downhill again and splashed into a rushing puddle.

  “Why?” Rose said. “You didn’t.”

  The BMW roared up the third rise and there it was: the huge dark hulk of his ridiculous mini-mansion, hunched on the ridge line like a fat, sleepy snake. “It’s not about me,” Lisa told her.

  “Of course it is,” her daughter said.

  “It’s not–”

  “Don’t!”

  “Rose, please listen to–”

  “Stop it!”

  A streak of red flew in from the left, a motorcycle or golf-cart or something, and slammed into the road right in front of her. Lisa jerked the wheel to the side, flinching away from the collision without thinking. Mud sprayed across the windshield.

  Rose had screamed. She remembered that much, at least. Then there was nothing under the front tires, and they were tipping, plunging, roaring down the hillside, sliding to the side, falling faster and faster. Lisa screamed and threw her arm in front of Rose and an instant later they rammed into a solid block of stone.

  Stop, Rose had been screaming. Stop stop stop…

  And now she wasn't even moving. She wasn't even moving. Rose leaned forward, forcing the tears back, sorry about what she said, sorry about being here, sorry about everything…

  And Lisa Corman Mackie opened her eyes.

  * * *

  Rose knew she looked awful. Her makeup had washed away long ago; her hair had dried into a mad black tangle. She didn’t care.

  Her mother had opened her eyes. She didn’t look sleepy or confused at all. She looked right at her daughter, into her daughter, tears sliding down her temples from the corner of her eyes.

  “I am so sorry,” her mother said, and Rose knew she wasn’t apologizing for the car accident, or the argument, or the stupid decision to come to Dos Hermanos in the first place. She was saying she was sorry for everything, from the minute it had started to go bad, and maybe even more.

  Her mom’s arms came up and Rose bent down. They hugged, awkwardly and not without pain. Rose’s back was sprung, though she sure as hell wasn’t going to tell the doctors that, and Lisa had needles in her arm and a bandage wrapped around one wrist. Still, they embraced as they hadn’t in years.

  “You’re okay,” Lisa said, and they both knew what that meant, too.

  “I am. I am. It will be different now.”

  “I know. I mean it, I know.”

  They stopped talking for a while and cried together.

  * * *

  Ken let it go on for as long as it needed to. He didn’t interrupt. He wasn’t sure he could have if he’d wanted to. Finally the two of them disentangled, laughing at the confusion of tubes and twisted sheets. Lisa rubbed the heel of her hand across her cheeks to wipe the tears away before she looked at him directly.

  “Hi,” she said. “I’m okay, really.”

  “I know you are,” he said thickly. “I mean, the doctors said… I talked…” Ken put his hands over his eyes to hide his own tears, but he couldn’t stop them. “Christ, Lisa. Christ…”

  Rose, standing close beside him, put a hand on his chest and made small circles, an oddly intimate, comforting gesture, like rubbing a baby’s back. “It’s okay, Daddy,” she said quietly. “She’s alive, and so am I, in spite of my best efforts.”

  He sniffed and wiped his eyes. “In spite of your best efforts,” he repeated, almost laughing. “How old are you again?”

  “I’m a hundred and twelve in dog years,” she said, “and you made me that way. Come on. Sit down here.” She pulled a second chair close to the bed, and Ken hovered over it, unsure what to do.

  He and Lisa hadn’t exchanged more than twenty words in a row since the day he’d left. All he knew about what she was going through was what Lisa told him, and that only came in dribs and drabs. He knew about her realtor business, of course, and he had a sense of how bad things were. Why won’t you take any money? He wanted to ask. Why not let me –

  Lisa pressed her lips together and scowled. “Don’t be an ass,” she said and gestured at the chair. “Sit down.” Lisa caught a glimpse of a khaki uniform moving in the hallway.

  “Is that a policeman at the door?” she asked.

  “Yeah,” Ken told her. “He’s been guarding you since we got here.”

  The officer stirred as if he knew they were talking about him. He turned and stuck his head in the door, a handsome, dark-haired head with thick black brows and piercing eyes.

  “You’re awake!” he said, smiling.

  “Yup,” Lisa said, pushing her hair back. She hated the feel of the IV in her wrist.

  “I’ll get the doc, then. By the way, I’m Bo Cameron, Deputy Sheriff. We wanted to make sure you were okay.” He flashed a smile and ducked away.

  “What is that about?” Lisa asked.

  “They want to get your statement about the accident as quickly as they can, I think,” he said, glancing at the empty doorway. “About that ATV.”

  Lisa let her eyes fall shut. She was already tired. “I didn’t see much,” she said. “You probably know more than I do.”

  “Yeah, I told the EMTs what I saw on the way here. Guess they passed it along to the Sheriff.”

  “Sheriff? God, this is a one-horse town.”

  “Actually, we’re saving up to buy our horse. Give it another couple of years.”

  Ken couldn’t stop looking at her. He felt like a starving man in front of a three-course meal. He wanted to her to look at him, him, so he could tell her about dragging them from the wreck while it was still steaming in the downpour, about the wild ride to the Borrego Clinic in the ’57 Chevy ambulance, about the argument in the ER when he refused to leave them. But he couldn’t open his mouth. He couldn’t even bring himself to take her hand.

  God, he thought. I’m an idiot. I’m such a fucking idiot.

  Lisa turned her head and opened her eyes, looking with great concern at her daughter. “What about you? Any injuries?”

  “I’m fine,” Rose assured her mother. “Clean bill of health, as if I’d let these guys touch me to find out.”

  The bizarre storm rumbled and hissed outside the hospital room’s picture window. Lisa’s eyes flickered to the glass, then back to Ken. “I thought you said it never rains here.”