She found David and Warren two blocks away. Each wearing a fluorescent vest, they were helping clear the debris off the roads and storefronts. The water had retreated but dumped the contents of the homes and businesses it had ravaged in its wake, laced with a thick, slimy coat of mud.
“Didn’t think we’d have to go through this again,” said David, swiping at the buzzing insects close to his face.
Warren had perked up since she’d seen him earlier in the morning. Back in his usual civilian clothes, a trucker’s cap on his head, he’d reclaimed some of his former authority. Still, he failed to meet her eyes as he excused himself so Laurie could speak to David alone.
“Everything OK?” said David, pulling her gently to the side.
“Crime doesn’t stop, even for this,” said Laurie, accepting his offer of a hug.
“You look ready for action.”
Laurie wasn’t sure how much to tell him but she needed to be honest. “I need to find Frank. I think he’s in trouble.”
David’s lower lip jutted out, a sign that he was thinking. “Trouble how?”
Laurie took a deep breath before telling him everything she knew. She noticed the little twitches his eyes made as he tried to make sense of the information. “This lawyer guy could be my half-brother?” he said when she’d finished, his eyes darting from side to side as he continued to process what she’d told him.
“I believe so.”
“And he wants to kill Frank?”
“I don’t know for sure. I think if he’d wanted him dead immediately, he would have killed him when he murdered Maurice.”
“And you’re sure of this? You don’t think Frank is responsible for all of this? From what you said, he didn’t think much of Uncle Maurice.”
“I can’t answer that for sure, David. Too many unanswered questions.”
“I’m coming with you,” said David, speaking without thought, as if his mind was jumping from scenario to scenario. “How are you getting there?”
Laurie placed her arms around him. “They’re trying to stop me from going as it is, David. There’s no way they’ll let you come too.” She squeezed him to her. “I know what I’m doing. I’ll find them.”
“Frank knew all this time, and never told me?”
“Possibly, but he might not have known either.”
“Stay. Wait until this is all over,” said David, his voice breaking. “I can’t lose you, Laurie. You’re all I have. You’re all I’ve ever had.”
“I’m coming back, David. I promise,” she said, pulling herself away from him while she still had the strength to manage it.
Chapter Forty-Six
Laurie caught a lift on the back of a highway patrolman’s motorcycle through the devastated island to the Coast Guard station. It was slow going, as they had to stop more than once to push the bike through thigh-high water or clear debris blocking the road.
The current estimate was that three-quarters of the island had been flooded, and she saw nothing to make her doubt it. Evidence of the storm surge was everywhere. Along the seawall, parts of the road and sidewalk had been torn up, leaving jagged concrete boulders in their wake. Fallen power and phone lines lay in tangles from toppled poles, and even some of the boarded-up store windows were smashed, the businesses’ interiors ripped out and scattered in all directions. The insect-strewn sludge that had been left in the aftermath of the surge brought with it an unholy stench that Laurie knew would only worsen over the coming days. The islanders had been here before and would come through it, but she knew firsthand the financial and emotional toll the storm’s fallout would exact on them.
A helicopter was being refueled at the Coast Guard station, and Laurie introduced herself to the pilot, Patrick Markham, with whom she’d spoken earlier, back at the high school shelter.
Patrick was no more enthusiastic regarding her scheme than he’d been on the phone. “My priority is going to be working on rescue calls. You understand that?”
“Of course,” said Laurie. “And I’ll make myself useful however I can, I promise. I just need to get to Bolivar.”
“You’re going to be putting yourself in danger. It’s probably not as bad over there as during Ike, but anyone fool enough to have stayed is now going to be on fire to leave.”
The crossing to the Bolivar Peninsula was usually just under a three-mile journey by ferry, but although the water had calmed since Heather had moved out into the gulf, no boats were currently making the journey. When Ike had struck, Bolivar had taken the brunt of the storm, which had all but decimated parts of the island, including the small beachfront community of Gilchrist. Early indications were that the peninsula hadn’t suffered as much this time around, but it had flooded, and many homes had been destroyed.
“I understand,” Laurie assured him. “All I need you to do is get me over there and I can do the rest.”
“We’re going to do another swing over there, but I’m not sure there’ll be anywhere easy to land. We rescued a few stragglers from there earlier, but had to use the airlift. You prepared for that?”
“I just need to get on land,” said Laurie, checking the address she had for Neil Mosley on the map she’d packed with her.
“Old school,” said Patrick, nodding to the map.
“I’ve been told it’s the best way, but then, the guy who told me that is old as dirt.”
He grinned. “You don’t risk losing signal, I’ll say that much for them.” He nodded toward the back of the bird. “Grab a seat back there. Leaving in five,” he said, placing headphones on as he settled into his seat in the cockpit.
Laurie introduced herself to the two coastguardsmen working the back of the helicopter. The machine was an MH-65 Dolphin specifically outfitted for search and rescue. The guardsmen told her they’d already rescued fifteen people in the last few hours from various parts of Galveston, and had taken a flyby of the peninsula.
The wind was already buffeting the helicopter as the pilot started the propellers. The three guardsmen had flown in earlier that day from Corpus Christi, the small city where Sadie Cornish had moved with her family many years previous. As well as rescuing those stranded by the hurricane, their mission was to document the devastation unleashed by Heather, as evidenced by the compact video camera wielded by one of the guardsmen.
“Ready for takeoff,” said Patrick over Laurie’s headset, followed immediately thereafter by the helicopter’s stomach-lurching leap into the still decidedly unsettled air. “Be prepared, Detective Campbell. It’s going to be a rough ride, both up here and down below. Ugly down there.”
Laurie had already seen her share of devastation on the ground following Hurricane Ike, but the pilot was right. Below her, Galveston looked like some waterlogged foreign country. The majority of the island was still blanketed by water. Great, tangled piles of debris snarled the roads and many of the beachfront properties on the West End were utterly destroyed.
“Estimates just jumped up to eighty percent of the island being flooded,” said Patrick, as he swept the rocking, bouncing copter back east toward the Bolivar Peninsula, scanning for signs of life below as he flew. “Thankfully, most folks had the good sense to get out this time. Look there,” he added, pointing to a herd of cattle that had somehow congregated near one of the resorts a little inland. “That’s a bunch of lucky hamburger.”