A Killing in the Valley (24 page)

“This is Tina’s first year at school, same as me,” Sophia said. “We’re making our own club up. We’re going to call it the Outcasts. Or maybe the Under the Radars. The Invisibles is a contender, too.”

It hurt to hear comments like that from Sophia, even when spoken in jest, because she knew the joking was for self-preservation. Sophia was doing better socially, but coming to a new school for your senior year could never be a happy situation. Knowing another girl who was in the same boat had to be of some comfort.

“Where did you go before?” she asked the girl.

“Locke,” Tina answered. “It’s in Los Angeles.”

Kate knew L.A. well enough to know that Locke High School was in south-central, in a very tough area. That part of the city had been totally black for decades, but more recently it had become increasingly Latino. It was a hotbed of gang activity, a tough place to survive in. This girl is stronger than she looks, she thought.

“Do you like it here in Santa Barbara?” she asked.

The girl nodded. “Too many guns in Los Angeles. Too much killing.”

Amen to that, Kate said silently to herself.

The timer went off in the kitchen. “Calorie time,” Sophia called out, getting up from the couch. “You gonna join us, Mom?”

“I’m not hungry yet. Maybe I’ll have a slice later,” Kate said.

They ate at the kitchen table. The girls washed their pizza down with Cokes. Kate joined them with a glass of chardonnay. When they were finished, the girls cleaned their plates and loaded them in the dishwasher.

Sophia grabbed her purse and keys. “We’re gonna be really late tonight, Mom, we’ve got full dress rehearsal in two weeks and we’re pathetically behind. So don’t wait up. I don’t want to come home and find you asleep in front of the TV again, okay?”

“Yes, ma’am,” Kate answered.

“I’m serious. I don’t want to feel guilty that I’ve got to get home so my mommy won’t get worried.”

“All right already,” Kate surrendered. “It was nice to meet you, Tina. I’ll see you again, I’m sure,” she told Sophia’s new friend.

Tina glanced at Sophia. “It was nice to meet you, too, Mrs. Blanchard.”

Mrs. Blanchard.
Kate didn’t like being called that. She had only kept the name “Blanchard” because it was the girls’ name. Usually when someone called her Mrs. Blanchard, she would immediately correct them: “It’s Kate.” Or in the rare formal situation, she’d allow a “Ms.” But with this girl she would let it slide. She understood that Tina came from a culture which mandated respect for adults, and frowned on easy informality.

“Don’t wait up,” Sophia firmly reminded her again.

Maybe Sophia was hooking up with a boy after rehearsal, Kate thought with a sudden epiphany. Not the worst thing that could happen. Her daughter wasn’t a flake—any boy she got involved with would be acceptable, and safe.

Kate smiled. “I promise.”

T
HE FIRE STARTED MIDDAY
, high up in the tinder-dry Los Padres National Forest. By nightfall it had jumped the initial fire lines and was burning out of control, threatening several small towns in the Santa Ynez Valley, hundreds of homes, and thousands of acres of prime agricultural, recreational, and commercial property.

Every fire department within a hundred-mile radius joined forces to fight the fire. From all over the state, rangers from the forest service were flown and trucked in and were immediately thrown into the battle. Convict work-crews from Santa Barbara, Ventura, and San Luis Obispo counties were pulled from the honor farms and brought to the front lines to cut firebreaks, working alongside the professionals.

Within twenty-four hours after the fire started, over two thousand people were trying to stop it. They were pissing into the wind. Unless the weather changed radically—the wind dying down and shifting, the temperature dropping, some other freakish and unlikely act of nature—the fire was going to burn until it got to where there was nothing it could feed on. Maybe the area around Lake Cachuma, the huge county reservoir, or the Rancho San Marcos golf course, three hundred acres of grass and sand, would slow it down. The worst-case scenario, which had to be seriously considered, was that it wouldn’t be stopped until it reached the Pacific Ocean.

Andy Cassidy’s fire department F-150 lurched to a stop outside Juanita McCoy’s house. Andy was an assistant county fire chief in charge of the Santa Ynez region, the headquarters for the valley’s fire department. He was bone-tired; he had been up all night fighting the fire, on the front line of attack. He needed to get back to the station and grab a couple of hours of badly needed sleep before he headed out again. But first he had to try to persuade old Mrs. McCoy to leave her ranch.

She stood outside her front door, staring at him with determination. “I’m not going anywhere,” she told him in a firm voice. “Not yet, anyway.”

“Mrs. McCoy…”

“The fire’s at least twenty miles from here.”

“And moving damn fast,” he said in a frustrated tone of voice. “It could reach the edge of your property by tonight. Earlier, if the winds pick up like they’ve started doing.”

“The edge of the property’s a long ways away,” she said, her eyes turning to the east, where plumes of dark smoke rose in the distance against the rust-red sky. “There’s a good chance it won’t reach this far.”

He’d known this wasn’t going to be easy. He wished this evacuation had been mandatory, instead of voluntary. By the time the county legally insisted that she and the few other holdouts like her had to leave, everyone would be too busy trying to hold the fire back to assist the stragglers in getting out. That’s how lives were lost. Mrs. McCoy was an important person in the county, practically an icon. Leaving her to her own devices was stupid and dangerous. But short of hog-tying her and carrying her off, he didn’t know what else he could do.

“And what about the old ranch house?” she asked him. “What’s going to be done to protect it?”

“We’ll do everything we can,” he vowed. He was well aware that the house was an historic landmark. Not as significant as one of the original Missions, like La Purisima, but still very important. “If the fire starts really threatening that section, we’ll dig a wide trench to stop it. Bring in the water planes if we have to.”

“The 1990 fire jumped the highway,” she reminded him, scoffing at his promise. “Six lanes, like nothing. If this one’s that strong it’ll jump any measly, last-minute firebreak you can cut. And if you dump five tons of water from a plane on that old house, the force could flatten it.” She shook her head. “I’m not ready to leave. Not yet.”

There was nothing more he could do. “I’ll check in with you later,” he said. “If I can. Don’t be stupid about this, Mrs. McCoy,” he implored her. “No house is worth your life.”

He could see by the tightening around her eyes that he had spoken out of line. “Mrs. McCoy,” he said, trying to be conciliatory, “get your people to take whatever valuable stuff they can out of that house, but please, don’t risk your life over it. What good would that do?”

“I can take care of myself, and my property,” she told him firmly. “You’d better get some sleep, Andy,” she admonished him. “You’re out on your feet.”

Kate Blanchard, working at her office, had the radio on to the all-news station. They were broadcasting live updates of the fire every fifteen minutes. It sounded very grim.

She had not talked to Juanita McCoy since this time yesterday, when she’d called to find out how dangerous the situation was, and to fret to Juanita for her and Steven’s safety. Juanita had been determinedly upbeat, insisting that the fire was not going to affect them directly. She and Steven were absolutely safe, she had assured Kate, when Kate urged her to evacuate. If the wind changed direction and they were in any peril, of course she would leave. But that wasn’t necessary yet.

The phone call hadn’t been assuring; in fact, the opposite. Juanita was blinding herself to the dangers, Kate knew, because of her devotion to her land. Somebody ought to go out there and pull her off the place forcefully, she thought with a growing sense of anxiety. Not her, though. That wasn’t her job. She had felt stymied and frustrated by her inability to do anything.

Sophia came in and flopped down in the chair next to her desk. Kate glanced at her watch. It was lunchtime. Sophia had a free period after lunch on Tuesdays and Thursdays, so she had an hour and a half before she had to be back on campus.

“Have you eaten yet?” she asked Sophia. “Do you want to grab something?”

“I guess.” Sophia cocked her head toward the radio. “Anything new?”

“No,” Kate answered. “Everything’s still out of control.”

“Have you talked to Mrs. McCoy today?” Sophia asked. She was clearly worried.

Kate shook her head. “Phone lines are down. Only essential calls are being routed through. Cells are down, too.”

“I wish we could go up there and help,” Sophia lamented.

“I know you do. But there’s nothing we could do, and all the roads are closed.”

Over the past two weekends, Sophia had taken three riding lessons with Juanita. After the formal lessons, they rode all over the ranch property, for hours and hours. Keeping her promise, Juanita made sure to keep Sophia away from any contact with Steven.

In the afternoons, when they were finished riding, Sophia worked alongside Juanita, in her garden. The summer vegetables were about finished, and there was a ton of picking, canning, and freezing to be done. For a girl who had always lived in a city and had never had any taste of rural life, it was an exhilarating experience. Last weekend she had come home with a huge bag of produce from the garden—tomatoes, squash, corn, two varieties of melons, and enough pole beans to feed them for a month.

“The winter garden goes in in November,” she told her mother authoritatively. “Kale, spinach, lettuce. Turnips. It’s fun, Mom, you should come out with me.”

“That would be nice,” Kate had answered. She wouldn’t, though. Not because she didn’t like to; she enjoyed getting her hands dirty, seeing things grow that you had nurtured. But Sophia was developing a special relationship with Juanita McCoy, and she didn’t want to intrude.

“I hope they’re okay up there,” Sophia said, her voice laden with concern. “She and Steven.”

Steven McCoy. That was another dilemma. If Juanita did evacuate, where would he go? According to the bail requirements, he had to reside with her. But if she had no residence, where would that leave him?

Kate wondered if Luke had thought about that. Later on, after Sophia went back to school, she’d remind him to think about it.

“Let’s get lunch,” she told her daughter. “I’m starving.”

Juanita McCoy paced in her kitchen as she listened to the ongoing reports on the police band. It didn’t matter where they were trying to stop the fire, or even slow it down—it was relentlessly pushing the fire brigades back. As she looked out her windows she could see, two or three times an hour, the fire planes overhead on their way toward the center of the blaze, dipping low as they approached the heart of it, releasing their loads of retardant, then banking away and heading back to the airport to be reloaded. In their wake the fire would subside for a few moments, then roar back to life and move relentlessly on.

Despite Andy Cassidy’s attempt at pacifying her, she knew that the firefighters weren’t going to save the old building that had been the cornerstone of the family’s property for five generations. Every ounce of their effort would be consumed with trying to keep the fire from burning all the way over the pass, into the city of Santa Barbara.

Juanita, Steven, and Keith Morton stood at the edge of the old ranch-house lawn. Steven, wearing a T-shirt, jeans, rough-out leather cowboy boots, and a battered felt ten-gallon hat that had belonged to his grandfather, was trying to comfort her dog, who was skittish and jumpy. With an animal’s sixth sense she knew that danger was approaching.

Juanita had tried to talk Steven into evacuating when the fire department had pressed her again, this morning. He had dug his heels in.

“Where would I go?” he challenged her. “Back to jail? I’ll take my chances here. Besides, I’m not going to leave you here by yourself.”

She had tried to reason with him. She was an old lady who had lived a full life. If the worst possibility happened, she would move on to a higher world, with no regrets. But he was a young man, on the cusp of beginning his life.

He had refused. She had put herself on the line for him. He had to stand with her now.

She didn’t argue. She was scared for him—she was scared for herself and Keith, of course, but they lived here, this was their life. She believed they had no choice, which Steven did. In her heart, though, she was proud he had decided to stay. The blood force had skipped her children, sadly, but it was alive in her grandson.

The large water tank was forty yards from the old house, at the edge of the gravel road. The ranch wells automatically filled it whenever the water level dropped more than ten feet from the top.

To their east, the fire had taken over the sky. Flames could be seen coming over the hills at the north of her property. It was coming like a glacier, as unstoppable and inevitable.

“How much water do we have in the holding tank?” Juanita asked Keith Morton.

“Eight thousand gallons,” he told her. “Full to the brim. I topped it off last night.”

“The pumps are primed, ready to go?”

“Yes, ma’am.” He was calm, cowboy-laconic. “Got plenty of fuel, too. We could run ’em four or five hours if we had to.”

“It’ll be half an hour or less, one way or the other,” she said, a hand sheltering her eyes as she peered at the fire. “We’ll save it, or we won’t,” she told him stoically.

He didn’t reply; none was necessary.

“It’s just the three of us now,” she told him. That was her principal worry—that even if they had enough water, and enough water pressure, two of them fighting this massive inferno might not be enough to hold it off.

Over the past day and a half, Keith and Steven had rounded up the cattle, loading them and the ranch horses into trucks that had been driven to safety in Paso Robles, a hundred miles north. And earlier in the day Juanita had sent Esther, Keith’s wife, into Lompoc, which was out of the fire’s path. Esther had protested, but Juanita had insisted. There was no reason to put a life in danger that didn’t need to be. Before Esther left, they had loaded up her truck with the photo albums, silverware, some of the rare old books, and a few of the special paintings; whatever they could fit in.