Whirlwind (11 page)

21

Pleasant Grove, Southeast Dallas, Texas

P
am Carraway had started her day before first light.

That morning, Pam, a part-time gym teacher, joined her search-and-rescue team in the parking lot of a Baptist church. Their fluorescent jackets glowed yellow, orange and green in the headlights of arriving vehicles.

You couldn’t tell by looking and talking with her, but Pam was not sure she could make it through another day.

As the sun rose, members of the volunteer group sipped coffee from commuter mugs and checked radios and phones while they were given their new assignment: the fringes of Lincoln Memorial Park Cemetery. Tornadoes had churned through the burial grounds and destroyed surrounding homes and businesses.

“The debris field is substantial,” Kel Zedler, the search manager, said. “It was searched yesterday by Jay Selinger’s group. We’ve been tasked to take one quadrant of the area and search it again. And, guys, it bears repeating that time is running out for survivors. Lives may depend on us.”

Some of the K-9 units yipped as the team climbed onto the school bus that would take them to their command post. As they drove in the twilight Pam adjusted to her muscle aches from yesterday’s marathon search.

She couldn’t shake off the secret overwhelming sense of loss and foreboding dwelling in a far corner of her heart.

Was it posttraumatic stress?

Suck it up, Carraway. This is no time to go to pieces.

Make no mistake, she was dedicated to the work, having started volunteering two years ago after the group had found her seventy-three-year-old father, an Alzheimer’s walk-away.

They’d saved his life, and she felt the best way to thank them was to be a part of the work they did.

Pam was already certified in CPR and advanced first aid. She was in excellent condition. The search team trained her on how to use compasses, maps, GPS, grid search practices, various advanced communications, weather, clue and evidence techniques. She’d learned incident management skills and could quote from four different manuals.

During the time Pam had been with the team, they’d helped search for bodies, missing children and seniors, hikers lost in the wilderness. They’d helped police look for guns or knives tossed after a crime.

As a searcher, Pam had been involved in helping locate twelve bodies. She had experience with making gruesome discoveries; still, she never got over the shock of seeing cadavers in various stages of decomposition. It never, ever got easier. She died a little each time, thinking of the families of the victims.

Yesterday her team searched through a section of Irving that had been hit hard. They’d made sixteen finds. Eight were deceased and Pam had found seven of them, including the man buried in rubble holding his dead wife, whose body had been cut in half by a roof beam.

The group also found eight people who survived. The power of the disaster was overwhelming. Some victims had been found miles from where they were when the storm hit. Some had been in trees, on rooftops, entwined in wrecked cars, enmeshed in debris or they had been torn to pieces.

Hope for finding survivors was ticking down according to medical estimates of the time a person could survive injury, exposure, without water or food. Gas lines were ruptured everywhere. In addition, there were health-and-safety laws outlining a deadline for debris to be removed before areas became vermin infested. There was a real fear that a victim, still alive, could be bulldozed into a dump truck and taken to a landfill.

That wasn’t all.

“You could use a tornado to attempt to get away with murder,” a team member who was a retired detective had told Pam, just as they got off the bus. “Place your victim amid the debris and it would be assumed the cause of death was from the tornado. Unless someone knew otherwise, you might get away with it.”

The possibility gave Pam a chill, but the truth was she was not sure she could survive finding another body, she thought, as they assembled at the command post. There, they were given their assigned zones and set out to process them.

Pam’s zone encompassed a section of the cemetery and a neighboring residential street, or what was left of it.

Police had sealed the area so search-and-rescue efforts could continue. The cemetery was a field of toppled trees and headstones. Huge patches of manicured lawns had been ripped from the earth. Across the street, houses had been flattened or shorn, exposing rooms, wiring and insulation. Topsoil had been hurled onto rooftops and cars overturned.

Pam searched the area as K-9 teams probed nearby. Clothing, toys, appliances and furniture were scattered everywhere. She found a real-estate for sale sign from Duncanville, which was about fifteen miles west. But so far she’d found no bodies, no survivors.

She was grateful.

Jay Selinger’s team was good, she thought. You could always count on them to do a thorough job.

Nearly two hours passed with Pam continuing her work amid the destruction of cars dropped on houses, more branches and tree limbs, and sections of walls hurled into residential streets. She came upon what must have been a day care. A heap of children’s furniture and toys buried beneath trees was all that was left.

She saw a doll, dirty and mud covered.

Pam bent down to grab the leg and froze.

It was not a doll.

22

Dallas–Fort Worth Metroplex, Texas

A
fter disembarking from his connecting flight through Seattle, Blake Cooper met Garrett Keo, his brother-in-law, at the arrivals gate at DFW International Airport.

For the first time ever, Garrett, a six-foot-two mechanic and Falcons fan from Atlanta, hugged Blake, in a tender but awkward moment.

That simple action pushed matters beyond the understated machismo of two blue-collar men who did little more than shake hands at family gatherings and holidays.

It drove home the depth of the tragedy.

“It’s a helluva thing, Blake, a helluva thing. Holly sends her love. We’re going to help you and Jen get through this,” Garrett said after grabbing Blake’s bag and leading him to his rental, a pearl-colored Ford Escape. “You made good time getting back,” he said as they left the airport.

“The airline bumped me ahead when I told them the reason I needed to get home,” Blake said. “My company covered the ticket, sent in a guy from Tacoma to fill in for me. Everyone’s been good...” Blake’s voice trailed. As they got on the expressway and the city rolled by, Blake thought back to that first awful call with Jen. How he couldn’t believe what she was telling him, thinking she had to be wrong.

Caleb vanished in the tornado. It made no sense.

It couldn’t be true, he thought, telling himself as his jet had climbed over the Rockies that really, everything was okay. Jen was just confused by the storm. Caleb was safe somewhere.

He had to be.

Yes, Blake had seen news coverage of the tornadoes on the TVs at the Seattle airport. Yes, there was death and destruction in several states. Yes, Dallas was hit hard. Yes, people were suffering, but this couldn’t be happening, not to his family. Really, everything is okay.

God, please let everything be okay.

Blake suddenly realized that Garrett had passed the exit for his home.

“Aren’t we going to go to my house? Hasn’t Jen moved out of the shelter by now?”

“No. I went out to Lancaster— It’s not good.”

“What?”

“Blake, your house is gone. I’m sorry.” Garrett’s voice was soft, filled with compassion.

Blake’s face paled and he ran his hand over it. Then a sound between a groan and a curse escaped him. “Was—was there anything left?”

Garrett shook his head solemnly. “Your neighborhood was totally destroyed, nothing left but rubble. The area’s restricted, sealed off while they deal with power lines and gas.”

Blake said nothing. He blinked at nothing, as if struggling to comprehend something incomprehensible.

“That’s not all of it, Blake. There’s more about Caleb.”

“What’re you talking about?”

“I’m so damned sorry. I should’ve told you at the airport.” Garrett’s voice began to crack a little. “It happened when you were on the plane, I—” The words wouldn’t come.

“Just tell me, Garrett!”

“They found a body.”

Blake’s eyes widened, his face tightened. “What’re you talking about? Whose body?”

“A baby. A baby boy. That’s all we know.”

Blake smashed his fists into the console. “You better be fucking wrong, Garrett! You better be dead fucking wrong!”

It took about two seconds before the full force of it hit Blake in the gut like a two-by-four.

“Oh Christ, is it Caleb?”

“We don’t know for certain. Jen got a call from some official then two Dallas cops came and took her to this high school in southeast Dallas.” Garrett tapped the rental’s GPS. “I put the address in here. That’s where we’re going.”

“A school?”

“They’ve set up a morgue in the gym.”

“A morgue! Jesus.”

Blake’s knees started bouncing up and down and he held them with his palms. Sensing his anguish was about to detonate, Garrett feared he would smash his way out of the Ford.

“Blake. You got to hang on. Jen’s in a bad way—she needs you. She’s with Holly, waiting for us at the school. Jen said she’s not doing anything without you.”

* * *

Jenna needed to believe that she was dreaming.

Because if I’m dreaming, none of this is true
.

She shut her eyes for a long moment then opened them again.

She was not dreaming.

This is really happening.

She was with several people waiting in the administration office of a high school. The school had been closed to students, had become a ghost building. Yet everyone was whispering, like they were in church or something.

Jenna had lost Caleb. It was her fault because she’d failed to hang on to him. But her prayers were answered. Caleb had been found and taken to this high school.

She was going to hold him one last time.

I’m so sorry. I didn’t protect you
.

A tiny voice in her heart cried out to her.
No. No. It’s not true. My baby boy can’t be dead.

“Would you like another cup of water, Jen?”

Jenna’s sister, Holly, stood by the cooler. It glugged as she filled another paper cup. Jenna tasted the cold water, felt it flowing down her parched throat. Then she looked at the trophy case with medals, statues and framed photos of teachers, coaches, basketball and football teams. She searched the pictures of the players and thought of Caleb. Would he ever be on a team? The faces of these young men screamed life to her while her heart cowered at what was waiting for her in the gym.

The office doors opened. Blake appeared.

She rushed to him, cleaved to him, nearly sank to her knees before he pulled her up so that they stood together, holding each other and sobbing for what seemed an eternity.

Then a woman stood and started the procedure.

“Excuse me— You’re Blake Cooper, Caleb’s father?”

“Yes, I am.”

“I’m Lanna Thomas with the Medical Examiner’s office,” she said.

Others began to introduce themselves: the two officers, Stroud and Dyer, with the Dallas PD; Wendy DeBello, with trauma counseling services; and Frank Rivera with the Missing Person Emergency Search System.

“I’m so sorry,” Thomas said to Blake and Jenna, “but we need one of you to make the identification now.”

Blake nodded to Thomas and cleared his throat.

“I’ll go.”

“No.” Jenna crushed him to her. “We’ll go together.”

“Okay,” Thomas said. “Follow me.”

The officers followed, as well, their utility belts giving soft leathery squeaks and keys jingling as they approached the gym. There was a faint hum in the air, and Jenna squeezed Blake’s hand harder.

“Where—” Blake started again. “Where was he found?”

“A woman with a volunteer search and rescue team found him among some broken tree limbs in a suburb ringing Lincoln Memorial Park Cemetery.”

The hum grew louder when they entered the gym, which had been partitioned in half with a floor-to-ceiling dividing wall. Thomas led them through the door into the closed section.

“The drone is from the generators outside for the portable air conditioners, to keep the room cool,” Thomas said, pulling on latex gloves.

Stepping inside, Jenna stopped.

The room was cold. On the polished gym floor were several rows of body-sized sheets. The odor in the air was a mix of a hospital and a supermarket deli. The surreal scene of the dead juxtaposed with the banners on the wall.

Go Tigers Go!

Jenna imagined basketball games, proms and graduations that had taken place here, as Thomas led them down a row of corpses with the officers following. They stopped at a tiny form. Thomas lowered herself, looked up at Jenna and Blake as she collected the sheet.

This had to be done.

“Ready?” Thomas said.

Blake pulled Jenna tighter but it didn’t stop her trembling.

He nodded and Thomas drew back the sheet.

Jenna’s skin numbed, she gasped and her stomach knotted.

The baby was a few months old and faceup on a plastic mat. It was a boy, wearing only a shirt. Part of his face was shredded into a pulpy stewlike mess. His left hand was gone. Jenna did not recognize his shirt.

She could barely push the words out. “Can you turn him over?”

Exercising utmost care, Thomas turned the tiny body. The little legs were muddied.

“Can you clear the mud from his lower left leg?” Jenna’s voice croaked.

Thomas gently passed her fingers over the section, cleaning it.

Relief pierced Jenna. “That’s not my son. That’s not Caleb.”

“You’re both certain?” Thomas asked.

“Caleb has a small rocket-shaped birthmark on the back of his left calf,” Jenna said. “The mud covered that area, but there’s no birthmark underneath. This baby’s hair is not the same shade as Caleb’s, either.”

“Yes, that’s right,” Blake said. “This is not our son.”

Thomas nodded to the officers and replaced the sheet. Then they all returned to the office where the others were informed that the deceased baby was not Caleb Cooper.

“Thank you. We know this was agonizing,” Thomas said.

Jenna nodded, but despite her relief, she mourned for the tiny dead angel and another mother’s pain.

“There’s some paperwork we need you to sign,” Thomas said.

As Jenna and Blake took care of the paperwork, the officials huddled out of earshot to talk briefly before Thomas addressed the couple again on behalf of the group.

“Jenna, Blake,” Thomas started, “as horrible as this was, and as anguishing as it is facing what you’re facing, you have to keep the facts in mind and prepare yourselves.”

“Prepare ourselves?”

“Rescuers are finding fewer survivors,” Thomas said. “The chances of anyone, let alone a baby, enduring three-hundred-mile-an-hour winds, injury, then more than forty-eight hours of exposure without water or food, are remote.”

“Are you telling me to give up hope?” Jenna said.

“No, no, not at all. We’re only advising you to bear in mind that we’re running out of time.”

“I’m well aware of that,” Jenna snapped. “Please don’t try to tell me my son is dead! Until I see him, Caleb is not dead! In my heart he’ll never be dead!”

“We’re not suggesting that, Jenna.”

“We will find him. I swear we’ll find him.”