Deluge (The Best Thrillers Book 2) by James Best (top romance novels txt) 📗

What are you talking about? You haven’t been a street cop for a decade.”

“We’re in crisis mode. Come on, tell me about your escape to Alcatraz.”

“Greg, it’s awful up here. Now I know where the term cloudburst came from. The sky exploded. We started off in a Land Cruiser, but the water became so deep we had to abandon it, so we hitched a ride in a semi stolen by a cage fighter fleeing a barroom brawl.”

She gave Evarts a short version of her night, focusing mostly on their continual quarrel with the governor’s office. When she relayed the part about the Bob Mandel Show, they both ended up laughing.

When they each took a breath, she said, “Okay, now tell me about bad guys shooting at you … and don’t pretend it was no big deal.”

“Marauding gangs from Santa Maria. They saw the flood as an opportunity to refresh their coffers.” He grew quiet a moment, and she could hear him take a deep breath. “They murdered Sheriff Lopez and wiped out the Solvang police department. It was a bad night. Barbaric.”

“Tom’s dead?” She couldn’t believe it.

“Yes. By the same gangbangers he tried to reason with.”

“Were you alone?”

“No. They made a mistake. We have our own gangs. Megan dispatched twenty of my officers to help, and by the time the sheriff deputies and Santa Maria police joined us, we had them outnumbered.”

“Tell me the rest,” she demanded.

Baldwin could tell that, like her, Evarts had given a highly abridged version of the night’s events. After he finished, Baldwin commiserated for a moment and then asked for a blow-by-blow description of the Cachuma Dam disaster. As he described the tragedy, she asked several questions.

After he finished, he said, “I feel like this was a departmental debrief, not a chat with a curious wife.”

“You know about Folsom Dam?” she asked.

“Of course.”

“That’s three dam failures … and this might be just the beginning.”

“God, I hope not.”

“Greg, it’s a deluge up here. Worse than what you described at Cachuma. More dams are going to fail … and this rain is going to keep pounding us. I’ve got to make the governor listen.”

“Putting aside that you’ve been dismissed, what in the world do you have that he should listen to?”

“Hell, I don’t know. Ashley had a wild idea, but even if they adopt it, the odds of it working are close to nil.” The phone was quiet for a moment. “I just feel the government needs input from a nonpolitical source. Someone who will tell them what they don’t want to hear.”

“That being?”

“I already told you, I don’t know.”

“Then you don’t have a problem.”

“The whole state has a problem. You know that. You lived it.”

“Okay, if you could see the governor face-to-face, what options would you present?”

She was not about to repeat Ashley’s suggestion. “I have no options. Not yet.”

“If you don’t have a choice, you don’t have a problem.”

“Then I’d better build some choices. We can’t sit back and let this happen.”

“Go ask Ashley. I don’t like the twerp, but on occasion, he thinks outside the box.”

“I will, but right now, I need to let you sleep a little more.”

“Done sleeping. In fact, I got up ten minutes ago and got some station coffee. Nobody can sleep after a cup of that sludge. Besides, I have a shitload of work to get done before I can return to my station.”

“Oh, yeah,” she said. “You discharged your weapon. Paperwork up the gazoo.”

He groaned. “Yeah, I’ll have writer’s cramp by the end of the day.”

“You old fogey, you don’t handwrite reports. Carpal tunnel’s more like it.”

“Yeah, yeah, yeah, and I still dial and hang up a telephone, roll up a car window, make films with my GoPro, and I’ve even been known to drop a dime on someone.”

As they laughed, her phone rang. She put Evarts on hold and answered.

“The LG wants to see us. Now,” Smith said without preamble.

“I’m just down the street. I’ll be right there. Coffee?”

“We’re making it here.” He ended the call.

She switched back to her husband. “Greg, I need to go. Gleason wants us.”

“Better be ready to hand him options.”

“I know. Maybe we’ll suggest that he nuke the state and call it a day.”

“Just Northern California, please. SoCal doesn’t like them much anyway.”

“No more joking around,” she said. “This is serious.”

“Yes, it is. Let’s hope Cachuma isn’t a microcosm of the state.”

“What do you mean?”

“Last night, the Solvang mayor said town business won’t recover, not for many years. The wine industry has been decimated, and tourism will go down the toilet. Beyond death and dislocations, this disaster will have long-lasting repercussions.”

“Damn.”

“What?”

“That’s exactly what Tom Smith predicts for the entire state.”

Chapter 37

Evarts took another sip of coffee and looked around the station break room for something to eat. His stomach felt queasy from lack of sleep and rotgut coffee. He needed to eat something before he started writing his report. His wife had been right about his pending paperwork, and he hadn’t even told her about killing several assailants. He would have to write a detailed account of his actions, plus get statements from every witness before he could return home and resume his duties.

He bought a Snickers bar from a vending machine and wandered into the office area to see what was happening. Almost nothing. One officer manned the front desk, but the bull pen area remained empty. A few hours previously, they had rounded up nearly twenty gangbangers. The holding pen could accommodate two, so they had housed them in the gymnasium at the middle school. His idea, á la Lompoc. A good idea too. It gave him a place to catch a few hours’ sleep.

When he approached the officer, he saw that the man was really a firefighter. Evarts felt a wave of sadness when he remembered that practically the entire Solvang department had been maimed or killed. Then he thought about the wives and husbands of fallen officers. He doubted they were resting comfortably. Without a chemical