chapter one
Ten straight days of near 100-degree temperatures and still the
rains didn’t come. Digger couldn’t remember the last time it had
rained, two months, three months, probably more. In Bernalillo,
and the little towns where the old families lived, they held rosaries
praying for rain. Still, the heavens did not answer their prayers.
Each time the deceitful clouds loomed over the land they lingered
there, descending teasingly close to the parched earth before vanishing.
The air and the earth remained so dry it shriveled the skin.
Drought spawned anxiety, and always the fear of fire. But fire
wasn’t the only thing to fear. In the high desert, rain isn’t always a
blessing. Sometimes when the monsoons finally arrived, the rain
came like a vengeful lover, clawing and violating the earth. Digger
knew what the rain could do. She’d seen those cruel claw marks
and she’d written a series of stories. One of them had even won
a press award. But nothing made a difference in a town where
people came to live out their sunshine fantasies.
Digger always stopped at the top of the hill on her morning
trail run. It was the halfway point and there was a convenient
rock where she could sit and look down to where the drought depleted
river bled feebly among the sand banks. Beyond it, the land
rose sharply and atop the escarpment a line of fancy new homes
crenelated the ridge line, windows glinting in the morning sun.
Los Sueños, The Dreams, the city’s newest subdivision. A hundred
more toilets hemorrhaging water from the near exhausted
aquifer.
Digger squinted at the development, studying the way the
land dropped sharply to the wooded area below. All through her
run, she’d been puzzling over last night’s anonymous email and
now it came to her. This is what it was all about.
The message had popped up in her inbox last night just before
she’d left the newsroom. The subject line had jolted her: STOP
THE ROAD! She’d opened the email and quickly scanned the
text:
“We will not have our rights trampled on again. We have
our dreams too. We will not let this road destroy the sacred place
beneath the cliff. Enough, is enough! We will take action. You will
hear from us again soon!”
Digger had stared at it, frowning. No name, no contact information.
Probably another scam. She trashed it.
Now, as she looked at the glinting windows of Los Sueños, it
all made sense. A new section of road was supposed to connect
the street that skirted the base of the escarpment with Los Sueños
at the top of the cliff. So, the cliff held secrets. Weird. Nothing
she’d read—and she’d scoured a ton of city records—said anything
about sacred or historic sites. A whiff of controversy would
have lit a fire. But there had been nothing, not even a hint of
smoke.
Suspicion stirred like a tiny irritation, like a piece of grit at
the bottom of her running shoe. Somebody in Las Vistas must
have made sure the information never got out. The developer was
Johnny Raposa. Hmm, that name. Grandpa used to tell a story
about a Portuguese fox, raposa, quick, clever and elusive.
*******
On the other side of Las Vistas, Mayor Jack Kimble stood at
the edge of his patio staring at the gray-green sandy mesa that
stretched west from his back yard for seventy miles to Mount
Caballo. Clouds had been building all afternoon and now formed
a billowy white tower that rose over the mountain ridge. Its underside
loomed a dark, ominous gray, and the sky beneath was
brown like an old photograph. The air, still until then, suddenly
came alive. A gust beat against Jack’s face, whipping his loose shirt
around him like the robes of an Old Testament prophet.
Wind slammed the patio chairs against the table. A desert willow
by the fence bent, its wispy branches shaking violently. Great
thick thunderclouds roiled above him. Just then, a wall of brown
sand-filled air blew toward him. He put his hands up to shield
his face. Eyes shut, he smelled rain just before the first drops hit.
They felt icy cold against his arms. When he opened his eyes, he
saw big, fat drops splatting into the sandy earth like soft-nosed
bullets, gouging deep ragged-edged holes. Within minutes, the air
all around him was filled with sand and rain. Sluicing water bored
into a tiny crack in the dirt beyond the fence, and suddenly the
crack was a foot deep and a foot wide and still growing. Brown
water foamed and gushed through the sand, carving its way past
his house.
He staggered under the shelter of the patio, half blinded by
rain and wind. The phone in his pocket buzzed and he fumbled
for it.
“What?” he bellowed.
“Jack!” Linda Raccaro, the councilor from the southern side
of the city, screamed in his ear. “You gotta get over here now! The
whole place is flooding. People are gonna be mad!”
Kimble winced. Always something with these people. He’d
been dreading a problem like this. Half the residents of Las Vistas
were so new they didn’t even know it could rain in New Mexico.
They didn’t know what rain could do here. He looked at the turbulent
sky. Maybe it was a sign from God. The election was just
months away. If he handled this right, it could boost his sagging
popularity. An answer to his prayers.
“I’ll be there!” he snapped. Yes, he would show them! God
was on his side. He was sure of it. He hurried inside, rummaged
in the hall closet for a raincoat.
“Is that you dear?” His wife’s whiny voice twanged like a curb
alarm. “You’re not going out in this storm, are you?”
Kimble exhaled through clenched teeth. “Yes, dear. People are
having a problem. I am their mayor. They need me.”
He grabbed the keys to the Buick from the hook next to the
refrigerator. The old car grunted like someone straining to defecate.
Finally it rumbled to life. Kimble mashed it into reverse
and sped out of his driveway. He squinted, trying to make out
street names through the rain-drenched windshield. The directions
Raccaro had babbled over the phone were worthless. Good
God, the woman was clueless! How had she ever managed to get
elected? No wonder people in her part of Las Vistas were always
whining. Well, he would put a stop to that! He would be the one
to turn the rainstorm into a blessing for Las Vistas residents. This
would be his mission.
Fifteen minutes later he turned onto one of the gravel roads
that led into the subdivision. The old Buick’s engine strained
through a foot of raging storm water. Halfway up the street, the
Buick stalled. Kimble climbed out. A man in a Yankees ball cap
come running out of a nearby house, waving.
“Help!” the man yelled. He pointed at the ground.
As Jack watched, the surging water blasted into the soft sand,
creating a gaping chasm wide enough to swallow a truck.
“Look at this!” The man waved his arms helplessly as he glared
at Kimble. “I moved here to be in the desert. My realtor said it
never rains.”
Kimble rolled his eyes.
*******
Digger was thinking about the email as she got ready for work.
Who sent it and what did they want? What was at the base of the
cliffs and why would anyone want it kept secret? Dressed, she
picked her favorite pair of cowboy boots from the rack, rubbed
the toes on the back of each pant leg for a quick shine. She was
halfway to her car when she noticed the gray-white pile of clouds
on the western horizon and ran back for a rain jacket.
Fifteen minutes later she pulled into the newspaper’s parking
lot. The Daily Courier occupied a downtown building a few miles
from the new city hall. She nodded at the security guard as she
entered the newsroom, then hurried to the city editor’s desk.
“Hey Jim, I’ve got a story for you—”
“Not now!” he snapped, his eyes on his computer monitor.
“We’ve got a fast-moving storm. I need you for a weather story.”
Jim Swenson sounded as if he’d left rural Wisconsin last week, not
twenty-two years ago when he’d joined the Courier.
Damn, thought Digger, he wasn’t going to pay attention.
Swenson didn’t even look around. He pointed at the screen,
frowning. “You can see here. It’s coming in from the southwest
with a lot of rain.”
“Jim!” The police reporter yelled from across the room. “I just
heard on the scanner, they’re responding to an emergency—”
“Ugh—wait!” Swenson had gone pale. He held up a hand,
pressed the other to his sternum and grimaced. He rummaged
in a desk drawer, pulled out a bottle of Maalox, and took a swig.
He wiped white residue from his lips and groaned. Digger waited.
Lately the heartburn episodes were occurring more often. Swenson
exuded stress like a personal form of body odor.
“Okay.” He rubbed his chest.
“Jim!” The reporter shouted again. “There’s flooding in that
high-dollar subdivision, Vale de Oro.”
Swenson groaned. “Shit! Those people are going to be pissed.”
He eyed Digger. “Go find Rex from photo and get out there as
fast as you can.”
Rex was in the photo department, lurking behind his oversized
monitor, consuming the remains of a donut.
“We’ve got a weather story,” she announced.
“Yeah, I heard.” He popped the last bite into his mouth and
licked the sugar off his fingers.
Outside, Digger waited for Rex to load his camera gear into
the back of one of the Courier’s Jeep Cherokees. Here the asphalt
was bone dry but to the south the sky was lawyer-suit gray. Rex
took a last drag on his Marlboro and glanced at her.
“You got any rain gear?”
She waved the jacket she’d brought. Rex looked at it skeptically.
“That’ll be good for about ten seconds out there. Come
on.” He crushed the cigarette under his hiking boot and jerked
his head toward the vehicle.
About a mile south of the office they hit the rain belt. The
Jeep’s sun-rotted wiper blades creaked and thumped, smearing
brown dust streaks across the windshield. Rex hunched over the
steering wheel, his jaw muscles clenching.
“Crap! I can’t see worth shit,” he said. “You know you the
paper’s in trouble when they can’t even replace the wiper blades.”
Digger shot him a look. Rex had such a negative attitude. She
switched attention back to the directions she’d scribbled in her
notebook and tapped a street name into her phone. She had a
rough idea where to find the flood area. It was in a part of Las
Vistas blooming with Tuscan-themed houses featured in “parade-of-
homes” ads. Subdivisions there popped up so fast there was
no time to put in stuff like paved roads, and no money to pay for
them. It was all about the mountain views.
Today the mountains were obscured by a wall of dust and
pounding rain. Rex turned off the paved road at the entrance to
the Vale de Oro subdivision and made it about fifty yards along
the sandy side street when half of it suddenly wasn’t there. One
lane had caved in and was now a crevasse.
Rex parked and they sat in the Jeep for a moment, surveying
the chaos. Rain streamed down the windows, drumming hard on
the roof of the vehicle.
“Man, I’ve seen some storms,” Rex said, raising his voice to
be heard above the din, “But this one’s a mother! There’s going
to be hell to pay.”
“Like what?”
Rex looked around at her, eyebrow lifted. “You know what they
call this area? The Valley of Entitlement. Says it all, doesn’t it?”
Up ahead they saw people bunched together in front of an
oversized ranch house with faux-Tuscan roof turrets. A lot of
arm-waving and shouting was going on. The road ahead was a
gaping crevasse with water sluicing over the sides. In the distance,
beyond the houses, the sandy earth was dark with rain but
undamaged.
Digger stared at it recalling the environmental reports she’d
read. Every one of them warned that the soil was unstable because
the sloping terrain was a precipitation catchment area. When
there was rain, the reports said, natural water courses—arroyos—
carried the accumulated runoff down to the river. Building on the
slopes would create spillways that would collect and accelerate
rain runoff. Without mitigating measures, such as drainage ponds
and culverts, any significant rain events would result in flooding
and erosion. City councilors approved the new subdivision anyway,
without requiring drainage ponds or culverts.
She looked at Rex and shook her head. He gave her his seen-it-
all-before shrug.
“You know how it is in this town,” he said, “Come on, it’s
showtime.”
He jumped out, loaded his gear, and began to snap shots of the
arroyo, the water surging down the street and the noisy crowd.
Digger followed him trudging through the wet sand, rain pelting
her face, water dripping from her eyebrows and trickling down
the side of her chin. As Rex had predicted, water soaked through
the flimsy rain jacket within seconds.
Up ahead a tangle of voices pierced through the hiss of the
rain. “This is unacceptable!” shouted a short lady with shelflike
hips and a grating New York accent. “I wanna know why the city
isn’t doing something about this.”
“Yeah! The mayor oughta see this. Whatta we pay taxes for?”
said a man in a Vietnam veteran’s baseball hat.
A big flashy Cadillac swerved round the corner and barreled
toward Digger and Rex, tires spinning, sashaying from one side
to the other. It jolted to a halt a few yards short of the where
they stood. Digger recognized the woman who climbed out as
Councilor Linda Raccaro. Her springy grey curls sagged in the
downpour as she sloshed across the road, mud smearing her
white tennis shoes.
“Oh my gawd! This is terrible, terrible!” Her shrieks were
barely audible above the surge of rushing water, the rain, and the
angry complaints from home owners.
Another car ground up the road, transmission whining, tires
slipping on the wet surface. Mayor Jack Kimble’ s tall frame
emerged from the vehicle. He strode toward them, heedless of
the mud, shouldering his way through the throng until he reached
the end of a driveway. He stepped on top of a boulder and stared
round at the bedraggled crowd.
Digger slogged toward him, feet sinking in the soggy sand.
“Mayor,” she shouted, “Isn’t it true the city knew this could happen?
Why did the city ignore reports about the flood risks?”
Kimble towered above her, his long arms outstretched, his
brush-cut hair bristling from his head, his turquoise eyes blazing.
“Mayor!” she yelled again.
Kimble ignored her. Instead, his eyes were fixed on the sky.
He raised up his hands.
“I am listening,” he boomed. “I will save you from this
affliction!”
