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!”