“There’s no bird,” the firefighter said patiently.
“I know there isn’t a bird. The bird died in April. But he lived with me twelve years, and I’m not leaving his house behind.”
Vale almost smiled. Then he looked up at the building.
Willow Court had been built in 1974 when the paper mill still employed half the town. Its brick had faded from red to a color somewhere between rust and tea. White metal balconies hung above the parking lot. Most of the residents were elderly; some had been there long enough to remember when the river froze almost every winter.
Water ran over the parking lot in long brown fingers. It was only an inch deep, but the storm drains were beginning to burp.
Fire Captain Josie Navarro met Vale beside the entrance.
“We have two buses coming. One is stuck at Elm and Third. County says the normal shelter route is blocked by a construction fence. We can get everyone out, but we need the east stairwell clear and the first bus here now.”
“I’ll coordinate traffic.”
She studied his face. “You all right?”
“Why wouldn’t I be?”
“Because your hands are shaking.”
Vale looked down. She was right.
He was twenty-nine. He had served four years with the county, most of them without doing anything more dangerous than directing traffic around a crash or intervening in arguments between neighbors. The last hour had moved too quickly for his thinking to catch up.
He remembered Lena’s face against the cruiser. The way she had told him to verify her credential. The way he had taken her warning as disrespect.
He remembered the radio calling her name.
“I made a bad call,” he said.
Navarro did not ask for details. “Then make the next one better. I need that bus.”
He nodded and went to work.
On the second floor, Loretta Mercer was pounding on an apartment door with the handle of an umbrella.
“Henry Harris! You hear me? Open this door!”
Mrs. Alma Jenkins stood beside her, both hands on the handles of a walker, wearing a purple church dress beneath an oversized coat.
