“More than my apartment,” she said. “But apparently the same amount of common sense.”

A laugh traveled through the bus. It was brief, but it helped.

Mrs. Jenkins held the empty birdcage on her lap. Henry Harris had fallen asleep with his chin on his chest. A woman near the back quietly counted the people in her row each time the bus turned.

Marisol had carried a list of names on every scheduled shuttle route for years. Today she carried a handwritten evacuation roster that people had scribbled on as they boarded. She checked names against faces at the next safe stop. A firefighter followed the bus in a rescue vehicle, maintaining contact with Incident Command.

By 5:41, two buses had reached the high-school shelter on the ridge.

A third was still loading.

That one was the problem.

The Willow Court manager, Evelyn Brooks, was trying to find one resident who had not appeared in the lobby. He was a former postal worker named Thomas Dillard, seventy-eight, who lived alone in Apartment 204 and rarely answered the door to anyone but the maintenance man.

“He hasn’t answered the emergency calls,” Evelyn told Captain Navarro. “His car’s still here.”

“Does he have a mobility issue?”

“Bad hip. Uses a cane.”

Navarro turned to two firefighters. “We check the apartment, then clear the floor. No one goes in alone.”

Vale was standing beside the doorway. He looked up at the second floor, where a kitchen light still burned.

“I’ll help with the lobby.”

Navarro nodded. “Good. Keep the loading zone clear.”

The water in the parking lot was now knee-deep at its lowest corner. Firefighters had placed temporary markers along a safer approach to the entrance. Nobody was permitted to wander between parked cars looking for lost belongings.

The firefighters came down seven minutes later, supporting Mr. Dillard between them. He was wearing a brown coat over pajamas and carried an old envelope pressed to his chest.

“Sorry,” he kept saying. “Couldn’t find it.”

“Find what, sir?” Vale asked as they reached the ambulance.

The old man opened the envelope. Inside was a photograph of a young woman standing beside a blue pickup in a summer field.