Chapter 7 - THE GIRL IN THE RED SWEATER
Claire Whitmore shrieked, spinning toward the glass doors.
Outside, a cold November rain had started to fall, slicking the concrete sidewalk and the asphalt parking lot that bordered Route 9—a four-lane highway where logging trucks and commuters barreled through at fifty-five miles an hour during the lunch hour.
"Madison!" Claire cried, wrenching the heavy glass door open so hard it banged against the exterior brick stopper.
She stumbled on the wet steps in her high heels, dropping her black purse onto the concrete as she screamed her daughter's name into the wind.
Richard Whitmore sprinted past her, his suit jacket flying open in the rain, scanning the empty parking lot blindly toward the main road.
I didn't run toward the parking lot.
I turned back to Emma, dropping to one knee in front of her. "Emma, which side door did she go out? The one by the gym?"
"Yes, Daddy," Emma said quickly, pointing down the north corridor. "And Lucy said when Madison gets scared or mad, she doesn't go to the road. She goes to the old drainage culvert behind the soccer field where the big kids hid the stray kittens last spring!"
Behind us, Lucy poked her head out of the break room and nodded fiercely. "The creek goes up really fast when it rains! My grandma told me never to go down there when the water's brown!"
My stomach dropped. As a civil engineer who had mapped half the county's stormwater lines, I knew the Brookfield Elementary culvert. It was a forty-eight-inch corrugated steel pipe at the bottom of a steep, muddy ravine behind the athletic fields, feeding runoff from three subdivisions straight into Miller's Creek. In a November downpour, that ravine turned into a slick mudslide and the pipe filled to the top in twenty minutes.
"Mrs. Palmer, call 911 right now," I ordered, already moving. "Tell them to send the police here for the office, and fire rescue to the south access road behind the soccer field. Emma, stay inside with Mrs. Palmer. Do not leave this room."
"Be careful, Daddy!" Emma called out.
I burst through the front doors into the pouring rain.
"Whitmore!" I bellowed over the roar of a passing semi-truck on Route 9.
Richard spun around at the edge of the asphalt, rain plastering his graying hair to his forehead.
"She's not by the highway!" I shouted, pointing toward the chain-link fence bordering the back athletic fields. "She went down the ravine toward the drainage culvert behind the soccer field! Come on!"
Without a second's hesitation, Richard abandoned the parking lot and ran beside me, his expensive leather dress shoes splashing straight through ankle-deep puddles across the sodden grass. Behind us, Claire tried to follow, sobbing hysterically as she kicked off her high heels and ran barefoot across the wet turf.
By the time Richard and I reached the tree line behind the soccer goals, my flannel shirt was soaked through and the cold rain was stinging my eyes.
I grabbed the top rail of the chain-link perimeter fence and vaulted over, landing hard in the wet dead leaves on the other side. Richard clambered over right behind me, tearing the sleeve of his charcoal suit jacket on the wire barbs without even noticing.
"Madison!" Richard roared into the woods, his voice raw with terror. "Madison, baby, where are you?!"
Below us, the ravine dropped twenty feet at a steep angle, choked with slick clay, wet pine needles, and tangled bramble bushes. At the bottom, brown, churning water was already rushing three feet deep into the mouth of the massive rusted steel culvert.
Then I saw a flash of bright red wool halfway down the muddy bank.
Madison was clinging desperately to the exposed root of a beech tree, about four feet above the rushing brown water. One of her shoes was gone. Her hands were covered in yellow clay, slipping inch by inch down the wet bark as the bank eroded beneath her knees.
"Daddy!" she screamed, her voice tiny and terrified over the rush of the stormwater. "Daddy, I can't hold on!"
"I'm coming, sweetheart! Hold on!" Richard lunged forward onto the top of the slope.
I grabbed the back of his belt and yanked him back just as his slick-soled dress shoes shot out from under him. If I hadn't caught him, he would have gone headfirst down the clay chute straight into the concrete wingwall of the culvert.
"Your shoes have zero tread!" I shouted into his ear, dropping onto my stomach at the edge of the bank and digging the steel toes of my work boots into the roots. "Hold my ankles! Brace yourself against that oak tree!"
Richard didn't argue. He wedged his broad shoulders against the trunk of the oak, wrapped both hands like iron vises around my boots, and locked his elbows.
I slid my upper body over the lip of the mud bank, reaching down through the pouring rain.
Just as my fingers brushed the collar of Madison's red sweater, the wet beech root she was holding snapped with a loud crack.
Madison shrieked as she slid downward toward the churning brown torrent at the mouth of the pipe.
I threw myself forward, letting Richard take my full two hundred pounds on my ankles, and clamped my right hand around Madison's wrist two inches before the current took her legs.
The jolt nearly pulled my shoulder out of its socket.
"I've got you!" I grunted through clenched teeth, mud and rain blinding me as I locked my left hand over my right wrist.
Madison looked up at me with wide, terrified blue eyes—just a scared nine-year-old girl shivering in the cold rain.
"Mr. Hayes, I'm sorry!" she sobbed, her icy fingers digging into my forearm. "I heard what they said at the window! I'm sorry I broke Lucy's volcano and put the bracelet in Emma's bag! Please don't let me go!"
"I'm never letting a little girl go, Madison," I told her fiercely. "Hold onto my jacket! Richard, pull!"
With a guttural roar of effort, Richard hauled backward, inch by agonizing inch, dragging both of us up the slick clay wall until he could reach down, grab his daughter under the arms, and lift her onto solid ground.
Richard collapsed onto his knees in the mud, wrapping his arms around Madison and burying his face in her soaked blonde hair while she cried against his chest. Seconds later, Claire came stumbling through the trees, falling into the mud beside them and pulling Madison into her coat.
I lay on my back in the wet leaves for a moment, catching my breath as the wail of approaching sirens echoed across the soccer field.
When I sat up and wiped the mud from my forehead, I saw two Brookfield police cruisers pulling onto the gravel access road behind the gym, red and blue lights flashing through the gray rain.
Walking out the back door of the school ahead of the officers was Mrs. Palmer, holding a big black umbrella over Emma and Lucy.
Wait.
I stood up, squinting through the rain toward the school parking lot.
Principal Carter was standing on the back walkway with his hands behind his back as an officer spoke to him.
Mr. Sullivan's blue sedan, however, was backing rapidly out of its parking space near the dumpster, tires spinning on the wet asphalt as he tried to slip out the side alley before the second cruiser blocked the exit.
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He wasn't just running from a bank statement.
I looked down at Emma, who was pointing frantically toward the open trunk of Sullivan's car as it hit the speed bump.
