Whirlwind

26

Dallas-Fort Worth Metroplex, Texas

Kate’s Chevy Cobalt drove westbound on Lyndon B. Johnson Freeway.

There were more shelters she needed to check out.

As the road rolled under her wheels she took stock of the past twenty-four hours, accepting the ebb and flow of a live news story.

Elements were in constant flux. There was little she could do.

While waiting for the many calls she’d made-to Frank Rivera, to Jenna Cooper and her sister, Holly- to be returned, she’d arranged for Newslead to obtain Tony Valdez’s dramatic footage of the tornado destroying the Saddle Up Center. The news agency posted it on its site with a warning about disturbing content. The video went viral, pleasing Chuck and New York.

Late yesterday, Kate had gone to the shelter at the Rivergreen Community Hall to find Jenna Cooper. Volunteers and other tornado survivors had told her that Jenna, Cassie and Holly had left.

No one knew where they’d gone.

Kate ended the day feeling somewhat baffled, and last night she got online and talked with her daughter. Filled with guilt, Kate ached to hold Grace as she showed her pictures of birds that she’d drawn.

“This one’s an owl.”

“I see. It’s very good, honey.”

It was this morning, as Kate stepped from the shower, that her phone rang with an overdue call back from Frank.

She froze, water dripping from her as he brought her up to speed on the horror Jenna and Blake Cooper had endured yesterday in a high school gym.

“Last night, with the help of Dallas police, the deceased baby’s parents were located and they identified him,” Frank said. “They’re tourists from Switzerland. They were in a park when the storm hit.”

Tears stung Kate’s eyes.

“Oh no, that’s so sad.”

“They’re making arrangements to fly home with him and aren’t talking to the press.”

“I’m so sorry for them.” Kate searched for a tissue then used her towel. “What about Jenna and her husband? How are they doing? I’d like to interview them.”

“Not so good. They spent last night in a hotel with Jenna’s sister. I don’t think they’re in a frame of mind to talk to anybody. They were informed that time is running out on the odds of finding their son alive.”

A moment of silence passed.

“Okay. Thanks, Frank.”

“If there’s anything I can do to help, give me a call.”

After Kate dressed, she went online to search for news and ideas to pursue the story. The updated overall figures for the tornadoes that had hit Texas, Alabama, Arkansas and Mississippi, were sobering. The death toll had risen to seven hundred, most still in the Dallas-Fort Worth Metroplex. The number of reported missing in all the states was now fourteen hundred, most around Dallas. The number of injured had risen to seven thousand people and the estimated number of homes, businesses and properties destroyed was now at least twenty thousand.

“Stay on the missing baby story,” Chuck told her when she’d called the bureau for her assignment. “New York likes it. It represents the human struggle against the storm. A baby ripped from its mother, a hardworking family holding out hope. It doesn’t end until you find out what happened to their son, Kate.”

All right, she would keep digging.

This morning she’d set out determined to continue investigating the chain of events leading up to and after Caleb’s disappearance. Above all, she’d needed to find the people who were closest to Caleb before he vanished.

It all comes down to those mysterious strangers who tried to help.

Paging through her notes Kate again zeroed in on the words Jenna had used to describe her encounters with them.

They’re complete strangers. I never saw them before in my life, but the woman seemed kind of forward, kind of infatuated with Caleb… Then we saw them in the center, I mean they were just there…

The Valdez video was intense, but Tony and his mother, Dolores, didn’t recall seeing Jenna and the strangers. Neither did any of the other vendors Kate had reached for help.

“Most of the people who got out alive just scattered. They left,” Tony Valdez had told Kate. “They went home, or to schools to check on their kids or to other shelters to look for family in other parts of town. It was just chaos.”

So all morning Kate worked on her story the old-fashioned way.

With legwork.

In the back of her mind she continued weighing the possibility that the strangers may have abducted Caleb. But there was no evidence. She’d hit every shelter she could, telling volunteers about Caleb and the woman and man who were last seen near him. She asked them if anything sounded familiar, or whether anything had surfaced that might be linked to them.

She’d checked out shelters in Hutchins, Lancaster and DeSoto.

In each case Kate struck out.

Duncanville was next.