But what Hauser needed right now was to clear his head for this press release. He had to take his mind off of the cluster-fuck he felt brewing. Dr. Sobel had taught him to relax by focusing on something that he saw as a mini vacation. Hauser had thought of it as so much touchy-feely bullshit, but one afternoon after a particularly grueling day, he had tried it, recalling Sobel’s Ginsbergian delivery. When the going gets rough, take a little time for yourself—focus on something that makes you feel good. And with this fruity talk ringing in his ears, Hauser had taught himself to relax by spending time with his hunting trophies.
The centerpiece of the paneled wall behind his desk was the big buck he had taken up near Albany four falls back. He was a beautiful mount, a nine-pointer, and the cleaning staff had very specific instructions on how to dust him. Flanking the buck were two shoulder-mounted black bears, both taken on a bow. Near the coat rack was the head of a Dall sheep he had bagged on his trip to Sitka, Alaska, during a sheriffs’ convention last fall. And by the window, surveying the office with those two huge brown eyes, was Bernie, a big bull moose.
Hauser still felt that the space was incomplete without an elk, and he had been planning an elk trip with Martin, his brother-in-law, for some time. They were supposed to leave in two days. Now, with a double homicide on his lawn and a storm rolling in, he had to call Martin to cancel; Martin lived in Arizona and would that’s-too-bad and what-a-shame him for a few minutes before calling one of his rich golf buddies to step in and pinch-hit. And Hauser’d have to wait until next year for that elk. Sonofabitch.
The sheriff reached out and stroked the fur of the big buck, concentrating on his breathing. To Hauser, this was how his wife described yoga. He stood there, staring into the lifeless glass eyeballs, thinking about hunting and feeling like a stereotype.
Five minutes later, Jeannine came in, carrying a folded banker’s box that was jury-rigged with at least three kinds of tape and looked like it was stretching her arms while simultaneously clamping her breasts together. “There are two more, let me know when you want them.” Her tone said she was not particularly thrilled about another trip to the archive room to carry a forty-pound box.
“Bring the other two up,” he said, not quite grumbling but coming close.
Jeannine nodded, popped her gum, and dropped the heavy box down on the corner of his desk. Hauser was surprised that no dust puffed out. She shut the door when she left.
He picked up one of the yellow legal pads he liked to use for notes, and tried to come up with a statement that would in no way compromise any of the secrecy that an investigation of this type depended on. Cole had said to keep the media fed reliably so they could educate the public about what had happened and at the same time solicit information that might help advance the case. Sure. Easy. A child could write it. Suddenly Hauser regretted his football scholarship.
He had managed to get the words, In an effort to keep the public informed, down, then the phone lit up.
“What?” he snapped.
“There’s a Mr. Ken Dennison on the line. He’s with the National Hurricane Center. Says he needs to talk to you right now.”
Hauser’s brow knitted up. “You sure he’s not media?”
“He said it was the most important call of the day.”
Hauser put the cap on his pen and tossed it onto the desk even though he was unconvinced—anything was better than trying to come up with a prime-time version of what had happened at the house up the beach. “Put him through.”
In three seconds Mr. Dennison was introducing himself. “Carl Dennison, Sheriff Hauser. I’m with the National Hurricane Center. Advance warning department. We have news on Dylan.”
He said, “Yeah,” like he could care less.
“It’s headed straight for your doorstep. All our computer models say you’re the landfall point.”
“Shit.”
“Sheriff, are you familiar with the hurricane of 1938?”
Hauser hadn’t been born in 1938 but the storm had been so devastating that it was still the benchmark against which every storm in the area was judged. He had grown up knowing all the horror stories, the most frightening being how the Westhampton cinema had been washed out to sea, killing twenty cinemagoers and the projectionist. As far as natural disasters went, it was a hard one to beat. “Of course.”
“When that hit the US, it had softened from a Cat Five to a Cat Three. I don’t think we are going to be as lucky with this one.”
Hauser squeezed the bridge of his nose. He didn’t like hearing the word lucky applied to the big one of 1938. He said, “Shit,” again.
“We don’t see any way it is going to cool down enough to burn off any of its energy before it hits you. This is going to sound a little funny, but you are going to need walkie-talkies.”
“Walkie-talkies? You’re kidding, right?”
“Sheriff, the magnitude of what’s heading your way is something that there are no recorded benchmarks for. Dylan generates more electricity in a minute than a Westinghouse nuclear reactor puts out in a week.”
“Whoa, whoa,” Hauser held up his hand, trying to stave off bad news. “Hurricanes don’t have lightning.”
“You need new data. Rita, Emily, and Katrina—three of the most powerful storms of 2005—were all electrical hurricanes. The satellites are picking up flashes in the wall of Dylan’s eye that are probably the largest in recorded history. Per meter he probably measures fifty percent stronger than the worst of mesoscale thunderstorms. And he’s twelve thousand percent larger than any thunderstorm on record. You can expect lightning like no one’s ever seen before, Sheriff.”
There was something else in Dennison’s voice, something behind the bad news. It wasn’t huge, but it was important, because Hauser could hear it; he was used to listening to what people said between their lines of dialogue. “What are you not telling me?” Hauser asked.
“This is about two hours before we are past the tipping point, but everything says you are going to be asked to evacuate your county. I’d start now if I were you. Just get everyone the fuck out, excuse my frankness.”
Hauser wanted to say that Montauk wasn’t like New Orleans, where the poor would be left behind and nobody would be to blame. No, here the out-of-work fishermen and the old canning-factory layoffs would love to take a trip on a government bus to a week in a gymnasium in some other state where they could get free coffee and play cards all day. Maybe get new sneakers. No, it would be the rich who would refuse to go. A lot of them felt that their wealth entitled them to some sort of divine protection. “I could try. And I’d get some people out. A lot of people would refuse to leave their—” he paused, trying to find another word for stuff—“things,” he said.
Dennison uh-huhed, and said, “Print up flyers, distribute them by hand. Use manpower for that. Tell them you need their signatures if they are going to stay. There is no guarantee that there will be any emergency services once the storm makes landfall. Spell it out that they are risking their lives if they stay. Let them know that the power grid will probably fail. Land telephone lines will stop like a dead heart. I don’t want to sound melodramatic, but you have to listen to me. The electromagnetic field that this storm will generate is going to fry all antennas, including cell phone towers. Forget iPhones. Forget BlackBerries. Forget the goddamned Motorola brick. No more communication. Grid-based electronics will go, everything plugged into an outlet will simply overload and die in a single flash of lightning that could be the largest in history. Even the surge-protected circuits will go. I hope we’re wrong, I really do. But this is one of those times when the Boy Scout motto applies. Get all of your people together ASAP and get a working plan of defense into action. Talk to your citizens. We have a media branch that can help you get a website up to help with inquiries, otherwise you and your people will spend the next two days answering the same questions over and over and over and you need that time to get your citizenry out of there. If I had anyone I loved out on that narrow isthmus facing Dylan, I’d get them inland as fast as I could.”