With fewer than two thousand residents, Albion has three distinguishing characteristics. The B&LE occasionally rattles through the south end of town, loaded with coal and other freight on its way to the Lake Erie loading docks in Conneaut, Ohio. A medium-security state correctional facility opened for business just outside of Albion in 1993 and now housed a few hundred more adult male offenders than the town had residents. But the thing most locals remember Albion for happened on the last day of May 1985, the day forty-one tornados ripped across Canada, Ohio, and Pennsylvania. The F4 twister that swept the quiet streets clean of all cars, trucks, and Amish buggies hit Albion at 5:05 in the afternoon, two minutes after the warning was issued from the Erie National Weather Service. It obliterated a hundred or so homes.
DeMarco had heard all the stories. A man had been watching from his porch as the writhing black mass approached, only to have his leg sheared off by flying debris. House trailers were lifted off their foundations, spun through the air, smashed into the ground. A car was sucked two hundred feet into the funnel, heaved over top of a silo, and slammed into a field, a young woman and her dog inside. Bodies were found as far as two miles from where they had been yanked into the air.
The neighboring towns of Wheatland and Atlantic had also been laid flat. Dozens of lives lost, thousands forever damaged.
DeMarco thought about that twister, thought about the sudden, random violence of life as he drove into Albion an hour before noon on a sunny autumn day. He remembered what Samuel Butler had said, that life is a long process of getting tired. He and Laraine had laughed when she read that line to him out of Bartlett’s Quotations. But DeMarco knew now that Butler had had it wrong. Life is a long process of being destroyed, he thought. And not, in fact, a very long process at that.
Danni Reynolds’s apartment was on East Pearl Street, a street that had been wiped clean by the tornado and rebuilt in a hurry. The building was of post-and-board construction, two stories high, with slapdash balconies, railings and stairways that looked as if they could not withstand a heavy breeze. Where the yellow vinyl siding was buckled or missing in places, wisps of pink insulation stuck out like dirty cotton candy. Most of the windows were covered with towels, sheets, or heavy curtains to keep out the drafts.
DeMarco parked across the street and studied the building. Four apartments on the first floor, four on top. Apartments A and B in the front, C and D in the rear. Danni lived in the rear.
He drove around back to a paved parking area. No access from there to the next street behind the building unless she climbed a chain-link fence. She had two ways to get to ground level. Down the rear stairway to the parking area. Down the side stairway to East Pearl Street. He guessed that she owned a car, one of the five compacts in the parking area, none newer than four years old, none without a few scrapes or indentations. Chances are, he told himself, if she runs, it will be to her car. And if she ran, it would tell him a lot. Everything he needed to know.
DeMarco drove back toward East Pearl but parked his car at the end of the driveway, blocking its entrance. Then he climbed out and crossed to the side stairs. On the second floor balcony, he walked just past the door of apartment D, close enough to Danni’s apartment that, if she were inside, he would hear her phone ringing. Then he pulled the cell phone from his pocket and dialed her number. Four rings, then her voice mail answered. “Hi guys! I can’t take—”
No faint ringing sound had emanated from her apartment, no muted musical ringtone. Maybe she kept the phone on vibrate. Maybe she shut it off when she slept. Maybe she wasn’t home.
He waited ten seconds and hit redial. Then again. Then one more time.
“Hello?” she finally said. Groggy, she sounded even more like a little girl, a child.
He tried to soften the gruffness of his voice, gave her little more than a whisper. “Annabel?” he said.
He was answered with silence. He waited.
“Thomas? Is that you?”
“No, Danni,” he told her. “This is Sergeant Ryan DeMarco of the Pennsylvania State Police. And I need to speak with you.”
Immediately, his phone went silent. Call Ended, the screen message said.
Thirty-Seven