Fatalis

Chapter Four

Hannah Hughes stepped from the stall shower. She was headachy and tired as she cracked the bathroom door to let out the steam. Her eyes felt bloated, her round cheeks hurt, and her temples were making a chugging sound.

The rain didn't help. Gray weather, gray mood had always been a mathematical certainty in her life, along with other certainties like super-well-groomed guy, self-absorbed guy. Jocky guy, self-absorbed guy. Guy who drank, guy who overdrank. One day she'd write a book of certainties.

The petite young woman slipped a big towel from the hook behind the door and began drying off. The founder, editor, and publisher of The Coastal Freeway, Hannah was tired because she'd only slept for four hours after working eighteen hours straight. Senior reporter Jimmy Taubman had been trying to finish his feature on La Nina for today's edition and junior reporter Susan Crab had spent the previous day bopping between the drizzle-soaked Montecito Trails Foundation San Ysidro Saddleback Loop Trail Run and the Semana Nautica 1SK at San Marcos High School. That left only Hannah to write and edit the page-one stories and come up with the editorial. She always saved that for last; opinion pieces always had more teeth when she was tired and less inhibited.

But while Hannah wasn't quite ready to rumba, she had faith in what one of her journalism professors at Brown University used to call "the adrenaline rush of the world, the flesh, and the devil." Something would always come along to get her engine going.

Pulling on a white terrycloth robe, Hannah rubbed the steamy mirror with her sleeve, and began blow-drying her short, brown hair. As she did, she looked unhappily in the mirror.

She looked wan and tired, like the sober, tiny black-and-white photo on the "Hughes Views" editorial column. Even when she didn't look pale, Hannah hated what another college "mentor"-her then-boyfriend Jean-Michel-used to lovingly call her "angelic" look. Hannah would gladly surrender her inheritance to be a few inches taller. Nothing Amazonian, maybe five-foot-seven with strong cheekbones and dark, compelling Asiatic eyes. Instead, she had large, pure-blue, Lithuanian eyes and a round youthful face that made her seem even younger than her twenty-five years. Younger and more innocent. Whenever she interviewed men they tended to talk distractedly or with polite condescension, as though neither she nor the piece had any weight. A handful, like Sheriff Malcolm Gearhart, barely talked to her at all. What was The Coastal Freeway, after all, but a liberal-leaning daily giveaway, fighting for attention in a TV-and-Internet dominated world and earning over half its income from personals placed by lonely women in Ojai and horny men everywhere else. Sheriff Gearhart once said that more people picked up the paper to catch grease during lube jobs and scoop up dog poop in the street than to catch the news. He wasn't right about that, though Hannah knew that if she weren't the daughter of billionaire transportation giant Arthur Curry Hughes, many of the politicians, CEOs, and local movie bigs probably wouldn't talk to her at all. Many were closeted and not-so-closeted woman-haters.

Powerful men, closet misogynists, Hannah thought. That was another certainty.

Other members of the Santa Barbara County Women's Business Association said the same thing. Samantha Patrick bought Kevin Gold's computer store, didn't change a thing, and watched business fall off thirty percent. Caroline Bennett, owner of Bennett's Surf, said she actually lost customers when she inherited the place from her father. Same fish, same trucks but until she lowered her prices, they went elsewhere.

Interviews with women tended to go better for Hannah, not only because it was us-against-them in many cases but because it was often like talking to her mom or sister. They trusted Hannah and usually gave her terrific quotes wrapped around bare-soul confessions.

Unfortunately, not enough women were part of the Ventura-to-Santa Barbara political and business networks that made decisions-and news. Power was still a boy's club.

Hannah thought she heard her cell phone. She shut off the hair dryer. She couldn't understand why manufacturers didn't make these things quieter. Maybe they were afraid we'd think they weren't working. She'd mention it to her Friday at Home editor. Hair dryers, vacuums, and other things we didn't have to hear were too loud. Phones, car ignitions, and things we had to hear weren't loud enough. There had to be a reason why.

The phone beeped again. Hannah put the dryer down and walked into the bedroom of her beachfront condo. The glass sliders, crawling with rain, looked out onto a choppy, overcast sea. What was that, twelve gray days in a row?

Hannah looked away. Ever since she was a kid in Newport, Rhode Island, she suspected that she was the next stage in evolution. A human solar battery. That was why she'd moved to Southern California after graduating from school. Bake her with sunshine and she could run happily and productively forever. Even when she was tired. But darken the day, cool the air, force her to cover her arms and legs with fabric and she was ready to take hostages.

Hannah plucked the cell phone from the antique secretary beside the door. It was either her mother or her managing editor. She glanced at the digital clock on top of the dresser. It was nearly 7:00 A.M.; ten o'clock in Rhode Island. It couldn't be her mother. Evangeline Benn Hughes would be out on the tennis court at this hour.

"Good morning, Karen," Hannah said as she picked up a pen and pulled over a notepad from the state legislature.

"Good morning, Chief," Karen Orlando said. "Got what might be a hot one for you."

"Shoot."

"I just picked up a call from a Caltrans emergency road crew," Karen said. "A couple of engineers disappeared about an hour ago while they were checking a sinkhole up near Painted Cave. One of the crew members said he found blood on the road."

Hannah made notes. "But no trace of the engineers?"

"Zippo," Karen told her.

"What else?" Hannah asked.

"The crew guy said the sinkhole was 'fatiguing,' whatever that means," Karen went on. "Falling in, I guess. So they're going to have to dig. A second emergency crew is on the way. So is Sheriff Gearhart."

Hannah was waking up fast. With the possible exception of Caltrans, no one hated her more than Sheriff Gearhart. The prospect of getting them both to talk to her was the kind of masochistic challenge Hannah loved.

"I would've sent Jimmy to cover this," Karen said, "but he's rushing to make deadline and before calling in any stringers I figured you-"

"Absolutely," Hannah said. "Caltrans is mine." The headache, lethargy, and exhaustion were gone. "Where's the sinkhole?" Hannah asked.

"It's just east of the cave itself," Karen told her.

"Did they say what shape the road's in?"

"Route 154 and East Camino Cielo are open," Karen said, "though the area around the sinkhole is closed off for two hundred yards in both directions. You'll have to park and walk."

Hannah thought for a second. It was less than three hours before today's edition went to press. She also liked to push herself with breaking news. This was doable.

"I should be there in about a half hour," Hannah said.

"Have Walter meet me at the site and tell Weezie I'll E-mail the story in. Save me two columns above the fold."

"You got it."

Hannah thanked her and hung up. She didn't bother finishing her hair. The dampness on the hill would cause it to frizz anyway. Pulling on black jeans and a Coasted Freeway sweatshirt, she slipped on her dog tags and then grabbed her red leather shoulder bag and dropped the cell phone inside. Her office-on-the-hoof, she called it. A high school graduation present from her mother, the bag contained two audio microcassette recorders, her nearly indispensable Palm VII electronic organizer, a no-tech notepad and pens in the event of Palm VII battery crash, and a digital camera in case Walter got a flat.

Within five minutes Hannah was in her red Blazer, listening to the radio talk between Caltrans headquarters and the crew as she tore along the damp, deserted side streets toward the mountains.