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Starr was frowning. “How much time?”

Colter said, “I looked it up—a Chevy Suburban has about a hundred and fifty cubic feet of cargo space. With the passenger compartment, call it another fifty. So two hundred. The time-to-limit-level of CO2—that 8 or so percent—is around six or seven minutes per cubic foot—for one person. There are four people inside?”

“That’s what Louis thought.”

“Assume small children—the younger the better—so three hours plus for the whole family. There are ways to extend that a bit. Wet carpet will dissolve some CO2. If you’re trapped, you can pee on the rugs. That helps. Though only temporarily. In this SUV the carpet’s sure to be plenty wet already.”

“If we can’t get to them in time,” Tolifson said grimly, “I guess at least they’ll go to sleep peacefully.”

“That’s only true if you pump the air out of a space altogether, both oxygen and carbon dioxide. CO2poisoning is not a good way to die. At 4 percent CO2, you start to get restless, have headaches, hallucinate—and the survival mechanism is to get the body out of there. So you start to have panic attacks. Bad ones. Then thrashing. By 6 percent you’re gagging uncontrollably.”

“Lord, I had no idea.” Starr whispered this.

Colter was looking at a map of the area on a large laptop, running off a generator. He located their position and studied the topography. “I’ll head south along Thirteen, so I’ll be closer to the drone if there’s a hit.”

He explained that for speed he would take the dirt bike. His backpack carried basic rescue equipment, including a glass-break tool, supplemental oxygen and respirators, hose, a diamond-tipped saw and a drill, first aid gear.

In his thoughts was a fact that went unstated. He also had six body bags in the camper.

Which he would not take with him.

Dorion said, “The town council president—he’s also the fire chief—is downstream, searching.”

Tolifson nodded. “Tomas Martinez.” He added, “Ms. Shaw pulled back the rest of the search party. Left him. By himself.”

The chill in his voice was obvious.

Dorion had no reaction, but said to McGuire, “If you could get back on evac detail. And remember to threaten to arrest anybody who doesn’t comply.”

Tolifson said, “Uhm, Ms. Shaw, I don’t know that we can. Isn’t it just a misdemeanor?”

“You can arrest them, sure,” Colter said. He was the one Shaw child who had considered law school. He could answer Tolifson’s question, though, not for that reason but because he himself had been arrested for misdemeanors on several occasions. It went with the reward-seeking territory.

Dorion pointed to the Public Safety building. “You’ve got a prisoner transport van. I can see it.”

Starr said, “We only use it to take DUIs to County. And meth cookers, once in a blue moon.”

Dorion said, “Just throw a couple of the more arrogant ones inside and make sure people see it. Word’ll spread fast. Then release ’em.”

Tolifson said, “Can’t they sue for wrongful arrest?”

Debi Starr said, “In this podcast I was listening to, somebody tried that, and the judge laughed the stinkers out of court.”

McGuire climbed into his pickup, three-pointed and descended quickly into town on the tight gravel switchback.

Colter said, “Dorion mentioned there was a witness who saw the SUV.”

“Louis Bell. That’s his pickup stuck at the other end.”

“Did he say if the Suburban was upside down or not?”

“Upside down, he thought, but it all happened fast. He just glanced in the mirror and saw it go in. He had to pay attention. There was a car in front of him.”

“What car?”

“We don’t know anything about it, except a blue sports car, woman driving. Driver made it off the levee and just kept going. She wanted to get the hell out of Dodge.”

Colter asked, “You have no idea who the family is or about the tag on the SUV?”