Of course, Sandra knew something about drowning her own sorrows. Her idea of a six-pack had nothing to do with abs, either. In her cart were half a dozen bottles of Yellowtail Shiraz—on sale with a ten-percent discount for shoppers who bought six.
Sandra Berkley had a lot to forget. And not all of it had to do with her daughter’s death. No, Sandra’s regrets went back almost a decade, and no amount of cheap wine could ever let her truly forget.
chapter 36
MOIRA WINDSOR NEVER TOLD ANYONE she was interviewing that she wasn’t exactly an employee of the Herald. She was a stringer, a freelance writer. She thought that particular term made it sound like no one would hire her, so she never mentioned it when she was out talking with sources.
After speaking with Kevin Ryan, whom she thought was a royal jerk in the way he just brushed her aside, the pretty twenty-three-year-old returned to her aunt’s house in Paradise Bay, just across the Hood Canal Bridge. The name of the place always made her wince a little when she told people where she lived. The view of the bay was lovely, but it was far from paradise. Her aunt was off snowbirding in Tucson, Arizona, and she’d left Moira to house-sit. The word house was a bit of a stretch. It was really more of a cabin with a woodstove for its sole heat source. Outside in the crusty snow were fourteen bird feeders, eight garden gnomes, and two bleach bottles cut and bent to allow the wind to spin them as they hung from the eaves.
Moira was sure that Ann Curry never had to live like this.
She lined up two bottles of sparkling water, turned on some background TV, and sat down at her computer to search for whatever she could find about the infamous Port Gamble crash. She’d grown up in Bremerton and had vague memories about it, but as a pudgy teenager back then she likely gave it two minutes of thought: Wow, that’s terrible! I feel sorry for those kids and their families!
And then she went back to her life and her dreams of getting out of naval-gray Bremerton, the county’s largest city.
With a cooking show playing in the background, she went onto the search engine and put in the words: Port Gamble + Daisy + Crash.
The host was talking about ways to cut calories out of her “nice spice” Indian cuisine, but as a former fatty, Moira wanted to fantasize about the real thing. Bring on the fat! She guzzled her sparkling water and looked longingly at a bottle of red wine.
Seventeen articles popped up. She clicked on the first one that had appeared on the Kitsap Sun site.
HOOD CANAL BRIDGE CRASH KILLS FIVE
A Port Gamble school bus being used by a Girl Scout Daisy Troop for an ill-fated picnic at Indian Island careened over the Hood Canal Bridge yesterday afternoon, killing the driver and four girls, ages 5-7. Three children and an adult were airlifted to area hospitals.
Motorists on the scene indicated that the draw span had been retracted when the bus crashed in heavy rain and wind. State engineers say retracting the span is done to relieve pressure on the bridge.
“They were right in front of me,” said Cindy Johnston of Bainbridge Island. “I was following them pretty closely because I could barely see. The rain was coming down so hard. In one second, the bus just disappeared.”
Sustained winds of 50 mph, with gusts of 65 mph, were reported in the region by the National Weather Service.
The Washington State Department of Transportation and the State Patrol are investigating.
MOIRA KNEW THAT THE CRASH had killed several people, but she thought it was only two. Four plus the bus driver … it was beyond tragic. She tried to process the depth of that kind of loss on a small town like Port Gamble. It had to have touched almost everyone who lived there.
She read the next article, which indicated that two children were recovered from the water as well as one child and an adult who’d been thrown from the bus to the bridge deck. The article also went on to say that the recovery of the North Kitsap School District’s short bus and the bodies would likely take several days as the depth of the water was three hundred feet or more.
She clicked on another article, one from the Daily Olympian.
ELECTRICAL FAILURE LED TO
FATAL HOOD CANAL CRASH
A spokesman for the Washington State Department of Transportation said today that the school bus crash killing five was a “tragic combination of the weather and an electrical fault that caused the span to open.”
It had not been opened by the bridge tender, as previously reported.
Among the dead were Christina Lee, 7; Sarah Benton, 6; Violet Caswell, 5; and Emma Perkins, also 5. Also killed was bus driver Margie Jones, 29. Jones, according to the North Kitsap School District records office, was an exemplary employee. She was completing her master’s degree in education and was working as an activity bus driver. She’d planned to teach next fall.
“She wanted nothing more than to do something for kids,” said Barry Jones, her husband of five years.
Three of the survivors remain hospitalized. One, a 30-yearold Port Gamble woman, has been released.
Moira activated a few more links, some showing photographs of a barge transporting an enormous crane to the crash site, another as it raised the short bus out of the water, and finally a close-up of an exhausted pair of state divers standing at the rail. Their haunted eyes and grim expressions said more than anything a reporter could write.
Another article highlighted the joint memorial service held at Port Gamble’s church.
She recognized Kevin Ryan in one of the photos.
Finally, she thought, as her eyes scanned the computer screen and the next article. The names of the survivors.
VICTIMS’ NAMES RELEASED,
TWO IN COMA
The names of the survivors of the Hood Canal Bridge bus accident were released this afternoon. Sandra Berkley, 30, and her daughter, Katelyn, 5, were thrown from the bus as it went off the bridge. Ms. Berkley suffered cracked ribs and abrasions. She and her daughter were treated and released from Harrison Medical Center, Bremerton.
The two other victims, 5-year-old twin girls Hayley and Taylor Ryan, remain hospitalized. Their parents issued a statement yesterday.
“Our daughters are fighters. Please keep them in your prayers. Believe in miracles.”
The parents indicated that the girls are still in a coma. Visibly shaken, Adam Larsen, 34, spoke to reporters outside his home in historic Port Gamble.
“We are grieving for the families who have lost their children and for the bus driver’s family too. This touches all of us here. I doubt many of us will ever get over it.”
Larsen’s daughter, Starla, also 5, was a member of the Daisy troop. She, however, did not go on the outing due to minor illness.
The last site Moira visited was one called Kitsap Kalamities, a forum devoted to—as its banner indicated—“happenings of the rotten kind, right here in our own twisted backyard.”
There was nothing really new on the site. In fact, after skimming it, it was apparent that all of the content had been copied and pasted from other websites. Moira sniffed at that. It was the fate of journalism today. Why do any legwork when you can just cut and paste? Not her. Not Moira. She was going to do whatever it took to create something original. Notice-worthy. Star-making. And if her tip paid off, the Ryan girls were going to get her just where she needed to be.