Archer Mayor - Three Can Keep a Secret

Joe broke the silence first. “Okay, let’s start with the basics. Les, you and I can travel to Waterbury and check out where she was last seen and what possible routes she took. Sam and Willy, why don’t you two hold the fort, find out what you can about her background, and if you have time, start looking into who was supposed to be in that coffin?”

* * *

Joe’s choice of Lester to accompany him to Waterbury had not been arbitrary. During his tour of Windham County early that morning, he’d learned that the damage had exceeded the visible. Along with the roads and bridges and houses, the floodwaters had also stirred up petroleum deposits, sewage treatment plants, farm manure storage facilities, and carried them far and wide. One of his co-travelers had commented that he’d heard of a Vermont-stamped propane tank found floating in the Hudson River, and another had told of a virulent computer image making the rounds of a mobile home surrounded by a bright red pond of spilled fuel. More directly, when they’d stopped to examine Brattleboro’s Flat Street-in part, so named for its proximity to the Whetstone Brook-they’d found it under several feet of dark brown water, shimmering with an oily sheen from untold hundreds of polluted sources.

Joe knew that Waterbury would be similar, and that Sam was still breast-feeding her daughter, Emma. He had no kids himself, and Lester’s were both teenagers. So, his choice of companion was at once protective and practical. Not that he bothered explaining it to anyone.

It became an expedition traveling the normally two-hour journey. I-91 and I-89 were in fact largely open, but given that they’d been told they wouldn’t be allowed into the tunnels until the next day, Joe and Lester agreed that the drive should double as an exploration. The two therefore switched from dirt roads to highways to occasionally the interstate, sometimes backtracking, often using the phone-assuming there was coverage-to get and give road-closure updates as they went. All along, they found people outside, sometimes forlornly poking through belongings spread out in the sun, but for the most part working hard to address the damage. On the radio, they heard about the governor commandeering one of the few National Guard helicopters for an overview of the damage, and about FEMA, the Red Cross, the Salvation Army, and others setting up command centers and shelters to help the dispossessed, the homeless, and the simply stunned.

But what they saw as they crisscrossed toward Waterbury was less organized relief efforts, and more individual evidence of that older, less official, rural New England code that tended to respond to catastrophe stoically. Things were what they were, such a philosophy dictated. And then you got on with it.

It was close to the end of day when they reached their destination, and Joe was happy that he’d called ahead instead of relying on serendipity to supply them with room and board for the night. On the map, the town’s main street was ruler straight for over a mile, with the Winooski River hanging like a droopy clothesline from each end, outlining a half-oval parcel containing the office complex, a large field, and one perpendicular street with its bridge at the bottom. By and large, that whole section of land, roughly seven thousand feet long by two thousand at its widest, had been plunged underwater.

Waterbury had received the proverbial shellacking.

“Damn,” Spinney said as they crested the hill heading down into the floodplain at the center of it all. “I’m impressed they’re only missing one person.”

Traces of recovery were plentiful, as they had been all the way here, along with defiant hand-lettered signs adorning mud-clogged front yards and semi-destroyed homes, but the brutality of what had occurred lingered in the faces they saw as they drove by. This was a community funeral of sorts, and there was no amount of thumbs-up or spirit-rousing rallying that could alter it.

The man Joe had phoned was Bill Allard, the director of the VBI, who-along with the squad that handled this portion of the state-had been evacuated from the public safety building while inspectors checked it out. This made Allard at once a busy guy, making sure that his other units were up and running smoothly-by whatever means they could muster-and someone with time on his hands. He’d been the one to ask Joe to handle this missing person case.

Bill lived on Winooski Street-located within that flood-prone bulge between Main Street and the river. Fortunately for him, his address was near Main, and thus on higher ground. Those closer to its far end had run the gamut from getting their basements flooded to having their homes washed away. Turning right to reach Allard’s house, Joe was again reminded of his family’s good fortune. A second call to Thetford had recently revealed that Leo and their mom had suffered nothing beyond being cooped up indoors on a terrifically rainy day.

As Joe and Lester emerged stretching from their vehicle in the driveway at last, a square-built, muscular man approached from the adjacent Greek Revival home.

“Rough trip?” he asked, extending a hand in greeting. “I didn’t have a clue when you’d get here.”

“Would’ve been sooner,” Joe told him. “We rubbernecked some on the way. Wanted to check out the damage.”

Bill shook his head sorrowfully. “I wish I’d had to do that to see worse than what we got here. But this was about as bad as it gets. They’re saying over two hundred homes have been either badly hit or totally destroyed.” He waved a hand down the street, adding, “Including a couple almost within sight of here. My own backyard was flooded. It stopped just shy of the place.” He indicated his home. “It feels so random, you know? Fluky. I’ve been watching the news. They’ve got footage of a streamside house that looks so good, even the garden’s okay, but the next-door neighbor-not a hundred yards away-is off his foundation and sitting in a field of mud. Makes me feel guilty, almost. You got more bags?”

The three of them entered Allard’s home and settled in the kitchen as he prepared them something hot to drink. His wife came down to meet them and offered to cook dinner, which they gratefully accepted. Bill therefore shifted them to his office off the living room to give her space.

Joe glanced around at the signs of upheaval-piles of folders and files and scattered paperwork, covering every flat surface. “All the conveniences of your real office?” he asked with a sympathetic smile.

Bill was clearing seating space and groaned. “Yeah-right. I have no idea how people work at home.” He then looked up and added, “Thank God, we run a pretty autonomous outfit with the VBI. Can you imagine if we were more traditionally top-down? Other agencies are in a real pickle right now.”

They settled down with their coffee, making themselves comfortable.

“How is the public safety building?” Joe asked.

“It would’ve been fine, except for the damned tunnels,” Allard explained. “The water never reached the walls, pretty much like this house. But no one thought to rig the tunnels with watertight doors, so that’s how it got in. So stupid,” he added. “It’s always the things you don’t think of.”

“Those the same tunnels that Carolyn Barber used?” Lester asked. “They sound like a rabbit warren, going everywhere.”

“Pretty much,” Bill agreed.

“I take it there’s still no news about her?” Joe asked.

Their host shook his head once more. “Nope. Vanished into thin air.”

“Or drowned,” Lester added glumly. “From the looks of downtown, she may be fifty feet from the hospital, caught in a flooded passageway. When will we be able to get in there to check? I had no idea the whole campus was still six feet under.” He looked at Joe for confirmation. “We thought search and rescue had already gone through the tunnels.”