Archer Mayor - Three Can Keep a Secret

“I’d like to,” Al continued complaining, waving his hands around, “except here we are, right? Why couldn’t they’ve just put this jerk in holding overnight? Answer me that.”

“Don’t know, Al.”

“The PD just didn’t want to be bothered. That’s why. All hands on deck; can’t spare the manpower; special circumstances. Like the Sheriff’s Department’s not busy, too? We got guys all over the county, right in the middle of this shit storm, drowning right where they’re standing, and the great Bratt PD can’t house a single loser in their nice, dry basement? Please.”

The driver didn’t answer. The wheel between his hands was growing mushy, as the puddles they hydroplaned through grew in depth and number. He slowed down further. He was already taking back roads, instead of the interstate, from Brattleboro to Springfield, in the hopes that visibility would improve and the chances of skidding decline. Now he was beginning to doubt that any choice would have made a difference.

“Al,” he said shortly. “I need you to shut up.”

Al looked at what was going on through the windshield as if for the first time, and then stared at his colleague. “Jesus, Tom. Are we gonna make it?”

* * *

Bonnie Swift stood at the halfway point on the stairs, speaking gently and clearly to each passing patient. “It’s okay. Just a bit of water. The second floor is fine. Turn right at the top. Stay calm. Stay calm.”

One of her favorites came into view, Carolyn Barber, nicknamed “the Governor” by her own preference. She was, as usual, looking stunned and wide-eyed, as if having just been startled awake.

“Hi, Governor. Everything’s okay. Just take a right at the top, keep with the others.”

But Barber stopped and studied her closely, from about four inches too close for comfort-a habit Bonnie was used to. “It’s wet down there.”

“Yes, it is,” Bonnie said quietly, taking her elbow and steering her toward the next step up. “It’s raining very hard and some of the water is getting inside. Nothing to worry about. That’s why we’re going upstairs.”

Carolyn Barber paused a bit longer, watching her, before finally nodding. “It’s wet,” she repeated, but allowed herself to be directed.

One of Bonnie’s colleagues appeared from below after five more patients filed past.

“Everyone out?” Bonnie asked.

“All the patients are,” the other woman confirmed. “Maintenance is wrestling with the utility panels and computer servers. They said the automatic door locks might short out, so we should keep an eye open. They said Richardson better distribute some keys and man the doors so we can override the system if necessary. Also, we should start distributing flashlights.”

Bonnie made a face. “Good luck with the keys. He may not even know where they are. It’s been years.”

The two of them walked up the rest of the stairs and followed the patients down the hallway. The lights flickered, switching to the eerie backup units placed along the ceiling, and suddenly the fire alarms all went off, accompanied by a woman’s gentle and deliberate voice intoning, “Code Red. Code Red. Please proceed to the nearest emergency exit,” again and again, in an endless loop.

“Damn,” Bonnie muttered, covering her ringing ears. “This’ll make things better.”

Ahead, the line had stopped at one of the electronic doors. She sidled along the wall to get to it quickly and keep the group moving, but when she reached it, she found that it had automatically locked after allowing several patients through, separating them from their handlers.

“Shit,” she whispered to herself, her head beginning to pound from the bells and horns. She quickly slid her pass card through the lock.

Nothing happened.

She looked back and called out. “Jenn. Did the maintenance guys say they’d be fooling with the locks?”

“No. Like I said, just that there might be glitches,” Jenn shouted over the noise from the rear.

“That was really rude, what you said,” a woman nearby told her severely.

Bonnie ignored her and tried the lock again, to no avail. She peered through the mesh-wired glass door into the hall’s extension. Amid the pulsing red lights, she could just make out three people wandering away, including the Governor.

She pounded on the door to get their attention, wondering where the staffers were at that end of the building. Two of the three patients turned around, and she gestured to them to return. However, Carolyn Barber only stiffened slightly, as if caught in the midst of some mischief, before cutting left and vanishing through a doorway.

It was the back staircase.

Bonnie yelled back at Jenn. “Punch in the alarm. One of them’s in the stairwell.”

It wasn’t an actual alarm-which wouldn’t have been heard in any case-but a series of red phones located throughout the facility, programmed to trigger a complete lockdown, just in case one of the patients made a break for it.

Bonnie expected to hear the sound of the alarm-a mechanical clicking, echoing throughout the building like oversized dominoes striking each other in turn.

But there was only silence from the door beside her.

“You do it?” she asked in a loud voice. The line between them was becoming restive with people covering their ears, shouting, and beginning to react to the wall-to-wall wailing. Bonnie didn’t like how things were developing.

“It won’t take the code,” Jenn announced. “It’s dead.”

Bonnie hit the intercom button on the box beside the frozen door-a backup system to connect her to security.

There, too, nothing happened.

She looked back at Jenn and put up her hands, trying to keep her expression mildly bemused for everyone’s sake.

But she was closer to panic than that. Controlling a bunch of patients in a locked corridor was not a great challenge. But they’d just abandoned a rapidly flooding basement-which was where she suspected Carolyn Barber was now headed, no doubt seeking the familiarity of her room amid the confusion. And the people down there had no idea who she was or what to do with her. There was any amount of trouble she could get into, including finding a way outside through the suddenly compromised security system.

Bonnie began struggling to get back from where she’d come, hoping the other stairwell was still open.

* * *

“You’re up, Joe,” Harry told him as Joe hung up the phone on Leo and his mother.

“What’ve we got?” Joe asked, relieved to be put to use at last. Almost everyone else had been chest-deep in this mess for hours by now-handling washouts, accidents, calls for heavy equipment, stranded people, failed wires, fallen trees, and more. He and the rest of his team had been all but sitting on their hands, at most helping with computers, manning the phones, or keeping the coffee coming.

Benoit was still holding a phone at his ear. “West Bratt. Report of looters breaking into an abandoned trailer.” He handed Joe a slip of paper with the address.

Joe took the slip, looked over at Sammie Martens, who merely said, “I’ll get Les and Willy,” and headed toward the door.

“Meet you at the parking lot entrance,” he told her.

Two minutes later, the four of them paused at the glass doors, watching a deluge so complete that it seemed to be pouring from a battery of fire hoses.

“Damn,” Lester Spinney said quietly. “That’s really coming down.”

“That the best you can do?” Willy groused.

“I think it’s cool,” Sammie said wondrously.

Joe glanced back at them. It was rare that they all four set out on a job together. They were an independent bunch, paid to be so, divvying up the workload to get it done efficiently and thoroughly. They were veteran specialists and considered among the best in the state.