Three Can Keep a Secret

CHAPTER THREE

Joe rolled to a stop in the middle of the road. Ahead, the Whetstone Brook was arcing over the Route 9 bridge, the railing no longer retaining errant vehicles, but instead acting as a launching ramp for a continuous rooster tail of liquid mud fountaining through the sodden, gray air like a broken water main spewing across the road.

“Gee, boss,” Willy commented. “Not gonna go for it?”

Joe didn’t respond, craning to see to their right through the streaming water on the glass. “The address is over there. We might be able to get closer to the trailer park using the back feeder road, instead of the main entrance.”

“We putting a lot of effort into this?” Lester asked from the back. “I mean, not to be coldhearted…”

Joe held up his hand. “I know, I know. They had no idea what was out here when they assigned us.” He put the car in reverse and began turning around. “Let’s just give it a vague look around. We may not even get out.”

They’d barely engaged the road in question when Sam announced, “There, to the left. Two guys in a tree.”

The rest of them turned to stare.

“Idiots,” Willy said.

Joe cast him a look. “You don’t know that’s them.”

“Yeah I do,” the old sniper assured him. “The one on the upper branch is Zach Neeley. Worthless piece of crap. This is totally his style. I don’t know the other one.”

“Thank God for that,” Sam muttered.

“It’s gotta be one of his new recruits,” Willy finished. “Nobody’s dumb enough to do more than one job with Zach.”

“They look comfortable enough,” Lester said hopefully.

“They look half dead,” Joe stated, reaching for the radio. He gave their location and an update to Dispatch, adding that the priority of the call should be pretty high, as the situation looked “fluid.”

“You did actually say that,” Willy challenged him after he finished.

Joe shook his head and flipped on the car’s blue lights, to indicate their location to responders. This wasn’t going to be easy, he knew. Plucking these two morons from their perch would involve many skilled people trying their best not to get killed in the process.

“Now you did it,” Willy said.

Joe looked back at the men in the distant tree. One of them was pointing and waving at them, attracted by their flashing strobes.

“Oh, for Christ’s sake,” Sammie said, and without further comment, opened her door and stepped out into the storm, Les sliding out right behind her.

Joe immediately followed. The treed men had reacted to the sight of them by jumping into the water in obvious hopes of swimming across.

“That’s about right,” Willy groused, joining them in the downpour. “Trust a moron to think he can walk on water.”

Joe gestured to the rear of the SUV. “Get whatever you can find-ropes, vests, whatever makes sense. Maybe we can snag ’em on the way by.” He began jogging toward where the swollen brook crossed the road ahead, his eye on a long branch he’d spotted lying along the impromptu bank.

To his left, he could barely make out the two bobbing heads amid the trees, building fragments, furniture, and personal belongings, all careening toward him at high speed. With the sound of the water obliterating all chances of being heard, he began waving at them to swim toward his side of the river.

“They might as well be tennis balls,” Willy shouted beside him as Lester and Sam began rigging a coil of rope to the branch Joe had spotted earlier, hoping to extend a hanging lasso to the two men as they swept by.

It didn’t take long, but it only half worked. With the four of them as a counterbalance, they got the branch well in position, but only the man they didn’t know managed to snag the loop. Neeley took a swing at it and missed.

“I knew he wouldn’t let me down,” Willy said as he dropped the branch, took off at a sprint alongside the churning water-trailing a second coil of rope that he’d unobtrusively tied around his waist-and leaped almost on top of the flailing Zach Neeley.

Sam and Joe threw themselves onto the quickly vanishing rope as Lester kept pulling the unnamed man ashore.

“Willy, you son of a bitch,” Joe heard Sammie grunting as she struggled for a foothold against the dead weight of the two in the water. “I will kill you if you survive this.”

* * *

In Waterbury, Bonnie Swift-her ears stuffed with toilet paper against the incessant, malfunctioning fire alarm-finally managed to use a fire extinguisher to smash the handle off the locked door to the Brooks Rehab unit in the basement, only to be pushed back by a four-foot wall of dammed-up water and a stationery store’s worth of papers, files, books, plastic trash cans, and, incongruously, one poster featuring surfing off Hawaii. She stumbled against the stairs behind her, fell on her back, and felt the tidal wave wash over her, smelling of diesel fuel and oil, among other things she didn’t want to know.

Spitting and rubbing her mouth, she staggered back to her feet, swearing and looking into the murky water for the flashlight that she’d dropped. In her search for the wandering Carolyn Barber, she’d found several people feverishly trying to rectify the building’s electrical problems, but no sign of the Governor.

And by now, what little light had been supplied by the heavily masked sun was all but gone, and the normally long summer day was shortened by the weather to resemble its briefest winter kin.

She followed a faint glow to her submerged waterproof flashlight, near the bottom step, and sloshed through the open door ahead, into a maze of shadowy corridors.

* * *

Carolyn Barber had blundered into the state hospital’s famed tunnels. Unperturbed, even smiling at the novelty of her surroundings, she walked slowly ahead, hands outstretched, along the narrow corridors. The state office complex sat atop a honeycomb of such passages, some large enough to house offices to either side; others so cramped as to qualify as crawl spaces. The purposes of these tunnels had varied over the decades, as had access to them, depending on the overhead building’s function. The state hospital and the public safety headquarters had been considered drum-tight, for instance. Others were pretty much common areas.

Until the water had altered all such distinctions.

Carolyn hadn’t been looking to escape. She hadn’t even known about the tunnels. She’d just wanted to return to her room. The tunnels-by the doors, defaulting to unlock instead of to lock-had simply been delivered to her. With the ebbing light, the disorienting noise, and her desire for peace and quiet, they’d appeared to offer solace.

She was beginning to fret, however. The water, for one thing, had deepened. Initially reminding her of when she’d enjoyed wading as a child, it had now reached her waist, and was not smelling good, either.

She stopped, working her perpetually fogged brain for a clear thought. She had memories of being able to do that. She remembered a time, long ago, when she hadn’t felt trapped in a daydream. But she couldn’t swear to it. After all, she also vaguely recalled having been called a leader once, although none of her listeners seemed to know of it, which made her doubtful. They did honor the title she’d insisted upon, the Governor, which sounded right to her, if again tempered by their bemused expressions.

She looked ahead. There was the tiniest sliver of light, perhaps from a small window, itself out of sight. It was enough for her to see that the water level and the low ceiling almost met as the floor ramped down beneath her. It didn’t seem like a good idea to keep going.

She turned to retrace her steps and let out a startled cry. Something large had appeared right behind her, floating up without a sound and wedging itself into the tight passage. She tentatively tried determining what it was, and what to do with it, her terror heightening. In fact, it was a large wooden desk, liberated from a nearby office by the rising water, and set free to float like a clumsy crate.

However, Carolyn didn’t know that. She just felt hemmed in, which was a bad thing for her in particular. She therefore opted for her original route-away from the hard, large, slightly bobbing threat and into the deeper water.

* * *

Jenn stared openmouthed at her colleague. “Oh, my God. Bonnie. What happened to you? Are you all right?”

Bonnie Swift was drenched, covered with filth, and appeared exhausted. Jenn gently moved one of the patients from a nearby chair and steered Bonnie toward it. They were all on the second floor, the lights were back on, the alarms had been stilled, and, other than the staffers keeping a perpetually keen eye open for any mishaps or sudden movements, things had become relatively boring.

“I lost the Governor,” Bonnie admitted, dropping into the seat.

Jenn’s eyes widened. “She’s dead?”

But Bonnie shook her head and shrugged. “No. I don’t know. Maybe. I lost her in the tunnels. She’s gone.”

* * *

“She still pissed at me?”

Joe smiled as he applied a Band-Aid over Willy’s left eye. “She mentioned something about a newborn’s father risking his life for the sake of a dirtbag who didn’t have the brains of a urinal cake.”

Willy burst out laughing. “She said that?”

Joe sat back, his task completed. “Almost a direct quote-the last part, anyhow.”

“I love it.”

“So, yes, she is still pissed at you,” Joe concluded, just so the point wasn’t missed.

Willy made a face. “I know.”

Joe put away the first aid kit. They’d moved to a small staging area not far from their river rescue site, recently established for unrelated reasons. There were several trucks from various fire departments surrounding them, an assortment of vehicles from FEMA and the National Guard-places aplenty for Sam to get out of the rain, have a hot drink, maybe find some dry clothes, and cool off far from Willy. Lights on tripods had been rigged around the periphery, which-given the comings and goings of strobe-equipped vehicles and the people milling about in electric-colored slickers-lent the entire scene the look of an alien landing site.

Joe understood both sides-the impulse that made Willy dive in after a man who was now claiming Willy had hit him on purpose in the process; and Sam’s maternal outrage. It spoke to the passion and decency of each of them, as far as Joe was concerned. One of the graces he’d valued during his career was that for as long as he could still show up at the office, he’d get to work with people whom he’d have happily selected as his own kids.

Even if, on occasion, they were ready to kill each other.

Lester Spinney ducked under the raised hatch door of the SUV that Willy and Joe were using as a rain tent.

“All patched up?” he asked.

“They take care of our two burglars-in-training?” Joe countered.

Lester nodded. “Took ’em out back and executed ’em. Beat ’em to death-didn’t want to waste bullets.”

Willy laughed as Joe just gave him a look.

“Yeah, boss,” Spinney conceded. “They’re under lock and key. No trip to Springfield, though. You hear what happened to the last transport detail that headed that way? Got swept up in the river. Lost the EQ; damn near lost the crew.”

“Everyone okay?” Joe asked.

“Wet and embarrassed, but fine. We’re gonna hear a thousand stories like that before this is done. Guaranteed.”

“Got anything for us?” Willy asked, already getting restless and, Joe suspected, wanting some more time between now and when he and Sam reconvened at home.

“Oh,” Lester said, “Yeah. We’ve been called up north. It’s a little vague, since communication is falling apart, but we should be able to make it. We’re supposed to hitch a ride with some other folks on a Humvee to a spot somewhere in Newfane. They say we can still reach it, at least for now. You hear they’re talking about evacuating the state EOC? The whole Waterbury complex flooded and it’s threatening their computers and power.”

“You’re full of good news,” Joe told him. “What’re we supposed to check out?”

“That part’s a little jumbled. The emergency coordinator in the area-don’t ask me who or what-said he didn’t have time to go into detail. Apparently, most of South Newfane is being washed into the Rock River and beyond. But he said first that he needed cops, and then that they should be detectives-he was specific. ‘We got a missing person up here,’ or something to that effect. Sorry I don’t have more. I did ask.”

Willy was not in a mood to argue. “I’m in,” he said, sliding out of the SUV’s back.

Joe addressed Spinney. “They need a full crew?”

“Not our choice,” Les responded. “The Hummer only has room for two more. Pretty packed as it is. This is more the incident commander’s call than ours.”

Joe glanced at Willy. “You and me?”

Willy gave him a crooked smile. “Me and anyone ’cept you-know-who.”

* * *

The drive north was made in darkness, the Humvee’s roof, spot, and headlights all ablaze and, Joe thought, working as much against them as for them, the way the white light bounced off the prisms of a million falling raindrops. He imagined that from the air, they must have looked like a grounded cloud of fireflies, winding through the woods.

It was slow going. They avoided the pavement, since it was prone to caving in. They also had to double back a couple of times, their information being dated by a critical few hours. Conversation was minimal; a few actually dozed off. It was cramped, uncomfortable, damp, and clammy because of the partially open windows. Nevertheless, they made headway.

Where they ended up, hours after what would have been a twenty-minute drive-and after dropping off most of the other passengers along the way-was a cemetery tucked in amid a copse of ancient trees. It was high on a hill above a narrow, sylvan valley and normally solely populated by a small scattering of headstones.

But not tonight.

Joe and Willy eased themselves out of the vehicle and stretched in the fading rain, which was at long last reducing to a steady drizzle. A young man dressed in a yellow coat labeled EMS approached them, looking wet, unshaven, grim, and beyond haggard.

“You the police?” he asked hoarsely.

They merely nodded, perhaps sensing the inanity of displaying their shields in a place and time like this.

“I’m Joe,” Gunther thought to say. “He’s Willy.”

The man didn’t introduce himself, turning on his heel instead and leading them across the small cemetery’s uneven surface. Usually, trees are planted in such a setting to add grace and peacefulness. Here, the graves had come later, dug among the trees so that the huge trunks and gnarled roots appeared to have grudgingly made room.

“It’s over here,” their host said, speaking straight ahead in a loud voice, no doubt finding it less taxing than turning his head. Around them, small clusters of men and women, mostly dressed in fire department gear, watched them walk toward the very edge of the burial ground.

“There’s no river or creek to speak of up here,” the EMT was saying. “But once Irene let loose this morning, pretty much everything that could run water did.” His right arm flapped out to his side as he added, “And we have about two hundred feet of elevation above us here, so a lot of water ended up coming along this western boundary.”

He stopped near a roaring generator attached to three lights that his team had hung from an assortment of nearby branches.

Now he was shouting over the engine to be heard, and Joe and Willy leaned in close. “This is a small local cemetery. I don’t even know its name, and I’ve lived here all my life. But it’s still used, if not much. Anyhow, people take care of it and watch out for the stones, and mow it in the summer. It was the caretaker who got worried about what the runoff might be doing, and came up to see what was happening.”

He took a few steps toward where the light was focused, and his two guests finally saw the custodian’s source for concern-the water had indeed sliced alongside the lot, and created what looked like a six-foot-deep archeological trench, exposing the sides of several coffins in the process. There remained a trickle along the bottom, but the evidence spoke of a far more destructive cataract earlier.

“That’s dust to dust with a vengeance,” Joe heard Willy say softly to himself, adding, “Or mud to mud.”

The young man jumped down into the ditch and pointed at the row of more or less exposed boxes. He looked up at them, still shouting. “Pretty much speaks for itself, and no big deal when you get down to it. Not like anybody was actually carried away. That would really suck.”

Joe nodded to show his agreement, although he was beginning to question why they’d been called here.

Their host beckoned tiredly. “I’m real sorry, but you’re gonna have to come down here. I guess it’s not the first time you’ve gotten wet today, though.”

That having been said, they complied, slithering down the side of the ditch and joining him as he squatted down and played his flashlight along the side panel of the centermost coffin.

“Don’t know if it was a cheap box, or the passage of time, or maybe both, combined with the force of water, but you can see right here how the side caved in.”

Joe shifted around so that his sight line followed the light, dreading the macabre nature of what he was about to see.

“First time I saw it,” the EMT explained, “I thought it was just rubble that had piled up against the damn thing. But it’s not.”

He moved, handing the flashlight over. Joe lowered himself to his knees, feeling the water curl around his thighs. He pointed the shaft of light into the gash of splintered wood as Willy slid in next to him.

“Far out,” Willy said. “We got ourselves a mystery, boss.”

The stones and rocks weren’t piled against the coffin. They were spilling out. There was no body within.