Instead of speech, there was a series of short horn blasts, as from an old civil-defense alarm. All heads turned toward the source, a narrow stone tower just visible behind the roof of the library.The sequence repeated, and the common hung in stunned silence for a few moments before people started to talk.
“Fire alarm.”
“That’s not the fire alarm. This one’s different.”
“Police emergency?”
“Not police either.”
“Got to be the prison.”
This last rumor spread quickly through the crowd. Rebecca saw Tom Duggan on the gazebo, one hand still resting on the crown of his granite head, which appeared stately and confident while the man himself looked bewildered.
The police and fire chief hustled down the slippery bandstand steps and strode quickly across the common. This excited no one at first, the people just milled about, confused and drifting into tighter groups as the siren blasts continued. At one point Tom Duggan tried resuming his speech, but gave up, his voice lost in the din. Then people began to disperse. They walked off in different directions with faraway eyes. Their expressions unsettled Rebecca. It was like they had all suddenly remembered last night’s shared-nightmare. She returned to her Mountaineer and eased it through the thinning crowd back to the inn.
Fern was with Kells in the parlor. She wore a loose sweat suit, he a parka and wet boots. He was standing in a small puddle of melting snow.
On the television, a local news anchor had cut in with a bulletin regarding a disturbance at the prison at Gilchrist.
“Oh, my,” said Fern, her small hand going to her mouth.
“What have they said?” asked Rebecca, but Kells shushed her.
The anchor said that a small group of inmates had reportedly seized control of the prison Command Center.
“The Command Center,” said Rebecca.
Kells turned. “What’s that?”
“The brain of the prison. They control everything from there.”
Kells returned to the television for more news, but they were cutting back to a talk show.
Noises at the front door, others returning. Fern looked up with a start. “I better get some tea on,” she said, making for the kitchen.
Rebecca was excited. She followed Fern as far as the sitting room, as though expecting a messenger, but it was only Dark returning, shaking snow off an orchid mohair scarf. “What is that god-awful noise?”
Rebecca led her back into the parlor. Only a few chunks of melting snow remained where Kells had stood before the TV. There was a chill in the room because the outside door had been left ajar. Rebecca reached the porch door just in time to see a white Jeep Cherokee pulling out of the driveway.
He had shushed her rudely at the television, and she was wondering about him now. Remembering her sleuthing the previous night, she followed the enclosed porch around to the bookshelves before returning inside. She saw that Last Words was back on display.
The alarm went silent an hour later, by which time all of the guests except Hodgkins and Kells had returned to the inn. They all stayed close to the television in the parlor and pressed Rebecca for details about the prison. She described the security regimen and praised the professionalism of the Gilchrist guards, belittling the chances of a few disgruntled inmates against crash gates, electric fences, and underground sensors.
At dinnertime, Fern’s forced enthusiasm belied her anxiety while the guests chattered excitedly, the way people get when they find themselves near news. Twice Darla quieted everyone, claiming to hear helicopters overhead. Kells did not return for dinner, and neither did Hodgkins.
The mood after dinner was much different that night.
They migrated back to the television, with Terry commandeering the remote and switching between channels at the most inappropriate times. The snow was coming down more heavily with each hour, hampering the press coverage, but in a way the lack of video only made the story more alluring. The twenty-four-hour-news networks kept replaying the same choppy footage over and over again, that of badly wounded guards arriving at an area hospital in an ambulance fitted with a snowplow blade. Otherwise, the reports focused primarily on the all-star roster of criminal personalities involved.
“Craziness,” Terry declared. “I’m out of here first thing in the morning.”
Rebecca said, “I think it’s kind of exciting.”
The network newscasts came on at six-thirty, leading with the riot. Due to the guard casualties, the warden and his administrative personnel had reportedly been forced to evacuate the prison. They were awaiting more support, which, like everything in Gilchrist, was slow in coming. Snow had closed the nearest airport in Coventry.
Terry cut to the Weather Channel, which showed a forecast of more of the same: heavy snowfall, strong winds. Despite the traveler’s advisory, cars rolled past on Post Road, and all talk at the inn turned to leaving. Plans were made to rise at dawn and dig out.
Gilchrist Police Chief Roy Darrow came on the tube after seven and read a statement outside the front doors of the police station. He was asking the people of Gilchrist not to panic: “No inmates have escaped, and this uprising has been contained within the prison perimeter. No one on the outside is at risk.” But Rebecca knew that by giving voice to people’s fears, he was simply unleashing them. She expected the number of cars out on Post Road to double.
A scream came from across the room as Mia jumped out of her seat, spilling a mug of warm cider on the floor. “Scratching — at the window!”
It was Ruby. The cat had gotten herself locked outside on the porch. Coe opened the French doors and she trotted back in, slinking guiltily along the fireplace to the dining room. Mia, however, was not relieved.
“I want to leave,” she said, turning to Robert.
“Right now?” he stammered. “In this snow? In the dark?”
Coe interrupted then, asking that the television be turned down. Terry grumbled but muted the newscast. Coe went and stood at attention on the porch, just steps outside the open doors.
Rebecca listened too. Water moved through the house pipes from the dishwasher running in the kitchen. Blower heat breathed into the parlor. A wreath scraped mouselike against a window. But in the distance, the sound of firecrackers echoed off the mountains.
“Shooting,” Coe said, amazed at what was occurring in his hometown. “From the prison.”
Mia gripped Robert’s arm. “Right now,” she said.
Robert said nothing. He looked to Fern for advice.
“You’re my guests,” she said, disappointed but firm. “You come and go as you please.”
Mia searched for support, moving across the room to Rebecca. “What are you going to do, Miss Loden?”
Rebecca’s visit to the prison made her the closest thing they had to an authority on the matter. The others looked to her as well.
The existential jury again. She had always thought that she would make a good leader, a moral being, the mantle she assumed every time she sat down at her writing desk to work. She knew she could set their fears at ease.
“From what little I know about prison riots,” she said, “ninety-nine percent of the time, the inmates just give up. They can’t go anywhere, and eventually they settle for concessions like better food or longer exercise privileges. I think the snow has everyone on edge. No one could break out of that prison. This will all blow over before too long.”