Willy was correct with his scorn for this crime’s complexity. They’d known who did it upon first glance at the store’s surveillance tape. Caspar Luard was a twenty-something half-wit repeat offender who’d found flipping burgers a challenge and so took up crime as a fallback. This time, with predictable forethought, he’d approached a gas station, put a paper bag on his head in full view of the exterior camera, walked inside to relieve the counterman of the register’s cash, and then exited-to again pose for the camera as he removed the now half-torn bag and filled it with money before taking his leave.
Not all police work was a brainteaser.
“Boss?” Willy addressed him.
Gunther’s cell phone buzzed at the same time. An older-generation cop, Joe frequently remained surprised by the notion of a phone going off in his pants. He pulled it out and said, “Hang on a sec,” while he turned toward Willy, his eyebrows raised in inquiry.
Kunkle was holding his own phone aloft. “It’s Sam,” he explained. “She was waiting for Caspar when he got home. He can’t believe we figured this out.”
“He still have the rest of the money?” Joe asked.
“Less than half of it. He lost the rest. We take this route to his apartment, we’ll probably find it scattered like rice at a wedding, assuming some other loser isn’t already buying beer with it.”
Joe nodded and returned to his own phone. “Sorry. Hi.”
“Hey, Joe. It’s Harry. You knee-deep or can you come over to the command center?”
“Sure. ’Bout five minutes.”
Gunther took his leave, crossed the gas station apron to Main Street, and stood at the curb, waiting for the crosswalk light to favor him. It was a quasi-idiotic gesture, he knew, given that the town appeared as empty as a movie set awaiting a crew. There were no cars in motion, a couple of people barely visible two blocks in the distance, and very few vehicles parked by the meters. Even for a Sunday morning, it had an eerie, abandoned air to it, and-with the lowering, rain-sodden sky feeling fifty feet off the ground-it also looked like a black-and-white photograph, set off here and there with hand-applied painterly touches, like the brilliant yellow slickers of those far-off pedestrians.
His caller, Harry Benoit, was the town’s fire chief and the head of emergency operations. Over the years, Harry had made it his business to figure out how to manage chaos, from major fires to natural mishaps to protesters thronging the streets for assorted causes. And, through a combination of grant money, political arm-twisting, equipment acquisitions, and training involving a network of like-minded agency heads, he had succeeded in building a pretty solid organization across Windham County.
Joe tilted his head back and let the rain wash his face under the brim of his hat.
There was no wind to speak of; no lightning or thunder. Tropical Storm Irene, now that she’d arrived, was feeling like a summer shower.
But with something more malevolent lurking within her.
Joe took his hat off briefly and let the rain hit him fully. It was a farm boy’s variation on a cook’s dipping his finger into the sauce to finalize his appraisal of it.
This was no summer shower, Joe concluded, at last crossing the street to the signal’s steady chirping. There was a steadiness to this rain, and a weight-a sense of permanence that foretold it would be with them for a long time. It was the kind of rain that he’d loved in 1930s melodramas, supplied by pipes and sprayers kept just out of the frame.
Harry’s command post was in the basement of the town’s municipal building, which also housed the town offices, the police, and-on the second floor-the VBI’s cramped quarters. It looked like a structure that the Addams Family might have called home, and had begun as the local high school, before being steadily and repeatedly remodeled from the 1800s onward. Through the decades, every tenant had groused about its inefficiencies, its layout, and its temperature fluctuations. Joe had always enjoyed the antiquity of the place, and sympathized with a cranky old behemoth that, like him, had quietly endured the finicky technology forever being thrust upon it. In that way, he was reminded of the entire state’s dilemma, struggling to keep current in an ever-more-modern world while touting tourist-friendly images of photogenic cows, tasty syrup, crusty locals, and hot spot ski resorts.
The Emergency Operations Center, or EOC, like so many of its ilk across the nation, was located out of sight in a windowless, subterranean corner enclave. Joe had found it a curiously common habit of government bureaucracies to locate such centers in the heart of structures most likely to suffer from damage or pointed attack. Typical had been New York City’s, located on the twenty-third floor of the World Trade Center, after the 1993 bombing of the parking garage had revealed the building’s appeal as a target.
Joe had once mentioned all this to Harry, but all he’d found was a kindred spirit equipped with a gallows sense of humor, resigned to following directives from politicians far away and far removed.
And so they made do with the basement, with fingers crossed.
Joe climbed the steep approach of broad, uneven granite steps leading up to the municipal building’s entrance. They were set into a hill overlooking Main Street and the district court across the way-admittedly a location that alleviated most concerns about water doing much more than flatten the grass to both sides of him.
Still, as he well knew, water had a way of doing as it liked. Just ask New Orleans.
He paused in the old building’s lobby, shaking off the rain and slapping his damp hat against his leg, before descending a nearby staircase made of much-painted, scarred, and splintered wood, massive and old enough that it might have been pried off the Ark for reuse. There was a fitting thought, Joe mused.
The basement was normally a somber, tomblike place, relegated to storage, an officers’ rarely used gym, a Titanic-sized furnace, miles of awkward overhead wiring, and the usually darkened EOC.
But not today. Joe entered a beehive of activity, with people milling about and the smell of coffee strong. The air was electric with talk, ringing phones, buzzing printers, and the background chatter of TV weather stations and news programs.
He stopped on the threshold of the Emergency Operations Center itself and took it in. He recognized over three-quarters of the people there. He’d lived his entire adult life in this town, and knew most of the cops, firefighters, EMTs, social service folks, and politicians by name. But there were more than those here now. The room was packed with people typing, talking on phones, and conferring over wall maps covered with pins, overlays, and grease pencil scribblings. It was a low-ceilinged, cramped version of a war room.
“Kinda cool, huh?”
Joe turned at the voice by his shoulder and took in Harry Benoit, a steaming mug of coffee in his hand. An affable, disarmingly funny man in normal times, he’d been in the fire service from high school onward. He’d made crisis a primary food group.
But despite his opening one-liner, he didn’t seem to be enjoying himself right now.
“You look like hell, Harry,” Joe told him.
Benoit smiled tiredly. “Thanks. Been up most of the night. Not smart, considering what we’re facing today. This wasn’t supposed to hit till late morning. It’s six hours early. Now is when I was figuring for some shut-eye.” He paused to drink from his mug before adding, “Best-laid schemes.”
Joe caught his implication. “This really going to be bad?”
Harry gave him a serious look before suggesting, “They call these things ‘Hundred Year Storms’ for good reason, Joe. We’re on the verge of a world of hurt.”