Читать книгу When the Flood Falls - J.E. Barnard - Страница 7

Back at the Centre after lunch, Lacey copied her photos to Wayne’s laptop. He skimmed through them and, using his finger on the touchpad, drew arrows and circles on the relevant images to show where she needed to install the lights. “You’ll have to use extension cords for now, and I can’t spare any. We’ll wire them in properly if she wants to keep them. Go load them in your car before you forget. And bring this list of stuff from the van. We’ll do the art vault this afternoon.”

Extension cords weren’t exactly high security; they could be unplugged if someone managed to sneak under the motion-sensor panels the first time. Lacey made a mental note to make sure the sensors covered wherever the cords came from. If the lights went on just once, they’d prove Dee hadn’t imagined the whole thing and demonstrate the need for greater security. She’d convince Dee to spend the money, or Wayne to delay billing for the work, or something. She went out into the brilliant afternoon, shuffled around the equipment per her instructions, and headed back inside to meet Wayne at the elevator that would take them into that holiest of holies in the art world: the vault.

Located deep in the sub-basement, poking its rear end out under the parking lot, the steel-encased, climate-controlled room was reachable by only one elevator, and only if the right key card was used. It was also at least ten degrees colder than the atrium. Standing in the small elevator lobby across from the shining steel vault door brought goosebumps up in waves on Lacey’s bare arms. She tried not to rub them while Wayne briefed her on the security. Only those key cards held by Wayne, Rob, and the board’s president and vice-president would allow access down here. The elevator would not leave if the vault door was unlocked, something staff members would know, but illicit entrants would not. Those top four high-security cards could override that rule and call up the elevator to some other level, trapping intruders until police arrived.

“It’s almost more anti-vandal defence than anti-burglary,” Wayne said, handing up a screwdriver as she balanced on a small plastic stepstool to adjust the angle on the camera above the elevator door. “That protester outside could be the visible tip of a lot of local resentment. Who knows what some shine-swilling bush hermit might try for his fifteen minutes? Since Mayerthorpe, nobody takes chances with disgruntled farmers.”

Lacey nodded, although she thought Wayne was overstating his case. Mayerthorpe, Alberta, was where four RCMP officers had been picked off by a mean man with a grudge. The bright, touristy environs of Bragg Creek seemed a different universe from that of such men. In reality, the two small towns were hardly a half day’s drive apart, and there was plenty of bush around here to harbour angry nutters. The lone protester didn’t look angry enough to worry about, but then, some of the worst mass murderers in history had seemed nice enough to their neighbours.

When the two lobby cameras were cable connected and their angles adjusted to his satisfaction, Wayne unlocked the vault with his key card and a numerical code and pulled the shining door open. A wave of deeper chill flowed out, reminding Lacey of a morgue fridge. Peering past Wayne, she caught her first glimpse of the inner sanctum: ten metres by fifteen of white walls and floors under a six-metre-high ceiling, with lighting so intense it bleached out every shadow. One side of the room held bare, open shelving of varying depths and widths, the other a long frontage of vertical panels, each half as wide as a standard door, with a drawer pull in the middle and three slots for labels above that.

Lacey gestured. “What’s behind those?”

“You, in a minute.” Wayne lifted a remote control from a wall mounting and pushed a button. With a hiss of hidden hydraulics, one panel moved smoothly out into the room. Behind the polished metal front was attached a rigid-mesh construction half as long as the room and almost as high, with a handful of movable hooks hanging randomly from its expanse. “They’ll hang pictures on these for storage,” he added. “All computer hydraulics, and the software programmer is the biggest pain in the ass I’ve met in five years.” It was the most personal commentary he had let slip so far. He pushed another button to send the massive rack back to its resting place.

“Where do we start?” Lacey set down the plastic stepstool and tugged her tool belt into position. They tested and focused the motion-sensor camera over the door, a second camera facing along the shelving, and a third aimed along the front of the hydraulic racks.

“One more,” said Wayne. “Take everything and go tight up against the end wall.”

When she was in position, he pointed the remote. The rack closest to the wall rolled out with a whisper of steel wheels and a hiss of overhead cables, cutting off Lacey from the rest of the vault and giving her a long moment to either panic or admire the posters taped up on the mesh, presumably by the construction crew. Jayne Mansfield’s cleavage made a change from the hockey players on either side, but none of it distracted Lacey from the claustrophobia that was never far below the surface ever since the underwater incident all those years ago. She concentrated on breathing steadily. There would be no panic, no sign of weakness, not when Wayne was finally showing signs of accepting her. At least she could see through the mesh. A solid wall would have sent her through the roof.

When the motion stopped, she sidled along the rack to its back end. The plastic stepstool’s feet bumped along the mesh behind her, bouncing away only to rebound off the cement wall and back again. She wiggled past the rack’s cold steel end plate, reached back for the stepstool, and angled its leading legs into the gap. It stuck. Ignoring with difficulty the visual weight of all those other mesh monsters pressing in on her, she yanked. The stool moved a bit. The rack moved too. It rolled in toward Lacey, dragging her plastic stepstool sideways, pinned between the end plate and the wall. She shoved hard against the endplate but the rack kept coming, cutting off her only exit. She backed away, yelling for Wayne.

If he answered, his voice was lost between the overhead hiss of hydraulic cables and the underfoot whisper of the rack’s wheels. The stepstool collapsed with a whine of tortured plastic.

Her butt bumped the rear wall and still the rack came. She squeezed sideways, trying to fit between the end wall and the next rack. There wasn’t enough room. Nowhere to go.

“Wayne!”

The rack reached her hands, flat out at arms’ length. She leaned on it with all her might, but still it came.

Her elbows bent. Her wrists were bending …

The hiss stopped.

The steel behemoth stopped, too, so close that she went cross-eyed at the blur that was her reflected nose. Her hands pulled back from the panel as if it were electrified. She closed her eyes and clenched her teeth, each quiet breath a victory against screaming.

Wayne’s voice came from a long way off. “McCrae? Are you okay?”

Deeper breath. And another. She tested her voice and heard it say calmly, “Yes.” Just a bit stressed by nearly being crushed to death in an enclosed space, but she couldn’t say that out loud. In Wayne’s book that would be whining. Ex-RCMP officers did not whine.

“I won’t risk turning the power back on,” he called. “Can you push?”

“It weighs a ton.”

“It’s balanced like a dream. Once started, it will roll like a baby stroller. Now push.”

He was right, sort of. It took a lot of will for Lacey to put her hands against the rack again. But with him pulling from the front end and Lacey’s feet braced on the wall behind her as she pushed, the monster began to move. She kept pushing as it rolled smooth and slow, unwilling to wait even a step behind the first chance of freedom. When it cleared the opening, she slipped out of the gap and past the pin-up posters to the widest spot in the vault’s corner. If she’d had Jayne Mansfield’s cantaloupes on her chest instead of these fried eggs, she wouldn’t have fit back there in the first place. She swallowed a hysterical giggle.

“I’m clear,” she said. “Next time, you take the back, okay?”

“Nobody’s going in there again until the installer adjusts the auto-close. It should take a good shove to get this to move. Not like a CD player.”

“CD players only pinch your finger.” She might have been crushed, and even if she’d survived, she’d have been out of work for ages. Was she eligible for workers’ comp in Alberta? She wasn’t an official resident yet, just a temporary migrant from B.C. without a Calgary address or an Alberta health card. And here she’d thought the threats to life and limb had been left behind with her RCMP uniform. Deep breath. And another. She wasn’t crushed. No whining. “Do we put it back by hand, too?”

“Nope. Go turn the power back on. We need to know if it’s one rack or all of them.” He pushed buttons and watched the immense racks slide out into the room.

Lacey took her turn tapping the racks to start the auto-close sequence, pushing her fingers past the fear of touching those polished plates. The merest tap was all it took to start the racks. Nothing stopped them once they started except cutting the power at the switch box in the elevator lobby. Anyone hanging up a painting could get dragged sideways and mangled, like the stepstool.

Wayne wore his old impassive ex-cop’s expression, but the flint in his eyes matched the steel vault door. “We’re done in here until that’s fixed. Go download the elevator log so I’ll know who to yell at. Then you can take a break.”

Glad to escape the cellar that could have been her tomb, Lacey grabbed the log-reader gizmo and went, hoping she would remember where to shove the reader’s little flat plug. Wayne had shown her yesterday, but her hands had developed quite a tremor since then, and her mind wasn’t much better.

Fortunately the elevator gizmo co-operated, scrolling up a neat list of card numbers on its little screen. Wayne’s key card number, the only one she recognized besides her own, was last, as it should be. The elevator hadn’t moved because the vault door was open.

Wayne came out and closed the vault. She handed him the card reader and suppressed a shiver as the elevator doors closed her in. She hadn’t so much as remembered her old claustrophobia at lunchtime, but that was then. Deep breaths. At least it wasn’t underwater. Being trapped underwater in an enclosed space would have been her most terrifying RCMP shift come back to life.

As Lacey stepped out onto the flagstone floor of the atrium, her goosebumps receded before the balm of sunlight pouring through the south-facing wall of windows. The rattle and clunk of distant power tools displaced the vault’s preternatural silence. Voices murmured from the Langdon Theatre overhead and the Natural History Gallery across the way. Paint fumes rose from the classroom level beneath the theatre, heading for the varnished log-roof beams three storeys up. No way to feel enclosed here, overlooking the sun-kissed Elbow River with its churning, brown current that set up an echo in her stomach. She pulled her eyes from the water, willed herself to stare at the landlocked front entrance instead, and reminded herself that she had not died. If nearly a decade in the RCMP had not cracked her, she would not cave on her first civilian job because of a near miss. She was fine. She would be fine when she had to go back into that gap later today. Or tomorrow. She would be fine. Deep breaths.

Something bounced off her head and pinged against the elevator. More construction crew humour? She stepped aside.

“Hey, up there! Whatever you’re dropping, quit it.”

A baggie fluttered down, spilling triangular orange pills. From the landing half a flight up, a woman reached through the railing after it. Shaggy brown hair blurred her face. A baggy shirt and a loose skirt disguised her body. Add a droopy hat and here was the mess that had interrupted yesterday’s media event. Dee’s neighbour. What was her name?

“My pills,” Shaggy whispered. “Please.”

“You won’t want the ones that fell on the floor.” Lacey scooped up the baggie with its lone remaining pill and went up. She knew prescription speed when she saw it, and who but an addict carried Adderall in a baggie like it was trail mix?

Shaggy’s hand shook as she fumbled the little orange pill to her mouth. “Please,” she whispered again. “Call Rob.”

Gladly. Drug addicts were no longer part of Lacey’s job description. She pulled her phone and, lacking Rob’s direct number, called Wayne instead.

“There’s a woman on the west stairs above the atrium, asking for Rob. Can you let him know?”

“Will do,” he said. “Tell her to wait there.”

Lacey turned her head away. “Tell him to hurry. She’s popping ADD pills from a baggie. Long-time abuser by her shakes.” If the woman flipped out, she would have to be restrained. What legal cover did a mere security installer have if she took down an out-of-control addict? She turned, saw the woman glaring at her, and hoped her words would be forgotten as soon as the little orange upper kicked in.

Fast footsteps thumped on the glossy log stairs above them. The curator swooped down to sit beside the druggie. “Honey, you were supposed to stay off the stairs. You promised!”

Stay off the stairs? Stay off the Adderall, more like.

Shaggy leaned her head on Rob’s shoulder. “The paint fumes were killing me. The elevator didn’t come. I thought I could do it. I’m always better in summer.”

“Yes, you are,” said Rob, patting her hand. “But it’s not really summer yet, and you promised you’d be careful if I let you come around today. What’s Terry going to say to us?”

“My fault,” the woman whispered. “Take me home.”

Rob’s patting stopped. “Oh, dear. I can’t, honey. Not right away. I’ve got to head off that shipment of paintings from the Petro-Canada collection. The vault’s not going to be ready this afternoon. But maybe Ms. McCrae wouldn’t mind.” He looked up at Lacey with a pleading smile. “Jan lives just up the hill. It would be a five-minute round trip. Nice afternoon. Lovely scenery. I’ll take her van up after work.”

Jan — that was the neighbour’s name. “I’m on the clock.”

Wayne’s voice came from the foot of the stairs. “You can take her.”

Lacey swallowed her impulsive protest. Hiring her was ex-sergeant Wayne’s favour to his ex-constable, Tom, to whom she owed three weeks’ lodging, the job, and — more than once over their shared years on the Force — her life. Tom’s reputation was, in part, riding on her shoulders here. If Wayne wanted her to haul this addict home instead of doing any of the rush jobs that had to be finished by Friday, she would do it.

Rob helped Shaggy to her feet. “Jan, just tell Lacey where to go once you get into the car. Okay?” He passed her arm over Lacey’s rigid shoulders. “Hang on to the railing, honey.”

Lacey turned under the limp arm and supported Jan around the waist. Wayne came up a few steps and took the other arm. Nobody mentioned the little orange pills on the carpet, but Lacey made a mental note to go back later and make sure they were safely disposed of. Prescription speed in candy colours — just what you didn’t want scattered around a building that would soon be open to school tours.

Wayne steered them all outside and deposited Jan on a bench in the shade. “Get your car, McCrae. I’ll stay here.”

When Lacey returned, Jan was sitting up more or less straight, her back to the varnished log wall. Drugs must be kicking in. She could probably drive herself home in another five minutes, except that two former Mounties couldn’t let an obviously impaired woman operate a vehicle. Lacey got her buckled in and steered the Civic to the road, savouring the early summer scents of clean mountain air, newly leafed trees, and the glacier-fed river. After those terrifying moments in the vault, being outside was a balm, even if the task at hand was one she should have left behind with her badge.

“Where to?”

“Turn right onto the road, then left at the bridge.” Other than that, Jan kept her mouth shut and stared straight ahead. Occasionally she trembled. Lacey turned uphill past the first log-and-glass mansion. It was not flying the flaming C of the Calgary Flames hockey franchise, but the next two houses were. She hadn’t noticed them on her way downhill to work this morning. This high-end rural route was clearly a hockey neighbourhood. Did local support explain the museum’s hockey exhibit?

At a hand gesture from her passenger, she turned off the road a bit uphill from Dee’s drive, following paving stones around a modernist house that was all glass and angles. It, too, had a Flames flag hanging from a sunroom cantilevered out over the steep hillside. She stopped on an oblong of paving, as close as possible to the only visible doorway.

“I can manage now.” Jan groped for her seat belt, fumbled it open, then struggled with the door handle. Getting her feet outside took a lot of concentration, and once they were on the ground, she sat there breathing heavily.

“I’ll see you to the house.” Lacey unbuckled and went around the car. Jan stood up, swayed, and clutched Lacey’s arm.

“Just to the porch.” Jan hobbled over the paving stones and eased herself onto a chair.

Lacey’s phone rang. “McCrae.”

Wayne was terse. “Vault guy’s unavailable. Take off early. See you in the morning.”

Crap. Two hours’ pay down the tubes. He’d have found something else for her to do if she hadn’t left the building. Or did he know she was too shaky to work, anyway? Did he despise such weakness in an ex-cop? Would the next message be telling her not to bother coming back? She could end up working mall security by the weekend.

At least malls tended to be large, open spaces, almost like here. She looked out over the valley. The museum, with its nearly fatal vault, was a toy building down below, but behind it the river churned. Was it eating at the riverbank beyond the museum’s terrace? Was that the next fear she would face — being trapped down in the classroom level while murky water beat against the windows? She shuddered and turned away. Never again.

Jan was squinting in the sun, enough Adderall behind her eyes now to lift the sag out of her face. Lacey revised her age estimate down to the midthirties. Almost a contemporary.

“Thanks for the ride.” Jan walked almost steadily to the door. She didn’t fumble her key in the lock at all, just strode on through as if her previous shakes had never happened. The door shut behind her, leaving Lacey alone on the paving stones with the sweet June breeze whispering through the treetops and the museum far below, tiny and too postcard-like to have caused such mayhem in her life by three o’clock in the afternoon.

Even though her body was crying out for a nap after the disturbed night, she hated the thought of going back to Dee’s, to the barking dogs and the omnipresent rumble of the swelling river, not to mention whatever mood Dee had swung into by this time. A long, winding drive out over the open plain would feel great right about now, but driving would not get the motion-sensor lights installed. If she did those first, she could run into Calgary for extension cords and pick up more clothes from Tom’s at the same time. With luck, she’d even miss rush hour traffic.

Except, she realized, as she backed up the car to leave the sharp-edged glass house behind, she had yet to inquire closely into which individuals really might be out to get Dee, in case she hadn’t imagined the whole thing. The suspect list might start with Dee’s ex, Neil, but it had to include that protester outside the museum and the rich man up the hill. Just because he was helpful with the dogs didn’t mean he was truly a friend or ally. And the man who’d killed her dog last winter — she was set to testify against him. That was motive enough for some people.

All this was in Lacey’s mind as she sat across the black granite breakfast bar from Dee two hours later, eating some divine pasta Dee had imported from one of the trendy restaurants down in the hamlet. There was a glass of wine to go with it, of course, a crisp California chardonnay. But, mindful of the impending drive into Calgary, she wasn’t having any beyond a sip of Dee’s to see what she was missing. Someday, she might lose her overzealous adherence to alcohol limits, but not while her life remained in this highly unstable state. Getting busted for .08 would be a serious handicap to finding a proper job, not to mention house hunting and eventually moving.

“We have to take this seriously,” she said past a mouthful of succulent seafood and sauce. “Start with the protester. What does he hope to gain, with the Centre nearly finished? What did he lose because of this project your company helped finance?”

“The rural municipality approved the museum’s development. According to his handouts, he thinks the arts are a waste of time and money. It’s not an uncommon attitude in Alberta. I heard a rumour, too, that he’d had his own plans for the land, but his proposal was outvoted. It was before my time on the board, though, and I don’t think he blames me for it. He’s careful to stay off the edge of the property, so he’s doing nothing illegal. Just a nuisance.” Dee paused for a sip of her wine. “I hope he gives up when we open. It won’t do the tourist traffic any good.” She clearly thought the protester harmless; Wayne thought him a potential mass murderer. Lacey thought she’d better investigate a bit further, as soon as time permitted.

“What about Jake Wyman? You said he had a grudge.”

“I said he might have been holding a grudge. He hasn’t acted like it, though. And he’s never asked for his ex’s address again. Maybe she got in touch with him and he just hasn’t mentioned it to me. Not my business. I wasn’t involved with her divorce; I wasn’t her friend. I just manage her property while she’s out of the country.”

“Any other legal matters that might have led to a grudge? Someone you outmanoeuvred in a development deal, or whatever you real estate lawyers do?”

“I don’t see how. My listed address is a postal box, not my house. And anyway, lawyers don’t stalk each other. We sue.”

“Is there any possible way Neil could benefit by driving you to sell this place?”

Dee groaned. “Again with Neil. I know you didn’t like him, and yeah, you were right. He’s shallow and vain and manipulative, with an ego bigger than Castle Mountain. But to come after me? It would take too much of his valuable time to drive all the way out here. He might miss out on some breaking deal or glam social event.”

“You were right about Dan, too,” Lacey said, surprised it was so easy to admit. “He’s a rule follower to the core, and that core is a true-blue chauvinist. He couldn’t stand me outranking him at work, and he took it out on me at home.” She wasn’t ready to go into details about his methods, and hurried on. “Neil’s in real estate, too. Could he get the house back if you felt you had to move? Maybe to sell for a profit?”

“In this market? He wouldn’t touch it. I had to take a second mortgage to pay out his share, and now the market is slumping, so I’m stuck with it. Besides, his girlfriend’s house is bigger.” Dee shook her head. “If it’s him, I’m counting on you to catch him at it and make him explain. Beat it out of him if you have to. Not that you’ll have to. He’s a coward at heart. When he sees your car in the drive, he’ll know I’m not alone and he’ll call off whatever little plan he has. If it’s him.”

“Unless he’s driven by jealousy and thinks you have another man in here. Who knows what he’d do then?”

“He wouldn’t care. He doesn’t love me. Sometimes I wonder if he ever did.”

There was nothing to say to that, so Lacey said nothing. She spooned up the last of her seafood sauce, moved her plate to the dishwasher, and said, “I’d better get on the road if I’m going to be back to plug in those lights before the mosquito hour. Will you be all right on your own for a bit?”

“I’ve got lots of paperwork to keep me entertained. And I’m sure there will be another half-dozen crises at the Centre that’ll have to be dealt with tonight.” Dee’s voice was light, but the lines were back around her eyes, and she couldn’t stop herself glancing at the open window. Would Lacey return to find the house buttoned up tighter than a meth lab again?