Keeping the Peace

by Linda Cunningham

  “He’s going to show up real soon, Chief.”

  “I know that, Cully.”

  Chapter Twenty-One

  JOHN AND CULLY WALKED OUT of the hospital into the cold gloom of early evening. It was still flurrying as they drove back to the police station.

  John spoke to Becky as the two men took off their jackets and knocked the snow off their boots. “Anything new?”

  “Well, it’s been busy with a lot of little stuff. There was a fender-bender over on Church Street. That bad corner. Then, that young guy from Boston who’s was living with his girlfriend in the old Martin house called to say she’d kicked him out. He said he needed to get his stuff, and he was afraid to go in because she had a gun. Jason went over to see what was going on. Irene called from Chandler’s to say they’d discovered the old back entrance open. They thought it was the wind, but they wanted to file a report in case it was a breakin and something turned up missing. Steve’s over there now. That’s about it. Oh, and sorry, but I got busy with these things, so your kids are still here. They’ve been quiet, so I guess they’re resigned.”

  “Don’t go apologizing for not running them around. No sign of Richard Seeley?”

  “Not a single one, Chief. The boys have been just about everywhere, and Joe Bernard is circling through the whole town as we speak.”

  Cully said, “Well, we’ve got some news. And some evidence.” He waved the envelope in the air and set it down on her desk.

  Becky looked questioningly at John.

  “That’s right,” John said. “It appears the dominoes are falling in sequence. We had quite the talk with this Kayla person. Cully, get going and write this up, will you? Here are my notes. Be as accurate as you possibly can. Then hit the road. Find this guy.”

  Michael stepped out of the back office and handed a small stack of papers to his father. “Here’s everything I could get, Dad. Some of it’s really interesting, but I didn’t read it all. I figured you’d want to look at everything.”

  “Thanks, Mike.” John took the papers and went into his own office.

  Mia was sitting at his desk, typing away on his computer. Peter was leaning back in the straight chair, his chin on his chest, pretending to doze. Mia looked up as he entered.

  “We’re still here, Dad,” she said dully.

  John looked at her and sighed, but said nothing. Instead, he stood by his desk, looking through the pile of e-mails Michael had given him. There was a tap at the door.

  “Come on in,” said John, not looking up.

  Becky stuck her head in. “Sorry, Chief,” she said. “Peter, would you help Irene in the clerk’s office, please? That guy who was in there earlier dropped a map down behind the copy machine, and she can’t reach it. I think you can move the machine enough for her to get her skinny little arm back there.”

  Peter sat upright. For all his affected grumpiness, he liked to help people, especially when it required muscle. “Sure, Becky. I’ll go right now.”

  John looked up and smiled. “Thanks for that, Peter.”

  Peter nodded importantly and left the office. He returned five minutes later. “That was weird. The tax map he copied was the map of Mom’s office.”

  Three things happened at once: Michael came through the open door and said, “I don’t understand why this guy is so interested in Mom’s building.” Then, John’s cell phone rang, and a sudden wave of fear washed over him so profoundly that his mouth went dry and his knees became so weak that he had to grasp the edge of his desk.

  A tremor went through him, and he struggled to regain his composure. He heard Mia say, “Dad, answer your phone. Dad! Dad, are you all right?”

  He fumbled in his breast pocket for his phone. He knew without looking who it was.

  “Melanie?” he said. Somehow, probably because of that tremor, he had hit the speaker button.

  “John? Is that you?” Melanie’s voice was oddly shrill.

  He caught his daughter’s eye and saw her rise from the chair. The boys were looking at him, too. “Of course it’s me. What’s up?”

  “John, Gabriel and I are down here at the office, and I just wanted to call and tell you I’d be a little late. Sorry, I know this is an important date for you, but we’ve just got to finish this up.”

  Before he could ask what “date” she was talking about, she went on. “John, can you hear me?”

  Now, Michael and Peter had moved in to stand beside their sister, their eyes still on their father.

  “Of course I can hear you, Melanie. What is it?”

  “This is very important. You’ve got to go back to the house and take the rhubarb pie out of the oven. Please, John, hurry. The rhubarb pie. I—I’ve got to go now. I just wanted to tell you that.” Melanie ended the call.

  Mia’s hands flew to her mouth.

  “Dad,” Peter said. “Dad!”

  “Mom said ‘rhubarb,’” Michael added quietly.

  John rubbed the back of his neck roughly. Everything was becoming clear and very rapidly.

  “Mom said ‘rhubarb,’” Michael repeated.

  “I know. I know.” John leaned on the desk. “Let me figure this out for two seconds.”

  It had started so long ago, when he had first taken a job with law enforcement. At first, it was a code between the two of them, but as the kids came and grew older, the parents included them. They all knew that if at any time they were in danger and couldn’t speak of it, if they were kidnapped, held hostage, or needed to spread a warning without giving themselves away, they were to convey their danger by saying the word “rhubarb.” No one else knew about it, only the five of them. It was only to be used in matters of life and death. They had never used it before.

  John said, “Get Irene, Peter.”

  The boy ran out of the office and down the hall.

  Becky stood in the doorway. “What’s up, John?”

  “Mom’s in trouble,” Mia said, her voice catching.

  “I just got a call from Melanie,” explained John. “I think Seeley has them.” He rubbed his hand over his face, struggling to think clearly. “Mike, did she say she was at the office?”

  “Yeah. She said she was there and would be late.”

  Becky said, “I’m calling in Jason and Steve. Cully, get out here.”

  Mia’s eyes were awash with unshed tears, but her voice was steady. “What are you going to do, Dad?”

  “I’ve got to go down there. I’ve got to try to find out what’s going on.”

  The town clerk came into the office behind Peter.

  “Irene,” John said, “is this the guy who went through the tax maps today?” He handed her the computer print-out image of Richard Seeley that LAPD has sent him.

  “Why, yes, Chief,” she said. “That’s just who it was. What’s going on?”

  “I think he’s got my wife and Gabriel Strand hostage, Irene.”

  “Oh, Chief. Oh, no! Becky, can I help?”

  John said, “The best thing we can all do is go about our business until I find out what’s really happening.”

  “Absolutely! I’ll be in my office if I can do anything helpful.” With that, Irene left the room.

  John’s mind raced as Cully, Becky, Mia, Peter, and Michael stood looking at him. He needed a plan that would keep his wife safe.

  “I’m going to drive down there. Cully, you follow me, but take your own car and go into the elementary school parking lot. You can hide there until I can call you about what to do from there. Hopefully we won’t spook the guy.” Then he did something he’d done only a handful of times before in all his years as the chief of police: he pulled out a key from his pocket and unlocked the gun cabinet behind his desk. Four rifles stood there. He took one and handed it to Cully, whose face was now ashen. Then he took one himself. “Mike,” he said as he checked the firing mechanisms, “take your brother and sister home.”

  “Dad—”

  John looked up. “Mike, please. I am deadly serious. Do as I say. Do it now.�
��

  There was a glaring match between John and his children. “I’ll call you,” he said. “I promise I will.”

  The three of them stood together. They were fifteen, seventeen, and nineteen years old, closing in fast on adulthood, but as he looked at them standing there together, he could only see them as three, five, and seven. His children stood as a unit. Michael was in the front, Peter two steps behind him and to his left, and Mia, the most courageous of all of them, at Michael’s right elbow with her fists clenched. John fought back the tears that were breaking at the backs of his eyes. “I will not let anything happen to your mother.” I will not let anything happen to the one person I cannot live without. “Now go home.” He barked the order, and they turned as one.

  Tim Cully reached out and brushed Mia with his hand. For a second, their eyes met, and then the three siblings went into the hallway. Moments later, John heard the big outside door creak open and click shut.

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  “YOU ALL RIGHT, CULLY?” John asked.

  Cully nodded. “Yes, sir. Are you okay?”

  “I can function.”

  Becky stood in the doorway. “Jason and Steve will be here in two minutes. Joe Bernard and more state backup are standing by for orders.”

  As she finished talking, Jason Patterson and Steve Bruno walked in the door. They said nothing as they took the rifles Tim Cully handed them. John looked at them standing before him, young and brave and unconditionally loyal.

  He drew a deep breath and said, “We don’t know what we’re facing. Melanie called in our Mayday code, so I know something bad is going down in that office. I can’t say it’s a hostage situation because I haven’t heard from any hostage takers. I don’t know if anyone’s been hurt. All we do know is that an hour ago, Richard Seeley was in here looking at the tax maps of Melanie’s building. That makes me assume that he must be there, at the office, threatening her in some way.”

  “Is Gabriel Strand with her?” Jason asked.

  “That’s another thing I can only assume. He’s supposed to be. Let’s just hope he’s still alive.” John wiped his hand over his face. “Becky, you call Woody Patterson. Have him close off the main route through town and redirect it down Route 10. I don’t want any diversions or distractions.”

  “Yes, sir.” She was on the phone before he finished his instructions.

  He turned again to his officers. “Jason, you go with Cully. You drive in through the elementary school parking lot. You can see the back and north side of Melanie’s building from there, but any time the lights are on, it’s hard to see out through the windows from the inside. Steve, you come with me.”

  “What are we going to do?”

  “I’m not sure yet. I’m not sure how I’m going to find out exactly what’s going on in there. I’ll have to figure it out on the way. Let’s go.” He sighed, slung the rifle under his arm, and led the way out the door.

  John drove slowly out of the police parking lot and down the road toward his wife’s office. He drove slowly because he was afraid he might at any moment be overwhelmed with the enormity of the situation. He was afraid he might lose control. As it was, his mind was racing in several directions at once. He had to consciously avoid thinking about exactly what scenario was playing out at the brick house. Any speculation was only speculation. To assume anything only threatened to push his thoughts to panic and undermine the ultimate goal.

  Then he thought of the brick house itself. He knew it intimately from when he and Melanie had lived there early in their marriage: four large rooms downstairs, a wide center hall and staircase, and a kitchen wing out the back. The second floor had another four large rooms. Originally, there had been a stairway leading to the widow’s walk on the roof that looked up and down the whole river valley. They had made love on the widow’s walk more than once. Renovations early in their marriage meant access to the roof was now only through a manhole in the ceiling of the bathroom.

  These days, the downstairs of the house served as Melanie’s offices for her community newspaper. The upstairs was rented to a small accounting firm, but they’d likely be gone for the day. He thought about neighbors who might be in danger. The Sawyer family was just down the street; their boys would certainly come outside if they saw any commotion. Their home, however, provided the perfect vantage point. John called Becky on the radio.

  “Becky, you call Alice Sawyer and tell her to shut off all the lights in her house and tell her and whoever else is in there to stay at the back of the house until they hear otherwise from the police. If she asks, just tell her we have a potential problem at Melanie’s office. No need to say anything further for now.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  As he made his approach through the darkening winter evening, he confirmed that the accountants’ offices upstairs were all dark, the employees all having left already. The only room in the house that appeared lit was the front office on the south side of the building. Melanie’s office. There were four windows in that office. Two faced the street, and two faced down the valley. Cully and Patterson would not be able to see anything from the schoolyard. He glanced in his rearview mirror. Cully was driving close behind and, as directed, turned into the school parking lot. John pulled into the driveway of Alice Sawyer’s house, down the street and across from Melanie’s building.

  He took the binoculars and peered at the brick house, trying to see through the windows.

  “What do you see, Chief?” Steve asked.

  John’s heart was pounding in his chest, but he said quietly, “I can see people moving around, but I can’t make out who they are. The drapes are in the way. I can’t even tell how many.”

  “It’s getting dark real fast. I can sneak up to the porch and try to look inside. At least we’d know who was in there.”

  Before John could answer, the radio crackled with Cully’s voice. “Chief?”

  “Yeah, Cully, go ahead.”

  “Chief, we’ve got a situation. Mike’s car is here in the school parking lot.”

  “Mike? Mike who?”

  There was a pause before Cully’s reply. “Your son.”

  John couldn’t put the pieces together. His mouth was dry. Somewhere, in his fog, he heard Steve Bruno’s voice. “What’s the matter, Chief?”

  John shook his head and spoke into the radio. “Cully, where are my children?”

  “I don’t know, sir. Mike’s car is parked here, by the fence. There’s nobody around.”

  John’s fist came down hard on the dashboard of the Suburban.

  “Sir? Chief? You there?”

  “Yes, yes, I’m here.”

  “What do you want us to do, Chief?”

  John started to answer, when the front door of Melanie’s building opened. “Stand by, Cully, we got something going on.” He put the radio back in its cradle.

  “Chief?” Steve asked, shifting in his seat.

  John held up his hand. “Wait.”

  A man and woman ran out the door, and John recognized them as Lisa Wright and Roger Bickley, Melanie’s two employees. They held hands as they ran off the porch, neither of them wearing a coat. John and Steve watched as the two paused for a moment. Lisa seemed to peer through the encroaching darkness. Then she turned to Roger, and the two of them ran the hundred yards up the road to where the chief’s Suburban idled in Alice Sawyer’s driveway.

  John cracked his window. “Get in quickly,” he said.

  The two fairly dived into the back seat. John could hear Lisa’s teeth chattering.

  “Grab those blankets, Lisa,” he said. “Wrap them around yourselves. You need to tell us what’s going on.”

  Lisa reached into the back and took the two wool rescue blankets kept folded there. She and Roger threw them around their shoulders. All the while, she stammered through violent shivers. “I’m not cold, John. I’m not cold. He made us leave. We wouldn’t leave Melanie, and he made us leave.”

  John fought down the panic. “Tell me exactly wha
t’s going on in there. Are you two okay? Roger? Can you tell me what’s going on?”

  The little man with glasses nodded vigorously, although he, too, was shaking. “I’m fine, John.” He glanced at his watch. “It’s four thirty. He’s been in there for about an hour now.”

  John and Steve turned in their seats to face the backseat passengers.

  Roger pulled the blanket more securely around his shoulders and leaned forward. “Earlier this afternoon, Mike and Peter dropped Melanie and that Gabriel Stern?” He looked at Lisa. “Is that his name?”

  “Strand,” she corrected, her teeth still chattering.

  “Anyway, the boys dropped them off. Lisa and I were working on next week’s issue, as usual. Melanie introduced us around, showed Strand what we do, and then they went into her office to have a conference call with his band. I guess they’re up in Hanover. They’re doing some show at Dartmouth over the weekend. She shut the door, and I could hear her put the phone on speaker. I could hear that they were having a conversation, but I couldn’t understand what was being said. They talked for quite a while before I heard the phone hang up, and then I could just hear Melanie and Strand talking to each other. So, Lisa and I were working away, and I know it was three thirty because I glanced up at the clock just as this guy came through the front door. Our door was open, like always. He saw us and came into the room.”

  “Just a minute,” Steve Bruno interrupted and thrust out the faxed likeness of Richard Seeley. “Is this the guy?”

  Roger examined the picture closely in the half-light. “Yes, that’s him. That’s the guy.” He handed the paper back to Steve. “He came into the room and asked if this was where The Town Crier was published. I said yes, and he said he had some news for Melanie Giamo and asked if she was in. I said she was, but she was in a meeting. Then he said he knew who she was in the meeting with and they were waiting for him. He turned and started to cross the hall. Lisa said she would go in and tell Melanie he was here. There was something about the guy. You know, you can just tell when somebody’s not right. I got up and started to follow Lisa. He whirled on us and said don’t bother, it was his business. I spoke up then and told him to come sit down and I would get Melanie. Then he shouted at me, ‘You sit down!’ Then he barged through Melanie’s office door and slammed it behind him. Well, Lisa and I both rushed into the office. Melanie was sitting at her desk, and Strand was on the couch. They looked kind of shocked. The strange guy was blustering about something, I don’t know, and I yelled, ‘What do you think you’re doing?’ That’s when he pulled a gun out of his jacket pocket.” Roger stopped and took a deep breath. “A gun,” he repeated.