A Small Town

by Thomas Perry

  She fell asleep with these thoughts in mind, and when she woke, the dream she interrupted had something to do with Mark Ballard. She made no effort to bring it back to explore the details.

  Leah got up, walked to the station early, and went to work reading all the information she could find on the six men who were still at large. She hated to think that they were all still out in the world somewhere, alive and free, because they had wasted the lives of nearly a hundred people who had lived within a short walk from where she sat.

  27

  On Wednesday evening at six-thirty Leah got up from her desk in the Public Safety Building and walked to Steele’s Stand near the Tivoli Theater. When she was a teenager, the only foods the place sold were hamburgers, hot dogs, french fries, and onion rings. The drinks were soft drinks and milkshakes, the kind that were thin enough to sip through a straw.

  Steele’s was still called Steele’s, but the last Steele, Shirley, had been killed on July 19. The menu now included burritos, tacos, kimchi, three salads, ramen, and breakfast meals that were served from 6:00 a.m. until 11:00 a.m. A person like Leah, who had spent a beautiful summer day in an office or a school, could still sit at one of the outdoor tables under shade trees, and that was where Leah chose to be.

  She savored her unhealthy food and then walked back toward her office to pick up the files she wanted to bring to the council meeting at city hall.

  Joe Lambert was driving the lead car when the six convicts reached Weldonville. The afternoon sun was sinking behind a slight rise in the land now, but the sky was still bright above it to the west. He said, “I don’t think coming in this early is a good idea. Even if we don’t come across somebody who saw us two years ago, somebody who sees us now will remember us later.”

  Tim McKinney said, “I thought that was what we wanted, what we drove all this way for. We want them all to remember us for the rest of their lives.”

  “Yeah, well, I’d like to be able to drive away from here tomorrow and forget them for the rest of mine.”

  Jim Holliman laughed. “If you feel that way, do your best to put the fear in them tonight.”

  “It’s just that coming back here before dark is pressing our luck.”

  There was a buzz, and McKinney answered his phone. “Yeah?”

  It was Lee Wolf. “Hi, Timothy. Ask your friend Joseph to pull around the park and go past the police station and city hall, will you?”

  McKinney said, “Pull around that park and go by the police station and city hall.”

  Lambert said, “Could we be any more overconfident?”

  Lee Wolf said, “Put me on speaker.” McKinney did and held the phone in his lap, and Wolf seemed to hear the difference. He said, “We’re just taking precautions, doing our due diligence. Keep it slow, Joe. I want to see everything.”

  The two cars went past the Public Safety Building, and Wolf said, “Well, that looks reassuring. There are four, no, five cars in the police parking lot at this moment. It’s seven-thirty and the whole police force is taking the night off.”

  The cars drove along the street for two blocks and passed city hall. Three people were standing on the front steps by the open doors. There was a woman in her sixties with short, curly hair wearing a black dress with a pattern of big white flowers and carrying an armload of papers fastened in identical-looking navy blue folders; a middle-aged man wearing a short-sleeved shirt in a faint-blue plaid and khaki pants; and beside him, a fat uniformed policeman who looked about the age of the woman.

  The hallway beyond them was brightly lit, and the old marble floor shone with fresh buffing. At the end of the hall was an open door to a lighted meeting room in which a few other people were visible. The cars swept past city hall, and the view was behind them, but they passed another pair of men walking toward the old stone building.

  “There seems to be something going on in city hall tonight,” Lonny Mann said.

  “Yes, there does,” said Lee Wolf. “Keep going out to the highway and turn south away from the prison. Then stop at that turnoff we passed on the way in. We’ll talk.”

  Leah closed her office door at the station in the Public Safety Building but didn’t lock the door in case one of the night shift officers needed something out of it. She walked past the front counter and called out to Danny, who was stationed there tonight to deal with the public, “The boss is going to a council meeting. You can tell the girls to bring in the liquor and get the party started.”

  “Yes, ma’am,” said Danny. “I’ll do that.”

  Then she was out the door. The sun was lower now, but the rays were still bright and strong. Leah had to protect her eyes from the glare. She walked along the street carrying the six files she had picked out. Her long legs brought her to city hall, where she took the steps two at a time and went inside.

  Tim Munson, the old police sergeant whose actual job during business hours was courthouse bailiff, was on duty for the special council meeting. “Evening, Leah,” he said.

  “Hi, Tim. Nice to see you again. Everybody in there?”

  “I think so,” he said. “They’re all anxious to see you.”

  “Better not keep them waiting.” She unbuckled the belt carrying her badge, pistol, handcuffs, and pepper spray, and handed it to him. Then she gave him her phone and stepped through the arch of the metal detector.

  The sergeant opened the gun safe and put her belongings inside, as the nearly 150-year tradition of Weldonville demanded. Firearms had never been allowed in the city council chamber. Phones hadn’t been prohibited until about two years after they’d been invented and begun going off everywhere.

  As she stepped through the doorway into the council chamber, Linda Harris seemed to spring at her, throwing her arms around her in a tight embrace. “Leah, I’m so glad to see you.”

  “It’s good to see you too, Linda.” Leah was a head taller, and could see over her. When Leah was playing sports in high school with Kathy Harris, Linda had been the mother who volunteered for everything, brought snacks and drinks, and supplied rides to distant tournaments in the off-season. At the time, Leah had wondered how such a short woman had produced Kathy, who had been as tall as Leah. The absent father must have been something.

  Mayor Donaldson was next. He shook her hand with great formality and said, “Lieutenant, thank you for coming.”

  “Mr. Mayor,” she said.

  After him came the others—City Attorney Phil Haymes, Nora Fields, David Hall, City Comptroller Nell Hoagland, and the insurance broker Mark Stein, arriving last with his suit coat on but his tie loosened. Mayor Donaldson closed the council chamber door, walked to the conference table, and sat at the end. One by one, the others took their seats.

  “The meeting is called to order,” he said. “Who has questions for Lieutenant Hawkins?”

  Phil Haymes said, “Leah, we’re interested in a general outline of what’s happened since we saw you last. Just tell us what you can. There won’t be any notes or recordings. I’ve already written the draft of the minutes of the meeting, and they’ll contain no information about personnel matters.”

  Leah took a deep breath. “As you know, I left town a couple of months ago to learn new police techniques and organizational skills. But since then, some information has been forwarded to the police department by the FBI that the council would like to know, and the mayor thought it would be worthwhile to come and report on it.”

  “Wonderful.” said Nell Hoagland. “We can’t wait.”

  Leah said, “There’s been some progress.”

  “Amazing,” said Nora Fields. “Two years and two months after the nineteenth.”

  Leah shrugged. “You can never tell when an old case will suddenly come alive again.”

  “I’ll say,” said Mayor Donaldson. “They got five so far, by my count.”

  “Six, actually,” said Leah. “The ones who have been accounted for were Becker, Panko, Ortega, Bysantski, Duquesne, and Weiss.”

  “I missed one,” sai
d Donaldson. “I didn’t see anything in print about Weiss.”

  “Mr. Weiss’s death has not been announced publicly yet.”

  “Oh,” said Nell Hoagland. “Oh.”

  Leah went on. “That leaves six who haven’t been found.” She opened her file and took out a stack of photographs. “You can pass these around. They’re labeled on the backs. They are Timothy McKinney, Joseph Lambert, James Holliman, Edison Leonard, Lonny Mann, and Lee Wolf. One of the reasons I came back to Weldonville at this point was to see what else the FBI and other agencies might have learned, what they’ve tried, where they’ve looked, who they’ve talked to, and so on. It’s a lot less convenient to try to keep up with these things from the road. But they may find a connection between any of these men and the living criminals who haven’t turned up yet.”

  “We’re glad to see you home,” said Linda Harris. “Even if it’s for research.”

  “Thank you,” said Leah. “And I should mention that I’ve been learning a lot while I’ve been away. I’ll have some recommendations when I’m back for good.”

  Nell Hoagland said, “I would like to add that so far you’ve been quite easy on the budget.”

  “The kind of work I’ve been doing is mostly traveling from one jurisdiction to another, and then doing a lot of looking and listening. It doesn’t usually cost much.”

  Phil Haymes changed the subject. “This could be our last report until your training and study project is complete. Isn’t that right?”

  Leah looked around. “You’re all more experienced at government than I am, but isn’t that the way it works? The more reports, the worse things are going and the longer they’ll take.”

  Mayor Donaldson chuckled. “Ain’t that the truth.”

  Haymes said, “No argument there. But what I meant was, if anybody has questions for the lieutenant, this would be a great time for them. Once this meeting is over, it would not be appropriate to approach Lieutenant Hawkins independently to ask for reports. When she’s finished, there will probably be a report with her suggestions.”

  David Hall, who seldom spoke but usually communicated his opinions during meetings with nods and frowns and sighs, said, “Good enough.”

  Mayor Donaldson said, “And of course if there’s anything any of us can do, we’ll do it. As we told you at our last meeting with you, I’m staying in office and in the city at least until you’re done, and so are several other people, including Mr. Haymes.”

  Nora Fields said, “I have a question. If it’s out of order, just say so, but I have to wonder. The authorities have managed to bring half of the twelve to justice. Does anyone else feel the same relief I do? I mean, half are accounted for. The other six must know that. Won’t they be living in fear for the rest of their lives, too scared to do anything to harm our town again, or to harm anyone else?”

  Leah said, “It’s a good question, and I’ve spent some time thinking about it. My opinion is that it wouldn’t work that way. We know who the other six men are. They’ve all been convicted of doing terrible things for money when they were young and poor, and more terrible things after they’d gotten rich, and more when they were broke again. They all killed people four miles from here to escape from prison, and killed more people here in town after they were free and could have just driven past the exit and stayed on the highway to the interstate. I don’t think any of them is someone who is likely to change now. Just like you, I feel better since we got the news, but I won’t feel sure it’s over until we hear they’re all in jail or dead.”

  There was a sudden shout from the hallway outside the door, and then more shouts, men’s voices roaring in anger, and then three loud bangs that could only be gunfire. The shots echoed off the high ceilings and marble floor, and out of the echo came the sound of running feet.

  Leah was up and at the door, her right hand automatically reaching for her pistol, but not finding it. She opened the door a crack and looked out, and what she saw was terrible. Sergeant Munson was down beside the metal detector, not moving, and she could see blood pooling around him. The rest of the scene was filled with motion, a half dozen men in dark clothes and ski masks sprinting up the hall toward the chamber.

  She slammed the door, turned the lock, and called to the others, “Take cover behind the desks in the chamber.” She pointed at the semicircle of wooden desks marked with placards carrying their names used for public meetings. She pushed Nora Fields and Nell Hoagland in the right direction.

  There was a loud thud as something heavy hit the locked door. It seemed to be the sound of one or two men hurling their shoulders against it. The old oak door didn’t budge.

  Leah shouted, “Get down!” at the people who were still standing by the desks, and ducked down herself. As she did, she snatched the letter opener from the mayor’s desk set.

  The second she was down, there were loud bangs as the men in the hall fired rifle rounds through the door, splintering the wood by the door lock. The shots hit the marble floor and ricocheted upward into the walls of the chamber.

  There was a loud thump, and this time the door flew open and banged against the wall beside it. Two men charged in after it and stopped on either side of the door with shouldered rifles. The next three appeared and took up positions ten feet farther in, scanning for targets.

  The last man stopped in the doorway, and then stepped out again, looked back the way he’d come, and posted himself there as a lookout.

  One of the two men by the door stepped forward into the council chamber and stood in front of the semicircle of desks. He held his rifle upward in one hand and fired two rounds, a deafening sound in the small space. He yelled, “I want to see you and count you. If I do that, you’re alive. Anybody who doesn’t stand up and come forward on the first call is dead. Do you understand?”

  Leah stood up first to show the others it was the only choice. Tentatively, one by one, the others stood up.

  The man had an accent. Lee Wolf and Lonny Mann were both from the South, so she was sure this was one of them. “There. Very good,” the man said. “Are you the village council or the school board, or what?”

  Mayor Donaldson said, “I’m the mayor, and these people are the city council. Weldonville was a city when it was incorporated in 1873.” He pointed over his shoulder at the city seal mounted on the wall over his desk. Below the picture of the buffalo and the antelope in the long grass, it plainly said, “1873.”

  The man called out, “Did you hear that, gentlemen? The city council and the mayor himself. The Lord seems to have guided us to the right place at His chosen time.” There was no doubt now. He was Lee Wolf.

  “Who are you?” Nell Hoagland asked. “And what do you want here?”

  “I guess you could say we’re here because you didn’t leave well enough alone. It’s been over two years since the Weldonville prison break. You hired some people, a death squad, to go out and find the twelve men who planned the escape and managed to keep the freedom they had earned. You hired some pretty good hunters. They killed six of us before the rest of us ever heard about it. I hope it cost you a whole lot of money.”

  “You’re the missing prisoners?” Dave Hall asked.

  “No, we’re the missing free men. The prisoners aren’t missing. They’re all still behind those prison walls because they didn’t have the guts to walk out an open door.”

  Phil Haymes said, “What do you want?”

  “We want what we’ve got. You. We’re going to use you to show people what a mistake you all made by hiring a bunch of killers. We’re here to punish you so what’s left of your town will remember.”

  Haymes said, “If you’re from that prison break, then you have nothing more to gain here. You’re out already. You can’t do better than that.”

  One of the masked men swung his rifle so the butt pounded against Haymes’s head and knocked him to the floor. “Shut up.” Leah guessed from the man’s size and the light-colored eyelashes she could see in the eyeholes of his mask that he w
as Tim McKinney.

  Lee Wolf said, “Now, people. You’re not getting the point of our visit. We’re not here to have a two-sided evaluation of what we do. The point is to show people around here that trying to harm us is futile, because the only ones who are going to get revenge are the six of us. Not you or your town.”

  “Revenge for what?” Mark Stein asked.

  “Now that, unlike the others, is a good question. You, or your city, or some do-gooder around here who felt sorry for you, decided to put a contract out on the twelve men who escaped two years ago. So far six of us have been—I hate to use a crude term for it—butchered. Our revenge is for killing those six. We’re also making sure nobody sends anyone after us again. If they do, we can always come back and make you hurt and hurt.”

  He strutted along the arc of desks, staring hard at each of the council members as he passed. Leah had been studying him and the other five men quietly, carefully, without moving or catching anyone’s attention. She stood with her knees bent and shoulders hunched to give the impression that she was shorter and weaker than she was.

  “We never did any of the things you say,” Nell Hoagland said. “And what do you expect to accomplish here?”

  “Well, I heard that one of the attacks your boys made ended with burning down a workshop with two men in it. Whether they were still alive or not isn’t clear, but they weren’t alive after that. The second thing that comes to mind was filling a house where people were sleeping with propane, so there would be a fiery explosion. So, when I think about what would make us feel better, how could it not involve fire?”

  28

  The six convicts conferred among themselves for a few seconds. Two of them left the room and went in different directions, probably to see if the noise had brought out any unwelcome people. Leah didn’t have much hope that any shots had been heard. The old building was local stone and masonry built over tree-trunk-beam frames, with planks planed two inches thick. The interior layers were wood, lath, and plaster, and the roof was slate. The inner finish was all marble floors and oak woodwork. The buildings on all sides were municipal or commercial, and not occupied at night. Very soon both men trotted back into the room looking confident.