Alongside Night
A video camera mounted on a post at the entrance swiveled around to examine the car. Chin flashed headlights twice, then once again. The gate opened for him by remote control. Chin drove onto the grounds.
Utopia was built upon a sweeping landscape now covered with picture-postcard snowdrifts, here and there illuminated by floodlights. Video cameras followed the sedan’s progress as it drove a snowdozed dirt road that wound, eventually, down to Hoosac Lake. A half-mile short of the lake, close to a large, flat-topped building semi-underground on a hill, Chin pulled into a small parking lot and cut his engine.
Taking an attache case and a drawn pistol with him, Chin opened the sedan’s rear door, leading his two prisoners out by their handcuffs. He began pulling them toward the fifty-yarddistant building, in their last few seconds of privacy telling them quietly, “Remember, once you’re in the holding cell, you must remain absolutely still—no matter what—until I get you. Don’t even think about moving.”
Elliot and Lorimer nodded.
At the entrance to the main building, an armored door peeking out of the hillside, Chin held his gun to Elliot’s back while a video camera watched them. A few moments later, over an intercom, a voice asked:
“Who sent you?”
“The Old Boys,” Chin replied
“What did they tell you?”
“To keep my palms dry.”
The armored door slid open, and the three went in. The vestibule to utopia comprised a jail cell reminiscent of a small town—two chain-held cots on the wall, a seatless toilet—a door (to the Monitor Booth) that would have looked at home on a vault, and (on the side opposite the cell) the suite belonging to the officer on duty. This last was the only part of the prison interior not usually monitored by the Alpha Booth; Alongside Night
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instead it was cross-monitored with Command Shack Gamma, where five other officers—one on duty, four off—were stationed. The two on-duty monitor guards had a similar relief arrangement, but there was no cross-monitoring with the offduty guard shack, a half-mile away. It was precisely 6 A.M. by a digital wall clock when the OD
left his office to meet Chin and the two prisoners in the vestibule. He was a stocky man in his forties, well muscled with a slight potbelly, and looked exactly like an accountant, which is how he had started his career. The OD extended his hand to Chin in greeting. “I don’t think we’ve met,” he said. “Sydney Westbrook, late of the Boston office.”
“Special Agent Chin, just out of San Francisco.” Chin tucked his attaché case under his left arm, transferred his pistol left, and with his right took the proffered hand briefly. “Where do you want them?”
“Who are they?”
“This one is Elliot Vreeland and—”
“Vreeland?” Westbrook interrupted. “Jesus, I wish the chief would make up his mind. They just came for the other two not an hour ago.”
Startled, Elliot involuntarily asked, “My mother and sister aren’t here?”
“Shut up, punk,” Chin cut in, “you’ll speak when you’re spoken to!”
Westbrook shrugged, telling Chin, “Don’t wear yourself out. He’ll find out anyway.” He told Elliot, “That’s right.” Powers had kept his bargain. Westbrook looked over to Lorimer.
“Who’s this one?”
“The chief’s little girl.”
“Really? I saw her on the list but didn’t think the chief would have the heart to go through with it. But you know the chief. He won’t allow anyone to imply that he would show favoritism.”
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“Yeah. Like I said, where do you want them?”
“Right over here, for a few minutes.”
Westbrook led Chin and his prisoners over to the holding cell and unlocked it. Chin removed Elliot and Lorimer’s handcuffs. Lorimer went in immediately, but Elliot, precued, hesitated a moment. Chin shoved him in roughly—a little too roughly, more than Elliot was expecting. He fell against the cot. Lorimer looked as if she was about to spit at Chin, but held back. Elliot was never entirely sure that she was only acting.
As the OD locked the couple in, Chin asked him, “You wouldn’t have some coffee on, would you? I’m half frozen.”
“Sure,” he replied, “A fresh pot in my office.” Westbrook motioned Chin to follow: Chin holstered his gun and did. “So,”
the OD continued, “how’s Frisco this time of year?”
“Please,” said Chin, sounding genuinely annoyed. “That’s SF—if you must shorten it—not Frisco. A hell of a lot warmer than here, I’ll tell you.”