Author's note: Yes, here we are with another chapter. For the younger ones among us, you may not remember this song, but I do. Welcome back to the early 80's, kids…J
The suit he was wearing was simply a rag, really. Dr. Lecter's taste in clothing was the finest, as it was in everything. His suits normally cost more than the average used car. But this hideous monstrosity was necessary to pass. It was gray, which he liked, and it was of medium to low cost, which he did not. He assuaged his wounded sense of dignity with an expensive silk tie.
He walked across the grounds of the Renaissance fair. It was bright and active. A few police cars were parked at the edge of the faire grounds, jarringly out of place. He strode calmly up to the cars and watched carefully. There was a red-haired woman in a black gown speaking with a uniformed officer. Perfect.
Was Clarice here yet? Dr. Lecter did not think she was. The FBI would need some amount of run time in order to obtain plane tickets. Dr. Lecter had simply gotten in the car and driven. Driving had only required an hour more than flying would have, and in between fudging around at the gate and the paperwork of getting tickets through a vast federal bureaucracy he knew he would arrive first.
Dr. Lecter strode calmly up to the uniformed officer and reached into his pocket. He withdrew a fine black leather wallet and flipped it open. When he spoke, his voice bore a calm, bored, Northeastern accent only slightly less precise than his normal speech.
Purchasing a laptop had been one of the first things Dr. Lecter did upon his arrival in the United States. With it, he had purchased the best photo-quality inkjet printer that he could afford. It had come with some basic graphics software, and it had not been hard to figure out enough to create himself an acceptable ID card.
Besides, it had given him an excuse to recall his very first meeting with Clarice. He had sat in front on the computer, his eyes closed, while he stood in his memory palace. How dark and dreary his cell had been! And Clarice, young and hungry and seeking his aid, a veritable torch in the darkness of his then world.
He had spent more time in his memory palace than he meant to, reviewing snippets of her voice and his.
Dr. Lecter, my name is Clarice Starling. May I talk with you?
May I see your identification? Closer, please….closer….you're not real FBI, are you?
But eventually he had to force himself to concentrate on the task at hand. He needed to track Alice, not Clarice.
"Good afternoon," he said. "My name is Agent Lewis Friend. I'm with the FBI. Is this young lady a witness?"
The uniform stared at Dr. Lecter with watery eyes. "FBI, huh? Sure, she saw the perps." He jerked a thumb at the young woman. "All right, how bout you go talk with him?"
"Thank you so much," Dr. Lecter assured him. He eyed the fair-skinned redhead calmly. She took a step towards him. Calmly, Dr. Lecter began to stroll towards the gates of the Renaissance fair. Compliantly, she fell into step beside him.
"As I said, my name is Lewis Friend, and I'm with the FBI," he said, the lie rolling easily from his tongue. "And what is your name?"
"Mel," the young woman said. "Mel Beyer."
"Good afternoon, Miss Beyer. What could you tell me about what you saw?"
She shuddered. "Well," she said calmly. "At first I just saw them. A black girl in normal clothes with a video camera just sort of stuck out, of course. The other two looked like everybody else. In garb, you know."
"And what did they look like?" He knew already who he was looking for.
"One was a girl, in a white blouse and a long skirt," Mel said thoughtfully. "She had black hair and sort of…reddish-brownish eyes. I'd never seen eyes like that before. Sort of scary looking."
Maroon, Dr. Lecter thought, his own maroon eyes safely hidden behind dark contact lenses.
"There was something else weird about her," she continued. "I didn't realize what it was until after they'd left. She had an extra finger on her left hand. But it didn't…it didn't look abnormal. Does that make sense?"
Dr. Lecter's thoughts skipped briefly to his own left hand, currently buried in the pocket of the cheap suit jacket so that the scar between his fingers would not be obvious. "Yes," he said. "Perfect extra fingers. It's quite rare. What about the fellow?"
"Big and blocky," she said absently. "He just had a leather jerkin and breeches and boots. They fit in totally well. All they did here was get some people to dance and appear in their movie."
"Did you appear in it?"
She shrugged. "Sort of," she admitted. "I just…I didn't do anything. I just was in the background. They filmed the maypole, and people dancing."
He nodded slowly. The young woman shuddered. "Then I saw them heading back over to the side. Apparently they set up for their…other scene just over there, through the trees."
That would be interesting, Dr. Lecter thought. "And where was that?"
She pointed and shuddered again. "I thought it was just acting," she said sadly. "I…I didn't know. Then I heard the screams. And again, I thought it was just the movie."
"I see. I'll have a look at the scene. You needn't come with me if you don't want to. Thank you, Miss Beyer. You've been extremely helpful."
Dr. Lecter strolled over to where the trees separated the fairgrounds from the field next to it. The trees were tall and towered over this small piece of ground devoted to a bygone era. Passing through those silent sentinels revealed a horrid sight. Yellow crime-scene tape fluttered in the wind.
A stone fence and pasture provided the horses kept therein a small place to graze. A gate closed it off. A large tree provided the horses with a bit of shade. From a large, thick branch hung four stout ropes. From each rope, a body swung back and forth in a bizarre conga line of death. The tips of the corpses' toes swung just above the top of the stone fence. Flies buzzed around the faces of the dead.
Next to the three corpses on the rope, a fifth and sixth lay nearby. A large wooden wheel leaned against the low fence. What had once been a human being was attached to it. Now, it was a thing of horror. The limbs were broken repeatedly and carefully braided through the spokes of the wheel. What had once been arms and legs were now shattered and bloody. They bent in places that no limb had been meant to bend.
Dr. Lecter tilted his head and stared at what his child had wrought. This wasn't right; a braided and wheeled victim should have lasted for a while, yet. They could normally last hours. Perhaps days. There was something admirable in all this. Her daughter had her problems, but there was some artistry in this.
From his pocket Dr. Lecter removed a pair of latex gloves. He had obtained this to aid in the illusion of his being an FBI agent. They were also useful in ensuring that he left no fingerprints for dear Clarice to find. That was one convenience of now having the normal amount of fingers on his left hand; he did not need custom-made gloves anymore.
To lift the corpse's bloodied head took only a moment, and there he had his answer. A deep slash across the throat had finished the job. Doubtlessly Alice and her crew had meant only to film the victim suffering and killed them after the filming was done. Still, it bothered him. That was so…wasteful.
The sixth body he found was that of a dwarf. The corpse wore a jester's cap and bells, tights, and a T-shirt that read Homicidal Productions. It lay within the pasture, bruises on its face. The cause of death was not immediately apparent. In its hand was a plastic bag. Dr. Lecter was more interested in that than how the jester-dressed midget had died, so he squatted and reached for the bag. The mud in the pasture squelched under his feet and soiled the edges of his wing tips. He scowled.
The plastic bag crackled as he took it from the corpse's cold fingers. There was something inside, rectangular and not too heavy. Dr. Lecter glanced inside and was not surprised to see a videotape.
Was this the only one? He had to find out. Calmly he headed back to the uniformed officer guarding the scene. The officer glanced up at him desultorily.
"Pardon me," Dr. Lecter said. "There was this videotape found at the scene. Are there any others?"
The officer shook his head and looked bored. "Naw," he said. "Our orders were to secure the scene and wait for the FBI." He looked displeased.
Now it was clear. The local police had sent this one officer to babysit the crime scene. No wonder he was bored. Dr. Lecter found it surprising that he had not parked closer to the scene, but not everyone was so professional as Clarice.
"I'll be sending some agents back shortly," Dr. Lecter said, enjoying himself rather more than he thought. "Agents Graham and Starling. Please extend them…every courtesy. This videotape will go back to the lab for immediate processing."
The cop shrugged, not really caring.
Dr. Lecter's step was jaunty as he returned to the sober dark sedan he had rented. There was something awfully amusing about all this. Playing FBI agent had been fun. For a moment he thought about what Clarice would say when the officer told her that Agent Lewis Friend had been to the scene and picked up the videotape. He toyed with the idea of rearranging his daughter's work, but decided not to; they could have that.
Now all he needed was something on this tape to tell him where his excitable offspring was going. He warmed the engine and sighed. The vehicle he had chosen was a Buick, sedate, workaday, and would strike most people as a government car. However, it had little performance and he did not care for it. Whatever was under the hood, it was not the powerful V8 that he favored.
Still, it would do for now, and he needed to be inconspicuous.
He stopped at a nearby Target and purchased a VCR. He knew exactly what he wanted and bought the best. He paid with cash, making sure to wear his fine leather gloves so as not to leave fingerprints.
Back in his hotel room, it took only a moment or two to attach the VCR to the television in his room. The tape slotted into the VCR and began to play. At first, a blue screen appeared on the TV and then resolved into a landscape that Dr. Lecter did not think was very far away.
Two men pushed through a field of long, tall grass. One was the midget Dr. Lecter had seen at the dumpsite. The other was a tall, muscular fellow who Dr. Lecter recognized from stills culled from previous tapes in the FBI file. Surprisingly, a musical beat began to play – some of the dreadful music from the early 1980's. Dr. Lecter remembered the mind-numbing tune from the asylum; the orderlies had occasionally listened to the radio. It was tinny through the hotel TV's speaker then as it had been tinny through the faraway, cheap radio then.
On the screen, Colin Barksdale grinned at the midget, who strummed a lyre and tried to attract his attention. He opened his mouth and began to lip-synch with the music.
We can dance if we want to,
We can leave your friends behind,
Cause your friends don't dance, and if they don't dance,
Well, they're no friends of mine.
Dr. Hannibal Lecter raised an eyebrow. The look that came over his face resembled the look a society matron might have if she discovered that her escargot had not been cooked or killed, and thus she was putting live snails into her mouth.
The two men continued along through the field to a dirt road. The song continued as well. Dr. Lecter shuddered delicately. Was his daughter not the scion of Baltimore's high life? He would have to have a chat with her about her taste.
I say, we can go where we want to,
A place where they will never find,
And we can act like we come from out of this world
Leave the real one far behind.
No murders, just the man and the dwarf in the jester outfit. Dr. Lecter noticed that the dwarf wore the same checkerboard-patterned tights and jester's cap that he had been found dead in. The first verse repeated, much to the doctor's disdain. The men gained the dirt road.
And we can dance,
Alice Pierpont stood up from the bottom of the camera frame, popping into view with a wide grin. She wore a white peasant blouse and a long red skirt.
"Francais!" Alice Pierpont said on the screen to her father.
She took the dwarf's hand in one hand and held her skirt in the other. Dr. Lecter watched his daughter dance in a circle with a dwarf in a jester's costume with a bemused expression.
It is definitely going to be necessary to adjust her medication, Dr. Hannibal Lecter thought.
Dr. Lecter realized that there was no sound from the tape, just the song. He turned down the volume so that the song was inaudible. There was no need for him to torment himself with Men Without Hats.
Once you got rid of that, Dr. Lecter decided, the video wasn't that bad. Alice ran ahead of Colin and walked backwards, waving her arms at him and looking rather manic. Fortunately, once he caught up with her, he had adequate supplies of medication to bring her down to earth. Barring that, he could simply sedate her to the point of unconsciousness and get her out of the country quietly.
Then the scene cut to the Renaissance fair. Alice and Colin danced among the fairgoers and appeared to be having a good time. He supposed they were still singing the horrible song, but his ears could not bear the thought of turning the volume up. Dr. Lecter did not know that his daughter's version of the music video was not the same as the original, he never having been a big fan of MTV.
Boring, Dr. Lecter thought. But the finale did not disappoint him.
The dwarf danced and sang. The three walked up to the dumpsite. Dr. Lecter recognized the stone fence and horses. He also recognized the four corpses. They were not corpses in the film yet. They were alive, staring at the camera with naked terror on their faces. Their arms were bound behind their back. A small sort of a stand had been constructed under their feet. To Dr. Lecter it looked like a simple board. They had stacked bricks under it so that it would provide support. It looked rather wobbly.
Another man dressed in garb cowered by the wall, also bound. Dr. Lecter identified this person as the unfortunate wheeled and braided victim he had seen before. He knew what would happen here. His ears picked up minute variations in the sound, and he realized that the audio was now playing. He turned it back up and winced.
The awful music was still playing, but it was now their voices in lieu of the original singers. Dr. Lecter wondered briefly how they had done that and decided it was probably through some sort of computer program.
"We can dance if we want to, we've got all your life and mine," Alice sang on the screen. Dr. Lecter was somewhat surprised; her voice was pleasant to listen to. Perhaps he could wean her from this popular garbage and interest her in opera.
Then she strode up to the four hanging victims, and pulled the board away with a savage jerk. Her happily manic smile continued unabated. The four victims fell perhaps six inches. An audible crack echoed over the speaker. From the looks of things, Dr. Lecter thought two victims died instantly from broken necks. The unluckier ones strangled at the end of their ropes. As the video went on, their faces turned purple and their features tortured.
Below them, Alice and Colin danced merrily around their victim. The dwarf continued to dance too. Dr. Lecter stopped and eyed him. The dwarf was glancing at the hanging victims. Dr. Lecter closed his eyes for a moment and thought.
He's not in on it, Dr. Lecter deduced. He thinks it's a movie, and thus it's just a special effect. But he's beginning to wonder.
The two murderers sang about the safety dance. From the ground Alice picked up a heavy iron bar; Colin armed himself with a hammer. They set upon their victim with gleeful abandon. Fleshy, wet whacks and thuds emitted from the fray. The crack of bone could be audibly distinguished from the tearing of flesh and muscle. Agonized cries counterpointed the song from the killers' lips. Dr. Lecter found himself surprised that they were able to continue singing.
It's the safety dance,
Yeah, the safety dance,
The saaafety dance!
When they had finished pulverizing their victim, the two killers stood proudly. The fellow they had recognized barely looked human. They hauled him up by an arm each, standing over him as if proud of their accomplishment. His arms flexed in the way no human arms should. The effect reminded Dr. Lecter of a thick rope.
Shrieks of agony emitted from the victim's mouth, still recognizably human. The arms and legs were shattered beyond any hope of repair. The victim's eyes had been blackened and his nose broken by blows that had landed on his face in lieu of his limbs. But his mouth was still in reasonably good shape, Dr. Lecter thought.
Alice and Colin picked him up and carefully laced the broken limbs through the spokes of a nearby wooden wheel. They had done their job well, and the compound fractures provided the requisite flexibility well. The wounds were open, and there were pieces of bone splinter mixed into the gory wounds. The mouth still emitted horrid shrieks.
The dwarf apparently decided that enough was enough and turned to run. Alice and Colin both turned to look at him as he began to run. For a moment Dr. Lecter was tense, wondering if the dwarf would escape, even though he had already known the answer.
They caught up with him easily; his legs were far shorter than theirs and he was not able to cover as much ground. Colin held him firmly under the arms. Alice raised the bar high. She glanced over at the camera.
"It's the safety dance!" she cried, and smacked him once with the bar. Then she put the bar down. Colin tossed the dwarf's corpse unceremoniously away to where it had fallen. Alice faced the camera and raised her skirt in a polite curtsey.
"This has been a Homicidal Production," she said calmly. "Look for our next one soon, Reesey and Josh. We'll be doing a little…jailhouse rock."
Then the scene faded to white words on a black screen that Dr. Lecter remembered from the file. This has been a Homicidal Production. Copyright 2004.
It was…interesting, that was for sure. He was glad that he had gotten to it before Clarice and Joshua. Now his task lay before him: to find the patterns of order amidst the chaos. It would be difficult, but there had to be something. Some way for him to track Alice. After all, if he did not, then Clarice would get to her first.
…
Two days later
Starkey County, Indiana
The Escort was covered with road dust and grime as the miles had gone by. Alice was quite pleased. The music video had been fun. She and Colin had worked together nicely. Chatiqua had done her magic on her end of the camera, and they'd left their usual calling card.
Reesey and Joshie wouldn't appreciate it, though. That was too bad. Why didn't they realize what fun they were having? If they only asked, Alice thought they could find a role for Clarice and Josh in the movies. It would be amazingly great fun.
Thinking of Josh made her a bit sad, though. She still had feelings for him. In her heart of hearts she knew it would never work; Josh loved the FBI, not her. He never would. There was nothing that could make him feel for her the way she felt for him.
All the same, she had found herself liking Colin Barksdale a lot more these days. He understood her. They shared the same pressures: staying one step ahead of the authorities, Chatiqua's bossiness on the set, properly hitting their marks and playing their roles.
Teek was jealous of that. Alice could tell. Why? She and Teek were still buddies; they always would be. Alice knew that she owed her current freedom to her friend. She wasn't going to just dump Chatiqua. No way.
Alice closed her eyes and thought about a movie or a music video that might have a role for Josh and Reesey in it. After a moment, she had it. Maybe she'd have to talk to Teek about letting her have a role behind the camera too. Acting was fun and all, but she was curious.
But for now this was still Teek's show. And Teek was bossy as ever. After filming the video, they had traveled for a couple of days. During that time, she'd made Alice take some Depakote she'd picked up from somewhere. Alice wasn't sure where she'd gotten it from. She didn't like Depakote, especially when she was in one of her up phases. She felt great, like there was nothing wrong. So what if she was a little bouncy?
But Teek had been insistent, reminding Alice that she didn't want her stripping in the back seat or anything. So Alice had complied with her friend's wishes and taken the nasty stuff. Now she sat in the back seat, calm and cool. Teek had told her she had to be calm and cool to pull this off. For the past few days, Alice's mania had been under control.
In a way, Alice thought, she was more dangerous this way. When she was all the way up, she was too bouncy to kill people. Maybe that was what Teek was counting on. She hoped Teek had enough Depakote to keep her out of her down phases. Being stuck in a down phase without even the release of an up phase would be an awful punishment.
But for now it was time to be serious. Calm, cool, collected. Here, in this place. Teek had found it. Starkey County, Indiana, a sparsely populated rural dot on the map in the northwestern corner of the state. There were two towns and a little village. Starkey County had also recently received some sort of Federal funding recently, and they had gone and built themselves a brand-spanking-new jail.
The county had made some money with its new jail, which had a lot more capacity than the few criminals this tiny little corner of Indiana had. They did so by boarding prisoners from other counties. Articles in the media had gloried over it: everything was controlled by remote control, and so the jail required fewer officers to actually staff and run it.
That made it perfect for their purposes.
The Escort pulled into the parking lot at the county jail and slipped into a space. Alice opened the door and stretched. She needed to be calm and cool. You can do this, Chatiqua had told her. You're an actress. Colin's an actor. All you need to do is just that: act.
Besides, Colin would be doing most of the talking, anyway.
She wore a neat suit and pumps and looked quite professional. Colin stepped from the passenger seat of the car and stretched his blocky frame himself. He, too, wore a suit and tie. He looked pretty good, Alice thought. The way they needed to look: like mid-level bureaucrats.
The doors to the jail loomed overhead. This wasn't where prisoners entered; they came in through a secure gate in the back. Obtaining blueprints to the jail hadn't been too hard. Teek had done that through the Internet a while ago, while they were still en route. Downloading them had taken forever on a slow dialup line.
Alice and Colin strolled into the jail and walked up to the officer on duty at the desk. There were a few other officers standing around. They wore rumpled uniforms and looked bored. He glanced up at them.
"Can I help you?" he asked.
Alice reached into her purse; Colin reached into her pocket. Both of them removed black wallets and displayed ID cards. They'd made these up the night before. Alice thought they looked pretty good.
"Hi," Colin said. "My name is Jason Brindley. This is Mary Eddison. We're with the Indiana State Bureau of Jails and Prisons. We're here to inspect the prison on a pop inspection. Can I speak to the officer in charge, please?"
The guy behind the desk blinked slowly. He adjusted his polyester uniform shirt and stared at the two of them. "What?" he asked.
"We're with the Indiana State Bureau of Jails and Prisons," Colin repeated. "This is a pop inspection. I need to speak with your ranking officer, please." He smiled calmly.
"For what?" the guy asked. Alice sighed. Apparently this guy wasn't quick on the uptake.
"This is a pop inspection," she chimed in. "All jails in Indiana have to meet certain standards. Your jail has been selected for a surprise inspection."
The guy shook his head. "No one said anything about an inspection," he protested.
"That's right," Colin said calmly. "It's a surprise inspection. We don't always tell you we're coming. Now: call your ranking officer, please."
The officer decided this was more than he needed to deal with and placed a phone call. Alice watched calmly. There was no reason for the other guys just standing around to be here. That meant they were lazy, and that would be a good thing. Of course, once word of the pop inspection spread throughout the jail, they'd get busy quickly.
Within a few minutes, a man with captain's bars pinned to his uniform epaulets came down. He was older, about Colin's size himself, and out of breath. He stared angrily at them above a bushy moustache.
"What the hell is this about?" he panted.
"This is a pop inspection, sir," Colin said calmly. "We're with the State Bureau of Jails and Prisons, and we--,"
"I know that," the man snapped. "What do you mean? Why are you here?"
"To inspect the facility, Captain…Handley," Colin said, leaning to get the name off the nametag. "Look. This is no big deal, really. Just let us have a look in the prison, and we'll fill out our report and leave you alone. We're not here to gather inmate complaints; that's what the courts are for. We just have to make sure that everything's up to date and that the water is running and all that."
"The jail is barely a year old," the captain said, perplexed.
Colin reached over and took the man's arm gently. He began to walk away and indicated for the man to follow him. Alice fell into step beside them, knowing that the officers behind her were checking out her legs. Big deal; she'd get them back for it later.
"Captain Handley," Colin said comfortingly. His voice was lulling and soft. "I have my orders just like you do. My orders are to review the jail and make sure it meets state standards. I'm sure it does. But this is state law, and I have to do my job. Now if you refuse to cooperate, then I'll go back to Indianapolis and tell them you refused to cooperate. If that happens, then a lot of things are going to happen. For one thing, your state certification to run the jail will be revoked. A bunch of buses will come out and pick up the prisoners and take them to facilities elsewhere in the state. Your people will all be sent home. Now it'll all get straightened out in a couple of months, I'm sure, but why make unnecessary hassle for yourself?"
The captain stared at him wordlessly.
"What I need to do is this: look in a couple of cells and make sure they're the right size. I need to take a couple of water samples and make sure the inmates have potable water from the sink. And I need to have a look in the jail's control room and make sure that's up to scratch. I need to see a copy of your manuals and procedures. No inmate complaints, none of that. Just some paperwork. It shouldn't take more than a few hours and won't interfere with the operation of the jail in any way shape or form. OK?"
Alice smiled tightly at him when he glanced over at her. Colin was good that way; he could be very persuasive when he wanted to be. The captain shrugged and swallowed.
"Fine, then," he said. He gestured with a thumb. "Officer Parker, how bout you show these people around? Show them every courtesy."
A lanky officer broke from the huddle standing around by the desk and smiled nervously. His face was pale under his uniform cap. A long stray lock of hair pushed free from under the visor.
"Okay," he said with a Midwestern accent that reminded Alice of Reesey. Reesey, who she still considered a friend, even though it was Reesey's sworn duty to put her back in the loony bin. "Y'all come with me now. I'll show you whatever you need to see."
Alice and Colin played their roles. They looked over an empty cell and measured it, writing down the measurements in a notebook. Colin took a sample of tap water from the sink and put it in a test tube, which he capped tightly and put in his pocket.
The officer was extremely helpful and promised that a copy of the jail's manuals for inmates and employees would be made available to them on the way out. He answered their questions to the best of his ability. Alice fell into her role, enjoying the chance to be a bureaucrat. It was pleasant and easy enough.
The officers they passed kept an eye on her skirt hem as they passed, and she quietly marked several of them for when the fun started.
Eventually, they were brought down a hallway past several locking gates. At the end of the hall was a thick steel door. Their escort's keys jangled on his keyring as he got the right one out. He smiled apologetically.
"Sorry bout all this," he said. "We keep this room reeeal secure, though. We have to. You can run the whole facility from that room alone. We need to keep the inmates out of here."
Well, thank you for letting us in, Mr. Guard, Alice thought.
The room itself was somewhat bunkerlike. It was reasonably large, but the concrete walls and large desk provided a determined air. This was a place that had its mind on its work. A bank of TV's on one wall provided the guards running the place with a black and white, fisheye view of what was happening all over the facility.
In front of the bank of monitor screens was a desk with many control buttons and switches. Alice found herself thinking of the movie Star Wars, with the Imperial troopers on the Death Star. Two guards sat at it, glancing over at the screens. A telephone nearby allowed them to contact elsewhere in the prison. Alice looked over at the guards. Something seemed odd.
"Hmm," she said thoughtfully. "Guards on duty here don't carry walkie-talkies?"
"No, ma'am," one of the guards at the desk answered. "The walls are too thick here. Signal doesn't reach."
That was convenient.
"So can you control everything in this room?" she asked politely.
The guard blinked and nodded politely. "Yes, ma'am," he said. "From this room, we can lock down all four housing blocks."
Alice nodded. Good. "How about access to the outside?" she pressed.
The guard preened. "Everything right here," he said lightly.
"Even administrative offices and that sort of thing?" Alice asked.
"Everything," the guard assured her.
Colin leaned forward and smiled kindly. "So in a riot situation, one guard here could secure the entire facility."
The guard pondered and rubbed his chin. "Well," he allowed, "we can lock down the entire facility. Keep everything calm and keep a riot from spreading. We can't, like, arrest people from here, obviously."
Alice smiled coolly. "How about fire prevention systems?"
"Those are automatic, ma'am," the guard said helpfully. "But we can shut it down and bring it back up from here, yes." He gestured at a series of gleaming metal switches.
All righty then, Alice Pierpont thought. It was hard to believe this was so easy. This guy was telling her everything she needed to know. Then again, he thought she was a state agent. Plus, this was a welcome break from the monotony.
There was just one more thing that she needed.
"If a riot did break out, can you describe your riot-control procedures to me?" she asked politely. Her left hand held the notebook, her right hand poised over it with a silver pen ready to take down his words. He stared at her left hand and blanched. Let him stare. In another minute he'd have a lot to stare about.
"Well…um…the usual, you know," he began uncertainly. "Lock down the pod that's rioting. Try and keep everything else normal. Talk to the guards over the phone, keep them apprised of what we got through the cameras." He gestured at the big set of black-and-white monitors.
Alice nodded and wrote that down.
Part of her could barely believe this. It was almost too easy. She checked the monitors. All the guards were in little groups. Once they had control of the place, most of the guards could remain locked up; they would only have to clear a path through one housing pod. That would be easy. From here, they could do everything.
"Is there one button here that locks down everything?" she asked. "Like a panic-button sort of thing?"
The guard nodded and stared at her coolly. "Yes, ma'am," he said, and indicated a large red plastic button. It was covered over by a clear plastic shield to prevent it being pressed accidentally, but was not locked. "Course, if you ever hit that, you'd better have a good reason why. Once you press that, every door in this building closes and locks and can't be unlocked except for here. Somebody hit it by accident once. Sheriff was pissed. Er, excuse me, ma'am, he was mad."
Alice nodded. "That's all right," she said in a businesslike tone. "Colin? Now."
Alice lunged forward and dropped the notebook. She raised the silver pen high and rushed the guard. Behind her, Colin was taking care of their escort. Her right hand came up and the pen flicked in her hand. Her hand came down, the silver Cross pen held not like a pen but a dagger. It punched into the guard's jugular with a wet sound. A spray of dark red blood splattered on the bank of TV monitors in a bloodstain that looked like a pagan religious symbol.
A crack behind her indicated that Colin had taken care of their escort. She didn't know what he had done. It didn't matter. Alice pulled the pen free and lunged for the second guard at the desk. He was beginning to rise and paw for the can of pepper spray on his belt.
But Alice was faster and far more vicious. She grabbed for his shirt with her left hand and brought her right down again. She aimed for his eye and hit it. A liquid pop and a scream announced her success. Alice let the pen go and struck it again with the heel of her hand, driving it further into his brain. The second guard rolled back dead.
Colin flipped back the cover and pressed the red button. Red lights began to flash. Grumbling sounds from deep in the prison announced that every door was closing and locking. Alice chuckled and reached for the phone. It had been only a few minutes, and all three guards were dead.
It took only a moment to dial the number for Teek's cell phone. It rang three times and was answered promptly before it could ring a fourth time.
"Hi, Teek," Alice said. "We got the place." Her maroon eyes swept the monitors. "About twenty guards on duty. Only two or three we need to get out of the way, though, the others can stay locked up in the other pods."
"Good work, girl," Teek's voice said crisply. "You ready?"
Alice nodded. She felt good. They were in control of the situation. The jail was theirs. And this would be a lot of fun. "We need some dancers, and some band people," she said calmly. "Then…let's get hot."