Double Agent

by Gretchen Archer

  “This channel is reserved for emergencies.” It was Communication Storm Bennet Devlin.

  We heard pounding. “What.” Pound. “Is.” Pound. “Wrong.” Pound. “With.” Pound. “This.” Pound. “Communiqué.” Pound. “Device.”

  “Bi-an-ca!” I wasn’t quiet. “If you’ll change the channel to ten, we can speak privately.”

  “Is there something you need to hide, David?”

  I had a ton to hide. Two more dead bodies, in fact.

  “My room was inadequately serviced. Call someone to service it again.”

  How did someone get past the vault door to service her room? “Bianca?” I used my nicest voice that time. “If you could just change channels?”

  “Give me a B!”

  Who gave Chip Chapman a radio?

  “Give me an I!”

  How was Chip Chapman still standing?

  “Brad.” It was No Hair. “Channel thirteen.”

  The one of twenty channels no one wanted to use.

  “Give me a—”

  Everyone at the Bellissimo Resort and Casino held their breath to see if Chip Chapman could spell.

  “Give me an…ONKA!”

  “No!”

  It was one of the Michiganders. Who gave them radios?

  “Give him an OINKA! Here, piggy, piggy! Does the piggy have a radio?”

  On channel thirteen, Bradley told No Hair we’d get Bianca’s radio away from her as soon as we could if he could get Weather One’s radios away from them.

  “Where are you?” No Hair asked.

  “We’re on the seventh floor of the hotel. Looking for signs of Danielle.”

  We were almost an hour into looking for signs of Danielle. There was no surveillance video of her leaving the casino, so we’d run thermal imaging first—no heat signatures. She wasn’t in her Disaster room, she wasn’t with Eddie on Disaster, or on Disaster at all that we could find, she wasn’t on the mezzanine level or in the lobby, and as a last resort, we were searching the hotel room we’d checked her out of the day before.

  “DAVID!”

  “I’m on Disaster.” It was Fantasy. “I’ll take Bianca.”

  Fantasy to my rescue again.

  “Hey.” It was Baylor. On channel thirteen. “Main entrance. Blue.”

  “We’re on our way,” Bradley said.

  The police had finally arrived. Thank goodness.

  We slumped against the elevator walls on the way down.

  “Davis, where in the world is Danielle?”

  “She’ll show up, Bradley.”

  She always did.

  Mark Perry’s voice came blaring over the radios. “Everyone,” he said. “And I mean everyone except my team, needs to report to the Disaster great room for what will hopefully be our last tutorial on proper use of the radios.”

  “Hello? To the alls? Filet, who is—”

  Bradley and I looked at each other as the elevator doors opened to the lobby.

  “What would happen if we turned off our radios for just a few minutes?” I asked.

  “Nothing.”

  We turned our radios off.

  Our phones started ringing.

  With weary sighs, we turned our radios back on.

  “—please to washes filthy handses. That is alls.”

  * * *

  Our second homicide call to Biloxi PD in as many days was answered by the Captain of Biloxi PD’s robbery and homicide division, an officer we’d worked with often and well. The other, we didn’t know from Adam. They piled out of an unmarked Crown Vic they parked in the limo lane in front of the Bellissimo to the music of a chainsaw eliminating the last of the potential tree-limb missiles and to the backdrop of a decidedly darker, lower, eerily fluid sky. The increasing winds and pre-storm scuttle whipped debris—an empty paper coffee cup, leaves, twigs, loose valet claim tags, a fifty-dollar poker chip, and a small child’s sun hat—around the portico, into the dead fountain, and at our feet. The heavy glass doors, catching a gust, all but propelled us in, and caught so hard behind us I was surprised they didn’t shatter. I decided I’d had enough of the great outdoors until Hurricane Kevin came and went.

  But I turned back for one last look.

  Just in case.

  Bradley and I walked the officers through the relatively silent lobby, the relative part being Jenn Chojnacki and Summer Shugart beating on the door of Rocks, the lobby jewelry store, wanting someone to let them in to try on jewelry. I had no idea what made them think there was anyone in Rocks to open the door. The dark empty store was, had been, and would remain, closed.

  After we passed them, Bradley said, “Don’t ask.”

  Captain Sandy Marini and Mississippi State Emergency Response Agent Werner Graham, on hurricane loan from Jackson, Mississippi PD, were there for quick documentation and to oversee transfer of the bodies from our custody to theirs. As Sandy introduced the emergency agent, I wondered just how many agents our one resort could hold. We’d managed to shake a FEMA agent who used to be a real estate agent, but still had an insurance agent. And we had the Governor’s special agent, a dead plumbing agent, two dead gaming agents, and now we had an emergency agent? I wondered if I could talk No Hair into changing my title to Super Secret Spy Agent. I’d ask later. Because we were less than an hour from the first rains that would usher in the storm. We had no time to waste worrying about agents.

  Bradley and Emergency two steps ahead of us, I asked Sandy about her husband, her children, and her extended family, all native Biloxians. Any other day it would be small talk. That day, in the face of a hurricane, it was very large talk.

  “It took three shuttles yesterday, but we finally got everyone under a Red Roof Inn in Meridian.”

  Meridian, Mississippi, was a hundred and fifty miles to our north.

  “You’re staying?” I asked.

  “I drew the short straw.”

  “I’m surprised they let you out on a dead body call.” As hurricanes went, dead bodies on ice at a casino wouldn’t be top priority.

  “They didn’t,” she said. “This one volunteered to take it alone and I thought I’d ride along.” She pointed a gun finger at Emergency. “What about you? Bex and Quinn?”

  “Left with my parents—” I checked the time “—an hour and a half ago.”

  “For Pine Apple?”

  I nodded.

  “You and Bradley are staying?”

  “We drew the short straws.”

  “How was your high school reunion?”

  “How do you even know about that?”

  “We picked one of yours up yesterday,” she said. “Or the day before.”

  “One of my whats?”

  “One of your pineapples,” she said. “Dooley. Jud?”

  “Jug.” Him again.

  “DUI,” Sandy said. “Your homeboy was out of his mind.”

  “He wakes up drunk, Sandy. It’s no surprise he was driving drunk.”

  “Are you watching Weather One? They’re swinging from your rafters.” She glanced back at our favorite drunk Michiganders, still beating on the Rocks door. “Everyone in America thinks you’re having the best hurricane party in the history of hurricanes.”

  “You wouldn’t be here if we were.”

  “True,” she said. “Nothing festive about dead people.”

  “Any chance you have him again?” I asked.

  “Who?”

  “Jug Dooley.”

  “I have no idea,” she said. “Want me to ask?”

  I did. I did want Sandy to ask. I had fifty million questions for my homeboy.

  Sandy tipped her head left and asked her shoulder. I heard the answer over her police radio. “Chief said go look for yourself, Captain. Everyone’s busy.”

  “Could you maybe check the co
mputer in front of you?” Sandy asked.

  “For Chip Chapman’s autograph, I’ll check it.”

  I stepped away to answer my own phone. It was No Hair. “Davis, we got it wrong.”

  Which could’ve meant anything. We got it wrong when we passed out two-way radios. Or we got it wrong when we agreed to let Weather One cover the storm from the Bellissimo. Or we got it wrong when we didn’t give Bianca Sanders a designer fishing pole and buy her a one-way ticket to Norway. For sure, Bradley and I got it wrong when we didn’t dive into the backseat of my mother’s car and evacuate when we had the chance.

  “I’m on the phone with Gaming, and they don’t know either of these men,” No Hair said. “The dead men weren’t gaming agents.”

  Fear struck. I would say in my heart, but it struck everywhere.

  “They had paperwork, No Hair.” And badges. And uniforms.

  “And they probably got them off the two agents Gaming actually sent.”

  “Where are they?”

  “Who?”

  “The men Gaming actually sent.”

  “I have no idea,” he said. “Somewhere close.”

  “How do you know that?”

  Bradley, Captain Marini, and Emergency were all listening carefully.

  “Because I’m looking at their car in the parking garage,” No Hair said.

  “You’re in the parking garage?”

  “No, Davis. I’m sitting in the control room on Disaster. I’m looking at close-circuit video of their car on the fourth level of the parking garage.”

  “And you’re telling me there are two naked men stuffed in a closet somewhere in this building?”

  Bradley threw his hands in the air.

  “That’s what I’m telling you,” No Hair said.

  “Who are the dead men?” I asked.

  Bradley, Sandy Marini, and Emergency all zoomed in.

  “You tell me.”

  “How am I supposed to tell you, No Hair?”

  “Before Biloxi takes the bodies, run their prints.”

  I hung up, closed my eyes, and held up a give-me-a-minute finger. I drew a deep breath, then broke the news. “The gaming agents weren’t gaming agents.”

  Confusion registered all over Sandy and Emergency’s faces.

  Bradley rubbed the space between his eyes. “Don’t ask.”

  * * *

  We’d have stopped what we were doing and concentrated all our efforts on finding the hostage gaming agents had we not had two of Mississippi’s finest with us, and them arriving was the reason we’d stopped looking for Danielle. Left foot, right foot, we would finish the immediate task at hand—dead body relocation—then work to put out the old and new fires.

  “You have three, Brad?” Sandy asked. “A gunshot yesterday and two floaters today?” She wasn’t wearing her usual uniform of a navy-blue blazer over navy-blue slacks. She and the emergency response agent were dressed in head to toe camo cargo, a sign of the weather times.

  “Why didn’t you call in your DB yesterday?” Emergency asked.

  “I did.” Bradley looked up from his phone, where he was entering the lockdown code to open the casino doors. “I got FEMA.”

  “Where is he?” Emergency asked. “The FEMA agent?”

  Bradley and I exchanged a split-second glance. Was it a trick question?

  “No telling where FEMA is.” Sandy saved us from having to tell a Mississippi Emergency Response Agent we’d sent a FEMA agent on a Pine Apple, Alabama, errand. “What we have at the station,” she said, “is a zoo. I don’t know half the people flying in and out the door, everyone on their way to exactly nowhere. You’re lucky you got anyone.” She took a breath. “Cause of death on your floaters?”

  I took the question. “We don’t know. There are no visible signs.” They hadn’t been shot—thank goodness—they didn’t look like they’d been choked to death, there were no stab wounds or blood, and they hadn’t died because of any other manner of violent death that we could see. They could have drowned, but in less than a foot of fountain water? It would be the Medical Examiner’s call.

  Bradley pushed the last digit on his phone, the doors beeped, we stepped in and froze.

  The cash carts we’d searched for until the wee hours of the morning, first No Hair and Fantasy, then me, Bradley, and Baylor, were skewed and scattered down the wide middle aisle of the casino. They were chaotically parked, one upside down and another flipped on its side, as if Weather One had been asked to line them up, and they were empty. Thousands of empty cash boxes littered the carpet.

  The money was gone.

  Sandy Marini said, “Uh-oh. What happened here?”

  I gave her the headlines.

  “So it was a clean sweep?” she asked. “Every dime?”

  I opened my mouth, but before I could get a word out, the casino locked down again. We heard beeps, alarms, and the click of locks from all four corners.

  What happened?

  “What was that?” Sandy asked.

  “We’re locked in,” I said.

  “That’s not necessarily a bad thing, is it?” she asked. “You’ve got a killer on the loose. We don’t want a shootout, do we?”

  “Of course not,” I said, “but that’s not the problem.”

  “What’s the problem?”

  “We didn’t lock ourselves in. Someone else did.”

  The blood drained from Emergency’s face.

  Bradley pulled his phone from his pocket. “I’ll take care of this—” He did a double take. He shook his phone. He tried to turn it on, then off, then on. He flipped it around and showed us the black screen. “And whoever locked us in also disabled my phone.”

  “Here.” Emergency, not at all happy about being locked in the casino, pulled a phone from one of his many cargo pockets. Sandy held hers out too, but we couldn’t reset the lockdown code from anyone’s phone but Bradley’s, not even mine.

  We were trapped in the casino.

  Could Danielle, in a million years, have done this? No way. She didn’t have the wherewithal to navigate our system, reassign the lockdown code, then disable Bradley’s phone. A woman who had to write an invisible X in the air to distinguish left from right? A woman who broke her tongue in three places while licking cake batter beaters with the mixer running? A woman who drove to the Pine Apple police station to report that the child she was babysitting had been kidnapped when the whole time, the little boy was strapped in his car seat on the roof of her car?

  No. Danielle had not done this.

  Innocent? Not for one minute of her life.

  But had she locked us in the casino?

  No.

  Could Jug have done this?

  Never.

  Jug couldn’t tell time.

  The last question was could they have done it together.

  No.

  Jug and Danielle couldn’t rob a lemonade stand and get away with it.

  There was more to the hurricane heist than we knew. There were more forces at play, both internal and external, with an ingenious person who had incredible access to our system behind it. Our band of criminals was larger than a fake police officer and two fake gaming agents, and they were after something bigger than money.

  * * *

  “I’ll call it in.” Sandy Marini reached a hand to her shoulder. “We’ll get a crew over here to break down the doors.”

  “If anyone’s available,” Emergency said.

  “Tell them to bring grenades,” Bradley said.

  “That secure?” Emergency knuckled one of the doors. “If we can’t get out, how’s the coroner supposed to get in?”

  Sandy spoke to the small black box on her shoulder. “Cancel the eleven-forty-four to the Bellissimo.”

  The box on her shoulder asked, “Copy, Captain Marini
. False alarm?”

  “Not exactly.”

  “No one’s answering at the coroner’s office anyway,” her shoulder said, “so there isn’t a morgue pickup to cancel. And we need you back at the station as soon as possible. The weather’s on the way.”

  Sandy told her shoulder it might be a minute.

  Her shoulder asked about the status of Chip Chapman’s autograph.

  “How does this lockdown work, Brad?” Emergency’s face was flushed.

  “We have three people and three devices authorized to assign an eight-digit code to lock all casino entrances and exits.”

  “Who are the three people?” Emergency asked.

  “Richard Sanders, me, and Davis.”

  “Where’s Mr. Sanders?” Sandy asked.

  “Norway. Ice fishing,” I said.

  “Well, isn’t he the lucky one?” Sandy cast an imaginary air rod. Then reeled in an imaginary fish.

  “And the devices?” Emergency shifted his weight from foot to foot every two seconds.

  “My dead phone,” Bradley patted his pocket, “Davis’s laptop, and the computer in my office.”

  “Where’s your laptop?” Sandy asked me.

  “Not here.”

  “Where’s your computer?” she asked Bradley.

  “Two floors up.” He pointed.

  Emergency made a slow turning tour. “What’s the definition of casino lockdown?”

  “All power to entrances and exits, both casino and adjacent venues, gaming equipment, and fixed electronics are disabled,” Bradley said.

  “Wait a minute.” Sandy raised an eyebrow. “You’re saying you have no surveillance during lockdown?”

  “None,” I said. “Surveillance cameras are fixed electronics. In theory, if we’ve locked down the casino, there’s nothing to surveille.”

  “Welcome to our world,” she said. “Roll up your sleeves for some good old-fashioned detective work.”

  Emergency asked how long we’d be trapped.

  I told him it depends.

  “On what?”

  On what happened next. At that point, it was anyone’s guess.

  And if something didn’t happen soon, I’d be riding out Hurricane Kevin in the casino with my husband, a Biloxi Police Department Captain, a Jackson Police Department Emergency Response Agent, and three dead bodies.