Lark! the Herald Angels Sing

by Donna Andrews

  I was less sure what the contents of the other vehicle would add.

  “What’s with the sheep?” I asked. “They’re not members of your retreat group, are they? Or do you plan to give shearing and spinning demonstrations between choruses of ‘We Shall Overcome’?”

  “I borrowed them from Seth Early,” Rose Noire said. “I think they’ll help with the ambience. I mean, look at those calm, peaceful faces. Who could see those faces and still have an angry, violent thought?”

  I could, quite easily. That was probably because Seth Early’s sheep regularly invaded our house to graze on our curtains, deposit sheep droppings on our rugs, and drink from our toilets like oversized cats.

  “Does Seth know you’re taking them to Clay County?” I asked. “And what if they wander off over there? It could take them a while to get home.”

  “Oh, didn’t I tell you? This summer I talked Seth into attaching those cute little tracking devices to all his sheep. That means it will be much easier to keep track of them.”

  It occurred to me that it also meant that Seth was now able to figure out when his sheep strayed across the road and onto our property, so if they lingered overly long it meant he was relying on us to deliver them back, rather than fetching them himself. I’d keep that in mind.

  “As long as he’s okay with it,” I said aloud.

  I was starting to have some ideas on how we could make use of the sheep.

  “You know, that’s not a bad idea,” Caroline said. “Animals will make a nice addition to the chaos.”

  “Don’t you mean festivities?” I asked.

  “That too. I think I’ll round up a few from the zoo. And arrange for a truck to haul them over.”

  She hurried off.

  “Not the wolves,” I called after her.

  “Surely she wouldn’t even think of bringing the wolves,” Cordelia said. “Not with so many sheep about.”

  “She might have a sentimental moment and remember how fond Grandfather is of wolves,” I said. “Sometimes he’s a bad influence.”

  “Sometimes? I’ll go along and make sure she chooses relatively harmless animals.” Cordelia strode off in the direction Caroline had taken.

  “And can you get her to bring down the video equipment first?”

  “Of course,” she called over her shoulder.

  “While Cordelia’s doing that, could you mind the gate?” I asked Rose Noire. “Send any new arrivals to the lecture hall?”

  “Of course.”

  More people arrived. Caroline returned and unearthed the video equipment. Devon and Annika, Michael’s two grad students, arrived and fell upon the equipment with enthusiasm. I gathered what Grandfather had bought for himself was a lot nicer than what the college had provided for the students to use. I vowed that when we got him back safe and sound with their help I’d make him donate some state-of-the-art equipment to the department. He’d probably protest that he’d already given the drama department a very nice new building, and I’d point out that he’d probably still be in the slammer without Devon and Annika.

  Brianna returned from her sabotage mission. Ekaterina and Janet finished stenciling the Dominion logo onto the white van. It probably wouldn’t fool a real Dominion employee, but with luck no one in now powerless Clay County would look too critically at an arriving repair truck. They’d even stenciled logos on a half-dozen white hardhats for those of us who would be masquerading as repairmen.

  I checked my watch: 6:00 A.M. Time for my advance party to take off. I gathered them in the courtyard: Brianna driving the real Dominion repair truck with me riding shotgun, both of us in Dominion uniforms; Ekaterina driving the fake Dominion panel truck with Janet riding shotgun, both in generic maintenance uniforms; Devon and Annika in the back of the panel truck with the video equipment. Janet and I were both armed with shortwave radios, as were Delaney, now ensconced in Grandfather’s office with several extra computers, and Caroline and Cordelia, whom I was leaving in charge of supervising the gathering crowd here at the zoo.

  “Wish us luck,” I told them as I stepped into the repair truck cab.

  “We’ll be coming to join you before you know it,” Cordelia said.

  We were only a mile down the road when my shortwave radio erupted into life.

  Chapter 32

  “Blue team leader,” the radio sputtered. “This is blue home base—do you copy?”

  I recognized Delaney’s voice.

  “Blue team leader here,” I replied.

  “Can someone drop off a few cases of paintballs? Because Jack forgot to bring any, and there’s no way we can defend the fort with no ammo.”

  Since there was always the possibility that our adversaries could intercept our shortwave transmissions, we’d agreed to pretend that we were participants in a giant paintball game. Still, I wasn’t sure why she’d chosen now to start creating this illusion.

  “Roger,” I said.

  “And we’ve figured out what radio frequency the Yellows are using. Will let you know if we pick up anything useful.”

  “Good.” Presumably that meant she’d figured out how to listen in on the Clay County Sheriff’s Department’s radio transmissions. That could indeed be useful.

  A text arrived in my phone. I glanced down at it. A series of numbers—the radio frequency, I assumed. Good to have, though I had no idea when or how I’d use it. But reassuring to know Delaney and her cyber corps were monitoring it.

  We were approaching the county line. If I were driving, I’d have been tempted to pause or at least slow down a little as we neared the WELCOME TO CLAY COUNTY sign, and try to think of something suitably momentous to say to mark the occasion. “The die is cast.” “This was their finest hour.” Whatever. Brianna just kept the big rig lumbering steadily along.

  Though she did point out the Clay County Sheriff’s Department cruiser parked in a side road just inside the county line.

  “Looks like they’re guarding the borders,” she said.

  For the next few minutes, I kept my eyes glued to the side mirror, and I suspect Brianna spent as much time glancing in the rearview mirror as at the road ahead. But nothing happened. No sirens splitting the night. No flashing lights looming up behind us.

  “Guess we fooled them so far,” she said.

  Never had the road to Clayville seemed so endless. Brianna drove the hulking repair truck with practiced ease. I kept my hardhat pulled low over my eyes and tried to maintain the calm, resolute demeanor of a leader who had no doubts about the success of her mission. I also kept a map of Clay County propped on the dash in front of me—an honest-to-God old-fashioned paper map, which had taken some finding, but I assumed any Dominion worker who’d ever ventured into Clay County would be well aware of how useless a GPS device would be in its more remote corners.

  “Outskirts of town,” Brianna said finally. “Still looks pretty dark.”

  In fact, as we drove slowly toward the center of town, we only passed one or two houses with any lights, and those were clearly lanterns or flashlights.

  “You’d think more people would have generators,” she said.

  “Probably not a lot of people awake to start them up when you knocked the power out,” I said.

  “Yeah.” There was enough light in the cab for me to see her grin.

  Even the combined sheriff’s office and jail only had a few dim lights.

  We had arrived at the stoplight in the center of town. It was dark, of course. The only other moving vehicle in sight was Ekaterina’s van, directly behind us, but Brianna came to a full stop, the way you’re supposed to at a dead stoplight. Always a good idea not to commit minor traffic offenses in Clay County. Stopping also gave us a few extra seconds to reconnoiter. To our left was the Burger Barn. I’d forgotten that it was housed in a run-down two-story building—atypical of Clayville. Not the run-down part—just about everything in Clay County was run down, if not actually falling apart. But land was so cheap that most people found it more economica
l to expand horizontally rather than vertically. There were very few two-story buildings. Even the jail was only one story. The Burger Barn also had a six-foot false front at the top, along the street side of the building, with the restaurant’s name rather sloppily painted on it. This could be useful.

  “Hang a left,” I said. “And then another left into the parking lot behind the Burger Barn.”

  Once in the parking lot, we pulled the vehicles close to the restaurant’s back door in a formation we’d hoped would be possible, with the real Dominion truck on the outside, screening the panel truck as much as possible from view. Brianna popped the repair truck’s hood and went to peer into it. Ekaterina grabbed a small automotive toolkit and joined her, thus completing—I hoped—the illusion of two power company drivers conferring over an engine problem.

  The back door of the restaurant opened a crack and Rachel peered out. She opened it wider when she saw that Janet was with us.

  Devon and Annika and I began quickly hauling the equipment from the panel truck into the restaurant. After a brief and slightly tearful reunion, Janet and Rachel pitched in as well.

  When we’d finished unloading, I glanced over to see that Ekaterina and Brianna appeared to have completely disassembled the real Dominion truck’s engine, scattering parts in a wide delta around the cab of the truck.

  “Um … do you think you could put the engine back together pretty soon?” I asked them in an undertone. “Because while our plans don’t necessarily call for making a quick escape in the trucks, it would be nice if we could do it if we had to.”

  “Do not distress yourself,” Ekaterina said. “These parts are not essential to the operation of the vehicle.”

  “Seriously? Because it looks to me as if you’ve taken out the spark plugs and the battery and the radiator hose, and that’s just the parts I recognize.”

  “Ah, but we did not remove those parts from this truck.” Ekaterina looked triumphant. “These are decoy truck parts I brought along just in case. If anyone is observing us, these will create the false impression that we are immobile.”

  Sometimes I actually believed Ekaterina when she claimed that her father had been a Russian spy for the CIA.

  “Great idea,” I said. “Can you stay here and keep a lookout while maintaining the illusion that you’re trying to solve the engine problem?”

  “Of course.”

  “Brianna, they could use your help getting the video stuff set up.”

  She nodded and strode inside.

  I pretended to be watching Ekaterina’s engine tinkering, while actually scanning our surroundings. No one seemed to be stirring. Of course, it was only just beginning to get light.

  I strolled inside and found myself in the Burger Barn’s kitchen. Most of the video equipment had vanished, except for two metal cases that Annika and Devon were hoisting. Brianna and Janet were nowhere to be seen. Rachel seemed to be directing traffic.

  “Where’s the rest of the stuff?” I asked.

  “Upstairs,” Rachel said. “It’s just storage up there, and not very full, so we thought that would be a good place to set up the cameras.”

  “Better camera angle,” Devon said.

  “And we’re going to put the antenna on the roof,” Annika added.

  “We can hide it behind the Burger Barn sign,” Devon said.

  Exactly what I would have suggested. I left them to it, and they trudged upstairs, leaving Rachel and me in the kitchen. Not a pleasant place to be—it was so cramped I wondered how even a single cook could manage to work in it and so filthy that I was glad I’d never had any reason to consume food at the Burger Barn. I tried not to show my reaction—for all I knew, cleaning the kitchen was one of Rachel’s job responsibilities—but my face gave me away.

  “I know—it’s a pig sty, isn’t it?” she said. “I offered to clean it once, and Rocky wouldn’t let me—said he didn’t want anyone else messing with his work space. Just serving the slop he churns out in here makes me worry that I could get arrested as an accessory to murder. And it’s not as if any of it tastes good enough to risk dying for. I’ll be glad to get out of this dump. And by dump I don’t just mean the barn; I mean the whole county.”

  “Where are you going?”

  “Dunno. Maybe Richmond. Or maybe D.C. I was saving up money to go to college—I’ll probably end up spending it all to make a new start somewhere else, but it’ll be worth it.”

  “Come to Caerphilly,” I said. “Everyone there will be grateful to you for helping us out—we can work on finding you a job and a place to stay.”

  “I’ll think about it.”

  I opened the door from the kitchen to the public part of the restaurant and peered out. At the far end of the room, two large, old-fashioned bay windows flanked the double doors to the street. Although the windows ran nearly to the twelve-foot ceiling, they didn’t let in much light—window shades were pulled down over the top two-thirds of each window, and the café curtains that screened the bottom third were drawn. Still, there was a gap between the bottom of the blinds and the top of the curtains, so some light crept in—mostly moonlight reflecting off the snow. And someone could peer in, so I slipped along one side of the dim space, brushing against the outside edges of the booths. I remembered one time when I’d stopped in here for a cool drink on a sweltering August day. I’d thought that the vintage vinyl banquettes, liberally mended with duct tape, and the chipped Formica tables had a certain seedy charm. But even without seeing the kitchen I’d been wary of trying the food.

  I reached the front window and ducked down below the level of the café curtains. They’d have added a homey touch to the place if anyone had washed them within living memory, or even given them a good shake to remove some of the dust. If I owned the place, I’d also have cleaned out the impressive collection of dead insects that littered the window ledge and replaced the mummified potted plants with living ones.

  But most of all I’d have put up a few Christmas decorations. Was I just overlooking them in the dark? No. With the exception of a small half-dead poinsettia near the cash register, the Burger Barn showed no signs that anyone was celebrating the holiday season. No lights in the window. No wreaths or candles. No nativity scene. Not even a cutesy plastic Rudolph with a light-up nose.

  In fact, as I peered around the town square, I realized the same could be said of every building here in the center of town. Granted, taking out their power would have darkened any Christmas lights people had strung up—but I should still be able to see the glass of the bulbs glittering in the moonlight. I didn’t spot any. I counted exactly one door wreath within sight.

  “They really do need a transfusion of Christmas spirit,” I muttered to myself.

  And then I reminded myself to focus. I hadn’t crept to this observation point to pass judgment on the Clayville citizens’ lack of Christmas spirit. I needed to scout out what was happening across the street at the jail.

  And at the moment, not much was happening. Reassuring. I nodded with satisfaction as I scanned the building’s old-fashioned red brick exterior. I estimated that it had been built in the 1930s, and it would have looked rather charming if they’d done any repairs or painting in the last fifty or sixty years. Or maybe I only found it charming because the dim light inside reassured me that the power was still out in Clayville. Along the street in front of the jail was a row of angled parking spaces, all but two empty. A pair of Clay County Sheriff’s Department cruisers sat side by side near the right end. They probably belonged to the deputies on duty inside. Most of the spaces had signs. Two VISITOR signs at the far right, beyond the deputies’ cars. A handicapped space at the far left. The rest were marked DEPUTY, except for the middle one, directly in front of the door, whose oversized sign said SHERIFF.

  Well, that should make it easy to notice when Sheriff Dingle arrived.

  Next door to the jail was the county office building, a squat, utilitarian one-story cinder-block structure. It probably didn’t have to be ver
y big if, as rumor had it, most of the real business of governing happened down the street at the Clay Pigeon, the sleazy bar whose owner also operated the Clayville Shooting Range next door. And what did it say about a town when their jail was almost as large and a great deal prettier than the building that housed their mayor’s office?

  Where was everyone? Surely somewhere Mayor Dingle and Sheriff Dingle and their minions must be making plans to deal with the sudden epidemic of prisoners in their jail?

  Maybe they were—in some back room at the Clay Pigeon, perhaps. Out here on the street, not a creature was stirring.

  I heard the kitchen door open.

  Chapter 33

  I congratulated myself on not starting at the sound of the door. Rachel slipped through it and made her careful way to my side.

  “Brianna says they’ve got proof of concept on the video transmission, whatever that is,” she whispered. “What’s this all about—are you planning to broadcast whatever you’re doing?”

  “That’s the plan. Where’s the courtroom, anyway?”

  “Back of the county office building.”

  “Next door to the jail. Convenient. Can you keep watch here and let me know if you see any signs of activity? At either building?”

  “Sure.” She pulled over a vintage metal diner chair and sat down in the shadows, eyes scanning the street outside.

  I crept back into the kitchen.

  “Check this out.” Brianna handed me a laptop. “Careful—it’s tethered to the wall with an Ethernet cable.” Her tone seemed to suggest that this was an annoying if quaint eccentricity, rather like writing with a quill pen. “The Barn’s owner doesn’t hold with newfangled gadgets like wireless. I guess we should be glad he’s got internet at all.”

  I moved to where I could hold the laptop without disconnecting it and looked at the screen. It showed the front of the jail. From the angle, I deduced that they’d put the camera upstairs, as planned.

  Then the view shifted. This new view was from slightly to the left, and a little higher up.