Amidon - Security

ALSO BY STEPHEN AMIDON

Human Capital

The New City

The Primitive

Thirst

Splitting the Atom

Subdivision: Stories

SECURITY

STEPHEN AMIDON

Farrar, Straus and Giroux
New York

Farrar, Straus and Giroux
18 West 18th Street, New York 10011

Copyright 2009 by Stephen Amidon
All rights reserved
Distributed in Canada by Douglas & McIntyre Ltd.
Printed in the United States of America
First edition, 2009

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Amidon, Stephen.

Security / Stephen Amidon. 1st ed.

p. cm.

ISBN-13: 978-0-374-25711-8 (hardcover : alk. paper)

ISBN-10: 0-374-25711-6 (hardcover : alk. paper)

1. SpousesFiction. 2. New EnglandFiction. 3. Domestic fiction. I. Title.

PS3551.M52 S43 2009

813'.54dc22

2008013850

Designed by Jonathan D. Lippincott

www.fsgbooks.com

1 3 5 7 9 10 8 6 4 2

The author would like to express his gratitude to the
Corporation of Yaddo for its generous support.

For my brother, Tom

T he alarm came in just as he was leaving the office. His first impulse was to keep walking. Even now, in the dead of the night, the time of break-ins and drunken squabbles and combusting embers, it would almost certainly be false. Somebody coming home after a few too many and fumbling the abort code; a nightmare-addled child staggering into a forbidden room. And yet, Janine would know that he had heard, and Edward couldnt just leave while she was in the middle of dealing with an alert. So he shut the door on the cold night and walked back into the office to see if he could lend a hand.

The gentle electronic pulse sounding from the dispatchers console had all the urgency of a boarding announcement at a regional airport. But Janine was all business as she slipped on her headphones and dialed the client. Edward was struck by the transformation: a moment ago she had been hinting at quitting, and now she had the tunnel vision of a frontline soldier. The word kicking around the office was that she was getting tired of the graveyard shift. And so, having found himself once again irrevocably awake at two a.m., Edward had decided to swing by to cheer her up. Hed discovered her standing beneath a nimbus of Camel smoke outside Stoneleigh Sentinels propped-open front door. She was wrapped in an oversized Patriots windbreaker; her outerwear seemed to be composed entirely of leave-behinds from boyfriends and husbands. She dropped the cigarette when she saw his car; the way her right shoe twisted over the butt made her look like a wallflower at a high school dance. He would have let her smoke in the office, but didnt need the hassle of getting caught violating the towns draconian anti-tobacco measures.

They chatted at the dispatch console. It was a family thing. Her girls were running wild. She sounded like she really would walk this time, which would not be good: a skilled dispatcher was as hard to find as a plumber on a Sunday morning. As she talked, Edward found himself examining the photos of her three daughters arranged on the console. All of them in their late teens, early twenties. The only feature they shared was the panicked, pre-impact sheen of their eyes. None were in school; all still lived at home; the one with the nose stud was pregnant. He could only imagine the cramped house at night, the tense silences and explosions of temper, the sullen visiting boys slouched on weary furniture.

What do you say we swap you to days? he asked abruptly.

She narrowed her eyes in gratitude.

Well, hell yes.

And so it was decided that she would not be quitting after all. Hed switch her with Cole Birdsong, his four-hundred-pound, Bible-toting day dispatcher. The man lived with his mother and was always hinting about needing more money for her diabetes bills; hed take the extra ten percent to work nights. Of course, Edward would have to keep Janine on that rate of pay as well, but he could afford it. Business was good.

He hung around for the three a.m. status check; he felt no great rush to face the sleepless hours ahead. Janine went through the roster of the companys eight guards, located in hushed lobbies throughout town, where they made sure nobody burgled the converted factories where their fathers and grandfathers had once held decent jobs. The tally ended with Mike Tolland, Stoneleigh Sentinels senior patrolman. Its armed response, who covered the premier residential clients in the foothills west of town. Characteristically, he was out of position in a quiet subdivision in the north part of town. Edward almost got on the horn and asked him what the hell he was doing, but one personnel crisis was sufficient for a chilly November night. Instead, he headed for the door and Janine reached for her Camels.

That was when theyd heard the alarm. He read the screen as he neared the console. The alert was at Doyle Cutlers place. As premier as an account could get. Cutler lived at the very edge of the town; his five-acre mountain estate backed onto wilderness. If there was a major burglary in Stoneleigh in the dead of a Sunday night, this was as likely a spot as any. As Janine speed-dialed the home phone, Edward read the screen more closely. The houses front door and its gate had both been opened. No abort code entered.

Voice mail, Janine said.

Edward listened to the police scanner mounted above the desk, but there was only static. The next step should be dispatching Tolland, though that would mean stirring him from his pint of Wild Turkey and this months Soldier of Fortune. It would be quicker just to send the police. Edward was about to call 911 when Janine held up a finger. Someone had picked up.

Yes, this is Stoneleigh Sentinel, she said. We have two alarms sounding at your house. We need you to provide your abort code.

She listened with a scowl.

I understand, sir, but you need to do that in thirty seconds or we must respond.

Edward looked at the screen. Galt.

Could you repeat that?

Janines eyes were locked on the screen as well. She nodded.

Thank you. And with whom am I speaking? She nodded. Will you be in need of further assistance from us, Mr. Cutler? Then, have a good night.

She looked at Edward after she broke the connection. Her expression was uneasy.

What did he say? he asked.

A houseguest just left and they forgot about the alarm. Her voice dropped into a conspiratorial register. He sounded funny.

Funny as in...

You know, not right.

Drunk? Panicky?

Jacklit.

Edward looked back at the screen. Technically, contractually, the event had just ended. Inner door, outer gate, abort code. Why a guest would be leaving unexpectedly at three a.m. fell into the vast category of things that were none of Edwards business. But he didnt like the sound of a stressed clientnot at three in the morning on the edge of the wilderness. Especially not Doyle Cutler. Images of some sort of home invasionunprecedented in the towns history, though certainly not in the nationsshifted through his mind.

You want me to send Tolland? Janine asked dubiously.

He could call Cutler back himself, but what would he say? My dispatcher said you sounded funny? What was really required was for a seasoned pro to have a quiet look around. Not Tolland, who had just last spring tried to Taser a Mt. Stoneleigh student for getting lippy. He would demand entry; hed want to rattle doors and ask all the wrong questions. If he was denied access, he would almost certainly call in the town police.