would have a problem bringing any information she gleaned from the children. Alvorson agreed, and had even demonstrated a certain level of low cunning by suggesting the story about various supposed dead zones, where the microphones worked poorly or not at all.
Stackhouse shrugged. “What she brought us rarely rose above the level of gossip. Which boy was spending the night with which girl, who wrote TONY SUCKS on a table in the caff, that sort of thing.” He paused. “Although snitching might have added to her guilt, I suppose.”
“She was married,” Mrs. Sigsby said, “but you’ll notice she’s no longer wearing her wedding ring. How much do we know about her life in Vermont?”
“I don’t recall offhand, but it will be in her file, and I’m happy to look it up.”
Mrs. Sigsby considered this, and realized how little she herself knew about Maureen Alvorson. Yes, she had known Alvorson was married, because she had seen the ring. Yes, she was retired military, as were many on the Institute’s staff. Yes, she knew that Alvorson’s home was in Vermont. But she knew little else, and how could that be, when she had hired the woman to spy on the residents? It might not matter now, not with Alvorson dead, but it made Mrs. Sigsby think of how she had left her walkie-talkie behind, assuming that the janitor had his knickers in a twist about nothing. It also made her think about the dusty camera housings, the slow computers and the small and inefficient staff in charge of them, the frequent food spoilage in the caff, the mouse-chewed wires, and the slipshod surveillance reports, especially on the night shift that ran from 11 PM to 7 AM, when the residents were asleep.
It made her think about carelessness.
“Julia? I said I’d—”
“I heard you. I’m not deaf. Who is on surveillance right now?”
Stackhouse looked at his watch. “Probably no one. It’s the middle of the day. The kids will either be in their rooms or doing the usual kid things.”
So you assume, she thought, and what is the mother of carelessness if not assumption? The Institute had been in operation for over sixty years, well over, and there had never been a leak. Never a reason (not on her watch, anyway) to use the special phone, the one they called the Zero Phone, for anything other than routine updates. Nothing, in short, they hadn’t been able to handle in-house.
There were rumors in the Bend, of course. The most common among the citizens being that the compound out in the woods was some kind of nuclear missile base. Or that it had to do with germ or chemical warfare. Another, and this was closer to the truth, was that it was a government experimental station. Rumors were okay. Rumors were self-generated disinformation.
Everything is okay, she told herself. Everything is as it should be. The suicide of a disease-riddled housekeeper is just a bump in the road, and a minor one at that. Still, it was suggestive, of larger . . . well, not problems, it would be alarmist to call them that, but concerns, for sure. And some of it was her own fault. In the early days of Mrs. Sigsby’s tour, the camera housings never would have been dusty, and she never would have left her office without her walkie. In those days she would have known a lot more about the woman she was paying to snitch on the residents.
She thought about entropy. The tendency to coast when things were going well.
To assume.
“Mrs. Sigsby? Julia? Do you have orders for me?”
She came back to the here and now. “Yes. I want to know everything about her, and if there’s nobody in the surveillance room, I want someone there ASAP. Jerry, I think.” Jerry Symonds was one of their two computer techs, and the best they had when it came to nursing the old equipment along.
“Jerry’s on furlough,” Stackhouse said. “Fishing in Nassau.”
“Andy, then.”
Stackhouse shook his head. “Fellowes is in the village. I saw him coming out of the commissary.”
“Goddammit, he should be here. Zeke, then. Zeke the Greek. He’s worked surveillance before, hasn’t he?”
“I think so,” Stackhouse said, and there it was again. Vagueness. Supposition. Assumption.
Dusty camera housings. Dirty baseboards. Careless talk on B-Level. The surveillance room standing empty.
Mrs. Sigsby decided on the spur of the moment that some big changes were going to be made, and before the leaves started to turn color and fall off the trees. If the Alvorson woman’s