The procedure for alarms and drills was as rigidly structured as most routines in the state. I knew I would find my staff gathered on the second floor of the Monroe Tower parking deck across Franklin Street. By now, all Consolidated Lab employees should be in their designated spots, except for section chiefs and agency heads, and of those, it seemed, I was the last to leave, except for the director of general services, who was in charge of my building. He was briskly crossing the street in front of me, a hard hat tucked under his arm. When I called out to him, he turned around and squinted as if he did not know me at all.
“What in God’s name is going on?” I asked as I caught up with him and we crossed to the sidewalk.
“What’s going on is you better not have requested anything extra in your budget this year.” He was an old man who was always well dressed and unpleasant. Today he was in a rage.
I stared at the building and saw no smoke as fire trucks screamed and blared several streets away.
“Some jackass tripped the damn deluge system, which doesn’t stop until all the chemicals are dumped.” He glared at me as if I were to blame. “I had the damn thing set on a delay to prevent this very thing.”
“Which wasn’t going to hell if there was a chemical fire or explosion in a lab,” I couldn’t resist pointing out, because most of his decisions were about as bad. “You don’t want a thirty-second delay when something like that happens.”
“Well, something like that didn’t happen. Do you have any idea how much this is going to cost?”
I thought of the paperwork on my desk and other important items flung far and wide and possibly damaged.
“Why would anyone trip the system?” I asked.
“Look, at the moment I’m about as informed as you are.”
“But thousands of gallons of chemicals have been dumped over all of’ my offices, and the morgue and the anatomical division.” We climbed stairs, my frustration becoming harder to contain.
“You won’t know it was even there.” He rudely waved off the remark. “it disappears like a vapor.”
“It’s sprayed all over bodies we are autopsying, including several homicides. Let’s hope a defense attorney never brings that up in court.”
“What you’d better hope is that somehow we can pay for this. To refill those halon tanks, we’re talking several hundred thousand dollars. That’s what ought to make you stay awake at night.”
The second level of the parking deck was crowded with hundreds of state employees on an unexpected break. Ordinarily, drills and false alarms were an invitation to play, and people were in good moods as long as the weather was nice. But no one was relaxed this day. It was cold and gray, and people were talking in excited voices. The director abruptly walked off to speak to one of his henchmen, and I began to look around. I had just spotted my staff’ when I felt a hand on my arm.
“Geez, what’s the matter?” Marino asked when I jumped. “You (lot POST-traumatic stress syndrome?”
“I’m sure I do,” I said. “Were you in the building?”
“Nope, but not far away. I heard about your full fire alarm on the radio and thought I’d check it out.”
He hitched up his police belt with all its heavy gear, his eyes roaming the crowd.
“You mind telling me what the hell’s going on’? You finally get a case of spontaneous combustion?”
“I don’t know exactly what’s going on. But what I’ve been told is that someone apparently tripped a false alarm that set off the deluge system throughout the entire building. Why are You here?”
“I see Fielding way over there.” Marino nodded. “And Rose. They’re all together. You look cold as shit.”
“You were just in the area?” I asked, because when he was evasive, I knew something was up.
“I could hear the damn alarm all the way on Broad Street,” he said.
As if on cue, the awful clanging across the street suddenly stopped. I stepped closer to the parking deck wall and looked over the top of it as I worried more about what I would find when all of us were allowed to return to the building. Fire trucks rumbled loudly in parking lots, and firefighters in protective gear were entering through several different doors.