Are you hit?” I hadn’t heard a shot, but as I scrambled to his side I quickly scanned the lobby for danger.
“Leg cramp,” he gasped. “Heat does it to me. I’ll be fine in a second. Get outside where it’s safe.”
I ignored him and dashed off to follow Randall.
The narrow stairs to the basement looked as if they belonged to a castle dungeon. Both walls and treads were made of local stone, and the stairs curved around in a full circle twice. The lobby was actually on the second floor, in order to make room for all those impressive marble stairs outside, so you had to go down two flights to the basement. Two centuries of use had worn the treads slick and carved a little depression in the middle of each one.
In happier times, a visiting genealogist or history buff who wanted to consult the town records would march up the sweeping marble steps, wander around the lobby until he found the discreet sign for the archives, and then climb down the two circular flights to the basement. Savvy locals would skip the front steps to come through the back door of the courthouse and then venture through the furnace room to take the back stairs to the basement, which were only one flight, and retrofitted with a stair lift to make them handicapped accessible. The two stairways were at each end of one of the long walls of the antechamber, and the door to the archives was in the center of the opposite wall.
I suddenly remembered climbing down this same stairway on past Halloweens, when the town had used the large room at the bottom to set up a haunted house to raise money for charity. We’d creep down slowly and carefully to the tune of “Night on Bald Mountain” and other classical Halloween favorites. In the basement, we’d follow a tangled path past an assortment of ghosts and ghouls, dodging rubber bats and enormous fake spiderwebs. The door to the archive, which we passed halfway through the haunted house, was always blocked with a faux iron gate, but inside Mr. Throckmorton would arrange an over-the-top tableau of vampires or zombies—one of the high points of the evening. And at the end of the path, we’d finally reach the second spiral stone staircase at the other side of the antechamber and stumble up to the furnace room, where the elderly Shiffley cousin who served as the town engineer served out punch and cookies.
I was jolted back to the present by the sounds of someone slipping and falling below, followed by several angry oaths.
“Stay sharp!” I heard Wilt shout from the basement. “The shooter has to be nearby.”
I took the steps a little more slowly so I wouldn’t slip. Emerging into the basement was like leaving the Middle Ages for the Great Depression—either the courthouse hadn’t been redecorated since the 1930s or someone had taken care to replicate the institutional green-painted cinder-block walls and the black-and-white checkerboard linoleum of the era. I decided I liked it a lot better as a haunted house.
I found Randall, the reporter, and Wilt standing in a semicircle just inside the doorway from the stairs. The three rank-and-file guards, with their weapons drawn, were prowling restlessly around the room as if one more search might reveal that the cinder blocks and linoleum were covering a secret hiding place.
Presumably their erratic patrol was intended to protect us if whoever fired those shots returned, but I couldn’t help thinking that I was a lot more likely to get hurt by their overreaction than by anything the original shooter was apt to do.
They seemed to be paying quite a lot of attention to the ugly board-and-barbed-wire barricade on the wall opposite the stairwell, never quite turning their backs on it.
“That’s right,” Randall was saying into his cell phone. “The courthouse basement. And hurry.”
“She’s way past an ambulance,” Reilly said.
“I like to let the pros make that kind of decision,” Randall said.
But he wasn’t trying to do anything. And I
“Leg cramp,” he gasped. “Heat does it to me. I’ll be fine in a second. Get outside where it’s safe.”
I ignored him and dashed off to follow Randall.
The narrow stairs to the basement looked as if they belonged to a castle dungeon. Both walls and treads were made of local stone, and the stairs curved around in a full circle twice. The lobby was actually on the second floor, in order to make room for all those impressive marble stairs outside, so you had to go down two flights to the basement. Two centuries of use had worn the treads slick and carved a little depression in the middle of each one.
In happier times, a visiting genealogist or history buff who wanted to consult the town records would march up the sweeping marble steps, wander around the lobby until he found the discreet sign for the archives, and then climb down the two circular flights to the basement. Savvy locals would skip the front steps to come through the back door of the courthouse and then venture through the furnace room to take the back stairs to the basement, which were only one flight, and retrofitted with a stair lift to make them handicapped accessible. The two stairways were at each end of one of the long walls of the antechamber, and the door to the archives was in the center of the opposite wall.
I suddenly remembered climbing down this same stairway on past Halloweens, when the town had used the large room at the bottom to set up a haunted house to raise money for charity. We’d creep down slowly and carefully to the tune of “Night on Bald Mountain” and other classical Halloween favorites. In the basement, we’d follow a tangled path past an assortment of ghosts and ghouls, dodging rubber bats and enormous fake spiderwebs. The door to the archive, which we passed halfway through the haunted house, was always blocked with a faux iron gate, but inside Mr. Throckmorton would arrange an over-the-top tableau of vampires or zombies—one of the high points of the evening. And at the end of the path, we’d finally reach the second spiral stone staircase at the other side of the antechamber and stumble up to the furnace room, where the elderly Shiffley cousin who served as the town engineer served out punch and cookies.
I was jolted back to the present by the sounds of someone slipping and falling below, followed by several angry oaths.
“Stay sharp!” I heard Wilt shout from the basement. “The shooter has to be nearby.”
I took the steps a little more slowly so I wouldn’t slip. Emerging into the basement was like leaving the Middle Ages for the Great Depression—either the courthouse hadn’t been redecorated since the 1930s or someone had taken care to replicate the institutional green-painted cinder-block walls and the black-and-white checkerboard linoleum of the era. I decided I liked it a lot better as a haunted house.
I found Randall, the reporter, and Wilt standing in a semicircle just inside the doorway from the stairs. The three rank-and-file guards, with their weapons drawn, were prowling restlessly around the room as if one more search might reveal that the cinder blocks and linoleum were covering a secret hiding place.
Presumably their erratic patrol was intended to protect us if whoever fired those shots returned, but I couldn’t help thinking that I was a lot more likely to get hurt by their overreaction than by anything the original shooter was apt to do.
They seemed to be paying quite a lot of attention to the ugly board-and-barbed-wire barricade on the wall opposite the stairwell, never quite turning their backs on it.
“That’s right,” Randall was saying into his cell phone. “The courthouse basement. And hurry.”
“She’s way past an ambulance,” Reilly said.
“I like to let the pros make that kind of decision,” Randall said.
But he wasn’t trying to do anything. And I
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