When the Flood Falls. J.E. Barnard

there wouldn’t be a next time.

      It was his idea to walk instead of sit. Fresh air, a fresh angle on their problems. Counselling would be a fresh angle, she’d said. I’ll think about it, he’d responded.

      They walked shoulder to shoulder into the park, away from the few damp dog-walkers, stepping around puddles on the paved trail, while the leaves dripped and the river rushed past, swollen by spring rains farther up the Fraser Valley. He wanted to move home while they worked out a friendly separation. Give his shift buddies time to get used to the idea or they’d ask too many questions. She wondered out loud why it was more important to avoid questions than to face the fact that he’d attacked her in their own kitchen. He’d said, so calmly she didn’t believe she was hearing right until it was almost too late to react, “They’d ask fewer if I was a grieving widower.” And he’d shoulder-checked her sideways, off the path and onto the slippery riverbank.

      Sitting on that sunny gravel road under summery blue sky, two months and four mountain ranges away from Dan, and at least a kilometre from the nearest river, Lacey held out her hands, checking for scrapes across her palms from that desperate grab at the sodden bushes to keep herself out of the murky, swirling Fraser River. He’d helped her to her feet, swearing it was just a bit of horseplay, something to break the icy distance between them. There’d been no further mention of his moving home, or of counselling. A sleepless week later she’d called Tom and arranged to be in Calgary immediately following her exit interview from the RCMP.

      After a bit, obedient to the commanding voice in her head, she got to her feet and headed back up the road at a slow trot. There was, she remembered, a short path up from where she’d picked up Dee. It ran steeply up the hill and crossed the main trail near Dee’s backyard. She’d barely have time to shower and get down to the museum on time.

      The busy morning that followed kept her from thinking too hard about anything. Well, except about pushy Camille from the press conference. The woman poked her shapely nose into every area of the building. A handful of similarly streaked blondes followed her around, their high voices echoing acros the vast atrium like the yapping of a dozen purse puppies. Later they clustered in the outer office, watching through the glass wall as their leader flipped her hair and waved her arms at Rob, no doubt to punc­tuate some impossible new demand. Camille, the perennial headache.

      Lacey focused on adjusting the camera over the elevator door, which, she noted, was the same brand that covered Jake Wyman’s back gates. Nothing but the best around here. She went from that task to the next, working around the swirl of activity in and out of the theatre. Rehearsals were nothing to do with her. She would see the show on Friday with Dee.

      Dee was at the museum by late morning, calm and focused in the midst of a storm of queries from volunteers and workers alike. Yesterday’s despair might never have happened, save that the tension in her thin shoulders relaxed fractionally when she waved to Lacey. The mere presence of a police officer often had the same effect at an accident scene. People trusted you to handle it. You got good at projecting an air of calm competence even before you knew what you were up against. Fake it till you make it — just like Lacey was doing with this job for Wayne. Except that any of these workers or volunteers, or the nasty Camille, might have it in for Dee over some museum-related issue, and how could a stranger like Lacey hope to sort out the merely irked from the dangerously angry? Her phone went off; Wayne sent her down to the studio area to code keypads.

      Whatever else might be said about this job, it was giving her insight into how artists worked. This corridor beneath the theatre seats held small studios for rental by the hour, as well as a large room that could be divided for holding art classes. The inevitable messes could be cleaned up in a sloping stainless steel sink that was longer and a bit wider than a coffin. Two middle-aged women stood over the sink, sorting sculpting tools into bins. Occasionally a piece would roll down toward the drain with a pattering of plastic on metal.

      Beyond them, a short hallway connected the clay room to the theatre’s working underbelly, where scene­ry and props could be stored and artworks crated up for shipment. This hallway was lined with personal lockers, each with a keypad that needed coding according to Wayne’s list. Here artists could store their tools and masterworks between sessions. These were not ordinary bus station or even high school lockers, but cubbies rang­ing in size from breadboxes to deep, skinny spaces for stretched canvases. Across the aisle were walk-in closets tall enough to hold life-sized sculptures. Some of them contained rolling carts up to waist high, with a tool shelf at the bottom and a square flat top where the sculpting was done. One of the sorting women stepped on a cart’s bottom shelf and pushed off with her other foot, rolling across the floor, clinging to the flat top and laughing as she banged against the big window that opened onto the elevator lobby. No one else came into the area except a few lost rehearsal attendees. The women redirected them to the backstage stairs, pointing the way around by the corridors instead of letting them crowd past Lacey and her toolbox in the short, more direct hallway.

      Lacey smiled her thanks. Signage wasn’t her department, but if it wasn’t installed by Friday, she might spend all night retrieving disoriented guests and actors from the bowels of the building. Good thing she knew it so well by now: two asymmetrical wings connected by the third-floor skywalk and the main floor of the atrium. One wing held the galleries, with art at the top and history at the bottom. The other wing was two floors — a theatre with classrooms and other utilitarian rooms beneath. Theoretically only the actors would be down there. The offices and kitchen under the atrium would be swarming with caterers and staff, but that left a lot of odd corners and back halls where partygoers could get themselves lost. Accidentally or on purpose.

      By noon, she was inside the atrium’s information/security kiosk, kneeling on the floor with her head under the counter, twisting camera cables into a switching box. The midsummer sun beat through the immense window wall onto her back. Sweat glued her waistband to her skin and curls of hair stuck to her forehead. In the confined space, fresh glue and paint fumes assaulted her nose and throat. Beyond the windows, the river’s rumble echoed down her spine. When businesslike heels clicked across the paving-stone floor and stopped behind her, she backed out of her confinement with great relief. Even the dire Camille would be a welcome interruption at this point.

      “Security?” Dee tapped her ubiquitous travel mug on the varnished log countertop. “Can I have a safe-walk escort, please?” Lacey breathed deep and looked up at the sweat-free, wrinkle-free perfection that was Dee after a turbocharged morning.

      “You need an escort? Has something happened?”

      “It’s the protester out front. Rob and I have an appointment, and last time, he stood in front of Rob’s car for ten minutes. We’re taking mine, but he knows it and may stop us again.”

      “I can’t move him out of the way. We can’t touch him as long as he stays on public property.”

      “Just distract him. If he’s busy explaining his cause to a possible convert, he might let us sneak by without a hassle. You don’t have to identify yourself as anything but a curious construction worker.”

      “I look the part.” Lacey stood up and stretched out her back. “You want me to walk you to your vehicle first?”

      “Rob and I will sneak out a side door.” Dee waved at Rob and picked up her travel mug. “Give us three minutes to get into position, then go out and distract.” She and the curator disappeared down the stairs to the studio level.

      Lacey hung around inside the front entrance, watching Mr. Protest march up and down the shoulder by the parking lot exit, waving his sign at passing cars as they slowed for the turn onto the bridge. With his muddy rubber boots, greasy ball cap, and an equally filthy green plaid work shirt half-covered by a straggling grey-brown beard, he could play a hillbilly in any moonshiner movie. He might be a nuisance, but was he dangerous?

      After the three minutes were up, she strolled along the wide sidewalk of blue Rundle-stone slabs, wishing she were a smoker. Smokers could ask anyone for a light and then strike up a conversation. As a law enforcement officer, she had never needed an excuse. People were either flustered or flattered, depending on their conscience. Now she had no uniform, no authority, and