that’s what I was saying, Officer!” She shifted Bozo to her other arm and explained, “Some boy came around this morning at about five o’clock and woke us all up, nicely, though, he was very polite and well-spoken, and he said that the management had sent him, that some terrorist group or other was going to blow the entire complex up with dynamite because one of the owners did something the Iranians didn’t like, had helped hide Salman Rushdie or something like that. So I got Bozo, and we hurried out here and we all went over to that building over there, and we hid in the basement.” She turned, and pointed with her free hand, indicating the unfinished office building.
Lieutenant Buckley nodded. “Go on,” he said.
“Well, that’s where we all are, but I got tired of waiting, so I came up to see what was going on, and I looked over here and saw all your cars and came over to ask if you’d found all the dynamite yet. Did you?”
“We haven’t found any dynamite, Ms. Hagarty,” Buckley told her. “I think it must have been a prank. We’ll check, though.”
“A prank?” Her voice rose in outrage. “But we’re all over there in our pajamas, and we’ve missed work because we didn’t dare come back for our clothes! It’s almost been fun, in a scary sort of way, but I have better things to do! Whose idea of a prank is this, anyway?”
“I don’t know, Ms. Hagarty,” Buckley said. He turned to one of the officers and muttered something Smith couldn’t catch; the officer nodded, then turned and trotted back toward the main body of police.
Buckley gestured to the policewoman, and said, “Ms. Hagarty, if you’ll go to that van over there, this officer will take your statement, and then I think we can let you go back to your apartment, and you can get on with whatever you should be doing. Thank you for your cooperation.”
Nora Hagarty started to say something, but just then Bozo made a bid for freedom, scrabbling and trying to leap down from her arms, and she had to struggle to haul him back up to her generous bosom, leaving dirty paw-prints on her nightgown.
“This way, Ms. Hagarty,” the policewoman said. With a hand on Ms. Hagarty’s elbow, she started across the parking lot. Buckley headed in the other direction, toward the office building.
Smith called out, “Ms. Hagarty!”
“Yes?” She stopped abruptly and turned to stare at him. The policewoman stopped as well.
“I’m sorry to bother you, Ms. Hagarty,” Smith said, “But where did you get that hat?”
Startled, Hagarty reached up and removed the slouch hat, revealing a headful of curlers, and looked at it. “This thing? Why, I’ve had it for years. I just threw it on on my way out the door, to keep the sun off, or in case we got more rain. I couldn’t find my umbrella and the boy said I shouldn’t take the time to look. I thought I might need it, though. I know the weather reports didn’t say anything about rain, but the way the weather’s been this year you never know; I’ve never seen so much rain as we’ve had this year!” She shrugged and plopped the hat back on her head.
“Have you worn it much recently?” Smith asked.
The policewoman was looking at him doubtfully. Buckley had stopped and turned back to listen.
“This old thing? In the summer? Of course not!” Hagarty made a wave of dismissal. “Don’t be silly! It hasn’t been out of my closet in months. In fact, I don’t think I’ve worn it since Easter.” She stared at him. “Why?” she asked, suddenly suspicious.
“Oh, nothing,” Smith lied, “It just looked like one I’d seen somewhere, and I was trying to remember where.”
“Well, I think I did wear it back in February, maybe,” Hagarty reluctantly allowed.
“I wasn’t here in February; I only moved in in April,” Smith told her.
“Well, then I can’t help you, young man!” She turned away and marched on across the lot, the policewoman at her side.
Buckley strolled back across the lot to where Smith stood, between the Lincoln and a brown Datsun.
“Mr. Smith,” he said, “What was that about?”
Smith shrugged. “That hat,” he said, “It’s just like the one I saw in my nightmare.”
Buckley glanced after the hat, then back at Smith. “Really?” he said.
“I think so.”
Buckley shrugged. “Just a coincidence, maybe.”
“Yeah,” Smith agreed, doubtfully, staring after Nora Hagarty, “Just a coincidence.”
6.
At 3:10 p.m. on Wednesday, August 2nd, the Montgomery County police, under the direction of Detective Lieutenant Daniel R. Buckley, acting in response to several reports of missing persons in the unincorporated town of Diamond Park, Maryland, found one hundred and forty-two people, ranging in age from three to sixty-eight, waiting in the basement of a partially-completed building in the temporarily-abandoned Orchard Heights office park. Accompanying them were fourteen assorted dogs, eleven cats, two hermit crabs carefully tucked in their owner’s coat pocket, a hamster, and a scarlet macaw. Two cats, a parakeet, and a white mouse had been lost, and were never recovered.
All of those found were residents of the Bedford Mills Apartments, a small residential complex on Barrett Road. All gave the same story, of being awakened by a polite young man who told them that the complex had received a bomb threat. When informed that the threat was apparently false, all came out of the basement promptly and under their own power, without further urging.
The police took no further action. They did not enter the unfinished office basement, nor continue searching the vacated apartments; they no longer had a probable cause, or anything to search for.
Lieutenant Buckley did, however, ask for signed statements from several of the people involved in the incident. Over the course of the next few days, most of those he had asked obliged him. The statements all tallied closely— very closely, indeed.
When he read through them on the afternoon of Monday, August 7th, Buckley noticed the unusual lack of discrepancies, but dismissed it as the result of those giving the statements having spent the morning together with nothing to do but discuss the situation.
The parties responsible for the prank were never identified or apprehended.
Neither the Washington Post nor the Times bothered to mention the incident, but the various weekly Gazette newspapers put it on page one. Both the daily edition and the weekly version of the Montgomery Journal also reported it on page one, below the fold. The Express weeklies, which had just changed their collective name from the Chronicle-Express the week before and were still experimenting with the front page, put it on page two.
The Gaithersburg Gazette gave it a follow-up mention the next week, as well, castigating the decline in parental discipline that led to such stunts. None of the other papers bothered.
Also on the afternoon of Wednesday, August 2nd, somewhat after 3:10, Edward J. Smith threw his summer clothes and a few toiletries in a suitcase and took a room at the Red Roof Inn on Route 124, three miles up the road in Gaithersburg.
This
