“Nothing,” she answered without emotion.
“Will you give me a second chance?”
She felt like something that had been thrown off a ship in a heavy sea, thrashed from wave to wave and left stranded on jagged rocks. He had turned his back on her when she needed him. She had given up her son—her son—to the hands of a murderess, and all she wanted to do was turn off her mind before she went insane. Would God grant her a second chance, to hold her baby again? That and only that was what she steered toward, and everything else was wreckage in the storm.
“The FBI’s going to find David. They’ll take care of everything. It won’t be long, now that they’ve got her name and picture on television.”
Laura wanted desperately to believe that. Kastle and another FBI agent had come to the house at seven o’clock, and Laura had listened as Kastle told her more about the woman she’d come to identify as Mary Terror. Born on April 9, 1948, to wealthy parents in Richmond, Virginia. Father in the railroad freight business. One brother who’d hanged himself when he was seventeen. Attended Abernathy Prep, honors student, active in student government and editor of the school newspaper. Went to Penn State for two years, political science major, again active in student government. Evidence of drug use and radical leanings. Left college and resurfaced in New York City, where she enrolled in drama at NYU. Evidence of radical student involvement at NYU and Brandeis University. Then across the country to Berkeley, where she became involved with the Weather Underground. At some point she met Jack Gardiner, a Berkeley radical who introduced her into a Weather Underground splinter group designated the “Storm Front.” On August 14, 1969, Mary Terrell and three other members of the Storm Front broke into the home of a conservative Berkeley history professor and his wife and knifed them to death. On December 5, 1969, a bomb attributed to the Storm Front exploded in the car of a San Francisco IBM executive and tore both his legs away. On January 15, 1970, a second bomb exploded in the lobby of the Pacific Gas and Electric building and killed a security guard and a secretary. Two days later, a third bomb killed an Oakland attorney who was defending a winery owner in a civil liberties case involving migrant workers.
“There’s more,” Kastle had said when Laura had lowered her face.
On June 22, 1970, two policemen in San Francisco were shot to death in their car. Witnesses put Mary Terrell and a Storm Front member named Gary Leister at the site. On October 27,1970, a documentary filmmaker who’d evidently been doing a film on the militant underground was found with his throat slashed in a trash dumpster in Oakland. Two of Mary Terrell’s fingerprints were discovered on a roll of exposed film. On November 6, 1970, the chairman of a police task force on the Storm Front was ambushed and shotgunned to death while leaving his home in San Francisco.
“Then the Storm Front moved east,” Kastle had told her, the thick file folder on the coffee table between them. “On June 18, 1971, a policeman was found with his throat cut and hanging by his hands from nails in an abandoned warehouse in Union City, New Jersey, a communiqué from the Storm Front in his shirt pocket.” He looked up at her. “They were declaring total war on what they called—and excuse me for my language—‘pigs of the Mindfuck State.’” He continued on, along the trail of terror. “On December 30, 1971, a pipe bomb exploded in the mailbox of a Union City district attorney and blinded his fifteen-year-old daughter. Three months and twelve days later, four police officers eating lunch in a Bayonne, New Jersey, diner were shot to death and a taped communiqué from the Storm Front—with Jack Gardiner’s voice on it—was delivered to area radio stations. On May 11, 1972, a pipe bomb crippled the assistant chief of police in Elizabeth, New Jersey, and again a taped communiqué was delivered. Then we found them.”
“You found them?” Doug had asked. “The Storm Front?”
“In Linden, New Jersey, on the night of July 1,1972, there was a shootout, an explosion, and fire, and in the smoke Mary Terrell, Jack Gardiner, and two others got away. The house they were living in was an armory. They’d stockpiled weapons, ammunition, and bomb apparatus, and it was apparent they were about to do something very big and probably very deadly.”
“Like what?” Doug was working a paper clip around and around, nearing its breaking point.
“We never found out. We think it was timed to happen on the Fourth of July. Anyway, since 1972 the Bureau’s been looking for Mary Terrell, Gardiner, and the others. We had a few leads, but they went nowhere.” He closed the file, leaving the picture of Mary Terrell out on the table. “We came close to finding her in Houston in 1983. She was working as a cleaning lady at a high school under the name Marianne Lakey, but she cleared out before we got an address. One of the teachers was an undergrad at Berkeley, and she recognized her but not soon enough.”
“So why haven’t you been able to catch her in all this time?” Laura’s father stood up from his chair and picked up the photograph. “I thought you people were professionals!”
“We do our best, Mr. Beale.” Kastle offered a thin smile. “We can’t be in all places at all times, and people do get through the net.” He returned his attention to Laura. “One of our agents on the scene that night in 1972 saw Mary Terrell at close range. He said she was pregnant and badly wounded, bleeding from the abdomen.”
“Well, why the hell didn’t he shoot her right then and there?” Franklin asked.
“Because,” Kastle said evenly, “she shot him first. One bullet in the face, one in the throat. He retired on disability. Anyway, we thought for a while that Mary had crawled off somewhere and died, but about a month later a letter with a Montreal postmark was delivered to the New York Times. It was from Jack Gardiner: ‘Lord Jack,’ he called himself. He said Mary Terrell and the two others were still alive, and that the Storm Front’s war against the pigs wasn’t over. That was the last communiqué.”
“And no one’s ever found Jack Gardiner?” Doug asked.
“No. The underground swallowed him up and the others, too. We think they must’ve split up, and were planning to converge again at some prearranged signal. It never happened. The reason I’m giving you all this background is that you’re going to be hearing it on the newscasts every day, and I wanted you to hear it from me first.” He stared at Laura. “The Bureau’s releasing Mary’s file to the networks, CNN, and the newspapers. You’ll probably start hearing the first stories on the late news tonight. And the longer we can keep the press interested, the better our chances of someone spotting Mary Terrell and leading us to her.” He lifted his eyebrows. “You see?”
“They’ll find her,” Doug said, sitting on the bed beside Laura. “They’ll bring David back. You’ve got to believe it.”
She didn’t answer, her eyes staring at nothing. The shadows of the nightmare swarmed in her mind. After hearing what Kastle had to say, she knew Mary Terror would never surrender without a fight. It wasn’t in the psychology of such a person to surrender. No, she would choose the martyr’s death, by gun-battle execution. And what would happen to David in that hell of bullets?
“I want to sleep,” she said. Doug stayed with her awhile longer, helpless to soothe her silent rage and pain, and then he left her alone.
Laura was afraid of sleep, and what might be waiting for her there. Rain tapped at the window, a bony sound. She got up to get a drink of water from the bathroom, and she found herself opening the dresser drawer where the gun rested.
She picked it up. Its evil, oily smell came to her. A small package of death, there in her hands. Mary Terror must know a lot about guns. Mary Terror lived by the gun and would die by the gun, and God help David.
Their pastor from the First United Methodist Church had come to see them that evening and had led them all in prayer. Laura had hardly heard the words, her mind still bombarded with shock. She needed a prayer now. She needed something to get her through this night. The thought that she might never hold her child again was about to drive her crazy with grief, and the idea of that woman’s hands on him made her grip th
e gun with bleached knuckles.
She had never thought she could kill anyone before. Never in a million years. But now, with the gun in her hand and Mary Terror on the loose, she thought she could squeeze the trigger without flinching.
It was a terrible feeling, the desire to kill.
Laura put the gun back into the drawer and slid it shut. Then she got down on her knees and prayed for three things: David’s safe return, that the FBI found that woman quickly, and that God would forgive her thoughts of murder.
6
Belle of the Ball
AS LAURA PRAYED IN ATLANTA, A GRAY COUPE DE VILLE slowed on a forested road sixty miles northwest of Richmond. The car took a curve off the main road onto one that was narrower, and continued another half mile. Its headlights glinted off the windows of a house on a bluff, nestled amid pines and century-old oaks. The windows of the house were dark, and no smoke rose from the white stone chimney. Telephone and electric lines stretched from here to the highway, a rugged distance. Natalie Terrell stopped her car before the steps of the front porch, and she got out into the bitter wind.
A half moon had broken free of the clouds. It threw sparks of silver onto the ruffled water of Lake Anna, which the house overlooked. Another road snaked down the hill to a boathouse and pier. Natalie saw no other car, but she knew: her daughter was there.
Shivering, she walked up the steps to the porch. She tried the doorknob, and the door opened. She walked inside, out of the wind, and she started to reach for the light switch.
“Don’t.”
She stopped. Her heart had given a vicious jolt.
“Are you alone?”
Natalie strained to see where her daughter was in the room, but couldn’t find her. “Yes.”
“They didn’t follow you?”
“No.”
“Don’t turn on the lights. Close the door and step away from it.”
Natalie did. She saw a shape rise up from a chair, and she stood with her back against a wall as it passed her. Mary stared out a window, watching the road. Her size—her largeness—made pure fear leech to Natalie’s stomach. Her daughter was taller than she by about four inches, and much broader through the shoulders. Mary stood motionless in the dark, her gaze on the road as her mother shrank back from her presence.
“Why didn’t they follow you?” Mary asked.
“They…went somewhere else. I sent them…” Fear had her by the throat and wouldn’t let her speak. “I sent them to the beach house.”
“They had a tap on the line.”
“Yes.”
“I figured they’d have one of those new phone-tracer gizmos. That’s why I didn’t call from here. Like I said, Big Brother’s in action, huh?”
Mary’s face turned toward her mother. Natalie couldn’t make out her features, but something about her face was brutal. “So how come you didn’t tell them I was coming here?”
“I don’t know,” Natalie answered. It was the truth.
“Mother,” Mary said, and she walked to her and gave her a cold kiss on the cheek.
Natalie couldn’t suppress a shudder. Her daughter smelled unclean. She felt Mary’s hand rest against her shoulder; there was something gripped in it, and Natalie realized Mary was holding a gun.
Mary stepped back, and mother and daughter stared at each other in the dark. “It’s been a long time,” Mary said. “You’ve gotten older.”
“No doubt.”
“Well, so have I.” She wandered to the window again, peering out. “I didn’t think you’d come. I figured you were going to send the pigs after me.”
“Then why did you call?”
“I’ve missed you,” Mary said. “And Father, too. I’m glad you didn’t bring the pigs. I saw your car pull in, and I knew pigs don’t drive Cadillacs. But I’m parked down at the boathouse, and if I saw somebody following you I was going to take my baby and get out on the lake road.” The lake road was a trail, really, that wound around much of Lake Anna before joining the main road. This time of year a gate closed the trail off, but Mary had already broken the gate off its hinges to allow a quick escape.
My baby, Mary had said. “Where’s the child?” Natalie asked.
“Back bedroom. I’ve got him wrapped up in a blanket so he’ll be all comfy-cozy. I didn’t want to start a fire. You never can tell who might smell the smoke. The rangers’ station is still a couple of miles north, isn’t it?”
“Yes.” The lake house, constructed for summer use, had no furnace but there were three fireplaces for cool nights. Right now the house was as chilly as a tomb.
“So why didn’t you bring the pigs?”
Natalie could feel her daughter watching her, like a wary animal. “Because I knew you wouldn’t give up if they caught you. I knew they’d have to kill you.”
“But isn’t that what you want? You said it in the papers: you wouldn’t cry if I was dead.”
“That’s right. I was thinking of the baby.”
“Oh.” She nodded. Her mother had always loved babies; it was when they got older that she turned her back in boredom. Mary had taken a gamble, and it had worked. “Okay, I can dig it.”
“I’d like to know why you stole him from his mother.”
“I’m his mother,” Mary said flatly. “I told you. I’ve named him Drummer.”
Natalie moved out of the corner. Mary’s gaze tracked her across the room, and her mother stopped near the cold fireplace made of fieldstones. “Stealing a baby is a new one for you, isn’t it? Murders, bombings, and terrorism weren’t enough for you? You had to steal an innocent child not two days old?”
“Talk, talk,” Mary said. “You’re still the same, talking that shit.”
“You’d better listen to me, damn it!” Natalie snapped, much louder than she’d intended. “By God, they’re going to hunt you down for this! They’ll kill you and drag your body through the street! Sweet Jesus, what’s in your mind to make you do such a thing?”
Mary was silent for a moment. She set the Colt down on a table, close enough to get it fast if she needed it. The coast was clear, though; the pigs were sniffing around the family’s beach house by now. “I always wanted a baby,” Mary told her. “One of my own, I mean. From my own body.”
“And so you steal another woman’s child?”
“Talking shit,” Mary chided her mother. Then: “I almost had a baby once. Before I got hurt. That was a long time ago, but…sometimes I still think I can feel the baby kick. Maybe it’s a ghost, huh? A ghost, up inside me trying to get out. Well, I let the ghost out. I gave him bones, skin, and a name: Drummer. He’s my baby now, and no one in this mindfucked world’s going to take him away from me.”
“They’ll kill you. They’ll hunt you down and kill you, and you know it.”
“Let them try. I’m ready.”
Natalie heard a sound that made her sick with anguish: the thin noise of a baby crying, from the guest bedroom. Mary said, “He’s a good kid. He doesn’t cry very much.”
“Aren’t you going to go get him?”
“No. He’ll go back to sleep in a few minutes.”
“He’s hungry!” She felt her cold cheeks redden with anger. “Are you letting him starve to death?”
“I’ve got formula for him. Don’t you get it, Mother? I love Drummer. I’m not going to let anything hap—”
“Balls,” Natalie said, and she strode past her daughter into the hallway. She reached out, found a light switch, and turned on the overhead light. It stung her eyes for a few seconds, and she heard Mary pick up the gun again. Natalie continued into the guest bedroom, turned on a lamp, and looked at the crying, red-faced baby wrapped in a coarse gray blanket on the bed. She wasn’t prepared for the sight of such a small infant, and her heart ached. This child’s mother—Laura Clayborne they said her name was—must be ready for an asylum by now. She picked up the crying infant and held him against her. “There, there,” she said. “It’s all right, everything’s going to be all—”
&
nbsp; Mary came into the room. Natalie saw the animal cunning in her daughter’s eyes, the years of hardscrabble living etched on her face. Mary once was a beautiful, vivacious young woman, the belle of the ball in Richmond society. Now she resembled a bag lady, used to living under train trestles and eating out of cast-iron pots. Natalie looked quickly away from her, before her eyes were overpowered by the waste of a human being. “This child’s hungry. You can hear it in his crying. And he needs his diaper changed! Damn it, you don’t know the first thing about taking care of a baby, do you?”
“I’ve had some practice,” Mary said, watching her mother rock Drummer with a gentle motion.
“Where’s the formula? We’re going to warm some up and feed this child, right this minute!”
“It’s in the car. You’ll walk down to the boathouse with me, won’t you?” It was a command, not a question. Natalie hated the boathouse; it was where Grant had hanged himself from an overhead rafter.
When they returned, Natalie switched on the kitchen stove and warmed a bottle of formula. Mary sat at the small table and watched her mother feed the freshly diapered Drummer, the Colt near at hand. The shine of light on her mother’s diamond rings drew Mary’s attention. “That’s right, that’s right,” Natalie crooned. “Baby’s having a good dinner now, isn’t him? Yes, him is!”
“Did you ever hold me like that?” Mary asked.
Natalie ceased her crooning. The baby sucked noisily at the nipple.
“What about Grant? Did you hold him like that, too?”
The nipple popped out of the infant’s mouth. He made a little wailing sound of need, and Natalie guided the nipple back into his cupid’s-bow lips. What would Mary do, she wondered, if she were to suddenly turn away, walk out of this house with David Clayborne, and get into the car? Her gaze fixed on the Colt and then skittered away.
Mary read it. “I’ll take my son now,” she said, and she stood up and lifted Drummer away from her mother. Drummer kept feeding, staring up at her with big, unfocused blue eyes. “Isn’t he pretty? I almost had a wreck looking at him. He’s so pretty, isn’t he?”
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