by Julie Smith
“Mama?”
“Shavonne, honey, is that you?” The two agents were scrambling back to their equipment.
“Mama. Mama, I’m all right. They treatin’ me good and they need love …” Her voice sounded the way it did when she read aloud, unsure of each word, figuring each one out as she went along.
“Where are you, honey?”
“Love less. They will trade me for love.” Each word separate, slow. “Love less.”
“What you say, honey? Tell me again.”
A man spoke into the phone. “Tell the police we want Lovelace. We’ll call again.”
Dorise felt as if her whole body were being torn by exploding sobs she couldn’t control, that seemed not even a part of her but something far away and destructive.
Twenty-six
“THEY CALLED DORISE,” Shellmire said. “An agent’s on his way with the tape.”
Everyone shouted questions, Skip fairly shrieking hers: “Did she talk to Shavonne?”
He ignored them all, shouting over them. “I’ll run it down, if everyone’ll just be patient.” He looked wilted. Skip thought he must have already sweated a gallon, and the day had hardly started.
The man’s going to be dehydrated by noon.
But so much could happen between then and noon; there was so very much to lose.
“They put Shavonne on and apparently had her read a prepared statement. She said she’s okay and they’ll exchange her for Lovelace. At least that’s what it sounds like. Then a man came on and said they’d call again later.”
“Lovelace for Shavonne. Why on earth do they want her?” Skip was thinking aloud. She didn’t like it. There had to be more.
King said, “Are the hostage negotiators on the scene?”
Shellmire shook his head. “Penny Ferguson’s going to be handling the negotiation.” He looked at his watch. “She should be here in about ten minutes.”
They drank coffee and waited for her, Taylor drumming his pencil nervously the whole time. Skip thought, Wouldn’t you know he’d be a psychologist.
Ferguson arrived with another agent, carrying a briefcase that might have held a change of clothing. She was a petite woman with a neat pageboy. Her hair was sun-streaked brown, the kind of hair that looks natural and costs plenty. Her well-tailored pantsuit was a deep olive, almost black but not as severe. Her silk blouse was a lighter olive that brought out the green in dark hazel eyes. The whole effect was pleasing to the point of soothing. It occurred to Skip that this was no accident.
Ferguson introduced herself in a voice that washed over the group like mother’s milk—warm and nourishing, just sweet enough to make you want more. Skip felt instantly comfortable; she noticed even King was smiling. “Agent Ferguson,” he said, and his own voice seemed to have lost some of its edge.
“Sorry I’m late. I just got in from Washington.”
Shellmire said, “Agent Ferguson’s the best we got—I call her our secret weapon. We flew her in ’cause she’s got a voice could make you kill your grandma if she wanted you to. Fortunately, she usually just wants you to give up your life of crime.”
Ferguson smiled, and she had the teeth of a movie star, an all-American, girl-next-door kind of grin that made you glad she’d gone into law enforcement instead of white-collar crime. “I’m what they call a VNL—till they know me, of course.”
Cindy Lou said, “Abasolo, you can close your mouth. She’s wearing a wedding ring.” Because she was a consultant, and not a police officer, Lou-Lou could say anything she pleased and always did, which made her Skip’s hands-down hero. Yes, she decided, those two have definitely been flirting.
The sergeant gave the psychologist one of his devastating grins. “Don’t be jealous, Lou-Lou. I like my women mean.”
King asked the question everyone else was holding back: “What the hell’s a VNL?”
“A Very Nice Lady, Captain. But that’s only what I look and sound like.”
Shellmire said, “She’s got that right. We got guys in prisons all over the country still don’t know what hit ’em.”
Ferguson sat down, apparently feeling she’d established her credentials. “Morris briefed me,” she told Shellmire. “And I’m quite familiar with the Jacomine case, as well as The Jury.”
“Okay. The only new development we got is they want to exchange the victim for Jacomine’s granddaughter.”
“What kind of weapons do they have?”
“We don’t know.”
“How many people are in there?”
“Don’t know that either.”
“Are we set up at the scene?” She was firing questions like darts, the VNL momentarily banished.
“We have a command post next door and the block’s surrounded.”
“Do they know we’re there?”
“So far we haven’t heard a peep out of ’em. Not so much as a curtain flutter. The street’s blocked off, but we’ve got people walking up and down now and then, to make it look normal. So far as we know, they don’t have the least idea we know where they are—or who they are.”
The two psychologists, along with Tarantino and Cappello, were released. That left Shellmire, Skip, Abasolo, King, and Ferguson, who entered the command post in two groups, like people arriving for a business meeting. Goerner was already there.
The furniture had been stripped from the living room and piled in the dining room, replaced by folding tables and chairs, and a baffling maze of phones and electronic equipment.
“How’d you get this stuff in here?” asked Skip.
A man she didn’t know pointed to a side window. “Brought it in from the other side of the house.” He pointed next to a front window. “See those roofs? TAC unit’s already in place.”
Ferguson took off her coat. “Shall I make the call?”
“You better listen to this first. The Rev’s been on the phone.” The speaker couldn’t have been more than twenty-two; he wore khaki shorts and a polo shirt. His head was almost as smooth as The Monk’s, and he had on glasses. “I’m Will Kohler, by the way.”
Shellmire made the introductions. Kohler said, “Shall I play the tape?”
The instant Goerner nodded, Jacomine’s voice filled the room. “Rosie, honey, how the hell are you?”
“Darling, I just stepped out of the shower. Could you give me twenty minutes?”
“Are you wearing a towel? With maybe a pair of high-heeled what-do-you-call-’ ems?”
“Mules, sweetcakes. ’Bye now.”
The woman hung up and Jacomine swore. Then he hung up himself and dialed again. Rosemarie Owens’s machine answered.
Kohler clicked the tape off. “We timed him. He called again in exactly twenty minutes. Listen to this.”
“Rosie, honey.”
“Darling, I’m so glad to hear from you. I could just hug your evil little neck. But I’ve got to be somewhere in ten minutes. Call me there, will you?”
She gave him a number and hung up. Kohler fast-forwarded. “She’s a fast thinker, but of course she didn’t know about this little setup.”
Jacomine’s voice again: “Rosie, what’s going on?”
“My home number isn’t safe, baby. How’ve you been? I’ve been so worried about you.”
“That wasn’t nice what you did to me, baby. Disappearing off the face of the Earth. ’Specially after I did that little favor for you.”
“I had to be out of touch for a while. The FBI came calling.”
“I was getting the dumb idea you just didn’t want to talk to ol’ Uncle Earl.”
“Earl, this is serious. We really can’t talk for a while.”
“Well, we have to, sweetness. I’ve got me a situation here. I need you to send a plane for me and a few of my friends. You know that island you own off the coast of Florida—the one with the airstrip? We need you to take us over there.”
“You think I’ve got planes at my disposal?”
“Charter one, Rosie—and make sure it can’t be traced to yo
u. Or your heirs are gonna die before you do.”
“What the hell are you talking about?”
“That cute little Lovelace is quite a kid. I know you want to meet her sometime.”
“Earl Jackson, you’re just as crazy as you ever were. You’ve got to promise to leave me alone now—do you hear me? You really can’t call on my phone.”
“I don’t have to, honeybunch. I sent somebody to help you. He’s watching you this minute, and he’ll introduce himself real soon. I know you still love me, honey. You do, don’t you? You have to because of what we did together. That thing last week—you remember?”
He rang off, and this time Rosemarie did the cursing.
Kohler turned off the tape. “Neat, huh?”
Goerner’s face twisted like so much dough. “Shit! What about Owens?’
“We don’t know yet. We monitored the call from here and then got in touch with the office in Dallas. But she was gone by the time they got there. We haven’t heard from them since.” He checked the time. “That was forty-five minutes ago.”
“Oh, Lord, what else?”
“Well, sir, there is something. Several somethings.”
Goerner glared as if Kohler were the perp.
“We have laser surveillance equipment that’ll go through their wall, as long as we’ve got our window open. Theoretically, we can hear all over the house, but some things come in better than others. So far we’ve got seven discrete voices. We don’t know how many more there are. We’ve got a few conversations about cooking and household chores, and one that seems pretty interesting. Shall I play it for you?”
“Certainly. For Christ’s sake.”
“This one’s kind of fuzzy at first.”
It began with a blur of voices, one of them female, one male. And then one that was clearly Jacomine’s. “What do you mean he can’t walk?”
The female voice answered. “Tara says we might have hurt him last night. I think you should come up and see him.”
Instead, his voice bloomed into a shout. “Daniel! You get your tail down here.”
Silence.
“Daniel, goddammit!” Again a shout. Then a lot of rustlings and scrapings.
Kohler said, “He must have been sitting down. We think he got out of his chair and left the room.”
“And how long ago was that? Before or after the Rosemarie incident?”
“After. About ten minutes ago. That room—” Kohler tapped the wall “—the one closest to us—is the one he’s apparently using for an office. When he’s in there, we do pretty well. When he’s not, we don’t.”
Ferguson said, “What do you think? Do we call?”
Goerner put both hands over his face, and drew them down to his chest, his fingertips ending up on his mouth—a man frustrated and nervous. Headed for a heart attack, Skip thought.
“Yeah, sure. Make the call.”
Ferguson sat at a folding table and dialed, showing not so much as a wrinkle in her green silk. “Hello. This is Agent Penny Ferguson of the FBI. I wonder if I could speak to the Reverend Jacomine?”
The phone went dead.
Kohler said, “This is cool. All calls from their number to any FBI office get put through to here automatically. So when he calls back—” He was interrupted by a ringing phone.
Giving Goerner a smug look, he answered it himself. “Federal Bureau of Investigation.” There was a pause.” Agent Ferguson? One moment.” He punched buttons and looked up at his audience, canary feathers dotting his chin.
The nerds, thought Skip, shall inherit the Earth.
Ferguson answered with her last name. The caller rang off.
After that, they waited.
If Jacomine and his followers were holding a council of war, they weren’t doing it in the office.
Finally, they heard someone re-enter the room, and a few minutes later a phone rang. Ferguson jumped, ready to go. Kohler held up a hand. “It’s ringing at the Bourgeois house. We’re set up so we can hear the whole thing.” He adjusted something—the volume, Skip thought.
They heard Jacomine say, “You shouldn’t have called the FBI. I said tell the police.”
“What you mean, don’ call the FBI? Let me talk to my baby.” Dorise sounded indiscreetly furious.
“We’re disappointed in you, Mrs. Bourgeois.”
“What you talkin’ disappointed? You kidnap my chile from a public school, you think my house ain’t crawling with FBI? What you think I’m gon’ do to get ’em out of here? They here right now, and they got my phone tapped. They say they don’t, but I know they do. What you think I can do about that?”
All right, Dorise! Skip had no idea whether she’d been coached, but she liked it. It had the sound of “I-can’t-beat-’em-and-neither-can-you.”
“Good. Then I’ll talk to them. Have Agent Ferguson call us, please, gentlemen.”
In the command post, a collective sigh went up when he rang off.
Ferguson checked her watch. “We’ll give it ten minutes. To fray their nerves a little.”
“Why not?” said Goerner. “Mine are shot. They might as well catch up.” His hand was torturing his hair, as if he might tear out a hunk of it. Skip would have felt sorry for him if his voice didn’t sound as if it could cut concrete.
When the allotted time had elapsed, Ferguson dialed again. “Agent Ferguson calling. I had a message from you.”
“Ah, yes. Agent Ferguson. Apparently, you know where we are.”
“Yes. And we have the block roped off and surrounded. But you expected that, didn’t you?” She waited a moment. “How are you doing in there? Is Shavonne okay?”
“She’s doing great, Agent Ferguson. We’re not gonna hurt that child.”
“Why don’t you call me Penny, Reverend?”
“Looks like you know my name, too.”
“Oh, yes.”
“All part of the plan, Penny. All part of the plan. Here’s what I need: You just give me my granddaughter in exchange for Shavonne, and then give me and my friends an escort to the airport. Now what could be simpler?”
“How many people are in there with you?”
“You’ll be told when the time comes.” He spoke sharply. “You just get me my granddaughter.”
“Does she want to join you?”
“Of course. Sure she does, Penny—we’re doing more for justice in this country than you and every damn police force in every state combined.”
Goerner balled up his hands in victory-fists—it was an admission of guilt.
Ferguson stayed cool. “Well, Reverend, is there anything you need in there? Have you got enough food and supplies?”
“That’s not really your concern, is it?”
“I’m a little worried about Daniel.”
He hesitated before speaking. “Now, why in the hell are you worried about Daniel?”
“Is he okay?”
“You tend to your own knitting, Miss Agent Penny Ferguson.” The phone went dead.
Goerner’s mouth worked like he was chewing. “Fuck.”
There’s got to be more, Skip thought. There just has to be.
She had butterflies that felt more like bees, partly from fear and tension, but partly from excitement. As the negotiator talked with Jacomine, an idea started forming in the back of her mind. It was so outlandish there wasn’t a chance of talking anyone into it—and yet she couldn’t get it out of her head. She was reasonably sure this particular situation—therefore this specific opportunity—had never come up before.
It was going to meet resistance, though. Maybe this wasn’t the time to bring it up.
Kohler, wearing headphones, was making keep-it-down signs. When he had their attention, he turned a dial, and they heard a woman, apparently in Jacomine’s office. “He needs a doctor, Daddy. This is not something to mess with.”
“It’s God’s call, Tara. We’ve done the contest a thousand times and nobody’s gotten hurt before.”
“Daddy, he’s getting worse.
He can’t even get up to go to the bathroom.” Her voice was panicky.
“Now, don’t you worry about it, you hear me? Go on out of here now. 1 got a phone call to make.”
They sat tensely while he dialed a number and got no answer.
Twenty-seven
SKIP’S MIND RACED. Finally, she could stand it no longer. “Agent Goerner, I’ve got a thought.”
He looked at her from under beetle brows, his expression saying this better be good. “What?” Rude. Barely acknowledging her.
“Look, we know we’d never exchange one hostage for another, but evidently they don’t know that or they wouldn’t be asking for it.”
“What are you getting at, Langdon?”
“Lovelace is nearly as tall as I am. Nobody’d notice the difference without having us side by side.”
“So?”
“Well, I bet anything her grandfather hasn’t seen her in years—the only one who’d recognize her is Daniel, and sounds like he’s out of commission.”
“You want to change places with her, is that what you’re saying? You want me to send you in there to get killed?”
“I’d have a gun with me. We could work that out.”
“Absolutely not. You crazy, Langdon?”
“Besides,” Shellmire said, “Jacomine might not know his own granddaughter, but he most assuredly knows you.”
“Not with my head shaved, he doesn’t.”
Ferguson said, “Gentlemen, take this woman seriously. Do you hear what she just offered?”
Abasolo was staring straight at Skip, as if sizing her up, deciding whether she was up to it. They’d been through a lot together—his opinion meant a lot. “The gun thing’s not so hard,” he said. “You could pad something so they don’t feel it when they pat you down.”
“Forget it,” said King. “She’s not doing it.”
Goerner glared at him.
Abasolo was still looking at her. “There’s this guy who does theatrical makeup—we’ve worked with him a few times.”
“Are you guys in kindergarten or what?” Goerner snapped.
Skip said, “Listen, please. We can’t let Jacomine take control.”