by Ben Miller
Randall rolled his wrist and opened up his arm, revealing to Jack a plastic device in the palm of his hand. “If you don’t stop then they’ll die.”
Jack stopped. He tried to see what Randall held in his hand, but he couldn’t tell for sure from this distance. “What is that?”
“Come back here,” Randall replied, his voice returning to its usual calm.
Jack looked back at Vicki and Jonah, allowing them his full attention for the first time since entering the room. He could see that each had been strapped to the diving board face up. He could not see any blood or any other trauma to either of them. The grisly image of Sheila and Mary Beth Franklin, lying dead on that twin bed without any overt evidence of bodily harm, popped into his mind. Behind each one of them on the tile sat a small machine with a blinking light and a red LED display, each showing a number. Vicki’s machine read “98.” He couldn’t quite see Jonah’s well, but he thought it read “98” as well. In addition to these little machines, Jack could see a thick black wire running from each diving board to a rectangular shape in the middle of the opposite end of the pool. The box looked like a home gaming console.
Jack looked back at Randall, who waved him to come back toward him. Randall pointed to a metal-framed folding chair that sat on the tile less than ten feet in front of Randall; Jack hadn’t noticed it when he had first entered the room. “Have a seat,” Randall offered.
Jack did not let his weapon waiver, but he slowly walked back to the locker room end of the pool, facing Randall head on. He took a few steps forward, stopping about two paces short of the folding chair. “What is that?” Jack asked again.
Randall held his right palm up, revealing the device to Jack. He splayed out his middle, ring, and pinky finger, but kept his thumb and forefinger wrapped tightly around it. “This?” he asked, almost playfully.
Jack nodded.
“Oh, this… this is what is allowing your wife and son to continue breathing.”
Jack himself stopped breathing. He wanted to ask Randall to expound on that comment, but he couldn’t seem to push the air out of his chest to ask.
“Can you see the little monitors at the end of each diving board?” Randall asked.
Jack could feel some wind coming back into his lungs, but he still didn’t speak. He assumed that Randall referred to the machines with the LED displays, so he nodded.
“Those are called pulse oximeters. Do you know what a pulse oximeter is, Jack?”
Jack shook his head.
“A pulse oximeter is a machine designed to read the percentage of oxygenated hemoglobin coursing through peripheral arteries. Your wife and your son each have a lead—a little sticker— on their fingers. Light passes through from one end of the sensor to the other and it can tell how much oxygen their little red blood cells are carrying around.”
Jack thought he understood and regained his voice. “So they’re breathing?”
Randall smiled, as a math teacher would when his pupil finally understood long division. “Yes. In fact, quite well. One hundred percent is the best one could hope for, and they’re both satting at ninety-eight percent. They received propofol, a powerful sedative. They’re in a sort of twilight state right now, in a very deep sleep. But still alive.
“Now, do you see that little box on the far end?” Randall asked.
Jack again nodded. “Yeah.”
“That is, of all things, a Wii console. Nintendo Wii. Have you heard of it?”
“Yeah.” Jack began to sense that Randall intended to confuse him with this discourse on modern technology. He knew he needed to concentrate, stay focused, maintain his edge, for he recognized that his family lying in peril at the other end of this room would cloud his judgment, impair his negotiating skills.
“Good. It’s not a regular Nintendo Wii, though, but I’ll come back to that. This…” He pointed with his left hand to his right, and then he shifted his weight a little, turning slightly to his left. He looked to the left, then quickly back at Jack. “This is a Wii controller. My finger is holding down the trigger on the back side of this controller on purpose. If I release this trigger, it sends a signal to the game console—kind of the whole purpose of these remote, wireless game controllers, you know, to send signals to their consoles. Anyway, when that happens—or if, I guess I should say ‘if’—then the console will respond by sending out a signal along those little black wires towards the diving boards, detonating small charges at the base of each diving board. Simultaneously. See, that’s the genius of it, Jack. They would both go off simultaneously.”
He paused to place emphasis on this word. As Randall continued his smile broadened, gleeful over the ingenuity of this whole situation. “You see, the charges at the base are not nearly powerful enough to kill them. Actually, if it goes as planned—and, well, everything for me goes as planned—the explosion wouldn’t even injure either of them. But it would cause the diving board to shatter at the base. And both your wife and your son would fall into the pool.” He studied Jack’s face and could not yet perceive terror. He didn’t even see fear. Jack just focused on the other end of the pool, looking at Randall’s electrical handiwork.
Apparently Randall needed to explain it further. “Jack, your unconscious wife and your unconscious son would fall into the water, at opposite sides of the pool, simultaneously. Within seconds their lungs fill with water, their bodies weighed down by the diving boards themselves. Now you could jump in and try to save them. But you’d never get them both. In fact, I’d put money down against your even saving one of them.”
Jack turned back to face Randall. He couldn’t believe this far-fetched scenario. Clearly Randall’s delusions of grandeur had led him astray. He stared dead into Randall’s eyes.
“Do you remember what Sarah said, Jack?”
What? Who the fuck is Sarah? Jack tried to not let the confusion in his mind seep into his facial expression. He tried to think about women he knew named Sarah. None of the victims in this case, or their family members. None of his friends or family members. An old acquaintance from high school? Someone Randall knew?
“Loving someone means you’re willing to watch them die.” Apparently, Randall had given up on the chance that Jack would reply, so he answered his own question. “I’m paraphrasing here, of course.” He rapidly cocked his head to the left, as if avoiding some unseen flying insect. “Copyright laws…” he whispered, his face curling into a wince as he shrugged.
Jack had no idea what this meant. It seemed to reference some irrelevant piece of pop-culture, but he could not place it. Jack had a sudden irrational fear that, if he continued to talk to Randall in this meandering manner long enough, Randall’s insanity might rub off on him, start to invade his brain like an infection, make it impossible for him to follow a linear thought.
“So, the next question would be, Jack, when I release—sorry, if, IF—if I release this trigger, which one do you love more?”
What was Randall getting at? Loving someone means you’re willing to watch them die? So, would Jack save the one he loved more, or would he watch the one die who he loved more? None of this made any sense to Jack. He teetered on the edge of delirium. He suddenly found himself back in that tent on that camping trip with Uncle Ned, drowning in terrifying uncertainty. He had to shift the conversation; he needed to take some control.
“You’re bluffing,” Jack accused, still boring holes into Randall’s retinas with his stare.
Randall’s smile evaporated as he leaned forward and stared right back, deadly serious, for several seconds. As if he had just lost a middle school staring contest, Randall’s serious countenance suddenly broke, back into his animated demeanor. “Maybe,” he shrugged. He then began to nod, his expression becoming a little more serious again. “Maybe,” he repeated. “Do you know what I did after high school, Jack?”
Another diversion in the conversation. Jack’s frustration with the lack of contiguity in this conversation began to boil over. He needed to throw a wren
ch in Randall’s plans, an improvisation into his script. “You mean before you started killing little kids?”
“Oh, yes, long before that,” Randall replied with a wave of his hand, completely unfazed. “In college. I majored in mechanical and electrical engineering. I actually worked on a couple of projects that later went on to form the basis for much of modern day home gaming devices. But, silly me, I left that field to go on to medical school, ‘cause I thought I could make a difference in the world. I thought I could improve people’s quality of life. But, no, you’re right, I’m probably bluffing about my silly little system down there. Probably.” He nodded several times in succession, his bottom lip jutting out, as if agreeing with Jack’s earlier notion. Suddenly, though, he stopped nodding and glared at Jack. His voice changed abruptly as well, became more menacing, much like it had over the phone earlier. “Or maybe I’ve been working on this for the last several months, I’ve tested it on two separate occasions, and I know exactly what I’m fucking talking about.”
Randall held his right hand up in the air again, palm out. “Why don’t we find out, huh?” He extended his forefinger straight but kept it bent at the first knuckle, keeping it in contact with the trigger.
“No!” Jack screamed and took a step forward. For the first time since entering the pool, he took his left hand off of his gun put both hands in the air, removing his aim from Randall. “No,” he repeated, this time a little more calmly.
Randall smiled. He finally had instilled fear in The Great Jackson Byrne. “Good.” He returned a full grip to the controller and brought it back to a neutral position in front of him.
Of course, Randall could be bluffing. His whole Wii Bomb thing could be a total load of horseshit. But Jack could not risk his wife’s and his son’s lives to take that chance. He admitted to himself that he held an inferior position. He now needed to focus on negotiating. “What do you want?” Jack asked.
Randall’s already broad smile widened even further. “Ah, now you’re starting to ask the right kinds of questions. I like this!” He slapped his knee with his left hand. “Well, since you asked, I think the first thing—the most polite thing, I suppose—would be to say hello to all the folks watching at home!”
88
Caleb Goodnight stared at the screen in front of him through tears that had welled in his lower eyelids. His terror from the scene before him outweighed the countless other emotions he experienced—guilt, devastation, helplessness. There stood Jack Byrne—more than just an acquaintance, someone he would consider a friend—facing every man’s greatest fear: the potential loss of his family. Somehow Jack seemed to keep himself together better than Caleb, though Caleb knew that one should not judge a book by its cover, so to speak.
Randall Franklin had revealed his identity as The Playground Predator to Caleb over the phone less than an hour ago. Franklin then curtly described his current situation, possessing Vicki and Jonah Byrne as hostages, awaiting Jack Byrne to come rescue them. He provided Caleb with a URL which led to a website that Franklin had set up to provide a live feed of the chilling event inside the swimming pool of Chevy Chase High School. Billing it as “the entertainment opportunity of a lifetime,” Franklin instructed Caleb to run this streaming footage live during his show. He offered Caleb and his production crew creative control over the editing process, as his website provided two simultaneous views of the pool from which to choose. He promised adequate but not high sound quality, noting that it may go out from time to time. “Beyond my control,” Franklin had explained, though, given the intricacy of the entire set-up, Caleb found this hard to believe. Before hanging up Franklin assured Caleb that he would monitor the cable news channel to insure that his broadcast went through as instructed. If Franklin saw anything else on CNN that night, he promised to swiftly execute the Byrne family.
Caleb had immediately tried to call Jack Byrne, but it went straight to voicemail. He did not leave a message, not knowing how he could possibly convey his sentiments in such a medium. After a discussion with his co-producers and the network head, in which Caleb had detailed his conversation with Franklin, including the consequences for failing to comply, they had collectively agreed not to discuss the topic with any police officials. They knew the FBI’s policy on reacting to terroristic threats like this one. Even if authorities forbade them from airing the footage, Caleb and his cohorts all felt the moral obligation to follow through with Franklin’s demands; they could not bear the thought of owning responsibility for anyone’s death. Thus, Caleb had gone on camera at the top of the hour.
During the segment in which he usually provides a flattering introduction of his nightly guest, Caleb Goodnight looked directly at the camera with the seriousness unmatched previously in the history of his TV persona. A memory of President George W. Bush addressing the country from the Oval Office on the evening of September 11, 2011 came to his mind.
“Our normal show has been pre-empted tonight by a terrorist,” he began. “A man by the name of Dr. Randall Franklin has identified himself at the so-called Playground Predator that has taken the lives of three small children over the last several weeks throughout the mid-Atlantic. He currently has kidnapped the wife and young son of famed FBI agent, and former guest of this show, Jackson Byrne. He is holding them hostage and filming the entire event, as Special Agent Byrne is expected to negotiate for their safe return.
“I implore you to use extreme caution in watching this show. I assure you that this is very real and, quite frankly, very terrifying. Nothing has been staged. A madman is in control, and we are simply complying with his demands in hopes of savings innocent lives.” The show then flipped to the streaming footage from inside the high school.
Now, several minutes later, Caleb, feeling defeated, leaned forward in a chair in the production control room as he watched the events unfold before him. The tears slowly began to stream down his cheeks. He wanted to leap through the screen, to somehow help his friend Jack.
In this sentiment, Caleb was not alone. Over 60 million other viewers at home wanted to do the same thing.
89
Randall pointed off to his left. Jack followed his finger to the end of the first row of the bleachers. A small but clearly recognizable video camera, its red light aglow on its façade, sat on a small tripod which rested its legs on the second bleacher from the bottom. Jack couldn’t believe he hadn’t noticed it before now. Though Jack remained utterly bewildered, suddenly some of Randall’s previous gestures-- those made in the direction of the camera— made more sense.
Randall then pointed to his right. “And there’s another one.” All the way at the other end of the bleacher sat another camera on another tiny tripod. This one tilted downward, its focus clearly on Jonah and Vicki strapped to the diving boards.
“Your good buddy Caleb Goodnight is doing me the favor of broadcasting our little tete-a-tete on his show tonight,” Randall explained.
Jack tried to comprehend this, tried to understand how and why Randall could achieve such an accomplishment. Whether or not it held any truth. Another bluff, perhaps? What kinds of ploys would Randall have used to try to convince Caleb to display this horror show? Quickly, though, Jack became aware that he could not let his thoughts of safely retrieving his wife and son get derailed. He needed to maintain focus. He needed to negotiate.
“You know that’s where this all started for me,” Randall stated, back in a friendly, conversational manner. “On The Goodnight Hour. I watched you on that show, talking about your heroic and insightful solving of the Lamond Hollows case, and it inspired me.”
“Yeah,” Jack said, just trying to keep the monologue going. His mind worked on a strategy to turn this monologue into more of a dialogue, but he hadn’t arrived at the proper method yet.
Randall continued. “I was in a pretty… dark place, I guess.”
Jack noticed a chink in the armor, so he took a shot. “Because of Lily?”
Randall stared at Jack through his eyebrows, doing
his best impersonation of Jack Nicholson in The Shining. Another terrifying chill passed down Jack’s spine, but he didn’t let it show in his face. Randall then lifted his head, a satisfied smirk on his face. He waved a finger with his free left hand in front of his face. “We’re not going to go there, Jack. Not tonight. Tonight is not for that.”
Jack nodded. “OK. Then what is it for, Randall? What do you want with me?”
“What do I want with you?” Randall repeated. “What I want is what you have.”
Jack scowled, not understanding. “What I have? My family? You had a family, and you destroyed them.”
Randall shook his head in disagreement. “No, not that. And my family was already destroyed. I just put them out of their misery. Their past, present, and future misery.”
“Misery that you brought upon them.” Jack continued to fire at Randall’s perceived weakness, hoping to distract him long enough to take a chance to overcome him, to get that goddamned controller away from him. “Your own daughter, Randall? And you, a doctor, and you couldn’t—”
“No!” Randall shouted. “That was out of my control! There was nothing I could do! She stopped breathing! She was dead before I even laid my hands on her!” Shades of despair began to creep into Randall’s face, which gave Jack hope. He needed to find the exact right moment to make his move. He concentrated on every expression in Randall’s face, on the tension in his grip, the muscle tone in his entire right arm.
But that relaxed, insane smile came back to Randall’s face, and Jack’s hope faded once more. “Oh, you’re good, Jack.” Randall pointed at him, like a teammate would after a brilliant pass to set up a go-ahead goal. “I may have under-estimated you. You are a worthy adversary. But seriously, don’t go there again or your family is dead, OK?
“What I want,” Randall continued, raising the volume in his voice to indicate his bringing the conversation back to where he wanted it, “is your fame. To be remembered, talked about. To go down in the annals of time. You knew that. You figured it out with the messages I left behind, with the song. Oh, that beautiful song. I deserve that, Jack. Not you. You were the star athlete in school, getting all the headlines, all the notice. But I was smarter than you. I was going to do great things in my life. I went to medical school, Jack. I save lives every single day. I deserve to be recognized. Not you.”