“Oh, that,” said Donna. “Sure. Didn't know they changed the name. Didn't know it had a name-we just figured he's nutty as a fruitcake.”
“Well, there's that, too,” said Irene. Then she surprised herselfshe actually giggled. It was either a sign of returning mental health or incipient hysteria. She was trying to decide which when the door burst open.
85
“Pender!” Maxwell's voice, from somewhere in the direction of the house. “Pender!”
Miss Miller, her hands and feet bound with towels from her bathroom and a sock stuffed into her mouth under the surgical mask, kicked ineffectually at the boards of the loft. Pender had tried to talk with her a few times, but she didn't seem to want to do anything but scream, so for now he ignored her-and Maxwell- and kept working. He was stacking books at the edge of the hayloft, which smelled of dust and vomit, until he had built himself a barricade two feet high, three feet thick, along the edge of the loft. From behind it he had a clear view of the barn door, and a clearer shot at Maxwell than Maxwell had at him.
It wouldn't be an easy shot, though. The range from the edge of the loft to the door was close to sixty feet, and he'd have to figure in the downward trajectory. He'd also have to try for the kill grid: there was no guarantee that a nine-millimeter round, even a hollowpoint, would knock a man down from that distance.
But at least his target would be backlighted in the doorway. And even if Maxwell did manage to squeeze off a round, Pender figured he'd be safe enough ducking behind three feet of books. Unless of course Maxwell was packing something in the nature of a. 357.
Hurriedly Pender added one more layer to the barricade-a leather-bound set of the complete works of Joyce, Kalat's Biological Psychology, Barlow and Durand's Abnormal Psychology, and twelve volumes of the Handyman's Encyclopedia — then settled down for a long wait.
If Maxwell entered the barn before nightfall, Pender would have the drop on him. If he didn't, Pender could go back on the offensive under cover of darkness while Maxwell was out looking for him. And if they didn't find each other before morning, Pender would return here and wait for the Hostage Rescue Team that McDougal would undoubtedly be dispatching as soon as Pender's fax reached him.
However it worked out, Pender liked his chances-until he heard a woman's voice calling him from the same general direction.
“Agent Pender? This is Irene Cogan. Max says he's going to kill me if you don't show yourself.”
Pender didn't want to believe it. Surely Maxwell understood that a dead hostage is no hostage at all. He decided to wait it out.
“Pender!” Maxwell. “Looks like I underestimated you-again. Obviously I'm not going to kill my hostage.”
Obviously, thought Pender.
“What I'm going to do now, I'm going to burn her with a cigarette lighter until you show yourself.”
Oh fuck. Pender could feel the sweat breaking out on his forehead again. Things don't get any easier, do they?
He took off his bandanna and wrung it out, then tied it around his forehead again. Another question presented itself: was Dr. Cogan still a legitimate hostage, or was she now acting as an accomplice? She'd been Maxwell's prisoner for over a week, more than enough time for the Stockholm syndrome to have taken effect. Especially with such a charming seducer as Maxwell-most if not all of the missing strawberry blonds were believed to have gone off with Casey voluntarily, at least initially.
Pender now faced perhaps the most difficult decision of his career. He decided to wait it out a little longer, see if he could gauge whether Dr. Cogan was really being tortured by the tenor of her screams.
Sure enough, the first one was more of a yell-a full-voiced shout, with plenty of lung power. But Pender knew he had to discount it. Maxwell might have merely threatened her into screaming the first time-that was what Pender would have done in Maxwell's situation.
But after the second scream-it rose and fell and rose again and bubbled in her throat, ending in a heartfelt
“Oh God, oh God, stop, please stop, please make him stop!”-there was little doubt left in Pender's mind. Some anguish and shame, but little doubt.
“Leave her alone!I'm in the barn!”
“I thought you might be!” shouted Maxwell.
“The hell you did,” Pender muttered.
“Where's miss Miller? If you've hurt her, I'll make you pay.”
Oh-ho. “SHE'S SAFE FOR THE MOMENT-BUT SHE'S SCARED, AND SHE MISSES YOU. GIVE YOURSELF UP.”
“NICE TO KNOW YOU HAVE A SENSE OF HUMOR, PENDER.”
“I try to keep myself amused.” Pender settled in behind his barricade of books, steadying the barrel of his pistol on a copy of Finnegans Wake and sighting in where the two sliding barn doors met, at a point approximately three and half feet from the concrete floor.
“I'm sorry I had to do that, Irene,” said Max as he marched her down the blacktop to the barn. “He left me with no choice.”
Irene could no more have replied at that point than she could have flown. For the first time she understood the use of the word “insult” as a medical term meaning a bodily injury, irritation, or trauma. There was no other word to describe how it had felt to have Maxwell snatch her out of the drying shed, drag her naked across the meadow and up to the chicken coop-a more or less centralized location-then bend her wrist behind her back and hold his Bic lighter to her forearm for an agonizing eternity, until her scream finally met Agent Pender's standard for sincerity. At that moment she had hated both of them, Maxwell and Pender, with equal intensity.
When they reached the barn, Maxwell forced Irene to pry open the sliding doors just wide enough to admit them, and remained crouched behind her as she entered. The barn faced to the west; the late-afternoon sun behind them cast the elongated black shadow of a four-legged woman across the dusty cement floor.
Irene looked up to the hayloft at the other end of the barn, saw the barricade of books, saw the black of the gun muzzle pointing at her, saw the top third of Pender's massive bald head above and behind it, a blue bandanna knotted around the forehead. It wasn't how she'd pictured him at all.
Maxwell saw the head too, raised his pistol, and fired a shot at it over Irene's head. The report was deafening. Instinctively she threw herself forward onto the cement floor. Maxwell was unprotected for a moment, but Pender had already ducked behind his barricade. By the time Pender raised his head again Maxwell had seized Irene by the elbow, dragged her over to the side of the barn, behind the passenger side of the blue Cadillac, then fired another shot up at the hayloft.
Pender fired a round over the de Ville. He now had ten left-one in the chamber and nine in the clip. He had no idea how many rounds Maxwell had-or how many weapons.
“Are you going to come down here, or do I have to burn her again?” called Maxwell.
Irene, lying on her bare back on the rough concrete floor, ears ringing, stared up into the rafters. That hopeless, defeated feeling came over her again. If Pender came down, Maxwell would kill them both. If Pender didn't…
But she couldn't let herself think about that. Because she knew that given the choice, she would choose death over burning-she just couldn't face the pain again.
Jonathan Nasaw
The Girls He Adored
86
“Hurting her isn't going to do you any good, Maxwell,” Pender called from behind the barricade. “I'm soft-hearted, but I'm not suicidal. And don't forget I have Miss Miller.”
“I guess we're going to be here for a while, then.”
“Not that long.”
“What do you mean?”
“How far have you thought this thing out?”
“Far enough.” Max's provisional plan was to wait for dark, creep up to the foot of the ladder, use his talent for imitation to impersonate Irene. Agent Pender, it's me, Dr. Cogan. I'm coming up. Max would have the element of surprise on his side-he'd be content to take his chances with the older, slower, fatter FBI man.
When that was over, Max told him
self, he'd have to make a run for it. If Pender had managed to find him, the rest of the FBI couldn't be far behind.
So yes, Maxwell had thought this thing out far enough. “Why do you ask?”
“Just wondering how you plan to deal with the Hostage Rescue Team that'll be coming in in about an hour. That's how much of a head start they gave me.”
Max felt a leaden weight in his gut, and the murmuring began in his head again. Everybody shut up, he commanded. I have to think. What Pender said had rung true and fit the known facts. FBI agents never worked alone. Of course the cavalry was on the way. Why else would Pender be content to hole up in the loft?
“Pender?”
“Still here.”
“Assuming you're not full of shit, why are telling me this?”
“Because I'm prepared to offer you a deal. Once the HRT arrives, it'll be too late, it'll be out of my hands. You'll kill Dr. Cogan, they'll kill you. I don't care about you, but it's my job to see that no harm comes to her. So here's the deal: if you leave Dr. Cogan behind unharmed, I'll let you walk out of here. You can take Miss Miller, or leave her behind-that'd be entirely up to you.”
“How's this supposed to work, exactly?”
“Simple as pie. You walk out that door behind you. You'll have a head start-that's about as much as I can promise you.”
“How do I know you won't shoot me in the back on my way out?”
“Because I'm an FBI agent, not a hit man.”
“Tell that to Randy Weaver, and all those poor crispy critters in Waco.”
“My point exactly-that's what happens when you get the ninjasinvolved. All that armor, all those guns and flash grenades and dogs, all that testosterone and confusion. Hell, I might even get killed, and that's definitely not part of my game plan.”
“That still doesn't answer my first question. Why should I trust you not to shoot me in the back?”
“Because given the current climate”-Waco was heating up again, with the discovery that the FBI had lied about using incendiary grenades-“the good old days of shooting perps in the back are behind us. And if you leave Miss Miller behind, which you'll probably want to do anyway, seeing as how she doesn't seem to be in traveling condition, she'd be a witness. She's up here, she can hear me.”
“Let me speak to her.”
“Not convenient at the moment. I'm not moving from this spot.”
“What's to stop me from using Dr. Cogan as a shield, leaving the same way I came in?”
“Hey, go for it, fella. You think you can get far enough in an hour, on foot, carrying a grown woman, while I'm potshotting you, then by all means go for it. If not, here's the deal. As long as you leave Dr. Cogan behind unharmed, you can walk out of here anytime before it gets dark. After that all bets are off.”
“I'm not sure. I need to think.”
“Just don't think too long,” called Pender. “I figure we have about an hour until sunset.”
An hour, thought Maxwell. Not much time-for the dull normals. For a next-generation multiple, it was more than enough. He already knew what he was going to do. The old reliable had been working for him since Juvie, and he'd already beaten Pender with it once. No reason he wouldn't fall for it again.
Still, a little more darkness wouldn't hurt. Not too much, though-Maxwell needed enough light to shoot by.
“Pender!”
Pender glanced at his watch. Half an hour had passed. The light was fading inside the barn. “What?”
“No deal-I still don't trust you. But I'll make you a counteroffer.”
“I'm listening.” Pender's stomach growled. He remembered for the first time that he hadn't eaten since breakfast. Odd he hadn't noticed it before-he was not a man accustomed to missing meals.
“You and me, mano a mano. Gunfight at the OK Corral.”
“How's that going to work?”
“You come down here, we count down from ten and draw.”
Oh-ho, thought Pender. Years ago, before the Reeford disgrace, he was sometimes called upon to give a lecture at the FBI Academy in Quantico, “The Art of Affective Interrogation,” in which he stressed to the recruits that often the key to cracking a case was not what you knew, or what you didn't know, but what you knew that the other fellow didn't know you knew.
Still, it wouldn't do to give in too easily. “How do I know you're not going to shoot me on my way down?”
“We both stand up at the same time with our guns at our sides, pointing down. Either of us makes a move prematurely, the other one'll see it.”
“But I'll be at a disadvantage, climbing down a ladder onehanded.” Pender pretended to mull it over for another moment. “Tell you what, you hold your gun behind your back until I'm on the ground. Deal?”
“Done,” said Maxwell.
Done, thought Pender.
Irene didn't know what to think, except that it would be over soon, one way or the other, and that the chances of her survival had increased from zero to fifty percent. Not a set of odds she'd have thought much of a week ago-apparently it was all a matter of where you were coming from. Like everything else in life.
“Dr. Cogan?” called Pender.
“Yes?”
“Would you count to three, slowly?”
“Now?”
“Yes, now.”
Irene looked at Maxwell. He nodded.
“One. Two. Three.”
On three Maxwell stood up, the pistol in his left hand, behind his back. Irene climbed unsteadily to her feet, peered over Maybelline's roof, but at a crouch, to keep the car between Pender and her nakedness, and saw the FBI man standing in the hayloft with his gun at his side. Slowly, he began to move toward the ladder.
Irene watched Maxwell's hand-if it began to move, she was prepared to shout a warning, maybe even try to grab it. Pender started down the ladder, hanging on with his left hand, gun in his right, toes feeling for the rungs, head turned at a painful angle so he could keep his eyes on Maxwell.
“So far, so good,” called Maxwell, slowly bringing his hand out from behind his back when Pender reached the ground. Then, without taking his eyes off Pender: “Irene, would you count down from ten to one-same cadence you just used.”
“Wait,” said Pender calmly. “I just want to be clear on this-do we draw at one or after?”
“What's your preference?” asked Maxwell, just as calmly.
“Could be problematical either way. How about three, two, one, go, and we draw on the go.”
“Okay by me. Got that, Irene?”
“Got it.”
“Then let's git it on,” said Maxwell, in a high, pinched voice. Irene didn't recognize it, but knew it was one of his impressions.
He does that when he's nervous, she remembered. He was nervous that first day with me.
“Ten,” she said, loudly and clearly, hearing her voice echo around the barn.
Pender was still trying to decide what number to go on when she started her count. He'd thought about it all the way down the ladder. Going before the count began would have been risky- Maxwell was watching him too closely. But Maxwell had implicit faith in Buckley's trick. Once the countdown began, he'd start to relax, he'd be in familiar territory.
“Nine.”
Too soon.
“Eight.”
Not yet-nerves of steel.
“Seven.”
Pender cocked his wrist and fired from the hip. Seven sounded just about right to him.
87
The hollow-point caught Maxwell high in the left shoulder and spun him sideways. His balance and reflexes were superb. He kept his feet and even managed to squeeze off a round of his own that ricocheted off the cement floor and sent chips flying from one of the stanchions separating the stalls.
Pender managed to get off a second shot within the space of a heartbeat, but yanked it high. A rookie mistake-second shots tend to pull high due to bad initial positioning caused by the upward kick of the gun on the first shot.
You know better than
that, Pender told himself. Everything but his mind was moving in slow motion. He found he had all the time in the world. Still he overcompensated downward on the third shot. The bullet smashed through Maxwell's knee as he struggled to switch the heavy Glock from his useless left hand to his right. The gun went flying, but somehow Maxwell managed to hop halfway out the barn door before falling, despite the fact that his right knee had all but disappeared in a spray of fine red mist.
Maxwell lay on his back, half in and half out of the barn, staring up at a rosy sunset sky. Pender approached him cautiously, holding the SIG out in front of him, his finger half-tightened on the trigger. When he reached Maxwell, Pender saw that he was still conscious, and that neither of the wounds was necessarily fatal. What a goddamn shame. He knelt at Maxwell's side, placed the muzzle of the SIG against Maxwell's forehead so that Maxwell could see it and feel it.
“Caz Buckley sends his regards,” Pender said softly. “By the way, he said to tell you he never really liked you.”
When the shooting began-she hadn't seen who started it-Irene had dropped to the floor and crawled under Maybelline. She was astonished at how calm she was. A week ago, she knew, she would have been either hysterical or catatonic. Instead, she waited for the gunfire to end, and didn't crawl out until she saw Pender's Hush Puppies crossing her line of vision.
She stood up, saw Pender kneeling in the doorway at Maxwell's left side, holding the gun to Maxwell's forehead. “No!” she cried. “What are you doing?”
“Just securing the prisoner,” he replied, hurriedly beginning to pat down the waistband and pockets of Maxwell's shorts with his free hand, searching him for another weapon while trying to avoid the blood spurting from the damaged knee. At that point Pender himself wasn't entirely sure whether he had intended to fire a third round into Maxwell's brain from point-blank range. Probably not: though he was pretty worked up, he hadn't forgotten that powder burns on Maxwell and blowback on himself would have been a dead giveaway.
The Girls He Adored elp-1 Page 30