by Lisa Black
“You’d be amazed what people can do when they have the proper incentive.”
“You’ve got some money, you have your car. You could leave now and come out way ahead.” Theresa wished she could have read Cavanaugh’s book before getting herself into this. Whatever she said might agitate him, spur him on. On the other hand, she couldn’t sit idly by while he shot a two-year-old.
“You think so, do you?”
“I’m probably going to get fired for giving you that car, if not thrown in jail. I’d hate to have it be for nothing.”
“Yeah, what about that?” He crouched in front of her, putting them at the same eye level, submachine gun across his knees. The sudden advance startled her. “You did that because you love that cop?”
“You’re not watching the street. They might come for your car.”
“The marble behind you, Theresa, is as smooth as a mirror. I can see any movement outside. Cops are many things, but invisible is not one of them. Now, did you come here because you’re in love with that cop?”
Love. Something she had almost convinced herself didn’t exist until one night when Paul suddenly put his arms around her, outside a ring of crime-scene tape in the Metroparks after everyone else had left. He hadn’t asked her to dinner or a movie or out for drinks, knowing that her defense system would rise if forewarned. He simply stepped inside the castle walls before she had time to lower the gate.
She swallowed. “Yes.”
“Crazy, the things people do for love.”
She couldn’t speak around the lump in her throat.
“Bo,” the child insisted.
“Is that what you’re robbing this place for?” Theresa asked him. “Love?”
“You trying to analyze me, Theresa? Figure me out? Or just distract me from the fact that Ethan’s mom has twenty-seven seconds remaining?”
“I’d like to know why my fiancé is bleeding to death and why my daughter may have to grow into adulthood without a mother.”
He edged closer to her, so close she could see the red veins standing out against the whites of his eyes, could smell the last traces of a breath mint on his tongue. “I’d really like to tell you, but I’m afraid you wouldn’t understand.”
“I might understand a lot more than you think.”
He didn’t actually roll his eyes, but he came close.
She went on. “I understand that someone didn’t take very good care of you when you were a little boy.”
The red-rimmed eyes narrowed, and his body receded from her ever so slightly. “You saying I wasn’t raised right?”
“I’m saying someone burned the inside of your left wrist with a cigarette, at least four times that I can see. I had a young man about your age in last month. The abuse had occurred when he was five, but his wounds were less distinct than yours. So you were, what? Ten? Twelve?”
He stood as quickly as if he had discovered a scorpion at his toes, checked his watch, and said, “Mama’s time is up.”
“You’re not going to shoot this little boy.”
“And who’s going to stop me, Theresa? You?”
“What will it gain you, except a quick trip to a lethal injection?”
“That’s assuming I get caught.”
“You know you’re going to be caught eventually. You’re not stupid.”
They certainly didn’t seem to be bonding—in fact, she seemed to annoy him more with every word. Yet he kept talking to her. Why?
“I’m not going to get caught.” He did not say this as if he believed it, however. The tone of his voice sounded neither boastful nor wistful; it sounded resigned, as if he knew he would do exactly that.
“Let’s say you do. If you leave here without hurting anyone, the cops will pursue you, yes. But if you hurt a child, they will chase you to the very ends of the earth.”
Bobby shifted in the background, but Lucas did not turn. “You seem to forget I’ve already killed someone.”
She didn’t want to mention Mark Ludlow again; it might make things worse. But he had freely discussed the bank teller. “You mean Cherise? What happened to her anyway?”
Without raising his voice he asked, “You think I didn’t shoot her? You think maybe I’m faking all this?”
“No.” But her voice lacked certainty.
“Anybody else here think I’m faking this?”
The other hostages, who had been present to hear the gunshot and Cherise’s voice, abruptly cut off, shook their heads. Missy even cast Theresa a murderous look.
What am I doing? What she’d said to Cavanaugh was true. Forensic work burdened her with only a limited amount of personal responsibility. Sure, she cared about solving an innocent victim’s murder, but if she could not, she didn’t take it personally. Sometimes the evidence just wasn’t there. But now she had to be proactive, and other people could die as a result. The idea made her heart pound even more than Lucas’s threats.
“Set the boy down,” Lucas said to Theresa, referring to Ethan. “Just leave him there.”
“He’ll run away.”
“Missy, you hang on to the kid. I need to show Theresa something. Just hold the back of his shirt so he don’t run around.”
Missy moved to the other side of Brad and slid the boy from Theresa’s lap, gently easing him into her own. Ethan seemed sufficiently interested in Lucas’s movements and did not protest.
“Get up.”
Theresa stood, her knees reluctant to move but not half as reluctant as her mind. Why had she antagonized him? Why hadn’t she kept her mouth shut?
On the other hand, Lucas seemed to have forgotten Jessica Ludlow’s tardiness.
The phone began to ring.
He ignored it. “Come here.”
She complied. It didn’t seem that she had another option. But Lucas merely grabbed her right elbow with his left hand, leaving his gun ready in his right. He prodded the muzzle of it into her rib cage, and she flinched.
“We’re going to take a stroll. Just walk with me, nice and easy, and I won’t have to pull this trigger, understand?”
“Yes.”
He gripped her elbow tightly enough to stop the circulation, and they made a careful excursion past the other hostages. The pool of Paul’s blood had developed a yellow halo as the serum separated out from the red blood cells. She looked at the security guards with a wincing glance; their barely contained fury hurt her eyes. The dog growled. The phone kept ringing.
The teller cages continued in the marble and gilt tradition of the rest of the lobby. Behind the fancy ironwork grates sat counters filled with the accoutrements of work: tape dispensers, staplers, rubber stamps of all sizes and shapes, framed photos of adorable children. The third drawer down at each station had been pried open, the locks mangled, except for one. Cherise’s work area, complete with a nameplate and a photo of herself and a boyfriend with a beach in the background. The entire drawer, undamaged, lay on the floor.
Theresa took this in as they passed. Lucas did not pause but continued past the tellers’ cages, around to the narrow, walled-off section behind them. Theresa could already smell it. The burnt gunpowder and the tinny odor of blood.
On a worn section of carpet, directly below a stack of computer printouts and a half-empty coffeepot, the young woman had bled out onto the springy carpet. This, then, was the missing Cherise.
1:00 P.M.
Patrick had never felt more helpless. Returning to the library’s video monitor only to find Theresa missing from the hostage’s lineup had been déjà vu in the worst way. Cherise had gone off in the same direction and hadn’t come back. Paul had been shot before their eyes, or before the cold black-and-white eyes of the video monitor. Now Theresa, and he couldn’t do a damn thing to stop it. He should have stayed over there. No, he should have stayed here, made Cavanaugh distract Lucas. “Why didn’t you do something?”
“I called. He ignored the phone. But she’s all right. We’re catching snatches of her voice.”
“Ma
ybe it’s time to use the snipers. Or the assault time. Or the 101st Airborne.”
“The snipers are ready,” Cavanaugh said. “They’ve had a hundred opportunities to pick off Lucas, but Bobby stays out of range. He could shoot a few hostages or set off their RDX, wherever they’ve got it. For amateurs they’ve been pretty careful so far.”
“Do we know they’re amateurs?” Assistant Chief Viancourt asked.
“We don’t know much of anything at the moment.”
Jason hung up his cell phone. He had spent enough time on it to leave a red slash across his face. “Lucas Winston Parrish was injured five years ago in an explosion during a training mission in Germany. He was stationed at the base there. He still carries a few pieces of shrapnel against his ribs.”
Patrick sighed. “Theresa called it.”
“Maybe,” Cavanaugh said. “What else?”
“He told the military that both his parents were dead, and the prison said he had one visitor during the five years he spent at Atlanta—his sister. She lives in North Carolina and isn’t answering her phone.”
Cavanaugh massaged beads of sweat into his face. “What did he do in the military?”
“Armory clerk.”
“So he knows guns. And at least the basics of explosives.”
“I’d like to know where he got those two.” Patrick nodded at the monitor. “That’s a lot of firepower for a bum just out of jail.”
Cavanaugh asked Jason, “Did Atlanta say he and Bobby were friends?”
“No one there knows. Of the regular guards on their cell block, one is off on a fishing trip and the other one is in the hospital.”
“Prison riot?”
“Heart attack.”
“And Bobby had no visitors.”
“There’s one more thing. Parrish had one other person on his visitor’s list—a Jack Cornell in Tennessee. The guy never visited, but he had him listed. There was a Jack Cornell in his unit in the army.”
“That’s his gun connection, I’ll bet,” Patrick said. “Lucas came here from Atlanta by way of Tennessee.”
Cavanaugh opened the cooler next to Irene and pulled out a dripping bottle of water for Jason. “Here, you deserve it. Get us Cornell on the phone. We definitely need to talk to him.”
“Talk to him.” Patrick perched on the window seat and lit a cigarette. “We need him picked up by the Tennessee cops. He’s the best suspect for providing not only the guns but the plastic explosive as well.”
Cavanaugh swiped at the sweat on his temples with one hand. “If they show up at his door, they could be walking into a literal powder keg. On top of which, he might wind up too preoccupied with his own problems to talk to us about ours. We’ve got two dead people here and a bunch of hostages, and he’s not going to be willing to own up to his part in that. Jason, you silver-tongued devil, get the right cops in Tennessee on the line and tell them everything we’ve got. They’ll have to handle it as they see fit. They might even know the guy.”
Patrick took one more deep puff before tamping the butt on the bottom of his shoe. “I’d send someone to the sister as well. At least she’s got more incentive to help, if she wants her brother to live through the day.”
CHAPTER 20
12:55 P.M.
Theresa gazed at the dead girl. Auburn curls crowned Cherise’s face, in which a slash of red lips and sightless blue eyes stood out against the paled skin. A screwdriver lay a few inches from her right hand. She had been wearing a shiny cream blouse and dove gray slacks; the slacks were spattered with a fine mist of red dots, but the center of the blouse disappeared into a gaping, bloody hole. He must have fired more than once; Theresa did not know how delicate the trigger on such a weapon would be, how easy it would be to blow away a target’s entire rib cage before the index finger could loosen. It looked pretty damn easy.
“You killed her,” Theresa breathed, the words sounding ridiculous even to her own ears.
“I said so, didn’t I?”
“I had hoped—Why the hell did you kill her?”
“She didn’t cooperate.”
Theresa eyed the Craftsman. Did he make Cherise use the screwdriver to pry open the cash boxes, and she pulled it on him? Did he shoot her in a bizarre parody of self-defense?
But what were they doing behind the cages? Tiny dots of high-velocity blood spatter and one neat bullet hole speckled the cabinet doors to the left of the body, so she had been shot right where she lay. “What were you doing back here?”
“What?”
“What did you come back here for? The cash is in the cages, so why come back here?”
“I thought there might be more.”
“That’s why she had the screwdriver in her hand? Because you thought there might be more boxes for her to pry open?” Not self-defense, then.
“What are you doing, Theresa? Investigating?”
I look at scenes like this every day, she wanted to tell him, and this one isn’t adding up. Besides, every moment she kept him occupied gave Jessica Ludlow another moment to return. “I want to know why you killed her. What happened?”
“I walked her up to the teller cages and told her to pry open the cash drawers.” He began to guide Theresa out, talking as they walked. “Everything was cool. But when I wanted to check out the areas back here, she turns around and starts to argue. She says this area is just for paperwork, which is okay with me, but she waves this screwdriver under my nose. At that point I felt it both necessary and prudent to shoot her. She also served as a good lesson for the rest of you.” His words, so mocking, did not match his voice.
“You might have gotten out of this without murdering. Now there’s no going back.”
He squeezed her elbow again in a vein-crushing grip as they exited the teller area. “What makes you think I want to go back? What do you think is the whole point of this?”
“Good question.” She turned to the security guards this time, taking in their faces, the way their bodies tensed at her passage, as if frustrated that they could not help her. The dog let out one sharp whine. “What is the point of all this?”
“The point is that I’m more than willing to kill to get what I want.” He announced this not only to her but to her fellow hostages as they returned to the reception desk. “Isn’t that right, Theresa?”
They turned to her with pleading looks, wanting her to disagree. She could not. Despite the reluctance in his voice, if not his words, Lucas had killed without apparent hesitation or remorse. “He killed her. Cherise is dead.”
Missy cried out. Brad and the security guards gasped, a single, unanimous drawing-in of breath.
Lucas released her arm, leaving a tingly sensation as the blood flowed back. “Sit back down, Theresa. Missy, let go of the kid. His mama’s overdue.”
“You can’t shoot this baby,” the receptionist intoned, just as Theresa had a scant ten minutes before.
“I’d set him aside if I were you. The bullets will go right through him into your lap.”
“You ain’t going to shoot this little boy.”
“Theresa,” Lucas said. “Take the kid from Missy.”
She had been scanning the street outside—was that a movement, or a wave of heat distorting the air?—and blurted out without thinking, “Why me?”
“Because Missy wants to be a hero, an inspiration to receptionists everywhere. You, on the other hand, will do anything to get back to your man and your daughter.”
“Not hold up a baby boy as a target for you.”
“You sure?”
Was she? Didn’t she owe it to her own child to stay alive, no matter the cost? Then what the hell was she doing here? Why hadn’t she let Paul go, to be sure she could keep being a mother to Rachael?
But could she sacrifice someone else’s child?
Make your decision, her grandfather had said. Stick to it.
“No,” she told him. “I won’t.”
He lifted the automatic pistol, aiming downward at both the young boy
and the receptionist. “Suit yourself.”
“It isn’t smart,” Theresa warned.
“Who said I was smart?”
“You did,” she insisted desperately. His finger closed on the trigger.
The phone rang.
The elevator bell dinged. Theresa heard a frenzied rush of footsteps.
Jessica Ludlow threw herself into the lobby, toting a visibly stuffed red backpack. “Stop! Don’t kill him!”
Lucas ignored the phone and pointed his automatic rifle at the floor. “Well, well. Ethan’s mommy has returned.”
The young woman threw the backpack at Lucas’s feet, went to her knees, and pulled her child back from Missy. He clutched his stuffed Browns mascot, crying.
Lucas snatched up the bag with one hand. “Take a look at this, Bobby. The little lady came through.”
“I filled it up.” Jessica’s breath came in gasps. “The bank-loan department had cash in drawers. Hundred-dollar bills.”
“Just lying around?” Lucas said. He crouched on the floor next to the large black duffel and opened the red backpack as if it were a present plucked from under a Christmas tree. Theresa had just seen his handiwork in Cherise, but she felt positive, in her heart of hearts, that Lucas felt relieved to spare Ethan. Most people had a soft spot for children, she thought. It didn’t make him any less dangerous.
The phone continued to ring.
“No,” Jessica Ludlow explained. Stress made her voice bounce off the walls. “The cops met me. You said that was okay as long as I came back.”
“I did. Relax, Jessie.” He had emptied half the backpack when he asked, “Did they fill this bag?” He began to remove the bundles of money and place them in the oversize end pocket of one of the black duffels. He stacked them carefully, perhaps to fully utilize the space.
“No, I did. I told them not to add any dye packs or anything.” She cradled Ethan’s head under her chin. He let out a shout now and then, but, it seemed, more as communication than as notes of distress.
Lucas’s movements slowed. “How much is here?”
“I’m…I’m not sure.”
“Of course you are.” His momentary elation faded before Theresa’s eyes, and his voice turned cold and accusing. “They would have told you, because they’d expect me to ask.”