by Craig Smith
We drew up a sketch of the place quickly, as close to scale as she could get it. After we had finished, I took off at a run, only to be caught by Connie Merriweather as I was leaving the building. ‘I’m coming along,’ he said.
‘That’s not possible.’
He took my arm. It wasn’t a friendly gesture. ‘They’re my kids!’
‘I’ll call you the minute we know something. What I want you to do is get upstairs to the sanctuary and start praying. You tell them the last four days have just been for practice! The next hour... we’re going to need it all! You and I both know that won’t happen if you’re not there to lead them.’
‘I want to do something!’
‘My mamma used to tell me the Lord listens to the prayers of a righteous man! Why don’t you go work on proving her right?’ The preacher’s hand fell off my arm, and I thought to say something more, but there was nothing to tell him, no hope that we did not already share, and I went on through the door before he could answer me or even give me God’s blessing.
I took a country highway south of the church as far as the interstate, then ran west on it for just under five miles, pushing my car as hard as it would go. The road was cleared, but along each side the snow was piled high. I exited onto State Highway 641 and got into some traffic, but a caravan of emergency vehicles was running silently out of the north. When the traffic pulled over, I followed in behind the flashing lights. After the mall we hit the last two miles pushing it up past a hundred. Just outside King’s Court, we found a state trooper waiting to help us across the highway. A second trooper made sure we found the staging area.
I parked the car where a deputy indicated and got with Max Dunn, Joe Roby and Cass McCreary. Off from them about ten paces a dozen officers from the city and sheriff’s SWAT teams were strapping on armour and checking their weapons. In the distance, I saw one lone reconnaissance officer in civilian clothes running through a woods still deep in snow. He was headed in the direction of the Lyons house.
As I came up to join Max and the two SWAT commanders, I saw Cass McCreary fixing her hair into a teenage girl’s pig tails. She looked a bit odd in a bullet proof vest, but when she finished the effect by slipping on a white sweatshirt with a high school logo on it she looked just like a buxom blonde cheerleader I had known a million years ago.
‘We need a dad,’ Max told me.
I looked at him in surprise.
‘Dispatch can’t turn up Rolly,’ he explained, ‘and DeWitt’s in church. Won’t answer his phone when he’s at the church. Our boy William knows my face, and Roby here is taking both teams in.’
‘Whatever you need,’ I said and handed over the diagrams of the Lyons house. ‘Here’s the interior of the house, by the way.’
Max glanced at it, then passed it to Roby, who went over to his entry teams with the sketches. As he was doing this, Cass McCreary explained to me what it was going to take to be her daddy.
When the reconnaissance officer returned, Roby came back to get his report. ‘It’s quiet,’ he said. ‘Good cover till we get to the backyard. Then…’ He shook his head. ‘...bad news.’
‘How much time in the open?’ Joe Roby asked him.
‘It’s a big yard. Seven-eight seconds at a full sprint. Doesn’t sound like much, but if he sees us it’s enough time to execute everyone.’
‘What about the doors?’ Max asked.
‘Nothing that’s gnbs ahatoing to slow us down. Back door into the garage is particle board or cheap tin, I couldn’t tell which. One punch and we’re through. Other way in is a glass patio door.’ He raised his eyebrows, discounting its potential to slow them down.
Roby looked up from the diagram. ‘We’re a little thin, Cass. If you can roll off the front and take the first basement window on the southeast corner that will give us cover on all the windows and two full teams going in. One up and one down.’ Cass McCreary nodded and Roby looked at me. ‘That leaves you moving up on the front door, Rick. Better than even money Booker pops right out into your arms. If I were you I’d strap a vest on and get a weapon.’
‘I’ll be okay,’ I said.
Roby considered me dubiously, then shrugged. It wasn’t his body.
Max patted me on the back. ‘If he’s too much man for you, Rick, just dive for cover.
I’m coming in right behind you.’
Roby looked at Max. ‘EMTs know to come over the top of us?’
‘The ambulances are up the highway,’ Max told him. ‘They’re coming in with me.’
Chapter 86
Darkness.
THE CANDLE STILL BURNS steadily. At first the shotgun is all Penny can look at. After a time, she forces herself to examine the room. The window behind her at the top of the room has been sealed shut with plastic and cardboard so no light comes in. From there, she thinks, you could see the shotgun and the string to the door – if it weren’t covered. She rocks in the chair, but it’s impossible to move it. No matter what direction she pulls a piece of rope resists the pressure.
She looks at the window again. The only hope is that someone comes to it, tears out the plastic and cardboard and looks in before they run to the basement for a rescue. Or somehow that she can get her hands loose…
Penny flexes and tears against the tape and rope binding her, but her strength fails her.
She cannot fight it, but if she nags it, a little twist one way, then back...
Sliding it up now, then down just a fraction. A little at a time. Steadily. Then maybe a chance. She thinks about erosion, water and sand tearing down mountains – with enough time.
She keeps her eyes on the gun. Her wrists burn as she turns them, fighting the tape. Not too hard! she tells herself, just turn it, pry a little, turn again the other way. She has time. She has until that door is pulled open. All the time in the world...
Chapter 87
Sunday 12:59 p.m., March 28.
IN THE CAR McCreary told me, ‘Glad you brought the dad-mobile, Rick. This thing’s perfect.’
‘Hey, this was a nice car fifteen years ago!’
‘Fifteen years ago I was still a nice girl. What’s your point?’
‘I’m just saying…’
Cass pulled her " w dTaurus .45 out from under her nice-girl sweatshirt, jacked a shell into the chamber, checked the safety, then slipped it back into place. ‘Are you religious?’
‘I am this morning.’
‘Pray that son of a bitch is in my window, will you?’
‘Hey, leave us something to prosecute! Garrat promised me she’s taking this case herself.’
‘I’m just going to shoot his nuts off, Rick. Garrat can have his ass.’
THE ROAD IN WAS QUIET, and I said something about how still everything was. ‘We got it blocked off at either end,’ she answered. ‘Dispatch has been calling everyone up and down the road for the last fifteen minutes. Telling people to stay inside.’
‘That’ll get them on their front steps faster than a fireworks display.’
She shook her head, grinning. ‘They’re telling folks we had a prison break this morning, and we’re out here trying to catch them... you know, in case someone decides to start shooting anyone they don’t know.’
‘Might work for a few minutes,’ I said.
‘A few minutes is all we need.’
We came around a curve, and I saw Ben Lyons’s Bronco covered in snow – but no Toyota. The street was empty. The house darkened, seemingly deserted.
‘Okay,’ McCreary told me, ‘hit the horn.’
I tapped it lightly, then again, a longer shot, then several more taps.
‘You see a curtain...’
‘I know. I call your name.’
As I pulled to the curb, McCreary jumped out and trotted prettily up the lane along one of the two tire tracks running through the deep snow. At the front of the house, she cut through the snowdrifts and came to the door. Her hands were free and open. She moved with the kind of bubbly innocence of eighteen. I hit the ho
rn again and lowered my window. ‘TELL HER TO GET A MOVE ON!’ I shouted. Cass tossed me a quick glance before ringing the doorbell. I watched the windows for movement, then hit the horn several quick taps.
Roby’s team would be waiting under cover at this point. Will Booker might be checking.
Nothing here but a dad and his little girl come to pick up Penny Lyons. As we could be a potential problem, we hoped Booker would come have a look. If we got him to the front of the house, Roby could cross the backyard on Cass McCreary’s signal. With no signal from us, Roby moved when he felt like it.
‘I THOUGHT SHE WAS SUPPOSED TO BE WAITING FOR US!’ I called.
I hit the horn again, a long blast. Across the street I saw a curtain move, but not at the Lyons house. Come on, Will! I thought, get curious, boy...
‘ARE THEY EVEN HOME?’ I shouted.
Now Cass moved off the step and out into the yard. She looked at the windows, edging toward the end of the house without being too obvious about it. She turned back toward me,
‘SHE SAID SHE’D BE HERE!’
‘WE CAN’T WAIT ALL DAY, SWEETHEART!’ I got out of the car, a grumpy but lovable old dad.
‘What do you want me to do... just leave?’ Quieter. Not overplaying it.
‘Well if they’re not here!’ I said, ‘I’m not going to wait here all afternoon!’
‘She said she’d be here!’ A nice daddy’s girl whine. A few steps more to her left, as if tempted to look in a window...
I started to answer. A speech about responsibility and wasn’t it about time she and her friends started thinking about it, but at that moment we heard glass breaking.
Roby at the patio door. Now an explosion of wood. The back door of the garage.
We were in.
Chapter 88
Darkness.
THERE IS A CAR, THE SOUND OF a horn. A man’s voice. Penny forces her eyes from the wide bore of her father’s shotgun and stares at the plastic covering the window. She leans forward now, feeling the flesh at her wrists tearing. She screams into the gag with pain. She struggles to breathe, her nostrils sucking wildly for air. Her chest hammering. She looks at the gun again. The string. The door. She listens. What is the man saying?
Not police, she thinks miserably. A girl answering him? Next door maybe. The Frosts?
But that didn’t make sense!
Now glass shattering! Voices upstairs, footsteps. Penny looks back at the window.
Nothing. They are coming downstairs. Through the door. Rescue.
Her eyes flick to the window, now back to the door as she loses all control, her underpants warm and wet suddenly. The string. The gun.
Her body surges against the certainty of death, but the tape holds her. The gun remains fixed on her, sitting on its little metal folding chair. They are down the steps. Coming for her on the run. Seconds left, she thinks. The time it takes to get to the end of the hall and pull the door open…
Chapter 89
Sunday 1:03 p.m., March 28.
CASS MCCREARY BEGAN RUNNING the moment she heard the glass. She had her Taurus .45 out and made the corner of the house quickly before she slipped and fell in a deep drift.
There were two window wells looking into the basement on the south side of the house. A second officer was already leaning down into his. Cass scrambled across the heavy snow.
She broke and cleared the glass with a hard sweep of the Taurus. There was cardboard and plastic on the inside. Careful not to cut herself on the shards still in the window frame, Cass beat the cardboard down with two ferocious back-handed swings. When the cardboard and plastic broke free she snapped the safety off her weapon and leaned into the well to get a look at things, her .45 in the lead.
The room was black, illuminated by a single candle. McCreary blinked away the brightness in her eyes and tried to focus. She broblack,appedsaw the shadow of a girl in a chair and started to transmit to Roby that she had a visual on one of the hostages, but she saw the girl looking first at the window and then at the chair placed in front of her with such panic that Cass stopped. Her eyes adjusting, Cass studied the chair more closely. It was positioned oddly between the girl and the door to the room. Then she saw in the murky light that a shotgun lay across the chair. She heard the voices of cops somewhere close, heard their shouts – the order to check the other rooms. They had found something. Cass saw the girl’s eyes full of terror. She pivoted her head between the door and Cass and then back to the door. And Cass McCreary finally understood.
She reached the Taurus down further through the window, just as the door pulled back and the string snapped taut.
Chapter 90
Sunday 1:03 p.m., March 28.
I HELD THE FRONT OF the house only a second or so before Max Dunn and the EMTs came roaring into the suburb. I went in ahead of them, kicking the front door open, and found an officer holding the centre of the room with an assault gun. The air was clean. He wore a headset and spoke into it. ‘EMTs are coming!’ he said.
His voice was cool with the precision that you see in trial runs, and I came up out of my crouch with a feeling of relief. I moved to the side to make room for the medical people. That was when the shotgun blast roared up from underneath us. Not ours. None of us was packing a shotgun.
The officer held his arms up to stop the EMTs, and I took off for the basement at a run.
As I came out of the turn of the stairwell, I saw a knot of men breaking loose at the other end of the hall. Joe Roby shouting into headset. He needed the EMTs now!
An officer came out of the darkened utility room. ‘In here!’ he shouted to the men behind me. I joined the crowd and looked past Roby. I saw three figures on the floor. All of them as still as death. I got out of the way of the EMTs and stepped into the laundry room behind three armoured men. Two officers were cutting the tape and rope that bound a nearly naked girl to a wooden chair. I smelled cordite and saw the shotgun. It was strapped to a metal chair that lay on the floor now, but the string that connected it to the door was still attached.
An officer in front of me, a city police, caught my eye and pointed at the chair, then to the window. ‘Cass McCreary shot the damn chair over just as we were coming in. Otherwise...’
There was a hole about the size of walnut punched in the metal back of the chair – he result of McCreary’s .45. Across the room, I could see the washing machine had taken the shotgun blast intended for the girl. I looked at her wide, unblinking eyes. Penny Lyons. Alive.
She looked, I thought, a bit like a picture of Missy Worth I had in my files, when Missy had been a willowy seventeen-year-old. Behind me there was a call to clear the door, and two EMTs slipped into the room.
In the seconds it had taken for me to understand what the girl had escaped, two of the bodies had been cleared from the utility room. The man remained, a thin blanket covering his chest, for all the good it would do him.
‘Clear it!’ Roby was shouting. ‘Everybody up! Now!’
I moved with the rest toward the stairs, seeing several men taking a look into an opened freezer before they climbed out of Will Booker’s hell. I noticed several candles set about. It had been the sole illumination until we had arrived. By the door to the utility room there were five stacks of clothes, all neatly folded, a pair of shoes on top of each, odd testimony to Booker’s peculiar madness.
When Roby saw me, he held his hand up, stopping me. ‘Max is coming down.’
As he said this, Max Dunn pushed past the last of the officers leaving the basement. Cass McCreary was behind him. Roby looked at the woman. ‘You couldn’t have cut it any closer, Cass.’
‘Is she okay?’ McCreary’s wrist was wrapped in a blood-dappled piece of surgical gauze.
‘She’s shaken up and dehydrated, but she doesn’t appear to be hurt otherwise.’
He turned to Max and told him what Booker had done to Penny Lyons and then described McCreary’s shot just as the entry team was pulling the door open. While he did this, I stepped over to see
what the officers had been looking at in the freezer. I saw the fur of the guard dog Pete first, then stepping closer realised it lay on the naked corpse of Judy Lyons. The dog’s head had been crushed; Booker had peeled away the woman’s scalp.
‘We think it’s Judy Lyons,’ Roby said as McCreary and Max Dunn came beside me to look into the freezer. ‘Got another down here.’ He led the way and we followed, looking into the room where Booker had kept them. ‘Presumably Mr Lyons,’ Roby announced.
Max walked in and nodded grimly. ‘It’s Ben.’ Then he swore.
‘Booker shot Tabitha Merriweather,’ Roby told him. ‘Looks to me like he went for the lung so she could choke to death on her own blood. The wound was fresh and they got her out, but I doubt she’ll make it to the hospital. He pointed at a piece of bloodstained carpet. ‘The boy was here. He was unconscious, already in shock. Got one leg broken at the knee and stinking to high heaven; Booker shot him in the other knee as well. Wound looked a day or two old.’