Hicks frowned at Martin.
“Sucks for us, but what can you do? We might be able to get heat images.”
If they had to breach the house, it was safer for everyone if the breaching team knew the location of everyone in the environment.
Maddox tipped his chin toward Talley.
“The Chief here worked Rooney into admitting that all three perps are inside. I might be able to work him for the locations.”
Martin didn’t look impressed with that.
“Hicks, float two men around the perimeter to find out exactly what we’re dealing with here. Let’s make sure this place is secure.”
Talley said, “Captain, be advised that he’s hinky about the perimeter. I pulled back the line to start the negotiation. That was part of the deal.”
Martin stepped away to stare up the street. Talley couldn’t tell what she might be looking at.
“I understand that, Chief. Thank you. Now, will you be ready to hand off the phone to Maddox and Ellison as soon as we’re in place?”
“I’m ready right now.”
She clicked her tongue curtly, then glanced at Maddox.
“Sounds good, Maddox. The three of you should get into position at the front of the house.”
Maddox’s face was tight. Talley thought he was probably irritated with her manner, also.
“I’d like to spend some time going over the Chief’s prior conversations with these guys.”
Martin checked her watch, impatient.
“You can do that while we rotate into the perimeter; I want to get the show on the road. Chief Talley, I have seven minutes after the hour. Do I now have command of the scene?”
“Yes, ma’am. It’s yours.”
Martin checked her watch again. Just to be sure.
“Then log it. I now have command and control. Sergeant Maddox, get into position. Sergeant Hicks, you’re with me.”
Martin and Hicks trotted away into the milling SWAT officers.
Maddox stared after her for a moment, then looked at Talley.
“She’s wound kinda tight.”
Talley nodded, but said nothing. He had thought that he would feel relieved when he turned over command of the scene.
He didn’t.
THOMAS
Alone in his dark room, Thomas held his breath, better to hear past the changing whup-whup-whup of the helicopters. He feared that Mars might pretend to leave, then creep back to see if he was trying to get untied. Thomas knew every squeak in the upstairs hall because Jennifer liked to spy on him; one squeaky spot was right outside his door, the other about halfway to Jennifer’s room. So he listened.
Nothing.
Thomas was spread-eagle on his lower bunk, face up, his wrists and ankles tied so tightly to the corner bedposts that his feet felt numb. After Mars had finished tying him, he stood by the bed, towering over him like some kind of retard with his slack jaw hanging open like one of those public-bathroom perverts his mother always warned him about every time he went to the mall. Then Mars had taped over his mouth. Thomas was SCARED; sweat gushed from him like he was a lawn sprinkler and he thought he was going to suffocate. He struggled and pulled at the wires that held him, straining to get free until he felt Mars’s breath on his cheek. Then he couldn’t move at all, like his mind and body had disconnected and all he could do was just lie there like a turtle waiting for a car to squash it flat.
Mars placed a hand on his chest, and now the breath went to his ear. Warm and moist. Then, a whisper.
“I will eat your heart.”
Thomas’s body burned from the inside out, a kind of wet heat that grew hotter and hotter. He messed his pants.
Mars went to the door, shut the lights, and left, pulling the door closed. Thomas waited, counting slowly to one hundred. Then he set about working his way free.
Thomas was good at working his way free. He was also good at sneaking out of his house, which he had done almost every night this summer. He would sneak out after his parents had gone to bed to hook up with Duane Fergus, who lived in a big pink house on King John Place. Sometimes they threw eggs and wads of wet toilet paper at the cars passing on Flanders Road. When that got old, they would sneak across Flanders to a development that was still under construction where teenagers parked to make out. Duane Fergus (who was a year older and claimed to shave) once threw a rock at a brand-new Beemer because (he said) the lucky turd behind the wheel was getting “road head.” They both shit a brick when the car roared to life, bathing them in its lights. They ran so hard back across Flanders that a monster 18-wheeler had almost turned them into blacktop pie.
Thomas had perfected the art of moving through his home without being seen because he had changed some of the camera angles. Just a bit, just a nudge, so that his mom and dad couldn’t see everything. He knew that most people didn’t live in houses where every room was watched by a closed-circuit television system. His father explained that they had such a system because he handled other people’s financial records and someone might want to steal them. It was a big responsibility, his father had said, and so they had to protect those records as best they could. His father often warned both Thomas and Jennifer to be careful of suspicious characters, and to never discuss the alarms and cameras with their friends. His mother was fond of saying that she thought the whole mess was nonsense and just their father’s big toy. Duane thought they were da bomb.
The wire holding his left wrist was slack.
When Mars was tying Thomas’s right wrist to the post, Thomas had scrunched away just enough so that now the cord held a little bit of play. Now he worked harder at it, pulling the knots tighter but creating enough slack to touch the knot that held him to the post. The knot was tight. Thomas dug at it so hard that the pain in his fingertips brought tears, but then the knot loosened. He worked frantically, terrified that Mars or one of the others would throw open the door, but then the knot gave and his left hand was free. The tape hurt coming off his mouth worse than getting a cavity filled. He untied his right hand, then his feet, and then he was free. Like Duane said, you had to risk being street pizza if you wanted to see a guy getting road head.
Thomas stayed on the bed, listening.
Nothing.
I know where Daddy has a gun.
Thomas felt calm and certain in what he needed to do. He knew exactly what the cameras could see and what they couldn’t. He wanted to go to his bathroom to clean himself, but knew he would be visible on the monitor if he did. He pulled off his pants, used his underwear to clean off the poo as best he could, then balled the underwear and pushed them under the bed. He slipped to the floor and crawled along the wall toward his closet, passing under his desk. Someone had ripped his phone out of the wall, leaving the plug in the socket but tearing free the wires. Turds.
In The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, the children found a secret door at the rear of their wardrobe that let them escape the real world into the magical land of Narnia. Thomas had his own secret door at the back of his closet: an access hatch to the attic crawl space that ran beneath the steep pitch of the roof. It was his own private clubhouse (his and Duane’s), through which he could move along the eaves to the other access hatches dotted around the house.
Thomas pulled open the hatch and wiggled into the crawl space, being careful not to bump the rafters with his head. The heat in the closed space of the attic enveloped him like a gas. He found the flashlight that he kept just inside the hatch, turned it on, then pulled the hatch closed. The crawl space in this part of the house was a long triangular tunnel that followed the back edge of the roof. Where windows were cut into the roof, the triangle became a low rectangle, forcing Thomas to crawl on his belly. He worked his way along until he came to a second access hatch, this one in Jennifer’s closet. He listened until he grew satisfied that the turds weren’t in her room, then he pushed it open, knocking over a tumble of shoes.