Diana screeched, “You filthy, insane animal!”
Jeremy, Chloe, and Trey were sobbing. Melissa Brandywine was up on her hands and knees dry-heaving.
I was still trying to see the wound.
There’s no such thing as a good bullet wound, but a gut wound is particularly bad. It can kill in a few minutes or a few hours. A bullet might rupture the colon, for example, or the liver. Fecal matter could splatter in the system and cause a bacterial infection that won’t stop. Bones could shatter into the kidneys, into the spleen, causing a swifter death. In any case, we had to believe the man was a mess inside and needed a doctor now.
“I said to get the hell away from him!” Fowler shouted again. “I mean it!”
I thought it would be a matter of seconds before he put a bullet into Diana, or me, or both of us. Then she stood up, her eyes blazing. “Go ahead, then!” she shrieked. “It’s what you want, Henry. Go ahead and kill me. But let the rest of them go. Let Cross take Barry and the children and Melissa out of here, and then you can do to me whatever it is you think I deserve.”
“No,” Fowler said. “Barry’s not going anywhere. And neither are you.”
She pivoted and crouched beside me. “What can we do?”
I could see the entry wound now. It was to the far right of the navel, close to the side of Nicholson’s torso. That was good news and made me wonder whether Fowler’s point-blank shot had been intentionally bad.
But then I rolled the eye doctor onto his side, saw that the exit wound was draining blood. A puddle of it already stained the carpet.
I rammed the sofa pillow against the wound, took off my belt, and strapped it in place. “You’ve got to get some alcohol into the wound,” I said.
“Get out, Cross!” Fowler screamed. “Now, or you’ll never see Christmas morning or your family again.”
I felt the gun barrel against the back of my head. “I’m sorry,” I said.
Tears dribbled down Diana’s cheeks. “I am too.”
I got up, took one last glance around so I could describe the room and everyone’s position in it, then turned and walked to the front door. Fowler followed me, about ten feet behind. I unlocked the door and started to open it, wondering whether Fowler intended to shoot me in the back of the head as I left.
CHAPTER 25
I stepped out into brilliant, blinding light and jumped when Fowler slammed the door after me. I stood there a moment, hands on my thighs, trying to get control of my breathing, trying to focus on something other than the wounded doctor and the five other hostages I’d left inside with a madman.
“Alex!” I heard Adam Nu yell. “Move!”
I snapped to alertness and started through the snow, toward the lights. Shortly before midnight, it had been a little above my ankles. Nearly two hours later, the snow was well up my shins and falling faster than I’d ever seen in Washington, two, maybe three inches an hour. Rocky Mountain rates.
The farther I got from the house, the more satellite trucks I could see. This was clearly the media event of a slow news day. But, hey, what was Christmas without a hostage crisis? It was a tradition, just like the mandatory car bomb in Bethlehem.
There were also folks from the neighborhood out, which surprised me. There were even some kids. Shouldn’t they all be sleeping? Several folks had camera phones held high above their heads. They clicked. They texted. They Tweeted.
But it was the MPD people who blew me away. There must have been fifty rank-and-file officers now at the scene. They held pistols and four-foot-high shields, and they waited for me. I thought I heard something behind me, but I did not turn. A voice from the crowd called, “Merry Christmas, Detective!”; it was followed by a smattering of applause and a few whistles.
Then I heard a woman’s voice-coming from close behind me.
“Mr. Cross,” she said. “Detective, please wait.”
I spun around. The congressman’s wife was staggering through the snow toward me in her stocking feet, sad, stunned, still shaking like a leaf. She was carrying a shovel. I went to her, lifted her out of the snow, and carried her through the line of policemen in riot gear.
“What’s with the shovel?” I asked as I handed her over to a pair of EMTs inside the shelter behind the police vans.
She looked at me in bewilderment. “He said it was for you. That you were to keep the front walk clear of snow if you wanted to see any more of the hostages alive.” Then she began to cry. “Mr. Cross?”
“Yes, Mrs. Brandywine?”
She shivered beneath the blanket the EMTs had wrapped her in and wouldn’t meet my gaze but said, “You won’t be repeating…the things he said?”
“No, ma’am,” I replied. “I’m not in the habit of quoting madmen.”
The congressman’s wife nodded, her lower lip trembling. “Thank you.”
“It’s got to be a decent Christmas for someone. It might as well be you.”
Book Two
CHAPTER 26
“Well, look who got out in one piece,” said Adam Nu, who came in from the storm as the medics moved Mrs. Brandywine to an ambulance. Then Nu gave me a quick hug, which wasn’t like him at all.
I let out a breath. “Yeah, it wasn’t a lot of fun. But if I don’t get some hot coffee and food, I’m going to be useless.”
One of Nu’s men got me a ham sandwich and a steaming Styrofoam cup of French roast, a holiday feast that I wolfed down as I stood by the gas heater. Then I asked, “What did you hear over the phone?”
“Some of it,” McGoey said. “When he was yelling or singing or you were talking. Guy’s a barking lunatic.”
“He is, but I don’t see him executing the family,” I said.
“You said he shot Nicholson,” Nu said.
“He did,” I replied. “But not to kill. He was at point-blank range. He could easily have made a shot that was guaranteed to turn Nicholson’s lights out.”
“Maybe he wants him to suffer,” Nu said.
“Or doesn’t believe himself a killer deep down,” I replied. “He did let Mrs. Brandywine go, and it could be an indicator of his willingness to negotiate an ending to this without further bloodshed.”
“Sorry to spoil the holiday,” McGoey said. “But you’ve got Fowler all wrong, Alex.”
“How’s that?” I asked, annoyed that he was trying to tell me about a man he’d never met.
He got out his cell phone and said, “Remember before you went in, we talked about the skank meth addict Fowler lived with?”
“Patty something,” I said.
“Patty Paradise, aka Patricia Kocot,” McGoey said. “I had someone go to her crib, see if she’d be willing to come down and talk some sense into her boy.”
“And?”
The detective got a laptop and showed me the most recent picture of Patty Paradise. She was naked, slumped in a bathtub. She had two bullet holes in her forehead, and split skin and angry bruising along her forearms and shins, clear indications she’d been electrocuted before being shot.
CHAPTER 27
As Nu and his men prepared an assault plan based on what I’d told them about the layout of the house and the position of the hostages, Ramiro and other officers began calling the Nicholson residence again, trying to make a connection with Henry Fowler once more.
Despite the coffee and the food, I was suddenly exhausted. I told McGoey I was going to catch a catnap but to wake me if Fowler answered. The van was equipped with two bunks that folded down off the wall. I grabbed a blanket, lay down, and closed my eyes.
I’ve always been one of those people who can fall asleep at a moment’s notice. It’s a skill that’s handy when you’re involved with this kind of drawn-out fiasco. But that night I couldn’t fall asleep. Not at first, at least.
My brain kept replaying what Fowler had said and done; I tried to use what he’d told me to connect the man he had been with the animal he was now.