She wouldn’t be sidetracked. “What’s back there worth blowing up?”
“You’ll have to ask Bobby. He’s the one with the detonator.” He stood, yanking her to her feet by the front of her shirt. She felt the stitching come loose beneath the arms.
It felt better to be standing under her own power. At least it did until he swung her against the wall again, the barrel of the gun under her chin. This time he had his finger on the trigger. She tried not to breathe, but her lungs ached for it, to keep up with the demands of her pounding heart.
“My balls are going to hurt for a week now. I help you out by releasing your boyfriend, Theresa, and this is how you repay me.”
He hadn’t killed her for asking once, so she tried again. “What’s back there worth blowing up?”
“I told you to ask Bobby. But consider this: When the government has killed your whole family, there’s no part of it not worth blowing up.”
“What do you mean?” she gasped. “What happened to his family?”
“He’s got nobody left, that’s what I mean. But I do, and here’s where you come in. As soon as that three million arrives, it’s going to be moved into my car. And you, Theresa, will be at the head of the assembly line, with me on your back like a remora. The snipers try to take me out, they’re going to hit you instead.”
With that, he escorted her to the reception desk, not gently, but at least he clutched the back of her shirt instead of her hair. She collapsed next to Jessica Ludlow and wiped her sweating face on her sleeves. She could only hope that one of SRT’s microphones had been dropped behind that particular air-conditioning grate.
The phone was still ringing.
Patrick collapsed onto one of the upholstered chairs. The clock read 1:12, and yet he felt as if he’d pulled an all-nighter.
No, what I did was pull the rug out from under my career. The assistant chief went by, giving him a cold stare and a wide berth. Patrick had made the guy look ineffectual in a crisis, and that would not bring any recommendations his way.
But Theresa still lived. He could breathe again, maybe quell the tremors in his legs.
“Detective Patrick?”
Peggy Elliott stood next to him, still as fresh and neat and she’d been hours earlier. She’d removed the suit jacket to reveal a tailored white blouse with a gold Summer Reading Club pin on the breast pocket. “Are you all right?”
“Oh, sure. Fine.”
She waited for more without comment, then gave up. “There’s a phone call for you.”
He followed her to a communication system set up on a reading table in the map room, where other staff could make calls without disturbing the negotiator. Kessler spoke to someone, apparently his wife, telling her not to worry. Jason trotted toward them, listening to his cell phone while devouring another sandwich. Once upon a time, Patrick could eat all day and all night like that. Once upon a time, he’d had that kind of enthusiasm for his job as well.
The librarian handed him a receiver. “It’s the hospital.”
A doctor at the Metro General trauma center introduced himself and asked Patrick if he was Paul’s partner.
“Yes. Thank you for calling me, Doctor. How is he?”
“We tried a plastic graft. It took thirty units of blood, but it’s in place.”
“Is he awake?”
“Off and on. Not much.”
“Can we ask him a few questions, do you think?” Who knew what the two guys might have discussed in front of Paul, when they took him for another bank employee? They might have mentioned their exit strategy, assuming they had one.
“I’m not calling to tell you to come and interview him,” the doctor said with a tougher edge to his voice. “I’m saying if you want to speak to him again, you might want to come here now.”
It wasn’t as if the possibility hadn’t occurred to Patrick. He had been to the full-dress funerals of too many cops killed in the line of duty for that. But he hadn’t really believed it. “He’s going to die?”
The doctor didn’t pause. “He’d be dead already if the nick hadn’t been at the lower end of the femoral and someone hadn’t gotten that belt around his thigh immediately. He could recover, but I’m not fully confident of it, and that’s why I’m calling. The police department said you are listed as emergency notification. You and a woman named MacLean, but she’s unavailable.”
Not fully confident. Patrick had heard versions of that, too. It meant the doctor didn’t think Paul would live through the end of the day.
His eyes drifted to the windows, through which the Federal Reserve building gleamed in the afternoon sun. “You say he’s conscious?”
“Off and on,” the doctor repeated. “I can’t make any promises about that either.”
Patrick sighed. “I’m sorry, I can’t come right now. We’re in the middle of something here. I’ll send another officer out in case he wakes up. But I have to stay here.”
“Okay,” the doctor said, and hung up. He had done what he could and undoubtedly had other patients and phone calls to see to.
Patrick called another detective, Sanchez, and asked her to go to Metro. She was sensitive but smart, and Paul had always gotten along with her. She would know what questions to ask if he woke up, know when to call Patrick and when not to. But he, Patrick, couldn’t spend the afternoon sitting next to an unconscious man on the off chance that he might come to and he might be able to tell them something of Lucas and Bobby.
“How are things going?” Ms. Elliott asked him gently.
“Not good.”
“I had guessed as much. I wish I could help.”
Patrick gestured at the books around them. The tomes held centuries of accumulated knowledge and yet couldn’t tell him how to defeat one man with a gun. “Not unless you know a formula for invisibility. Or how to neutralize RDX.”
“The plastic explosive?”
He probably shouldn’t have mentioned that, but Peggy Elliott had been in and out all day and nothing confidential had found its way to Channel 15. Still, he didn’t clarify. “Or how to deflect bullets. Lots and lots of bullets.”
“No.” She shook her head. “Sorry.”
He needed to get back to the monitor, to Theresa’s grainy black-and-white image. He could do nothing for Paul, but he still might be able to do something for her.
He stood up and reached for the glass door when Jason said, “Detective, wait.”
The young man held a cell phone to his ear, and a cop had just handed him a receiver from a table unit. “This is the PD in Tennessee, and I’m already on with Lucas’s sister. Can you talk to them?”
Patrick nearly leaped over the row of flat-drawer filing cabinets to grab the phone and identify himself.
“Slow down.” The voice on the other end did not conjure up images of honky-tonks and moonshine stills. The syllables were as neatly pronounced and accentless as any TV anchorperson’s, the pace measured and calm. “Who is this again?”
Patrick repeated himself while enunciating and using a sleeve to mop the sweat from his forehead. He leaned on the cabinets and closed his eyes, the better to concentrate on the man’s voice.
“This is Captain Johnson from the Hudson County sheriff ’s office in Tennessee. I went out and talked to Jack Cornell, just like you asked.”
“We appreciate that,” Patrick said with fervor. He pulled out his notepad and opened it, discovering that he’d mislaid his pen. He lost a precious second or two patting his pockets before Ms. Elliott handed him hers. “We have a real bad situation up here. One person dead and one cop almost dead, with eight hostages still inside.”
“Yeah, that’s what that first guy told me. It wasn’t any trouble anyway. We know Jack real well, and he lives near town.”