“Rachael, then. Where is she?” “She’s watching the monitor in the map room.” The hostage negotiator studied him. “If this goes bad-” “She might witness her mother’s slaughter, yes, I know that. But what else could I do? Stick her in a closet and tell her to be quiet like a good girl? If it was my mother, I’d sure as hell want to see what was going on.”
“It will give her nightmares for the rest of her life. Why don’t you send her to the hospital to stay with the fiancé? Paul,” he added hastily, seeing the look on Patrick’s face. “He was almost her stepfather.”
Is going to be, Patrick thought, but he felt superstitious about insisting, felt afraid to acknowledge Cavanaugh’s use of the past tense when it came to Paul Cleary. “I thought of that. She didn’t ask much about him before, but I’ll have to tell her what kind of shape he’s in. I won’t make her go-I keep picturing Tess bleeding to death on the floor of the Federal Reserve building. Having to be here if that happens, yes, would traumatize Rachael for life. But knowing she might have had a chance to say good-bye if I hadn’t sent her off to Metro… well, she’d hate me forever.”
“So are you basing this decision on her feelings or yours?”
Patrick damned the man. That was probably what made him a good negotiator, the ability to cut through words to the crux of the matter. “That’s just it-it’s going to have to be her decision.”
Cavanaugh shrugged. “Whatever. Just keep her out of here.” He dialed the phone again. “He still isn’t answering. This is not good.”
It felt better to discuss anything besides himself or Theresa. “What’s his plan?”
“That’s just it, I don’t know. After the entrance, the exit is the most dangerous time, and it’s best to have every detail worked out. You think they were trigger-happy before… They should be even more worried about it than I am. I don’t get it. Did we hear from the storage facility that had Bobby’s car?”
“Whoever left it there gave his name as Bobby Moyers. Surveillance tapes have since been recorded over, and the employee who assigned the unit got fired three months ago. Decatur PD is trying to track him down on the off chance he can give us a description.” He dialed again.
“Where’s the secretary of state now?” Patrick asked suddenly. “The luncheon should be over.”
“Yeah, it’s over,” Viancourt answered from the couch, a bitter edge to his words. He had probably hoped to attend at least part of it. “They’re bundling the secretary into a bulletproof limo as we speak. So I guess this had nothing to do with that after all. I’m glad I didn’t even suggest to the chief that we cancel it,” he added pointedly. He had been right and they wrong.
Patrick checked his Nextel, hoping the hospital would call him if Paul’s condition changed. “Maybe he was waiting for the traffic to clear.”
Cavanaugh asked what he meant.
“We’ve gotten the feeling all day that Lucas was stalling. First he refused to wait for this shipment, and then he changed his mind, even after going through the whole rigmarole of sending the Ludlow woman to rob the bank-loan department. Maybe he wanted to wait until the secretary departed, taking a lot of traffic and a lot of cops with her.”
Cavanaugh nodded. “It could be. It works in our favor as well- if we have to pursue, which I pray we don’t, at least we won’t be running into the motorcade or convention-center traffic. Of course, if he heads east from here, it wouldn’t have made any difference anyway. I need to know what he’s planning. If he waits any longer, we’re going to run into that Hall of Fame concert traffic.”
He dialed the phone again, punching the numbered plastic buttons with violence.
“What about Cherise?” Patrick said. “Did you check out what Theresa told that SRT guy?”
Cavanaugh gestured at Jason, who answered. “I spoke with her parents-as much as I could; they were hysterical-and her brother, and three other Fed tellers. She’s had no recent changes in her behavior or her habits. She’s been dating the same guy for a year and a half, a production assistant at WMMS. They break up off and on, but he’s been away with a church mission trip for the past ten days, rebuilding homes in New Orleans. Her finances have stayed steady. She deposits her salary and pays her bills. No big purchases. If there’s some dark secret in her life, she’s hidden it well.”
Cavanaugh kept dialing, so Patrick lowered his voice and spoke to Jason. “Lucas, then. Did we ask his sister what Theresa told the sergeant about abuse?”
“I tried her, but the line was busy. Apparently there are still people in this country who don’t have call-waiting. Or a DSL line.”
“Mind if I try?”
“Be my guest.” Jason stood up. “I’ve got to have a bathroom break anyway, or it’s going to get messy in here. Here’s the number.”
Patrick moved out to the center of the building, by the elevators, where the early-afternoon sun slanted through the wall of windows facing the courtyard and the Eastman Reading Garden. Miraculously, Lucas Parrish’s sister answered on the first ring. As soon as he identified himself, she said, “I’m not interested in helping you kill my brother, and besides, I have to be at my post in ten minutes.”
“Ma’am, he’s surrounded by approximately thirty-five cops and security guards. I don’t want anyone to shoot him, because once one bullet flies, you know more will follow, and there’s a lot more people down there besides your brother. So I’m as desperate to keep him alive as you are, understand?”
Slowly she agreed.
“Do you have any idea why your brother is doing this?”
“Why he’s robbing a bank? Because he’s a dreamer without a real job, that’s why.”
“He doesn’t want to work for a living?”
From the tone of her voice, she took no offense at the question. “He’s not lazy-he’s impatient. He wants grand adventures, tons of money, a beautiful woman who will love him forever and ever. He aims too high, I guess you could say.”
“I’ve been told Lucas suffered some abuse as a child. Can you tell me how that happened?” He tried to sound knowledgeable, when in truth he had no idea how Lucas’s friggin’ childhood could help them in this situation. But Theresa had taken some risk to pass along this information, and he would act on it.
“You mean the burns?”
“Uh… yeah.”
“My mother’s husband. Our father, I guess, though I’ve never really been too sure about that.”
“He left when you two were kids?”
“Yeah.” She waited, no doubt wondering what the hell Patrick was getting at. He wondered, too.
Patrick began to pace, then entered the stairwell to move down one floor. “Is that when Lucas began to get in trouble?”
“No. He didn’t go in for petty stuff-he’s never aimed low. I got in more trouble than he did. He liked school, worked part-time here and there. He read a lot. I guess that’s how he got so dreamy-he read books and drew pictures to get through the days at our house. I went out and played football with the boys, climbed fences, anything to be with other people. We all cope in our own ways.”
Patrick couldn’t stand in one place. He escaped the sunlight and slipped between the cool stacks, up to the glass-walled map room. Rachael had her back to him, glued to the monitor, watching the small group of pixels representing her mother.
Patrick asked, “Did he show any violence to other people? Act out against what his father would do?”
“Again, that was me. I fought. I got expelled for throwing another girl into the high-school trophy case. Lucas was more philosophical, like our mother. I guess that’s why him and me aren’t close.”
Through the glass he could see Rachael’s boyfriend, Craig, offer her a bottle of water, wet with condensation. She took it, and Patrick felt oddly comforted. At least the kid hadn’t gone completely comatose. “What do you mean?”