Hostage (2001) (17 page)

When they reached the rear of the command van, a woman wearing a green tactical uniform stepped from among a knot of sergeants to meet them. She had a cut jaw, smart black eyes, and short blond hair.

'Is this Chief Talley?'

Maddox nodded.

'This is him.'

She put out her hand. Now closer, Talley saw the captain's insignia on her collar. She had a tough grip.

'Laura Martin. Captain. I'm the field commander in charge of the crisis response team.'

Where Maddox and Ellison were relaxed and loose, Martin was as taut as a power cable, her manner clipped and humorless.

'I'm glad you've met our negotiators. Sergeant Maddox will take over as the primary.'

'We were just discussing that, Captain. I think we're in pretty good shape with that. The subjects seem calm.'

Martin keyed the radio transceiver strapped to her harness and called for a communications check of her supervisors in five minutes, then looked back at Talley.

'Do you have a perimeter in place around the house?'

'Yes, ma'am.'

'How many men?'

'Eleven. A mix of my people and the Highway Patrol. I put the men in close, then pulled them back to get things going with Rooney, so you'll have to be careful with that.'

As Talley spoke, Martin didn't seem to be paying attention. She glanced both ways along the street, leading Talley to think that she was measuring the scene and more than likely sizing up his officers. He found himself irritated. The command van was being repositioned farther down the block over an access point to the underground power and phone lines that ran under the streets. If they wanted to tap into the phone lines that ran to the house, they could do it from there. They could also tap power for the van. Talley had already called PacBell and the Department of Water and Power to the scene.

'I'll get my supervisors together so you can brief everyone at once. I want to rotate my tactical people into the perimeter as soon as we've stabilized the situation.'

Talley felt another flash of irritation; it was clear that the scene was stable. He suggested that Martin assemble her supervisors in Mrs. Pena's home, but Martin thought that would take too much time. As she called her people together under a streetlight, Talley radioed Metzger for copies of the floor plan. He passed them out as everyone assembled, and gave a fast overview of his conversations with Rooney, describing what he knew of the house and the people within it.

Martin stood next to him, arms crossed tightly, squinting at him with what Talley began to feel was a critical suspicion.

'Have you cut the power and phones?'

'We blocked the phones. I didn't see any reason to cut the power until we knew for sure what we were dealing with.'

Martin told her intelligence officer, a sergeant named Rojas, to have someone from the utility companies standing by if they needed to pull the plug.

Metzger pointed up the street.

'They're already standing by. See that guy in the Duke cap? That's him.'

The tactical team supervisor, a veteran sergeant named Carl Hicks, studied the floor plan sketches, and seemed irritated when Talley couldn't produce actual city floor plans.

'Do we know where they're keeping the hostages?'

'No.'

'How about the location of the subjects?'

'The room immediately to our right of the front door is the father's office. Rooney is usually in there when he talks to me, but I can't say if he sticks. I know he moves through the house to keep an eye on the perimeter, but he's buttoned up pretty well. The shades are down over every window except the French doors overlooking the pool in back. They don't have drapes back there, but he's got the lights off.'

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.

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.

The closet was dark, its door closed.

He eased his way out over the shoes and through a rack of her dresses, then turned off his flashlight. He listened at the closet door, and again heard nothing. He eased open the door. The lights in Jennifer's room were off; that was good because he knew that most of her room could be seen on the monitors. He opened the door so slowly that it seemed to take forever to get it open enough for him to stick out his head. The room was lit by pale blue moonlight. He could see Jennifer bound to the chair near the front of the room, her back to him.

'Jen?'

She lurched in the chair and mumbled. He called to her, his voice low.

'I'm in your closet. Just relax, okay? If they're watching, they can see you on the monitors.'

She stopped struggling.

Thomas tried to remember what the camera saw of Jennifer's room. He and Duane sometimes went into the security room when his parents were away so that Duane could see her naked. He was pretty confident that if he crept out of the closet on his belly, then hugged the wall beneath the windows where the shadows were darkest, he could get pretty close to the chair. If he heard Mars or those other turds coming, he could haul ass back into the crawl space, then go back to his room or run for the garage.

'Jen, listen up, okay? I'm going to come over there.'

She shook her head wildly, mumbling frantically into the tape.

'Be QUIET! I can untie you.'