Standoff (10 page)

Vern had propped Agent Cain's back against the counter with his legs and feet stretched out in front of him. His ankles were bound together with silver duct tape.

His wrists were likewise secured behind his back. His head was bowed low over his chest, but every now and then he tried to lift it, and when he did, he moaned.

"We've got him tied up," Ronnie was telling Galloway over the telephone. "We fired our guns almost at the same time, but the only one hit was Doc. No, he's okay." Ronnie glanced at Doc, who nodded in agreement. "Who's Ms.

McCoy?"

"Me," Tiel said, stepping forward.

"How come?" Ronnie gave Tiel a quizzical once-over.

"Well, I guess it's okay. How'd you know her name? Okay, hold on." As he extended the receiver to Tiel, he asked,

"Are you famous or something?"

"Not so you'd notice." She took the receiver. "Hello?"

The voice was government-issue—crisp and concise.

"Ms. McCoy, FBI Special Agent Bill Galloway."

"Hello."

"Are you in a position to speak freely?"

"Yes."

"You're under no duress?"

"No."

"What's the situation there?"

"Exactly as Ronnie described to you. Agent Cain caused a near disaster, but we were able to quell it."

Taken aback, the senior agent was slow to respond. "I

beg your pardon?"

"Sending him in here was a bad call. Miss Dendy needed an obstetric specialist, not the cavalry."

"We didn't know—"

"Well now you do. This isn't Mount Carmel or Ruby

Ridge. I'm not trying to tell you how to do your job—"

"Really?" he said dryly.

"But I urge you to cooperate with Mr. Davison from now on."

"It's the Bureau's policy not to negotiate with hostage-takers."

"These aren't terrorists," she exclaimed. "They're a couple of kids who are confused and scared and feel that they have exhausted all other options."

Raised voices could be heard in the background. Galloway covered the mouthpiece to speak to someone else.

Agent Cain raised his head and looked up at Tiel through

bleary eyes. Did he recognize her as the one who had knocked his lights out with a can of chili?

"Mr. Dendy is very concerned about his daughter's welfare."

Galloway said when he came back on the line. "The cashier—Donna?—told me that Sabra has delivered."

"A baby girl. Both are… stable." Tiel glanced at Doc, and he gave her a small nod. "Assure Mr. Dendy that his daughter is in no immediate danger."

"Sheriff Montez informs me there's a local man in there with you who has some medical training."

"That's right. He assisted Sabra through the labor and birth."

Doc's eyes narrowed a fraction—the gunslinger about to draw.

"Sheriff Montez can't recall his last name. Says he goes by Doc."

"Correct."

"You don't know his name?"

Tiel considered her options. She had been totally involved with the labor and delivery, but she wasn't entirely unaware of what had been happening outside. She'd heard the clap of helicopter rotors. Some would be police and medical choppers, but she would bet they also indicated the arrival of media from Dallas-Fort Worth, Austin,

Houston. Big stations. Network affiliates.

The active role she was playing in this unfolding story had automatically elevated its media-worthiness. She wasn't what she would term famous, but, in all humility, she wasn't a nonentity, either. She was seen nearly every night on the evening news in her television market. Those newscasts were also aired on cable stations in smaller markets throughout Texas and into Oklahoma, which amounted to several million viewers. She was a flavor-enhancing ingredient to an already juicy story. Throw into that mix the

involvement of Dr. Bradley Stanwick, who three years ago had disappeared from the public eye shrouded in scandal, and you had a tasty potboiler that would cause a feeding frenzy among the press corps.

But Tiel wanted it to be her potboiler.

If she gave away Doc's identity now, she could kiss her exclusive good-bye. Everyone else would report it first.

The story would be broadcast before she had filed her initial report. By the time she could produce her own account of events, the resurfacing of Dr. Stanwick would be old news.

Gully would probably never forgive her for this decision, but, for the time being, she was going to keep this spicy tidbit as her secret ingredient.

So she avoided giving Galloway a direct answer. "Doc did an incredible job under very trying circumstances.

Sabra responds to him favorably. She trusts him."

"I understand he was wounded during the exchange of gunfire."

"A scratch, nothing more. All of us are all right, Mr. Galloway." she said impatiently. "We're tired, but otherwise unharmed, and I can't emphasize that enough."

"You're not being forced to say this?"

"Absolutely not. The last thing Ronnie wants is for someone to get hurt."

"That's right," the boy said, "I just want to be able to walk out of here with Sabra and my baby, free to go our own way."

Tiel conveyed his wish to Galloway, who said, "Ms.

McCoy, you know I can't let that happen."

"Allowances could be made."

"I don't have the authority to—"

"Mr. Galloway, are you in a position to speak freely?"

After a momentary pause, he said, "Go ahead."

"If you've had any interaction with Russell Dendy, then you can well understand why these two young people felt desperate enough to do what they've done."

"I can't comment on that directly, but I understand your meaning."

Apparently Dendy was within earshot. "By all accounts the man is a tyrant," Tiel continued. "I don't know if you're aware of this, but he has pledged to forcibly separate these two and put the baby up for adoption. Ronnie and Sabra want only the liberty to decide their own future and that of their child. This is a family crisis, Mr. Galloway, and that's how it should be handled. Perhaps Mr. Dendy would consent to a mediator who could help them work through their differences and reach an agreement."

"Ronnie Davison still has a lot to answer for, Ms. McCoy.

Armed robbery, for starters."

"I'm sure Ronnie is willing to accept responsibility for his actions."

"Let me talk to him." Ronnie took the receiver from her. "Listen, Mr. Galloway, I'm not a criminal. Not until today, that is. I've never even gotten a speeding ticket. But

I'm not going to let Mr. Dendy dictate my baby girl's future.

From where I stood, I couldn't see any other way to get away from him."

"Tell him what we decided, Ronnie," Sabra called out.

He looked down at her where she lay with the newborn cradled in her arms, and his face took on a pained expression.

"Talk to Sabra's dad, Mr. Galloway. Persuade him to leave us alone. Then I'll release everybody."

He listened for a moment, then said, "I know they need to be in the hospital. The sooner the better. So you've got one hour to get back to me." Another pause. "Or what?" he said, obviously repeating Galloway's question. Ronnie glanced again at Sabra. She clutched her baby daughter

tighter to her chest, and nodded. "I'll tell you in an hour."

He hung up abruptly.

Addressing his hostages, he said, "Okay, you all heard. I

don't want to hurt anybody. I want all of us to walk out of here. So everybody just relax." He glanced up at the wall clock. "Sixty minutes, it could be over."

"What if her old man don't agree to let y'all alone?"

Donna asked. "What're you gonna do to us?"

"Why don't you sit down and be quiet?" Vern said querulously.

"Why don't you kiss my ass, old man?" she retorted.

"You're not the boss of me. I wanna know, am I gonna live or die? An hour from now, is he gonna start popping us?"

An uneasy silence descended over the group. All eyes turned to Ronnie, but he stubbornly refused to acknowledge the unspoken question in their eyes.

Agent Cain had either lapsed into unconsciousness again or was hanging his head in shame over his failure to bring the standoff to an end. In an event, his chin was resting on his chest.

Donna's elbows were subjected to more picking.

Vern and Gladys were showing signs of fatigue. Now that the excitement of the birth was over, their liveliness had waned. Gladys's head was resting on Vern's shoulder.

Tiel crouched down beside Doc, who was attending to

Sabra again. Her eyes were closed. Baby Katherine was sleeping in her mother's arms. "How is she?"

"Too goddamn much bleeding, and her blood pressure's falling."

"What can you do?"

"I tried massaging the uterus, but rather than slowing the bleeding, it increased it." His brow was furrowed with consternation. "There is something else."

"What?"

"Nursing."

"Could she be lactating this soon?"

"No. Have you ever heard of oxytocin?"

"I assume it's a female thing."

"A hormone that helps eject breast milk. It also causes the uterus to contract, which reduces the bleeding. Sucking stimulates the release of the hormone."

"Oh. Then why haven't you—"

"Because I thought she might be on her way to a hospital by now. Besides, she's already had rather a lot to deal with."

They were quiet for a moment, both looking at Sabra and disliking her paleness. "I'm afraid of infection too." he said. "Dammit, they both need to be hospitalized.

What's that Galloway like? Typical hard-ass?"

"All business, definitely. But he sounds reasonable.

Dendy, on the other hand, is a raving maniac. I could hear him in the background issuing threats and ultimatums."

She glanced at Ronnie, who was dividing his attention between the parking lot and the Mexican duo, who were be-coming steadily and increasingly edgy. "He won't execute us, will he?"

Seemingly in no hurry to address her question, Doc finished replacing the pads beneath Sabra, then leaned against the freezer chest and raised one knee. Propping his elbow on it, he wearily raked a hand through his hair.

By city standards, it could have stood a trim. But somehow, on him, in this environment, the unkempt look was fitting.

"I don't know what he'll do, Ms. McCoy. The misery that human beings are capable of inflicting on one another has never failed to fascinate and repel me. I don't think the boy has got it in him to line us up and shoot us,

but there's no guarantee that he won't. In any event, talking about it won't affect the outcome."

"That's a rather fatalistic outlook."

"You asked." He shrugged indifferently. "We don't have to talk about it."

"Then what do you want to talk about?"

"Nothing."

"Bullshit," she said, wanting to surprise him and succeeding.

"You want to know how I recognized you."

He merely looked at her, saying nothing. He'd built up quite an armor, but part of her job was piercing invisible armor.

"When I first saw you, I thought you looked familiar but couldn't place you. Then sometime during the birthing process, just before the delivery, it occurred to me who you were. I think the way you handled Sabra was the giveaway."

"You've got a remarkable memory, Ms. McCoy."

"Tiel. And my memory might be sharper than that of the average Jane Q. Public. You see, I covered your story."

She recited the call letters of the television station for which she worked.

He muttered an expletive. "So you were among the hordes of reporters who made my life a living hell?"

"I'm good at my job."

He snuffled a deprecating laugh. "I'll bet you are." He readjusted his long legs, but his eyes never left hers. "Do you like what you do?"

"Very much."

"You enjoy preying on people who are already down, exposing their hardship to public scrutiny, making it impossible for them to pick up the pieces of their already shattered lives?"

"You blame the media for your difficulties?"

"In large part, yeah."

"For instance?"

"For instance, the hospital buckled beneath the weight of bad publicity. Bad publicity generated and nurtured by people like you."

"You generated your own negative publicity, Dr. Stanwick."

Angrily, he turned his head away, and Tiel realized she had struck a chord.

Dr. Bradley Stanwick had been an oncologist of renown, practicing in one of the most progressive cancer-treatment centers in the world. Patients came from all over the globe, usually in a last-hope attempt to save themselves from dying. His clinic couldn't save them all, of course, but it had maintained an excellent track record of staving off the ravages of the disease and prolonging life, while also providing the patient a quality of life that made living longer worthwhile.

That's why it was such a cruel irony when Bradley Stan-wick's young, beautiful, vivacious wife was stricken with inoperable pancreatic cancer.

Neither he nor his brilliant colleagues could retard its rapid spread. Within weeks of her diagnosis, she was confined to bed. She opted for aggressive chemotherapy and radiation, but the side effects were almost as lethal as the disease the treatments were intended to combat. Her immune system weakened; she developed pneumonia. One by one her systems began to falter, then fail.

Not wishing her senses to be dulled by pain-relieving drugs, she declined them. However, during the last few days of her life, her suffering became so intense that she finally consented to a painkilling drug that she could self-administer through an IV.

All this Tiel learned through background research. Dr.

and Mrs. Bradley didn't become news until after her death. Until she died, they were just a sad statistic, the victims of an insidious disease.

But following her funeral, disgruntled in-laws began to make noises that perhaps their son-in-law had accelerated his wife's passing. Specifically, he had enabled her to kill herself by setting the dosage on the self-administering mechanism so high that she actually had succumbed to a lethal amount of narcotics. They alleged that her sizeable inheritance was his enticement to speed things along.