Takeover (9 page)

“Let’s go—” Theresa began to say, but then she stopped once more, arrested by voices from the small device in Jason’s hand.

“Bobby doesn’t want to wait until two o’clock,” Lucas said. “He’s not the patient type.”

Cavanaugh didn’t miss a beat. “Then I don’t know what to do, Lucas. Those money rooms can’t be bypassed.”

“Tell you what, Chris. You just get that car here and let me worry about the money. I have an idea.”

“Good, let’s talk about that. What’s your idea?”

“Never mind, just get the car here. Oh, and one more thing—
we won’t be leaving alone. In case you get any ideas about installing a remote kill switch in the engine or a GPS tracker, you should know that we’ve made some friends here and we’ll take at least two of them along for company. I thought you ought to know that. It might figure into your thinking.”

Click.

“Lucas?” Cavanaugh asked, without result. He sounded worried to Theresa, but perhaps this was a projection of her own terror.

“Come on,” she said to Jason. “We’re going.”

She turned and led the way out of the lab without looking back. They took the stairs.

“What’s on your mind, Theresa?” Jason’s voice sounded almost as smooth as his boss’s, and that only irritated her.

“He isn’t going to hold out much longer. I don’t know why he wants the stupid car, and I don’t care. All I know is that I can at least get that into place in case he decides to start shooting. He’s melting down, this Lucas.”

“All due respect, Mrs. MacLean,” Jason told her as he followed her down two flights, “but you’ve never been through a negotiation in your life, right? Perhaps you’re not the best person to predict what’s going to happen.”

She reached the bottom, held the door as he caught up. “All due respect, Jason, but you can’t stop me.”

10:55
A.M
.

“The car’s here,” Theresa announced as soon as she reached the reading table. Cavanaugh sat in front of the phone system, with the scribe, Irene, at his side and another woman next to Irene. Both Frank and the head librarian had left; Kessler sat drinking coffee as if it were an act of penance. Jason took a seat on the other side of Cavanaugh. Assistant Chief Viancourt browsed the library shelves with polite interest, the way one might do at the in-laws’ house. “It’s down on Superior, in front of the Hampton Inn,” she added.

Cavanaugh looked at her with a gaze so sharp she wondered what he saw. A red face and a crumpled blouse, a voice tight enough to tune a violin—not a professional scientist but a woman on the edge? She forced herself to take a deep breath, slow to a stop, drape one hand over the back of a chair as if she had nothing better to do than drop by the library on this sunny morning.

He said only, “Can they see it from the lobby?”

“Not unless they go through the employee lobby and the security team to the Superior entrance.”

“Good.” He turned back to the woman in front of him, middle-aged, black, wearing a navy suit and sensible shoes. “Go on, Mrs. Hessman.”

Theresa sidled over to the nattily dressed assistant chief of police, now perusing the spine of
The British Museum Catalogue of Seals.
She introduced herself to the man, who cooed with admiration over how “cool” her job must be before she could go on. He did not seem to know about her relationship with Paul, and she did not see the need to inform him. “I can use your clout on something.” She handed him the blank, powder-processed envelope from the robbers’ car and explained about the postage-meter number. “They won’t be able to give it to me, not immediately. I’d have to fax them all sorts of letters and forms. But someone in your position…”

Theresa had never been much of a manipulator, and she couldn’t believe how easy it was. The man’s chest expanded, and he nodded with great solemnity. He even patted her hand and told her he’d have it taken care of in no time before striding forcefully from the room. She watched him leave. The poor guy just wanted something to do.

Now if she could convince Cavanaugh to give Lucas his car back, her day might end well after all.

Theresa leaned against the metal shelving, listening to Cavanaugh question the woman, trying to stay still and quiet and patently under control. She wished Frank were there. She worked with cops every day but was not one of them, and she liked having Frank and Paul to buffer the unfamiliar faces.

“You handled getting Mark Ludlow on board?” the hostage negotiator asked.

“Yes. A number of our bank examiners were hired at the same
time, so they all retired at the same time, and we didn’t have enough qualified replacements locally. It’s hard to find an experienced Fed examiner who wants to move, much less move to Cleveland, I’m sorry to say.”

She chuckled, and Cavanaugh nodded. A survey of large cities with good self-esteem would not have Cleveland in the top ten. Or fifty.

“So you convinced him to leave Atlanta?”

“No, he responded to the online posting. He wanted to come here.”

“Why?”

She paused, fingers stroking the gold cross around her neck. “I think he said Atlanta had gotten too crowded. It
is
a huge city. But he still drove a hard bargain—he got a promotion and a job for his wife out of it.”

“What does his wife do?”

“She’s a secretary in the savings bond unit.”

“She doesn’t work with her husband?”

“Oh, no. Family members can’t be in a supervisory relationship with other family members. She can type and had done some clerical work before the baby was born, so we fitted her in with the support staff.”

“Did you meet her?”

“Yes—Jessica, her name is. Sweet girl.”

“How did she feel about the move, about her new job?”

Again the human resources manager fingered her pendant. “I don’t really know. I only met her twice, once for the testing and interview process and once to sign all the paperwork. She seemed excited about the job but expressed some…misgivings, I guess you
could say, about moving to the new city. I suppose that’s normal. She’s young and probably away from her family for the first time. I was a new bride of nineteen when I left Biloxi. It’s hard.”

“True,” Cavanaugh said, so briskly that Theresa winced. He didn’t understand. Didn’t he have a family, some sort of foundation he’d be reluctant to leave? “Did she seem angry about it?”

“No, not at all. Just nervous. She also, I think, would have preferred to stay home with her little boy instead of working. She said something about ‘at least until he started kindergarten.’ I could understand that, too. The first years are so important.”

“So her son is in a new house, a new city, and then has to start day care, too,” Cavanaugh said, showing more sensitivity than he had a moment before. “That probably worried her.”

“It was a lot of changes at once. Scary but exciting. She really is a sweet girl—an artist, too, likes to paint, and I told her about our art museum. I remember she joked that her son is taking after her and draws constantly, sometimes on the walls.” She chuckled again at the memory. “I think that’s all I can tell you. Why are you so interested in Jessica?”

“We believe she’s one of the hostages.” Cavanaugh pointed at the flat-screen, its images flickering silently on the tabletop. “Can you tell us if that’s her, on the left?”

The blood drained from the woman’s face to see her coworkers crouched on the marble floor, guns pointed at their bodies. “Oh, my Lord.”

“No one is hurt, and I’m sure we can get them out safely. But does that look like Jessica Ludlow?”

She squinted. “Yes, I’m sure. She has the
baby
with her?”

“Yes.”

“Why?”

“We’re wondering that ourselves. Thank you for your help, Mrs. Hessman—”

Theresa interrupted. “What time does she start work?”

“Seven-thirty,” the woman answered without hesitation.

Cavanaugh took a swig from his water bottle, allowing Theresa to continue her questioning.

“What time does Mark Ludlow start work?” she asked.

“Eight, usually. But a senior examiner…well…”

“Doesn’t punch a time clock.”

“Exactly,” Mrs. Hessman told her. “Some are more flexible, come in at eight-thirty or nine and stay later, but only a few. They’re all accountants, so they tend to be a bit regimented.”

“Do you know what day-care arrangements she had for their son?”

“No, I sure don’t.”

Theresa mulled this over while Cavanaugh thanked the woman again. “This officer will see you out.”

The room fell silent, except for the hum of distant cars and the terse, quiet exchanges from the staff offices. Then Theresa said, “Maybe they drive separately to work because she starts earlier. It still seems funny, considering the price of gas these days.”

“Come here,” Cavanaugh said to her. He pushed an empty chair out from the desk, next to him. “Sit down. Need a bottle of water?”

“No—yeah, actually. That would be good.”

Irene pulled an Aquafina from a small cooler and passed it down.

Cavanaugh handed it to her. “Or she drives separately because she drops the baby at day care. Are there still officers at the scene?
We’ll have them ask the neighbors while they canvass.”

Theresa soaked her hand with the bottle’s frigid condensation and rubbed it on the back of her neck, hot again from the six-flight jog. “They’re probably done.”

“Jason, get Homicide. Have someone come over here with everything they found out about Ludlow. If they didn’t find the day care, send someone back to the neighborhood.”

Theresa sipped, watching the TV screen. “This woman’s got a gun pointed at her little boy, and she doesn’t even know that her husband is dead.”

“I haven’t lost a child on one of my jobs yet, and I don’t intend to start today.”

“You haven’t lost anybody yet.” Jason stood as he dialed, adding to Theresa, “Chris has a perfect record. Two hundred and sixteen hostage situations ended without bloodshed.”

“Not totally—there’s been some blood lost. But not fatally.”

That should make me feel better,
Theresa thought,
but it doesn’t. He talks about loss of life as if it’s a running bet on a basketball team.
As Jason walked off with his cell phone, she asked Cavanaugh, “How did you get into this line of work? How do you talk them into giving up when they have to know they’re going to go to jail?”

“Mostly it’s about listening. You have to be a good listener. I’ll bet you would be good at it.”

“Not me.” She shuddered. “I don’t want live people depending on me.”

Cavanaugh laughed. “Dead ones are okay?”

“Precisely. I could fail to solve their case, to get justice for them, but I can’t make them any
more
dead.” She finished the water. “That probably sounds wimpy, but I don’t care.”

“It sounds sensible.”

“You, on the other hand—do you ever have to decide who lives and who dies?”

“Not in this case,” he said, neatly sideswiping the question. “The hostages are all together, and that simplifies matters. In domestics, particularly, you can have them scattered around in different rooms, so that at any given moment some are safe, some are not. We adjust our thinking accordingly.”

If it came down to Paul, who had chosen to be in the line of fire by virtue of his profession, and a civilian, he would adjust his thinking accordingly. She needed to stay with Cavanaugh, to be sure that did not happen.

She let out what had been weighing on her mind for the past hour. “Can’t we give them their damn car and let them move on?”

“Not in light of his parting statements. They take any person with them out of that bank, that person’s dead. Otherwise I’d be happy to let them have the car and all the money they want, and I don’t even care if they get away. That’s someone else’s problem. But I can’t give them a hostage.” He glanced at her face. “Don’t look like that. It’s not hopeless. I’m going to try to trade the car for leaving all the hostages behind.”

“They’ll never go for that. They have to know that once they poke their heads out that door without a hostage in front of their face, they’re dead.”

“That’s why it makes more sense to give themselves up. You have to let them reason through the scenarios themselves. Eventually they’ll get a grip on what is and is not a realistic option.” He glanced at her face again. “I just said it isn’t hopeless. I didn’t say it’ll be
easy.
”

Kessler stood to throw out his coffee cup. “But why kill Mark Ludlow? And if they’ve already killed once, doesn’t that make them more likely to…um…”

“We’re not completely sure they had anything to do with Ludlow,” Cavanaugh said. “We’re not even reasonably sure. But if they did, they don’t know that his body has been found or that we suspect he’s connected to this robbery. They want to have the option to walk away from this without anyone getting hurt, because they’re certain to get a lighter sentence that way. If we let them know that we’re waiting to hang a murder charge on them—”

“They have nothing to lose,” Theresa finished.

“Exactly. We need to keep them believing that it’s in their best interest to avoid hurting anyone.” Cavanaugh moved one hand to pick up the phone, then hesitated, long fingers stroking the receiver. “Tell me about your fiancé, Theresa.”

Would this man ever stop startling her? “Paul?”

Well, duh.
How many other fiancés did she have? She took another deep breath. “He’s been a cop for seventeen years. He’s currently a detective in Homicide. He’s a good cop.”

Cavanaugh waited as she tossed her empty bottle into the wastebasket. “I’m sure he’s a great cop, Theresa, but I’m not writing a brochure for the department. Tell me what he’s
like.
”

Not a word came to mind, and she stared at him in confusion. Glass slides and databases were her bailiwick, not psychology. “I don’t know what you want.”

“It’s an open-ended question, I know. This is why I ask: He’s a cop in their midst, but he’s in plainclothes and he’s not tied up with the security guards, so our two guys in there clearly do not know that he’s a police officer. That means they haven’t searched him,
haven’t found his gun, so now he’s ten feet away from these guys and he’s armed. What is he going to do?”

She glanced at the TV screen again; she had trouble looking away from it for more than a few seconds. Not much had changed in her absence. Paul still sat second from the end of the row of hostages, fidgeting now and then but obviously unhurt. “All he’ll care about is protecting those people. Frank says he’s a Boy Scout.”

“What do you think?”

It took her a while to answer. “I think he cares about doing the right thing. That’s why I want to marry him. My ex-husband never cared about the right thing. Paul is more like—”

“Your father?”

She gave a tiny jump, glared at him, and then looked away. She would never admit that; it made her sound like a neurotic little girl. No matter how true it might be.

Cavanaugh, mercifully, moved on. “Where did he propose to you?”

“What?”

“I’m just trying to gather information here, Theresa. Where did he propose?”

She smiled, unable to help it. “In an alley. In the rain. We had just cleared a triple homicide at a bowling alley, with about fifteen shots fired over three rooms—”

Cavanaugh’s dimples were showing, but his eyes seemed deadly serious. “So he’s kind of impulsive? You hadn’t expected a proposal?”

Her mouth formed a no, but that would be a lie. She had expected a proposal from their first kiss. “It wasn’t a complete surprise, but yes, a diamond popping out of nowhere sort of threw me.”

“Ah, he had the ring already. So he’s not
that
impulsive.”

“No, no. He’d had dinner reservations at Pier W, champagne on ice, the whole scenario, but then the pagers went off.” Apparently impulsivity was not a desired trait during hostage negotiations, which made sense. But what about the hostage
takers’
impulses? “What did Lucas mean about having an idea to get the money?”