Twisted Triangle (26 page)

Margo could see Edwin in the darkened secretary’s offi with a bag over his head and hands cuffed behind him, up against the copy machine.

“Edwin, are you all right?” she asked. “I think so,” he said.

“Do you have explosives around you?” “There’s something around my waist.”

“Why didn’t you tell Edwin that you’re a lesbian?” Gene interrupted. “Did you tell him about the money you stole?”

“I’m not going to let you do this,” Margo said. “Just leave. Get out.”

At this point, Edwin felt he should try to help. “Gene, you don’t have to do this,” he said.

But Margo didn’t want Edwin diverting Gene’s attention and giving him an opportunity to calm down. She needed to keep the chaos going, but she was also angry, and her adrenaline was running high.

“Edwin, just shut up,” she yelled. “This is all your fault. How could you do this to me? How could you call me and bring me into this?”

“Margo, I didn’t know what to do. He told me somebody was with my kids. I’m sorry.”

“God dammit, Edwin, if Gene doesn’t kill you, I will.”

“Don’t you know I’m going to take the children and leave the country tonight?” Gene said.

“Gene, just do what you have to do. Get out of here. Just leave.”

“You know I’m going to leave here and go and get the kids. You know I’m going to have to go through Letta. Is that what you want?”

Margo figured he meant that he would kill Letta if necessary to take the kids, but Margo was willing to call his bluff. “Gene, just do what you have to do. Get out of here. Just leave. I’m not coming out.”

Margo didn’t understand why he wasn’t trying to shoot at her. All she could think was that he wanted to take her somewhere, to torture her, to make her suffer more than just a quick shot to the head. She’d backed herself into a corner, literally, with no way out of the room except to get past Gene and the doorway he was guard—

ing, and she knew that was highly unlikely, if not impossible. “Edwin, are you ready to die? ’Cause I don’t know how we’re

going to get out of this.”

Edwin sighed and said, “I was afraid of that.” “Are you praying?”

“I’ve been praying.”

“Pray for me too,” she said. “I’m a little busy right now.”

She made the decision then and there that she would have to shoot Gene and, with any luck, take him down.

She took careful aim at the spot where his head had appeared, but as she began easing back on the trigger, she could feel it slip. The trigger didn’t catch. She also heard a click, which meant that the cylinder hadn’t rotated inside the gun, so it wouldn’t fi She started to panic.

Please don’t tell me my gun is malfunctioning
, she thought.

She decided she would have to “single fi the gun, so she pulled the hammer back with her thumb, cocking it, and took aim again at the doorway.

The next time Gene poked his head around, she fired. The bullet slammed into the doorjamb and the plaster next to it. Just a quarter-inch more to the right and she would have caught him in chest.

Dammit!
she thought before snapping back into police action mode.
Don’t panic. Get ready. Take the next shot
.

“You’ll have to do better than that,” Gene said.

Margo crawled around the edge of the desk and tried to reach up and grab the telephone. She had fi bullets left, and she was going to use them wisely.

“I wouldn’t do that if I were you,” Gene said, tauntingly. Margo withdrew back behind the desk.

Gene started throwing books and handfuls of papers into the offi apparently to draw her fire until she ran out of bullets, but he was careful not to put his head or body into her firing range again.

“Does he have a vest on, or doesn’t he?” Gene asked in the same taunting voice.

Margo knew that Gene had been issued a bullet-proof vest by the FBI and that he could very well be wearing it. That meant

she’d have to aim for his head, a much smaller target than his chest. But she also knew that Gene might be toying with her.

“Gene, just leave. Get out of here.”

“I’m not going to leave,” he said. “If I leave, you’ll shoot me in the back.”

“I’m not going to shoot you in the back. Just leave.”

“You’re going to follow me and shoot me. Give me your car keys.”

“No, I’m not giving you anything. Just get out of here.” “What’s it going to take to get you out of there, Margo, a gas

canister?”

Margo hoped that this, too, was a ruse and kept yelling at him until he stopped responding.

It got very quiet in the church, but Margo couldn’t be sure. “Gene, just go. Just leave,” she said.

When there was still no response, Margo reached up and pulled the phone by its cord off the desk and onto the floor. She didn’t know if Gene was still lurking around, but if he was going to run into the room, she didn’t want to be up and walking around. What she wanted was to call 911.

But as she started pressing buttons on the phone, she realized that Gene had disabled the lines: there was dead air on one of them, music on the other, and she couldn’t get a dial tone. She fi Gene had used one line to call the other and then put it on hold.

“Edwin, the phones are dead. I don’t know what we’re going to do.”

Finally, after pressing one button and then the other fi or six times, she was able to free up one of the lines and call 911. It was 11:38 pm.

She laid the receiver down and shouted so that she could keep her hands free and her fi on the trigger, aiming at the doorway, in case Gene appeared again.

Margo continued to yell at Gene. She was afraid that he might come charging back in if he heard her talking to the 911 operator;

she also wanted the dispatcher to know what was going on at the church.

“Gene, just take your gun and get out. Edwin, do you have explosives around your waist?”

Once she figured Gene was probably gone, she picked up the receiver and talked directly to the dispatcher.

“This is Margo Bennett; I’m at the Prince of Peace United Methodist Church. My husband has been here with a gun and tried to kill me. I think he’s on the way to getting my children; I need someone to check on my kids. I need police out here.”

“Offi are already on the way,” the dispatcher said. “I need you to calm down.”

“I am calm.”

“Is anyone there with you?”

As the dispatcher asked her a series of questions, Margo told Edwin to stand up so she could describe the explosives around his waist. She was not going to come out from behind that desk until she was absolutely sure it was safe. She told him to check the lock on the secretary’s door to make sure that Gene couldn’t come in that way, then she asked if he could remove the fanny pack. Edwin maneuvered his cuffed hands down his back to unclasp the pack, and laid it carefully on the fl .

Margo asked the dispatcher to call her house and tell Letta to take the kids next door to Beth’s in case Gene showed up and tried to nab them.

A few minutes later, the dispatcher told her that the police had arrived at the church.

“The offi are ready to come in,” she said. “Put your gun down.”

“Tell them I’m not going to the door,” Margo said. “They can break the windows to come in as far as I care, but tell them to please hurry.”

She didn’t know if Gene was still hiding somewhere, so she told Edwin to get down on the ground. “There may be shooting,” she said.

The dispatcher tried again to get Margo to put her gun down, but she wouldn’t until the dispatcher had listed the names of the offi who were going to come through the door.

Margo heard a group of offi come into the lobby and yell, “Police!” but she still refused to drop her weapon. Only after she had confi the offi identities would she lay her gun on the carpet, stand up, and put her hands in the air.

“Edwin is in there on the ground,” she said, pointing to the secretary’s offi

The police led Margo and Edwin, whose ankles were still shackled, out of the church and across the driveway as quickly as possible, fearful that Gene was still around and would blow up the church, taking all of them with it.

Once they were thirty feet from the building, the police took off Edwin’s handcuffs, and Margo asked if she could remove his leg irons. Margo used her universal key, which unlocked any set of cuffs, to free Edwin.

Detective Ron McClelland had worked the 3 pm to 11 pm shift that day and was en route to his home in Woodbridge when Margo’s 911 call came in. All he heard over the police radio was something to do with a bomb at a church and that patrol offi were responding. He was only a few minutes away, so he headed over to see if he could help.

When he got there at 11:55, the patrol offi had already secured the scene and had separated Margo and Edwin. Ron, a redhead in his late thirties, interviewed them separately, Edwin in one police car and Margo in his vehicle.

As Ron questioned Margo, he could see she was shaken, but she was still able to give good details about what had occurred.

Around 12:15, Margo asked if she could use Ron’s cell phone to call Letta at Beth’s house to make sure the girls were safe. Carly, the daughter of Margo’s sister Jackie, was staying with them too.

Letta had brought Margo’s cordless phone to Beth’s, and it rang while she was talking to Margo on Beth’s phone. Margo could hear

Beth in the background, saying that Gene had just called to talk to the girls, but she told him they were asleep.

Letta was crying and her voice was quivering as Margo told her what had just happened, but Margo had to cut the conversation short so that she could get back to the interview with Ron.

A little while later, she called Dianna.

“Sorry to wake you up, but Gene’s done it again,” Margo said. “You’re shitting me,” Dianna said.

“Gene tried to kill me tonight. Do you remember where Prince of Peace Church is? Can you come out here? I need somebody with me.”

“Margo, I’ll be there as soon as I can.”

Dianna grabbed her gun and threw a few things into a bag, not knowing how long Margo might need her to stay, but suspect-ing it could be up to a week. She sped up I-95 from her house in Fredericksburg and arrived about an hour later.

Dianna parked her Lexus down the street from the church. As she went looking for Margo, the red flashing lights of law enforcement vehicles, including the state police bomb unit, lit up the black night.

As Ron interviewed Margo, he got in and out of his car periodically to talk to the other offi coming back with new questions and updates on the case.

After returning from one of these breaks, he said, “We got a 911 call from Gene.”

Ron turned up his police radio, so they could listen to the chatter. By then, the dispatchers had been handling a series of calls into the taped 911 line from Gene, who was at his house about three miles from the church. His fi call came in at 12:40 am.

“He hung up,” the dispatcher kept saying. And then, “He’s called back.”

Margo was having a hard time focusing on what Gene was doing, but she tried to stay engaged so that she could help police respond to the ongoing situation.

Ron told Margo that police had evacuated some of the houses around Gene’s because they were worried he had explosives there, too. He had refused to come outside, so a hostage negotiator had been called in to talk to him.

This was not only an unusual event for Prince William County, but it also caused a great deal of alarm about the potential public safety danger, so the police had alerted Paul Ebert, the county’s chief prosecutor, an elected offi ial known as the commonwealth’s attorney, similar to a district attorney in other states.