1:35 P.M.
Across the street Patrick told Chris Cavanaugh everything he’d learned from Jack Cornell. The hostage negotiator listened. He did not mention Patrick’s earlier agitation or express any relief at Patrick’s current calm. He did ask about Paul.
“The doctor seems to think he’s going to die.”
Cavanaugh said, “You don’t have to stay here, you know. You can leave someone here in your place if you’d rather be at the hospital.”
Diplomatic as hell, Patrick thought. Cavanaugh knew he didn’t have to be there at all-Patrick was a flippin’ Homicide detective, not an SRT member, and surely the negotiator could work better without his emotions taking up space in the room. Yet he didn’t say that, nor even imply it.
Still, Patrick felt grateful. “No. Selfish, maybe, but I couldn’t stand sitting there next to a guy who’s out cold, without any idea what’s going on here. You talked to Parrish’s sister?”
“Yeah. She’s not in North Carolina anymore. She went army, too, and is stationed out in New Mexico. She hasn’t seen her brother in five years; they write each other at Christmas, that’s about it. No surprises in the family history. Mom was a schoolteacher, Dad knocked her and the kids around regularly and then took off on Lucas’s fourteenth birthday.”
“Great guy. And this was in Atlanta?”
“Outside Columbia, South Carolina.” Cavanaugh’s pager made a buzzing sound.
Patrick waited while Cavanaugh took his phone call. After Cavanaugh’s quick discussion of foreign rights and hardback editions, Patrick asked him, “What’s his plan for getting away? He must have a plan.”
“Oh, yeah. Every vibe from this guy says he has a plan. Unfortunately, he’s really good at keeping it to himself. I need another phone conversation before this shipment exchange happens. If he’ll talk about his ideas for a getaway, I can make him see how unrealistic they are.”
“Look, something else keeps sticking out. Bobby seems to believe that his brother is dead.”
“He could mean dead to him. Didn’t the brother turn him in?”
“Yeah, but I don’t know if Bobby knows that.” Patrick patted his shirt pocket but didn’t bother to remove the pack of cigarettes from it. “I can ask the brother.”
“It’s interesting. It could be the only psychological advantage we can get. Neither of them has anyone else we could use for leverage, no close family, no job, no political agenda. And it might be a way to drive a wedge between Bobby and Lucas if we need to.”
“Bobby will put family over friends.”
“Exactly. If they’re going to take the money and run, fine. But if they’re going to take some hostages with them-and they’d be insane not to-then we have to stop them before they reach the curb.” He watched the monitor, where Lucas slowly herded his captives toward the front of the lobby. “They’re getting ready to receive the money shipment. Maybe now I can get Bobby on the phone.”
“He’s never let us talk to Bobby before,” Patrick observed.
“We’ve never asked to, and Bobby has expressed his opinion throughout. He’s no flunky.”
“In that case there’s something else you should know.” Patrick scanned the area for Jason and didn’t see him. “I know we’re not supposed to tell you everything, but if you do happen to get Bobby on the phone and he really does believe that his brother is dead…”
“What is it, Detective?”
“His brother-Eric-is here. He was getting off work at the airport, and I thought he might come in handy.”
Cavanaugh absorbed this. “We usually try not to do that. I know in old movies they always bring the beloved mother or long-suffering wife in to talk the guy down, but in real life that backfires more often than not. Hostage takers tend to blame everyone else for their troubles, and the people closest to them most of all.”
“I know that.”
“However, when Lucas hit Theresa, he said that Bobby wants to use the RDX on the building because he blames the government for losing his family. If you’re right and he really does believe that his brother is dead, discovering that he’s not could change everything.”
“We’ve got nothing else,” Patrick reminded him. “Lucas doesn’t seem to have an Achilles’ heel. At least Bobby has this family hang-up. We could use it to distract him at an opportune moment, if nothing else.”
“I’ll keep it in mind. Otherwise we’ll have to continue doing what we always do.” Cavanaugh picked up the receiver and punched a few buttons. “We pick our way through the minefield wearing a blindfold, using nothing but a toothpick and some chewing gum.”
They watched the TV screen. Lucas apparently did not want to give up his surveillance of the street and called to Bobby, who approached the phone. The stocky blond adjusted the position of the M4 carbine, finally tucking the butt onto his hip so that he could keep his finger on the trigger while leaving his left hand free.
They waited, letting the phone ring. Patrick felt as if they were trying to tempt a smallmouth bass by jiggling the hook.
“Hello?” Bobby said at last.
Cavanaugh introduced himself again, then asked, “This is Bobby Moyers, right?” as if he didn’t know.
Bobby ignored the question. “Is the money here?”
“Not yet.”
“Well, where is-”
“The truck is tied up in the traffic around the convention center. You know, that luncheon for the secretary of state. It will just be a few more minutes. If you stay on the line, I can keep you up to date.”
“Uh-huh.”
“I wanted to ask you something anyway-you said you don’t trust cops. I need to ask why, because if we’re all going to go home today without having shed any more blood, we need to establish a little trust between you and me, at least in some areas. You see what I mean?”
“Trust really isn’t an option here, Chris.”
“Why not?”
“You killed my family. I mean the Cleveland Police Department killed my family.”
“No one told me about this.” His voice dripped with sincerity and concern. Not for the first time, Patrick wondered how he did it. He had to feel like crawling through the wires and choking the life out of the scumbag. “How did it happen?”
Bobby didn’t waste time with sarcastic preambles as Lucas would have. “First of all, my dad had to skip town when I was a kid because you guys were going to arrest him for robbing a jewelry store, which he didn’t do. It was some other guy who lived on the same street and kinda resembled my father. So he had to leave town and never come back.”
“I suppose that’s what Mommy told him,” Patrick muttered. Cavanaugh glared at him, and he shut up.
“Then you guys could barely get your charges to stick the first time, so you sent me as far away for as long as you could on a probation violation.” He made buying drugs sound akin to jaywalking, and in his mind it probably was. “My mother had a heart attack after a month. You put my mother in her grave over a damn probation violation.”
Bobby sounded agitated, and on the monitor they could see him pacing back and forth in front of the reception desk. They did not want a hostage taker agitated. Cavanaugh’s voice seemed to walk a precipice, sympathetic without falling over the edge into a valley of schmaltz. “That must have been very hard on you.”
“I couldn’t even go to her funeral.” “What about your brother?” A pause. “My brother turned me in. He was the one who called you guys.”
Cavanaugh waited. On the screen Bobby had stopped pacing, and now he leaned on the desk, hanging his head as if worn out. Jason returned and took a seat but did not speak.
“I hated him when they sent me to Atlanta.” “Do you still hate him?” “How could I? He was right. I was destroying our mother-her hair went gray during my first term. She worried about me day and night. I would have killed her eventually if you guys hadn’t beaten me to it. He was right.”
“So now you think he did the right thing?” “He tried to protect Mom. I can’t blame him for that. But I never got a chance to tell him, because you bastards killed him, too.” Cavanaugh exchanged a frown with Patrick. “What do you mean by that?”
“What do you think I mean? He got picked up on a DUI charge, and two guys in the holding cell with him beat him to death. The guards threw him in with the biggest psychos they could find and then looked the other way.”
“When did this happen?” “A few weeks after you sent me to Atlanta.” “Your brother was arrested for DUI?” “My brother never drove drunk in his life-the jail cops wanted to get back at me, and I’d been sent out of reach. So they took the only person I had left.” Patrick retreated between the stacks and pulled out his Nextel.
He had already called Records for a criminal history on Eric Moyers-clean-but wanted to double-check. He listened to Cavanaugh and Bobby’s conversation while he waited.
“How did you find out about this?”
“A buddy of mine, the guy who drove my car down to Atlanta and put it into storage for me-he told me.”
“What’s your friend’s name?”
“I’m not going to tell you! You’d go and harass him, too. Forget it, he’s got nothing to do with this. What?” He spoke this last word away from the receiver, but loudly, apparently shouting to Lucas. The response sounded like a distant murmur to Patrick. “Lucas wants to know if the truck is here yet.”
Cavanaugh looked at Jason, who nodded a yes.
“It will pull up any minute now-that’s why you need to stay on the line with me. You obviously feel very bad about your mother and brother.”
“I’m alone now. How would you feel if I came into your house tonight and took out everyone but you?”
“At the moment I’m very confused, though, because as far as I know, your brother is not dead.”
“Yeah, sure. Did you wave your hands over his grave and bring him back to life?”
“Have you been to his grave?”
“No-o-o.”
“Is there any chance your friend was mistaken?”
“You’re just playing with my head. You think I don’t know that? I should believe you over a friend? You’d tell me the sky was orange if it made me toss down my guns and let your sniper take me out.”
“What if I could let you talk to your brother? That would show you that I’m not lying, right, that I can be trusted?”
“What are you going to do, hold one of those séance things?”
“Your brother is not dead, Bobby.”
“Sure.”
“I know this for a fact. One of our officers interviewed him this morning. He works for Continental Airlines, right?”
A pause. Bobby started pacing again, within the length of the phone cord, back and forth, back and forth. He had room, since Lucas had moved their hostages away from the desk.
Patrick retook his seat. “Records has nothing on Eric Moyers. No arrest for DUI. Neither does Lakewood. They’re checking the other suburbs as well.”
“Bobby? Your brother was never arrested for DUI. I don’t know why your friend told you that. He must have gotten Eric confused with someone else.”
“He knew who my brother was.”
“Well, so do we, and he’s very much alive and well. More than that, he’s here with us, in the library across the street from you. If I get him on the phone, then you’ll have to admit that I told the truth, right? That if I say I can get something to happen, then I can. Right?”
It didn’t take a Ph.D. to see where Cavanaugh was heading. He needed Bobby and Lucas to believe that they could come out, give up, and not be killed or even mistreated. And they wouldn’t do that unless they trusted him.
“Sure,” Bobby said at last. “Go ahead, get him on the phone.”
“Okay. It will take a few minutes. He’s downstairs.”
“Is that truck here yet?”
“I don’t see it.” Of course he didn’t, unless he could see through stone walls.
“Then we got time.”
He covered the mouthpiece and whispered to Patrick, “Go get him.”
Patrick returned in four minutes with Eric Moyers in tow. The man seemed considerably less enthusiastic about the idea than his brother had. “What am I supposed to say to him?”
“Just tell him you’re not dead,” Cavanaugh said. “Otherwise just keep it neutral and calm. Don’t be judgmental or tell him he’s screwed up.”
“Even though he has.”
“But we’re trying to make him calm and sentimental here, right? Don’t get drawn into an argument. I’ll be right here listening to every word, but we’re not going to be on speakerphone, in case you and I need to consult. Are you ready?”
Moyers couldn’t have looked gloomier if he had been in line for the guillotine. “I suppose.”
“Bobby? I have your brother here.”
“Sure you do.”
Cavanaugh plugged a second receiver into his console and handed it to Eric Moyers. He put it to his ear, carefully, as if he might need to pull it away again in a hurry. “Bobby?”
“Is this supposed to be Eric?”
“It is Eric, Bobby. I don’t know why you think I’m dead, but I’m not.” No answer. He looked at Cavanaugh, who made a rolling motion with one finger-keep it going. “I see you’re in a jam over there. I want to help you out of it.”
“I’ll just bet you do.” Eric Moyers glanced at Cavanaugh again. The hostage negotiator said, “Talk about something only you would know.” “Bobby, listen to me a minute,” Eric tried. “For Mom’s sake.” “Don’t say a word about my mother! You cops will stoop to any thing to blast me out of here! I don’t know who you are, pal, but you’re not my brother Eric, so get off the phone and put Cavanaugh back on so I can tell him to go to hell.”
“Bobby, it’s me.” “You don’t sound anything like Eric.” Calm and nonjudgmental had been thrown out. “I have a cold, you idiot!” “Call back when the truck is here,” Bobby said. A clicking sound came from the phone’s speaker. “Did he hang up?” Eric Moyers asked. “I can’t say I’m surprised. Listening never was a specialty of Bobby’s.”
Cavanaugh rolled his head from side to side, stretching neck muscles. “It was worth a try. Maybe he’ll think about it. In the meantime I can’t stall them about the money anymore, and there’s no reason to try. There is the possibility that he’s telling the truth, that they’ll just take it and go.”
“Go where?” Moyers asked. “That’s the hard part.” Somewhere behind the books, Patrick heard the voice of a very young woman: “-don’t care. I don’t give a crap whether they like it or not. That’s my mother-” He hadn’t thought that the situation could get much worse. He’d been wrong.
Cavanaugh started to turn toward the noise and caught the look on Patrick’s face. “What’s the matter?”
Patrick pinched the bridge of his nose between forefinger and thumb. “If you thought Theresa was a handful,” he told Cavanaugh, “you’re not going to believe her daughter.”