“Why do politicians always talk in cliches?” Lonnie interrupted. “As of this point in time …”
“Ssshh,” I hissed.
“-we have no proof other than the claims of the people involved that there are any illegal weapons on scene.”
“But they admitted it!” another reporter yelled back.
“If you’ll let me finish,” Gleaves instructed. I had to hand it to him; Chief Gleaves was cool. He was the first Nashville police chief to come to the job with academic credentials and a little professionalism, rather than just a hundred years on the beat and a lot of good ol’ boys on the council as pals.
“There have been no charges filed against these people yet. The last thing we are going to do is go in there and provoke a confrontation. I’m not going to have another Waco here.”
“That’s a switch,” Lonnie said. “Old Baltimore Sims would’ve welcomed the chance go in there shooting.”
Baltimore Sims was a North Nashville boy who’d come up out of the old city sheriff’s department in the days before city consolidation. He had only a tenth-grade education, but he’d served as Nashville police chief for over a decade before being forced to retire for having his picture taken with guys in black suits at Churchill Downs one too many times.
I leaned back in the chair, exhausted. We listened to the press conference rattle on for another minute or so, and when everybody started repeating themselves, Lonnie hit the mute button.
“Want another one?” Lonnie held up his empty beer can.
“No. Too tired. I’ve still got to drive home. Guess I ought to stop at Marsha’s first and make sure her place is okay.”
Lonnie got up and walked over to the refrigerator and swung the door open. The inside light chiseled ridges on his face while the blue flickering from the television danced on his back.
“You ever get the feeling the world’s going to hell?” I asked. My eyes burned and my mind became a muddled blur. I thought of Marsha, murdered cabdrivers, slaughtered convenience-store clerks. All innocent people just trying to eke out a living.
“It’s like a disease. Random chaos, violence. Where’d it come from?”
Lonnie smiled and shook his head, like boy, are you dense.… He walked over past me and picked up the television remote control, then pressed a couple of buttons and the picture changed to an old black-and-white film of GIs spraying napalm out of a flamethrower into a cave. A second or so later, some poor soul comes sprinting out, a ball of flame doing the hundred-yard dash to death, then collapses in a burning heap.
“Channel Twenty-six,” Lonnie said. “The War Channel, twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week. All you can stand.”
I stared at him for a moment. “There has to be a point here somewhere.”
Lonnie dropped the remote control on the top of the television, then flopped down in his chair. “You think we win wars because we’re good, man? You think we whip ass everywhere because freaking God’s on our side, and not on the other guy’s? That somehow we’re righteous …”
He threw a leg over the side of the chair and took a long swallow of the beer. “Hell, no. We won the war because we are the single most meanest motherthumpers in the world. We even beat the snot out of the Japanese and the Germans, who up until they pissed us off were themselves the meanest motherthumpers in the world. I mean, these people gave us the Rape of Nan-king and the Holocaust, for God’s sake, and we pummeled them into slop. You think we did that ’cause we’re the nice guys?”
“That’s different, man. It’s not the same.”
“Isn’t it?” He leaned back, the can of beer cradled in his hands. “Violence is America, man. Just ask the Indians. See what they think of us. It’s genetic, encoded in the DNA. It’s where we’re from. It’s who we are.”
“I don’t believe that,” I said. “That’s lunacy.”
“So who’s arguing? Of course it’s lunacy. It’s also reality.…” His voice trailed off.
I stood up, suddenly very tired of Lonnie. I didn’t know whether it was his preaching, or the message he was delivering. Either way, I needed some air. “It’s late. I’ve got to go.”
“Yeah,” he said, staring ahead at the television.
“Thanks for the loan of the van.”
“No charge.”
“I filled up the tank.”
“Thanks.”
I stood there a second, then stepped over and opened the door. “Lonnie,” I said, turning back to him, “I’m really worried about her.”
“I know you are, man. Just hang in there. She’ll be okay. She’s a tough lady.”
“Thanks, buddy. Get some sleep. See you.”
“Yeah, you, too,” Lonnie said without getting up. “Watch yourself.”
As I stepped out into the darkness Lonnie turned the sound up on the television. I walked across the parking lot to my car, accompanied by the whistle of bombs dropping fifty years ago.
So who needs sleep, right? I took a long shower, slid under the covers, and tried to fade out. Every time I thought I was going to drop off, road rushed at me again, as if the vision of white-lined asphalt rolling by had been tattooed on my retinas.
This day had started out so well. The badly needed cash the videotape would score took second place to my perseverance. I’d hung in there and beaten the guy! He’d rolled that damn wheelchair around for weeks with me watching him. He figured nobody’d be crazy enough to follow him all the way to Louisville, Kentucky.
Well, damn it, he figured wrong. I was that crazy.
But it was all meaningless. I couldn’t stop thinking about her. On the way home from Lonnie’s the night before, I’d driven once again past the barricades. The traffic was so bad it took nearly an hour to get in and out. Blue lights sabered the night, and off in the distance sirens meowed faintly and helicopter blades chopped. But, thank God, no gunshots. Spectators, drunks, street people, concerned family members, and rowdy teenagers all mixed into a potpourri of chaos; that uniquely American method of dealing with tragedy by transforming it into street theatre. I tried to figure out some way to get past the police lines and up the hill, but there was no way.
I finally drifted off. Around four in the morning, I woke up with a jolt and couldn’t fall back off. I channel-surfed for a while, unsuccessfully searching for news bulletins, then popped the videotape of the bricklayer in the VCR. My landlady, Mrs. Hawkins, was asleep downstairs, but I wasn’t worried about waking her up. She’s as deaf as a rock wall, can barely hear with both hearing aids turned up to max. So I cranked up the sound and listened to the laughing and the bouncing of the basketball on concrete, the birds chirping and shrieking in trees, the roar of a truck going by somewhere behind the house.
I made a cup of hot chocolate and watched the tape again. I was preoccupied, drifting in and out. The tape took on a surreal quality, as if the TV screen were a window into another world, a world of much brighter colors and more acute lines than the fuzzy set of gray scales and soft lines that made up my world in the middle of the night.
I finally went under again, then woke up about daybreak with the bright silver flashing of the television dancing off the dirty cup in my lap. For a moment I couldn’t remember where I was. Then it came back to me. I grabbed the clicker and ran frantically through the local stations, then CNN.
Nothing.
I fought the urge to call her, not wanting to wake her if she’d had as bad a night as I had. I showered again, this time to wake up, and made a cup of coffee. The carton of milk in my refrigerator had gone solid on me; I choked the coffee down black. The day outside was dreary, with the threat of spring thunderstorms in the air. I threw on a robe and walked down the driveway to retrieve my Sunday-morning paper.
STATE OF SIEGE the newspaper headline blared in seventy-two-point bold block type. I laughed when I saw the headline, but then remembered how I used to feel when something like this went down in my old newspaper days.
I’d have handled the story the same way. The newspeople had to milk the story for all it was worth. If this kept up, half the city would be talking to Ted Koppel by Monday night. I unfolded the paper and spread it out on the kitchen table. Most of the front page was taken up by the story. And there, down in the far right-hand corner, was Marsha’s picture. Below the picture, a caption read: Dr. Marsha Helms, Assistant Medical Examiner and another line below that: Now held captive by cult members.
Held captive. I read the words over and over. I’d never known anyone who was held captive, at least not outside the normal channels of incarceration.
Held captive.
I rubbed my forehead and poured another cup of coffee, trying without much luck to shake off the cobwebs. I lay back down, somehow managed to drift off again, then woke up an hour later. I called Marsha on the cellular phone, but got busy signals for nearly a half hour. It occurred to me that with the regular telephone lines cut, the cellular would be her only connection to the police outside.
I spent the rest of the morning trying to find out anything I could. Events were occurring so fast that everybody was playing catch-up. I called the city room at the newspaper where I used to work. I got some new guy who’d never heard of me-and who didn’t want to talk anyway. Then I called another reporter I’d worked with, but he didn’t know anything either. I phoned the police-department media liaison, but she wouldn’t talk to me. I called Lieutenant Howard Spellman, my old buddy who was in charge of the Homicide Squad, but was told simply that he was unavailable.