Projection (10 page)

"When could you meet me at the hospital?"

"I should be out of here in a little over half an hour.  Where are you, anyway?  Could we hook up at, say, eleven forty-five?"

I looked at my watch.  11:07.  "No problem.  I'll be there," I said.  I was no more than twenty minutes from Lynn State, but sped up, knowing I needed all the time at the hospital I could get before Hancock showed up.

*            *            *

Calvin Sanger, possibly the last person I wanted to see, was sitting on the hood of his Cutlass at the head of Jessup Road, smoking a cigarette.  I would have flown right by him, but he spotted my truck and jogged into the middle of the street.  I stopped a few yards from him.  He walked to my window.  As the car in back of me passed, he nodded at the driver.  I worried he'd had me tailed.

"Nothing's changed," he said.  "Lucas is still running the show."

"I'd better get up there."

"Right."  He looked up the road, then back at me.  "Listen, Frank.  I'm the little guy in this thing," he said, the arrogance in his voice suggesting he thought a great deal more of himself.  "I'm at the
Lynn Daily Evening Item
.  Circulation twenty-five thousand.  It's nowhere."

"It's where they sign your checks."

"All three hundred eighty-five a week.  The girls you and I know at the Y probably do better."  He took a last drag off his cigarette, dropped the butt and ground it out with his foot.  "I'd just love to beat the big boys to the punch here.  If you give me the inside story on what's being planned up there, it could really launch me.  I could land at the
Boston Globe
."

"I don't have it to give."

"I have friends on the force in Revere and Salem.  I could get you cases out of both stations."

"Calvin, I can't..."

His eye twitched.  "Won't."  His tone turned bitter.  "What about Hancock?  She must have more info on the copycat than she's letting on.  Tell me what you know, and I'll see to it you come out looking like a hero.  Make me work for it, all bets are off."

"Meaning?"

"There are winners and losers in every story, heroes and villains in every city.  If I set my mind to it, you won't get a case in Lynn, never mind Revere and Salem."

I generally respond poorly to threats.  I looked through my windshield.  Without warning, I threw open my door.  It caught Sanger flush in the chest.  He stumbled back, falling to one knee.  I got out of the truck and walked over to him.  He was gasping for air.  I grabbed his collar and yanked his face up toward mine.  "Write whatever twenty-dollar story you can come up with," I said.  "You'll be the first to know if I take it personally."  I got back in the truck and drove the rest of the way down Jessup.

The grounds of Lynn State looked like a Desert Storm salvage yard.  A Huey helicopter, complete with .50-caliber machine guns tucked inside the doors, sat in the middle of the grass out front, surrounded by police cruisers.  A white canopy tent sheltered a giant PA system and stacks of wooden crates.  The parking area was dominated by the three assault vehicles — hulking, olive green armored trucks perched atop twenty-four-inch tires.  In back of them stood an aluminum-walled ‘temporary structure’ stenciled with
STATE POLICE
.  Rice's black Caprice was angled along one side.  I parked next to it and jogged up a set of makeshift wooden steps into the trailer.

Rice was seated at his desk meeting with one of his troopers.  He looked past him, at me.  "Speak of the devil," he said.  He stood up, which made most of his tiny torso disappear behind the desk.  "Dr. Clevenger, I was just talking about you with Lieutenant Patterson."

Patterson stood up, too.  He was at least a few inches over six feet tall, with defensive end shoulders and a barrel chest.  He was dressed in midnight blue fatigues and a ribbed, midnight blue turtleneck sweater.  His blond hair was shaved close to his scalp.  He swallowed my hand in his and pumped it twice, too forcefully.

"I think we've got the good Dr. Lucas focused on his whirlybird and his plans to meet with you," Rice smiled.  "We proceed as if you're going to enter the building," he said.  "That way we have a chance of snatching the two hostages Lucas thinks he'll be trading for you.  At the last moment, we'll launch the assault."

"What sort of assault?" I asked him.

"We have multiple waves of attack.  At twelve twenty-eight a team of six scales the back wall of the hospital and prepares to blast through the rear fifth-floor windows.  At exactly twelve-thirty, the chopper goes airborne, and the PA system set up in the tent warns everybody on the unit to hit the floor.  Thirty seconds later the chopper blasts away through the windows to cut down anything still standing.  That paves the way for the troopers on the back wall to strike, just as the assault vehicles crash through the front doors to inject additional troops."  His eyes lit up.  "We achieve complete domination of the site within four minutes."

"What do you estimate the body count at?"

"If we get lucky, zero," Rice broke in.

"You've got psychotic patients up there who hear voices without a PA system blaring at them."

"Psychotic
killers
," Patterson said.  "They've probably all thrown in with Lucas by now."

"One of them got thrown out the window by Lucas," I said.

Patterson shrugged.  "All they have to do is lie down when they're told."

"They're paranoid.  They're not going to lie down just because you tell them to."

"They'll end up lying down one way or...," Patterson started.

Rice held up his mitt of a hand.  My mind flashed back to him covering Winston's bloodied nose and mouth.  I felt a reluctant respect for him.  "Do you have an idea that might protect them?" he asked.  "what sort of warning or message might get through?"

"I can get through," I said.

"You won't be available.  We've got to use you to fake the hostage exchange.  There's no time for you to be jawing on the PA."

"I mean I can get through in person — by actually going onto the locked unit.  I think we should go forward with the swap."

"Come again?" Rice said, squinting at me.

"I think I can talk Lucas into surrendering."

"I must be missing something.  Didn't we both watch Dr. Winston butchered not thirty yards from here?"

I nodded.  "Winston went up against Lucas like a character out of a John Wayne western.  He baited him.  I'm going in because Lucas asked for me.  I'm complying with his wishes."

"And what in God's name would you do once you're in there?" Patterson said.

In God's name
.  I didn't miss the reference.  I paused.  "I'd listen," I answered.

"You'd listen.  That's gonna be very fucking effective."

Rice looked as if he was trying to understand.  He sat down Indian style on his desk chair and leaned forward, his head balanced on his fists.  "Listen... to what?"

"To
him
.  To Lucas."  I shook my head, trying to come up with words to match what I believed in my heart.  "If all he wanted to do was kill me he could have asked to meet me, instead of Winston, in front of the hospital.  He needs something else from me — enough to be willing to give up three of his hostages before he even gets close to it."

"What's he need?  Psychoanalysis?" Patterson joked.

I had to keep my cool.  "Of a kind," I told him.  "Maybe Lucas needs me to help him figure a way to release the hostages without feeling as if he's been conquered."

"Who gives a shit what he feels?"

"I think the families of the hostages would.  I think the father of that baby up there would."

Rice's eyes stayed fastened on mine.  He let out a long breath.  "Why do you believe you could pull that off, doctor?  Why do you think Lucas would let you get close enough to help him do the right thing?"

Patterson stormed out.

"I don't know why," I answered Rice.  "But I'm willing to find out.  And that's a pretty remarkable achievement on Lucas’ part in and of itself.  I don't think we should ignore it."

He studied me a little while.  "There would have to be steady progress — hostages being released right along," he deadpanned.  "If another murder takes place, whether it's yours or anyone else's, we jump-start Patterson's strategy."

"Fair enough," I said.

Several seconds passed.  "Let me ask you something," Rice said.  "Why did you think I would go for something like this to begin with?  I'm not even sure myself why I'm signing on with it."

"I saw what you did with Winston.  Anyone who has the courage to help someone end his life knows something about how precious life is."

He looked away.

"Where did you learn?"

"Vietnam."  He met my eyes again.  He pressed his lips together, remembering.  "I was a tunnel rat."

I knew tunnel rats had the unenviable responsibility for exploring the underground maze the North Vietnamese had dug from one end of their country to the other.  I waited for Rice to go on.

"You wouldn't believe the things in those tunnels," he said, smiling faintly.  "In some places they were barely wide enough to drag yourself through on your belly.  In other places whole medical clinics had been set up.  And shelters for families."  His face turned somber.  "Sometimes we only found out exactly what was in a tunnel after we'd filled it full of grenades."  He paused.  "I've seen enough killing in my life to last me the next three, doctor... Frank.  If you can prevent some here I'd be eternally grateful to you.  But once you're inside that locked unit, there's nothing I can do to help you."

I nodded.  "You already have."

*            *            *

I didn't feel good about having gone to Rice without telling Emma Hancock.  Three years before she had given me a rare second chance to get started in forensics again, after I had become persona non grata with her predecessor at the Lynn Police Department, in the wake of the Marcus Prescott fiasco.

Prescott was a thirty-two-year-old attorney who had raped a Lynn Classical High cheerleader.  When he had pleaded insanity, claiming he had no memory of the attack, I had testified for the defense that his symptoms were consistent with multiple personality disorder.  The jury had found him innocent and committed him to Bridgewater State Hospital.  Not a week after the team there had released him, he tracked the girl down at Brown University, raped her again and strangled her.

I'd been ready to throw in the towel on my career when Hancock called.  Since that day we had been through hell together, back way beyond the killings that got Lucas arrested, to dozens of other ugly cases.  That probably explained why I had reached out to Rice alone; I was convinced our friendship meant she would never sanction putting my head in the jaws of the beast.

Rice and I were standing outside the State Police trailer when I saw Hancock's red Jeep Cherokee drive onto the hospital grounds at 11:50  We'd gotten a message through to Lucas that we wanted the trading to take place all at once, at 12:30 — the pregnant nurse and two social workers in exchange for me.  He had agreed, demanding only that we meet on the very spot Winston had been killed.  I could have heard that as a homicidal threat, but I chose to understand it as Lucas desperately trying to maintain a position of power while under siege.

Hancock parked next to my Ram and walked up to us.  "Sorry I'm late.  Where are we on planning?" she asked.  She buttoned her coat, a play gray wool that seemed conservative even for a fifty-five-year-old civil servant.  "We should cut the heat to the building, for starters."

Neither Rice nor I said anything right away.  After a few seconds, he glanced at me, then turned to Hancock.  "We have a definitive plan that we..."

I saw her cheek quiver slightly on the second
we
.  Her nails clicked just once.  I held up a hand.  "It was my idea."

She guessed immediately which idea I was talking about.  "I already told you there's no chance I'd go along with that," she said.  Her voice had defeat built into it.  Rice had final say on what went down, and she knew it.  She tried to keep authority in her tone, but concern overwhelmed it.  "It's suicide, Frank.  Forget about it.  Understand?"  She looked from Rice to me, then back at him.

"What's your problem, exactly?" Rice asked.

"Nothing that won't go away if you tell me how the doctor's safety is reasonably assured."

"He's not looking for any assurance."

Her jaws worked against each other.  "I could go to Governor Cellucci on this.  You're using a private citizen like a Navy Seal."

"You could go to Cellucci," he said.  "It wouldn't change the plan, but you could.  Meanwhile, I'm gonna go sweat the details so our sharpshooters have a chance to pick off Lucas if he tries anything."  He walked up the wooden steps into the trailer.

Hancock looked down at the ground.

"He was going to storm the unit at twelve-thirty," I said.  "He's got a lunatic lieutenant named Patterson who thinks he can pull off another raid at Entebbe."

"I know Patterson.  He's bad news."  She looked at me.  "Why are you doing this?"

I felt as if she were looking through me.  "It's the right thing to do.  It's the right thing for me."

Her lips pursed.  "Why?  Why do you want to get yourself killed here?"

"I don't want to die, Emma.  I'm not planning on it."

"You've lost all objectivity.  You're
in
this thing, instead of outside it."

I could feel Hancock burrowing toward the truth — that I bore a good deal of the responsibility for getting us all into this mess, including Lucas.  Part of me wished I could tell her everything.  About Lucas being innocent of the murders of her niece.  About Kathy.  "I have a feeling in my gut," was all I did tell her.  "You once told me I should always go with it."

"That's what I'm driving at.  What's in your gut?  What are you feeling?"  She shook her head.  "Listen to me.  I sound like a shrink myself."

"You should probably avoid that.  I doubt it would go over big at the station."