Fire with Fire, page 22
“I want to find the kid, dead or alive,” Charlie said.
“Well, I want to find her alive.” Lamb raised her eyebrows.
“And that’s why you’re not suited to this job.” Charlie went back to the video, scrolled through it again. “Because that’s not your job. Your job is to find the answer. Not to hope for a particular kind of answer and let it blind you to the rest of the possibilities.”
“Isn’t that exactly what you’re doing?” she snapped. “By hoping that she drowned?”
He turned to her. “You think I hope a kid drowned?”
Surge’s hand sliced down between them like a huge boom gate.
“Cut it out,” the big man said. “Both of you.”
“What do you want out of this case?” Lamb asked over the top of the hairy arm hovering between them. “Do you want to find a little girl, or do you want to save your samples?”
“What do you want out of this case?” Charlie asked. “Do you want to find a little girl, or do you want to prove yourself so you can be a cop again?”
“Hey!” Surge bellowed. His huge fist descended on the table, smashing down hard, making the laptops jump and his fresh coffee slosh over the rim of his mug. A half-eaten apple that had been sitting at the table’s edge fell onto the carpet.
Charlie and Lamb and Binchley all looked at Surge.
“I don’t like infighting,” the big man said.
There was silence. Charlie pushed Surge’s laptop back toward him.
“So what else?” he asked Lamb.
“That’s it,” she said. “That’s all we have in terms of useful images. We got Jonie and Tilly arriving at the beach and a shot of six cars in the parking lot around the time of the disappearance. It’s not a lot. But it’s not nothing.”
Charlie stared at his hands on the tabletop.
“Aside from the pictures, I’ve pursued something else,” Lamb said. She opened her copy of the Tilly Delaney case file to the images of the bathing suit found washed up in the vicinity the day after Tilly went missing. Charlie had seen a thousand photographs like this one before, of twisted, shredded, or bloodstained pieces of clothing lying like the husks of dead creatures, alongside rulers for scale. The swimsuit looked tiny and shriveled in the glaring light from the forensic photographer’s bulb.
“This swimsuit,” Lamb said. “It could tell us something. Yes, the item itself was lost at Hertzberg-Davis. But we have forensic-quality photographs that we can examine. I’ve sent them to a professor who dropped in to give a guest lecture at the academy while I was there. Dr. Novid Sadik. I stayed behind after Dr. Sadik’s talk and—”
“We all know you were a nerd at the academy, Lamb.” Charlie waved wearily at her. “Get to the point. Who’s Sadik, and what does he do?”
“Water.” Lamb gave Charlie a scathing look. “Bodies in water. Water damage to murder weapons, vehicles, articles of clothing. I want to know what he thinks these tears to the suit are. Are they bite marks? Are they from the seabed? How long does he think this particular swimsuit would have been in the water? And how likely does he think it would be for Tilly to have been eaten by a shark and for her swimsuit to have survived in this condition? The photographs are very good. He might be able to tell.”
“It’s worth trying,” Surge said. “We know the swimsuit was Tilly’s size. And that it showed up in the right place, according to the currents.”
Charlie looked at the swimsuit. He jolted as Surge kicked him under the table.
Surge raised his eyebrows. “Good work, Lamb.”
“Yeah, yeah,” Charlie conceded. He was more focused on the strange, brown, bulbous creature on the chest of the swimsuit. It had huge eyes and was wearing a jaunty powder-blue porkpie hat.
“What is that thing?”
“Herbie the Millipede,” Lamb said. “He’s from a family of millipedes who live in Sydney, Australia. Popular kids’ show. I think Disney just bought it. It was never revealed publicly that the swimsuit had Herbie the Millipede on it. So if there’s a culprit and we find them, this could be our trump card.”
“Maybe. How many Herbie the Millipede swimsuits are out there in Tilly’s size?” Charlie wondered.
Neither Surge nor Lamb answered. They didn’t need to. Charlie shuffled sideways, hustled Lamb out so she freed him from the booth. He went to the trailer door, pushed it open, and sat on the top step. The movie lot was strangely quiet. There was no queue outside the makeup trailer. No execs walking by. An eeriness lingered in the air, of bad things past and bad things yet to come. He thought about Jonie Delaney pushing open the door of her toilet stall and finding herself unexpectedly alone. How the world must have tipped for her, the way it had for him when Dean smiled at him in that evil, knowing way on the boat and he realized he was suddenly alone, too. A cop alone among criminals.
“We’ve got to go, Lamb,” Charlie said eventually. “I’ve set up some meetings for us. Surge, get Binchley onto the plates in the parking lot. I want to know owners, and I want to know if any were sold in the months after the kid went missing.”
“Are you really gonna talk about me like I’m not sitting right here?” the biker asked. “You’re all drinking coffee and eating snacks and talking about me like I’m a goddamn printer. You just push buttons and I spit out what you want. This is bullshit.”
“Oh, I’m sorry,” Lamb said gently. “You’re not feeling used, are you, Brad?”
“Yeah. I am.”
“Well, welcome to my world, bitch!” Lamb roared.
There was a pause, and then Charlie heard Surge break into laughter. In time, Lamb joined in.
* * *
Bendigo just stood there, looking at the scissors embedded in Elsie’s stomach. The handle was sticking out of her abdomen on the right-hand side, just beside her ribs, about where Bendigo knew her gallbladder would be. Elsie was just standing there, too, the gun in her hand, her palm flattened against her belly beside the scissors. Her new appendage. The fabric of her white linen T-shirt was grotesquely pulled in around the base of the blades in a way that made Bendigo think of upholstery buttons. He gagged again, covered his mouth with his palm.
“I’m so sorry,” he murmured. The absurdity of it all caught him, the way it had when he’d first walked into the lab. How did a person apologize for causing another to be impaled on a pair of scissors? “Is it … is it…?”
Elsie raised the gun, pointed it at him. Her face was white.
“Go back to the lab,” she said.
“Should I help you walk?”
“Go!”
He went. She walked behind him, slightly bent, her hand still flattened against her belly, unwilling to touch the scissor handles, yet unable, it seemed, to pull her hand away. Ryan was pacing the lab when Bendigo entered the room. He seemed to sense something was amiss from the expression on Bendigo’s face. When Elsie entered, his eyes dropped to the scissors. He put his gun slowly on the tabletop.
“What…” He twitched, glanced at Bendigo, back at the scissors. “What…” Ryan rushed to his wife.
“Don’t touch it!” she screamed. Ryan fluttered helplessly around her as she eased herself onto a stool by the table crammed with equipment. “Just leave it. It’s not bleeding. If we don’t pull it out, maybe—”
“How did this happen?”
“It was—”
“It was an accident,” Elsie cut Bendigo off. Ryan’s jaw was slowly tightening. His dark eyes lifted to the scientist, rapidly filling with rage. Elsie wiped her bloody lip. “Ryan? Ryan? It was an accident!”
“Where did the scissors come from?” Ryan asked. Bendigo didn’t answer. He stood cowering beside where Ibrahim and Ashlea were sitting together, clutching each other. When Bendigo didn’t answer, Ryan went and got his gun, leveled it at Ibrahim, then Ashlea. “Are you armed, too? Either of you?”
No one spoke. Bendigo watched the scissor handles and the fabric gathered around them moving slowly in and out as Elsie breathed. There was no blood. Not yet. The lack of blood made everything worse, somehow.
“Take off your clothes,” Ryan growled.
Bendigo had to refocus, had to make a deliberate effort to comprehend what the man had said. Even when he grasped its meaning, he couldn’t make sense of the command. “What?”
“Take your clothes off.” Ryan’s growl rose in viciousness to a snarl. Spittle flew from his lips. “You’re gonna hide weapons? Try doing that without your clothes. Take them off. You two as well. Do it. Do it!”
“Ryan.” Elsie seemed tired suddenly. Impossibly, miserably tired. “This isn’t what we came here for.”
“Take your clothes off!” Ryan barked. Bendigo held firm.
It was Ibrahim who broke the pulsing silence.
“It’s okay. It’s okay. We’ll do it,” the younger man said.
Bendigo watched. Ibrahim slipped his shirt off, revealing the kind of muscular torso Bendigo could remember having himself as an early teenager and no later. Ibrahim unbuckled his uniform belt. No scissors clattered to the linoleum. Bendigo guessed the young man must have secreted them somewhere else in the room, perhaps under the bench. Bendigo tried unbuttoning his shirt, but his fingers were numb. Ashlea was sniffling as Ryan turned the gun on her. She peeled off her top, her face pained. Ryan’s glasses fogged as he went back to Elsie, staring helplessly and impotently at the scissors.
“What the hell do we do now?” he asked.
“We’ll ask them to send a medic in,” Elsie said. Her voice was low. Quavering. “They offered that earlier. We … we can exchange one of these guys for a medic.”
“What’s a medic going to do?” Ryan asked. “You’ve got scissors in your fucking … organs, Elsie! There are things in there. Important things. Aren’t your kidneys around there somewhere?”
“They’re at the back,” Bendigo ventured. A sudden wave of courage was swelling inside him. An opportunity he could grasp at. “I’d be more worried about the liv—”
“Shut the fuck up!” Ryan bellowed. He walked over and stuck the pistol right in Bendigo’s face. The older man stared down the dark barrel to where he knew the bullet was waiting. Begging to be released. To enter his brain. To end him. “You say one more word—”
“You’ll have to give up,” Bendigo said anyway, talking into the abyss. “If your wife’s not in an emergency room in an hour, Ryan, she’ll be dead.”
Ryan was panting. Sweat rolling down the sides of his neck into his collar. Bendigo could see his pulse hammering in his jugular.
“You don’t know that. You’re a DNA guy. You’re not a doctor.”
“She’s going pale,” Bendigo said. “Look at her face. Is that shock, do you think? Or is it internal bleeding? You’re not a doctor, either, are you, Ryan?”
“You shut your mouth.” Ryan’s sweaty finger was sliding on the trigger.
“What happens if you find your daughter, but your wife’s dead?” Bendigo asked, keeping his eyes on the gun. “Will it all have been worth it?”
Above them, a crack sound. Then a staticky kind of hushing that made Bendigo think of rainfall. Everyone looked up. The voice that came from above them was loud and made them flinch. Bendigo followed it to its source: a speaker in the corner of the room, nestled against the ceiling like a spider.
“Mom, Dad. This is Jonie,” the voice said. “I’m outside the Hertzberg-Davis lab right now. The police have asked me to record this message for you. I’m asking you to let the hostages go and surrender yourselves safely. I’m asking you to please listen to the police and do what they say. They know how to get Ashlea, Gary, and Ibrahim out of there safely. Mom, Dad, I love you. I need you both to come home safe. Please do this for me and for Tilly.”
“Oh my god,” Ryan whispered.
Bendigo watched the man’s face. Watched the resolve flicker in his eyes. A struggling flame. Breaking point reached. He lowered the gun and stood there, waiting, watching the speaker in the ceiling for more. Elsie wiped long streams of tears from her eyes. In time, the cracking sound came again, and the whooshing, and the recording began to replay.
“Mom, Dad. This is Jonie. I’m outside…”
“Ashlea!”
Elsie’s shout drew Bendigo away from his imaginings of the teenager outside the lab, in the police encampment, recording a plea to her parents. He looked to Elsie, then followed her gaze to where Ashlea was sitting with her arms folded awkwardly across her front, trying to hide her swollen breasts and her obviously pregnant belly.
* * *
“Something’s happened,” the technician said. She was a different woman from the one who had been manning the live feedback when the siege started. Saskia was aware of police, SWAT, and sheriff’s employees swapping out all around her. Taking breaks. Trying to ease the pressure. It made sense; the idea was to keep everyone sharp, refueled, ready to rush in at a moment’s notice and save the hostages. But Saskia was also aware that the breaks meant opportunities for those police employees to spread rumors, discontent. As she stepped up behind the technician, Saskia could sense anger hovering all around the young woman sitting in the chair. It was like a bubble of hot air. Saskia leaned into it anyway, ready to be burned if she had to be.
“Show me,” she said.
The technician showed Saskia a clip taken from inside the lab by the robot in the air-conditioning vent. Ryan Delaney pacing. Ibrahim and Ashlea sitting on the floor. She watched Bendigo enter the room, the scientist seeming smaller somehow than he had been when Elsie escorted him to the bathrooms a few minutes earlier. Saskia watched Elsie Delaney enter the room. Her gun was by her side, her hand clutching at her stomach. She eased herself onto a stool, her back to the camera, and Ryan raged, swinging the gun around, pointing it at Bendigo, at the two hostages on the floor. Even without sound, Saskia could see the terror in the room. The way the hostages flinched at Ryan’s movements. She realized Curler was standing beside her when he spoke.
“Bendigo must have made a move in the bathroom,” Curler said. “Punched her, maybe.”
They stood watching as the footage played. Ibrahim and Ashlea pulled off their shirts. Bendigo fiddled with his shirt buttons.
“Why are they getting undressed?” Saskia looked at the image of Ryan barking at the hostages. “Is he making them strip?”
“Maybe he’s trying to humiliate them.” Curler shrugged. “You hit my wife, you lose your clothing privileges.”
Something wasn’t right. Saskia sensed the situation inside the lab had shifted. On the screen, all the residents of the lab looked up at once.
“This is the moment we played the recording,” the technician said.
Saskia watched. Every person in the lab was frozen. Then they all turned to Ashlea, who was huddled into herself, crying.
“What’s this?” Saskia wondered aloud.
“They’ve all changed,” Curler said. He pointed to Ryan. “His shoulders are down. His head is up. You don’t think—”
“Oh god,” Saskia breathed. “She’s got her shirt off. They’ve noticed she’s pregnant.”
“So she is pregnant?” Curler said.
“I guess so. Look how they’re reacting to her. It’s because she has her shirt off. She must be showing.”
Saskia asked for the tape to be rolled back. The technician gave an icy sigh. Saskia and Curler watched.
“I’m sure that’s what it is,” Curler said gravely.
“We need to get the jump on this. Make sure they see it as an out, rather than an opportunity to make more demands,” Saskia said. “Let’s call them. Strike while the iron’s hot.”
The technician dialed. Saskia watched the little phone icon jiggling. It remained gray, unanswered.
“Fuck,” she growled. “All right. Curler, let’s hook you up to the PA system.”
“With respect”—Curler put a hand up—“I say we wait. Let the recording from Jonie marinate with them a little. Let them take in this new information about Ashlea. We’re trying to play on their sympathies. If we blast them with too many messages at once, we might undermine our own efforts.”
“All right, well, while we’re playing gentle mind games with these lunatics, I want some progress on our not-so-gentle approach,” she said. Hodge, who had been leaning against a nearby table, strategizing with her second-in-command, sensed she was needed. She walked over, and Saskia led her to Jonie and Tanner, who were still seated in the back corner of the tent.
“I really need to get out of here,” Jonie said as Saskia sat down. There was nonchalance in her facial expression but a tautness to her voice. Saskia wondered if the reality of the situation was finally breaking through. “I’m done. I did what you asked me to.”
“Can’t we just, like, go somewhere nearby?” Tanner asked. The boy gestured vaguely to the press camp. “We won’t talk to them. We promise. I just think Jonie needs to lie down or something.”
“Jonie, if your parents respond to your message the way we hope they will, we’re going to need you here,” Curler said. “It may be that your presence is the deciding factor in getting a peaceful resolution to all this.”
“You’re also not done,” Hodge said.
“Who are you?” Tanner’s whole body tensed in the chair, making it creak.
“My name’s Delta Hodge. SWAT commander.”
“Whoa.” The teen was a small boy for an instant, open-mouthed and disbelieving. “You’re the commander? Like, the boss of the whole thing?”
Hodge ignored him and turned to Jonie. “I want to talk to you about your parents’ behavior, Ms. Delaney, over the past year or so but particularly the past three to four months. I want you to think hard and give me all the details that you can. Nothing is too small.”
Jonie looked distracted. She was watching an ant crawl across the asphalt at her feet.
“You with me, ma’am?”
“Huh? Yes.”
“I can also help,” Tanner said, perking up. “I’ve been around the house a bit since Jonie and I have been together.”
