Читать книгу The Last Widow - Karin Slaughter, Karin Slaughter - Страница 13
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ОглавлениеSunday, August 4, 2:01 p.m.
“Where are they taking her?” Will grabbed Hank by the shirt and gave him a violent shake. “Tell me where, God dammit!”
Hank stared up from the bloody pulp of his face. His teeth were broken. His nose was bent to the side. His jaw was crooked.
Will scooped up the revolver from the sidewalk. He cocked the hammer. He took aim.
“Don’t shoot him!” Cathy screamed.
Will felt the same jolt of recognition. Sara’s voice, but not her voice.
“She’s gone!” Cathy gripped the shotgun with both hands, shaking with grief. “You let them steal my daughter!”
His eyes started to water. He had to squint against the sunlight.
“You did this!” Cathy stared straight at him. Straight into him. “My son-in-law would’ve never let this happen.”
Will felt her words harder than any blow he’d ever taken. He uncocked the hammer on the gun. He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. He forced the part of his brain that understood Cathy was right to shut down.
A siren whooped. An Atlanta police cruiser screeched to a stop ten yards away.
Will tossed the revolver onto the sidewalk. His hands went into the air. He told Cathy, “Put down the—”
“Put it down!” the cop screamed. He rested his gun on the open door of his cruiser. “Now!”
Slowly, Cathy placed the shotgun at her feet.
She raised her hands.
“I’m GBI.” Will worked to keep his tone even. “This is one of the bombers. He had a team. They abducted a wo—”
“Where’s your ID?”
“I don’t have my wallet. My badge number is 398. A woman was—” Will had to stop. Vomit had rushed up his throat. He spit it out. “A woman was abducted. Silver BMW. License plate—” Will couldn’t remember the number. His brain felt like a balloon that was trying to float away. “BMW X5 hybrid. There are four more men. Three.”
Fuck.
Will had to close his eyes to stop the world from spinning. Three men? Four? Merle’s dead body was between him and the cop. Hank had been beaten senseless.
Will said, “Three men. Call it in. BMW X5. A wo— two women abducted.”
“The radios are jammed.” The cop hesitated. He wanted to believe Will. “Phones are down. I can’t—”
Will didn’t have time for this shit.
He picked up Hank and threw him against the hood of the cruiser. He wrenched together Hank’s wrists and pinned them together with one hand. He kicked out his legs. He patted down the man’s pockets. Android phone. Folded money. Some coins. Driver’s license and an insurance card.
Will matched the photo on the license to Hank’s face. He watched the tiny letters of the name jump like fleas across the white background. He handed over both to the cop. “I don’t have my glasses.”
“Hurley,” the cop read. “Robert Jacob Hurley.”
“Hurley.” Will saw the bullet hole in the back of his leg. He wanted to jam a pencil into it. “He’s going to bleed out. We have to get him to the hospital.”
Will grabbed Hurley up by the collar. He stumbled, the road tilted like a funhouse.
The cop tried, “Are you—”
“Let’s go.” Will shoved Hurley into the back of the cruiser and slammed the door so hard that the car rocked.
Will braced his hands on the roof. He closed his eyes, trying to regain his equilibrium. He was suddenly aware of all of the pain in his body. The skin on his knuckles was broken open. Rivulets of blood were streaming down his neck. There were no words to describe what was going on inside his belly. Every single organ felt like it was strapped tight with a thousand rubber bands. His ribs had turned into straight razors.
Will walked around the car. The front door was at the wrong end of a telescope. He blinked his eyes. He fumbled for the handle.
The minute he was inside, the car lurched forward.
Will didn’t look at Cathy as they pulled away.
She called his name.
Will.
Sara’s voice, but not her voice.
The cop said, “I’m getting something.” He had his phone to his ear. “It’s ringing.”
“A woman was—” Will felt his stomach clench. He leaned over and threw up into the floorboard. The splatter went everywhere. He had to wipe it off of his face. “Sorry.”
The cop rolled down the front windows.
Will’s eyes started to close. He could feel his body wanting to give up. He told the cop, “Silver BMW. Michelle Spivey was with them.”
“Mi—” the cop’s mouth dropped open.
“They were a team. Cops. Military.”
“Shit. Phone stopped ringing.” the cop hung up and dialed again. The cruiser cut into the empty lane. Coasted through Emory Village. There were people on the sidewalk running toward the hospital. Druid Hills was filled with doctors and medical support staff and people from the CDC. They were all doing what Will and Sara had tried to do—reach the site of the disaster as quickly as possible.
Will’s vision fought him as he tried to look at his watch. It took all of his focus to make the numbers sharpen.
2:06 p.m.
“Thank fuck,” the cop mumbled. “This is 3-2-9-9-4.”
Will felt the anvil lift off of his chest. The call had finally gone through.
“I need the commander. I’ve got one of the bombing suspects in custody. I have details on—”
“S-shilver BMW X5.” Will heard his words slur. “Three sushpects. They abducted two wahh—” He couldn’t get the information to come out. His head didn’t want to stay upright. “Amanda Wagner. You need to fah … tell … tell her they took Sara. Tell her …”. He had to close his eyes against the sunlight. “Tell her I fucked up.”
Will’s eyelids peeled open like wet cotton. Thumb tacks were drilling into his pupils. Tears leaked out as he struggled to maintain consciousness. There wasn’t a moment of disorientation or forgetfulness. He remembered exactly what had happened and knew exactly where he was.
He swung his legs over the side of the hospital gurney. He nearly fell to the floor.
“Steady.” Nate, the cop from the cruiser, was still with him. “You passed out. You’re in the ER.”
Will strained to hear him over the loud noises. “Did they find Sara?”
“Not yet.”
“The car?” Will pressed. “They can’t find the car?”
“There’s a full-on manhunt. They’ll find her.”
Will didn’t just want them to find her. He wanted—needed—them to find her alive.
The cop said, “Maybe you should lay down, buddy.”
Will rubbed his eyes to clear them. The fluorescent lights were like sewing needles. He realized that he was sitting on one of dozens of gurneys that were parked on each side of the hallway. Patients were bleeding, moaning, crying. Debris covered their faces in gray dust. The atmosphere was eerily calm. No one was shouting. Nurses and doctors walked briskly back and forth with tablets tucked under their arms. The hospital staff were prepared for this. The real panic would be out in the streets.
Will asked Nate, “How many people are dead?”
“There’s no official count. Maybe as few as twenty, maybe as many as fifty.”
Will’s brain couldn’t comprehend the number. He had heard the bombs go off. He had run to help the survivors. He had been mentally prepared to do whatever it took to save as many people as possible.
Now, his only concern was Sara.
Nate said, “They’re clearing each building in teams. Looking for more—”
Will slid off the bed. He waited for the nausea and dizziness to return. Neither made a repeat appearance, but his head throbbed with each beat of his heart.
He closed his eyes, tried to breathe. “What about the BMW?”
“It’s in the system, but the system—”
“What time is it?”
“Two thirty-eight.”
Which meant that Sara had been gone for over half an hour. Will’s head dropped to his chest. His stomach was still grinding inside of his belly. His hands were bleeding from punching Hurley while Sara was taken right out from under him.
My son-in-law would’ve never let this happen.
Her son-in-law.
Sara’s husband.
The chief of their town.
Would not have let this happen.
“Hey,” Nate said. “You want some water or something?”
Will rubbed his jaw with his fingers. He could still smell Sara on his hands.
“Will!” Faith was running down the hallway. Amanda walked behind her. She was talking into a satellite phone.
Will’s throat felt so raw that he could barely get out the question. “Did you find Sara?”
“The entire state is looking for her.” Faith pressed her hand to his forehead the same way she did when she was worried that Emma had a fever. “Are you okay? What happened?”
“I let them steal her.”
Faith put her hand back to his head.
“We stopped to help them.” Will bullet-pointed the details of the car accident. “They drove up The By Way. That’s the last I saw of her. I don’t—” He stopped to cough. It felt like another punch to his gut. “I don’t know why she went with them.”
Amanda asked, “Why are you slumped over like a hobo?”
Before he could answer, she raised his shirt. Red and purple splotches showed the broken blood vessels under his skin.
“Jesus Christ,” Faith whispered.
Amanda told Nate, “You’re dismissed, Officer. Report to your squad. Faith, go find a doctor. Tell them he could be bleeding internally.”
Will tried, “I’m not—
“Shut up, Wilbur.” Amanda made him sit down on the gurney. “I’m not going to play that game where I order you to go home and you wander off like a wrecking ball. I’ll keep you with me. You’ll hear everything I hear. But you have to do exactly as I say.”
Will nodded his agreement, but only as a way to make her talk.
“First, you need to take this. It’s aspirin. It’ll help with the headache.”
Will stared at the round tablet in her palm. He hated drugs.
Amanda broke the tablet in half. “This is the last time I compromise. You’re either playing by my rules or you’re not.”
He tossed the pill into his mouth and dry swallowed.
And then he waited.
Amanda said, “Michelle Spivey was admitted through the ER this morning. Her appendix had burst. She was immediately sent to surgery. Robert Jacob Hurley identified her as his wife, Veronica Hurley. He showed Admitting his group insurance card. He’s divorced from his wife, but she’s still on his SHBP.”
“The state healthplan,” Will said. “So, Hurley’s a cop.”
“He served on the GHP until eighteen months ago. Shot an unarmed man during a traffic stop.”
“Hurley,” Will said. The connection to Georgia Highway Patrol made the name familiar. Will had followed the story the way every cop followed that kind of story, hoping like Christ that the shoot was legit because the alternative was first-degree murder.
He said, “Hurley was cleared.”
“Correct. But he couldn’t right himself. He dropped off the force six months later. Pills and alcohol. His wife left him.”
“Who was with him? Who planted the bombs?”
“Unsubs.” Unknown subjects. “The FBI is using facial recognition on the CCTV footage. One of them left fingerprints, but they’re not in the NGI.”
The FBI’s Next Generation Identification system. If the Unsub had ever been in law enforcement, military, or cleared a background check for a job or licensing, his details would’ve been stored in the searchable database alongside the criminals.
“Why did they have Spivey?” Will asked. “They deliberately bombed the hospital. They took Sara by chance.”
He heard Hurley’s words—wrong place, right time.
He asked Amanda, “Where are they going? What do they want? Why did they blow up—”
“Doctor?” Amanda was waving her hand toward a man in scrubs. “Over here.”
“A nurse is the best you’re going to get.” The man lifted Will’s shirt and started jamming his fingers into his belly. “Any of this hurt more than you think it should?”
Will’s jaw had clamped tight at the first touch. He shook his head.
The nurse pressed his stethoscope around, listening, moving it along, listening. When he was finished, he spoke to Amanda instead of Will. “All the MRIs are backed up. We can do a CT to check for internal bleeding.”
Will asked, “How long does it take?”
“Five minutes if you can walk down the stairs on your own.”
“He can walk.” Amanda helped Will off the gurney. The top of her head came up to his armpit. He leaned into her more than he should’ve. His stomach muscles burned like cordite. Still, he asked, “Why did they bomb the hospital?”
“To get away,” Amanda said. “They need Michelle. For what, we have no idea. We have to operate on the assumption that the bombing was a diversion. They could’ve done a hell of a lot more damage, garnered a lot more dead and wounded, in any number of other locations. The what can’t be our focus. We need to get to the bottom of the why.”
Will squeezed his eyes shut. He couldn’t break down anything she was telling him. His brain was packed with glass beads. “Sara. I couldn’t—I didn’t—”
“We’re going to find her.”
Faith met them on the stairs. She darted ahead of them and walked backward, giving Amanda updates. “They found a broken flip phone on a side street. ATF thinks it was used to trigger the bombs. We’re taking it to our lab for fingerprinting. First look says they’re the same as the ones we found from the Unsub.”
Will winced as his foot slipped on the stair. His ribs had turned into knives. He said, “The GPS. Sara’s BMW has—”
“It’s all in motion,” Amanda said. “We’re relaying information as quickly as we can.”
“Through here.” The nurse was waiting at the bottom of the stairs. He held open the door.
Will didn’t move.
There was something else they weren’t telling him. He could sense the tension between Amanda and Faith. One of them was a consummate liar. The other was the same—except when it came to Will.
He asked Faith, “Is she dead?”
“No,” Amanda said. “Absolutely not. If we knew something, we would tell you.”
He kept his eyes on Faith.
She said, “I promise I would tell you if we knew where she was.”
Will chose to believe her, but only because he had to.
“On your right,” the nurse said.
Amanda steered Will down the hallway and into a room. A table was in the middle of a giant metal ring. He put his hand to the back of his head. His fingers found the sharp edge of a staple holding together his scalp.
When had that happened?
Amanda said, “We’ll be out here.”
The door closed.
Will was helped onto the table by a technician. She disappeared inside a little booth and told him what to do, that he needed to lie still, hold his breath, let it go. Then the table was moving back and forth through the circle and Will had to squeeze his eyes shut because the metal ring turned into a quarter spinning on its edge.
He didn’t think about Sara. He thought about his wife.
Ex-wife.
Angie had disappeared on him. Constantly. Repeatedly. She had grown up in state care, too. That’s where Will had met her. He was eight years old. He was in love the way you can love something that’s the only thing you have to hold on to.
Angie could never settle in one place for long. Will had never blamed her for leaving. He had always had a knot in his stomach while he waited for her to return. Not because he missed her, but because when Angie was away from him, she did bad things. She hurt people. Maliciously. Unnecessarily. Will had always felt a sick sense of responsibility every time he woke up to find her things gone from his house, like she was a rabid dog he couldn’t keep chained up in the yard.
It was different with Sara.
Losing her—letting someone steal her—felt like he was dying. Like there was a part of him that Sara had breathed life into, and without her, that part would wither away to nothing.
Will didn’t know how to be alone anymore.
“All right.” The scan was finally over. The technician helped him off the table. Will rubbed his eyes. He was seeing double again.
The technician asked, “Do you need to sit down?”
“No.”
“Any nausea or dizziness?”
“I’m fine. Thank you.” Will stepped outside so that the next patient could be rolled in. She was a nurse still dressed in scrubs. Blood streaked her face. She was covered in concrete dust, mumbling for someone to call her husband.
Will found Amanda in the room across the hall. The lights were off, which was a godsend. The blazing pain in his eyes melted into a slow burn.
The nurse from before lifted his chin at Will. “Those crunches paid off, my man.”
“This is your lower abdomen.” The radiologist was pointing to a screen of blobs that Will guessed were his organs. “I don’t see any bleeding. Most of the bruising is in the surface. He’s right about the crunches. Your abdominal muscle created a corset around the organs. But here, you have a micro-tear in the periosteum.” He traced around a rib that looked like it was still in one piece. “That’s a tissue-thin membrane that surrounds the bone. You need to ice it three times a day. Take Advil or get something stronger if you need it. We’ll put you on a pulmonary plan to keep your lungs healthy. Moderate activity is okay but nothing strenuous.” He looked up at Will. “You got lucky, but you need to take it easy.”
Faith held up her phone. “Amanda, the video just came through.”
Will didn’t ask what video. They were clearly doing things without him.
“Let’s go somewhere else.” Amanda took them to the stairway opposite the one they’d come down.
She pointed to the treads. “Sit.”
Will sat because he needed to.
Amanda pulled a wrapped piece of gum out of her purse. He heard a snap, then she waved it under his nose.
Will reared back like a horse. His heart slammed against his spine. His brain broke open. Everything got sharper. He could see the grout in the joints between the concrete blocks.
Amanda showed him the packet he’d mistaken for gum. “Ammonium ampoules.”
“Fuck,” Will panicked. “Did you drug me?”
“Stop being a baby. It’s smelling salts. I woke you up because I need you to pay attention to this.”
Will’s nose was running. She handed him a tissue as she sat beside him.
Faith stood on the other side of the railing. She held out her phone so they could all watch a video.
Will saw a parking lot. The footage was in black and white, but sharp. A woman was walking with her daughter toward a Subaru.
Dark hair, slim build. Will recognized her from the stories on the news a month ago, not from the woman he’d seen today.
Michelle Spivey.
Her daughter was walking ahead of her. Looking at her phone. Swinging the shopping bags. Michelle was searching her purse for her keys when a dark, unmarked van pulled up beside her daughter. The driver’s face wasn’t visible through the windshield. The side door slid open. A man jumped out. The daughter ran.
The man reached for Michelle.
Faith paused the video and zoomed in on the man’s face.
“That’s him,” Will said. The driver of the Chevy Malibu. “Clinton. That’s what they called him, but I’m sure that’s not his name.”
Faith mumbled under her breath.
“Who is he?”
“He’s not in the system.” Amanda motioned for Faith to close the video. “We’re working the case. This is another piece of the puzzle.”
Will shook his head. She had made a mistake using the smelling salts. He wasn’t half out of it anymore. “You’re lying to me.”
Her satellite phone rang. She stuck her finger in the air for silence, answering, “Yes?”
Will held his breath, waiting.
Amanda shook her head.
Nothing.
She walked out into the hallway, letting the door close behind her.
Will didn’t look at Faith when he said, “You know his name, don’t you?”
Faith took a sharp breath. “Adam Humphrey Carter. He’s been in and out of prison for grand larceny, B-and-E, domestic violence, making terroristic threats.”
“And rape,” Will guessed.
Faith took another breath. “And rape.”
The word stayed balanced on the edge of the cliff between them.
The door opened.
“Faith.” Amanda waved her over, whispered something into her ear.
Faith headed up the stairs. The hand she put on Will’s shoulder as she ran past did nothing to reassure him.
“The elevators are too slow,” Amanda said. “Can you manage six flights?”
Will gripped the railing and pulled himself up. “You said you’d tell me everything.”
“I said you would hear everything I hear. Do you want to be with me when I talk to Hurley or not?” She didn’t wait. She started up the stairs. Her spiked heels stabbed into the treads. She rounded the corner without looking to see if he was following.
Will trudged up after her. His brain kept throwing up images—Sara standing in the doorway of the shed. Sara running ahead of him to the Chevy. The panicked expression on her face when she’d handed him the key fob. She had known something was wrong before he did. She had called it back at the Porsche. Will should’ve dragged her to the BMW and taken her home.
He looked at his watch.
3:06 p.m.
Sara had been missing for over an hour. She could be crossing the Alabama state line right now. She could be tied down in the woods while Adam Humphrey Carter ripped her in two.
His stomach clenched. He was going to be sick again.
You let them steal my daughter.
“Hold up.” Amanda had stopped on the fourth-floor landing. “Take a minute.”
“I don’t need a minute.”
“Then maybe you should try this in heels.” She took off her shoe and rubbed her foot. “I need to catch my breath.”
Will stared down at the stairs. He tried to clear away all the dark thoughts. He looked at his watch again. “It’s 3:07. Sara’s been gone for—”
“Thank you, Captain Kangaroo. I know how to tell time.” She shoved her foot back into the shoe. Instead of continuing the climb, she unzipped her purse and started digging around inside.
Will said, “That man, Carter. He’s a rapist.”
“Among other things.”
“He has Sara.”
“I’m aware of that.”
“He could be hurting her.”
“He could be running for his life.”
“You’re not being completely honest with me.”
“Wilbur, I’ve never been completely anything.”
Will didn’t have the strength to keep chasing his own tail. He leaned against the wall. He wrapped his hands around the railing. He looked down at his sneakers. They were stained green from mowing the grass. Red streaks of dirt and blood wrapped around his calves. He could still feel the cold stone floor of the shed against his knees. He closed his eyes. He tried to summon up the memory of that blissful moment before everything went wrong, but all he could feel was guilt gnawing a hole in his chest.
He told Amanda, “She was driving the car.”
She looked up from her purse.
“When they left, Sara was driving. They didn’t have to knock her out or—” He shook his head. “She told them to kill her. She wasn’t going to go with them. But she went with them. She drove them away.”
He looked down. Amanda had wrapped her hand around his. Her skin felt cool. Her fingers were tiny. He always forgot how small she was.
“I haven’t—” Will was an idiot to confess anything to her, but he was desperate for absolution. “I haven’t felt scared like that since I was a kid.”
Amanda rubbed his wrist with her thumb.
“I keep thinking of all these things I could’ve done, but maybe—” He tried to stop himself, but he couldn’t. “Maybe I did the wrong thing because I was scared.”
Amanda squeezed his hand. “That’s the problem with loving someone, Will. They make you weak.”
He had no words.
She patted his arm, signaling that sharing time was over. “Pull up your panties. We’ve got work to do.”
She bounded up ahead of him.
Will followed more slowly. He tried to wrap his brain around what Amanda had said. He couldn’t tell whether she’d meant it as a condemnation or an explanation.
Not completely one or the other.
He took a deep breath at the top of the next landing. The stabbing pain in his rib had turned into a dull ache. Will became aware of minor improvements as he moved his body, like that his head had stopped throbbing and the rolling lava in his gut was starting to smother itself out. He told himself it was good that his vision was no longer wonky. That the balloon of his brain had re-tethered itself to his skull.
He used the relief to plot ahead, past the interview with Hurley. He was certain the man wouldn’t give them anything. Will needed to go home to get his car. He would try to find Nate for a lift. Will had a police scanner in his hall closet. He would take it with him and look in the places that no one else was looking. Will had grown up in the middle of downtown. He knew the bad streets, the dilapidated housing, where criminals laid low.
The door opened to the sixth floor. Will followed Amanda down another long hallway. Two cops at each end. One across from the elevator. Two more guarded a closed sliding glass door.
Amanda showed them all her ID.
The glass door slid open.
Will looked down at the threshold, the metal rails recessed into the tiles. He took as deep a breath as he could. He couldn’t make himself forget that Sara had been abducted by a convicted rapist, but he could make himself appear calm enough to do whatever Amanda needed him to do in order to get information out of Hurley.
He stepped into the hospital room.
Hurley was handcuffed to the bed. There was a sink and toilet out in the open, a flimsy curtain for privacy. Sunlight filtered through the open blinds. The fluorescent lights were off. The glowing monitor announced Hurley’s steady heartbeat.
He was asleep. Or at least pretending to be. Sutures Frankensteined his face. His broken nose had been straightened, but his jaw hung crookedly from his face.
His heartbeat was steady, like a lazy pendulum swinging back and forth.
Amanda cracked open another ammonium ampoule and shoved it under his nose.
Hurley jerked awake, eyes wide, nostrils flaring.
The heart monitor sounded like a fire alarm.
Will looked at the door, expecting a nurse to come running in.
No one came.
The cops hadn’t even turned around.
Amanda had her ID out. “I’m Deputy Director Amanda Wagner with the GBI. You’ve met Agent Trent.”
Hurley looked at the ID, then back at Amanda.
She said, “I’m not going to read you your rights because this isn’t a formal interview. You’ve been given morphine, so nothing you say can be used in court.” She waited, but Hurley didn’t respond. “The doctors have stabilized you. Your jaw is dislocated. You’ll be taken to surgery as soon as the more critical patients have been helped. For now, we have some questions about the two women who were abducted.”
Hurley blinked. Waited. He was making a point of ignoring Will. Which suited Will, because if the man looked at him wrong, he wasn’t sure he could keep his shit together.
“Are you thirsty?” Amanda pushed aside the curtain around the sink and toilet. She unwrapped a plastic cup, turned on the faucet.
Will leaned against the wall. He shoved his hands into his pockets.
“You were a cop.” Amanda filled the cup with water. “You know the charges. You’ve murdered or participated in the murder of dozens of civilians. You aided and abetted the abductions of two women. You were part of a conspiracy to use a weapon of mass destruction. Not to mention healthcare fraud.” She turned around, walked to the bed with the full cup of water. “These are federal charges, Hurley. Even if by some miracle a jury deadlocks on the death penalty, you’re never going to breathe free air ever again.”
Hurley reached for the cup. The handcuff clanged against the rails.
Amanda paused long enough to let him know that she was in charge. She held the cup to his mouth. She pressed the tips of her fingers below his jaw to help his lips make a seal.
He made an audible gulp with each swallow, draining the cup.
She asked, “More?”
He didn’t respond. He leaned back in the pillow. He closed his eyes.
“I need those women home safe, Hurley.” Amanda found a tissue in her purse. She wiped out the cup before tossing it into the trashcan. “This is the only time in this entire process that you’ll have any bargaining power.”
Will stared at the cup.
What had she given him?
“On average, it takes fifteen years for the federal government to administer the death penalty.” Amanda dragged over a chair and sat by the bed. She crossed her legs. She brushed lint off her skirt. She looked at her watch. “It’s a bit ironic, but did you know that Timothy McVeigh was caught on a traffic violation?”
The Oklahoma City Bomber. McVeigh had set off a truck bomb outside of the Murrah Federal Building, murdering almost two hundred people, injuring almost one thousand more.
Amanda said, “McVeigh was sentenced to death. He had four years at Florence ADMAX before he petitioned the courts to bring forward his execution date.”
Hurley licked his lips. Something had changed. Her words—or maybe what she’d tricked him into drinking—were chiseling away at his calm.
Amanda said, “Ted Kaczynski, Terry Nichols, Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, Zacarias Moussaoui, Eric Rudolph.” She paused in her list of domestic terrorists serving out their multiple life sentences on what was called Bomber’s Row. “Robert Hurley could be added to those names. Do you know what it’s like inside an ADX?”
She was asking Will, not Hurley.
He knew, but he said, “What’s it like?”
“Inmates are confined to their cells for twenty-three hours a day. If they’re allowed out, it’s only for an hour, and then it’s at the pleasure of the guards. Do you think the guards are kind to people who blow up people?”
“No,” Will said.
“No,” Amanda agreed. “But your cell has everything you need to survive. The toilet is your sink and your water fountain. There’s black-and-white TV if you want to watch educational classes or religious programming. They bring you your food. The window is four inches wide. Do you think you can see much of the sky through four inches, Will?”
“No,” he repeated.
“You shower in isolation. You eat in isolation. If you’re lucky enough to get yard time, it’s not really a yard. They have a pit, like an empty swimming pool. You can pace it off in ten steps, thirty if you walk in a circle. It’s fifteen feet deep. You can see the sky, but you can’t write home about it. They stopped giving inmates pencils because they kept using them to rip open their own throats.”
Hurley’s eyes were open. He stared up at the ceiling.
Amanda looked down at her watch again.
Will checked the time for himself.
3:18 p.m.
“Hurley,” Amanda said. “I don’t care about your other charges. I care about returning those two women to safety. So this is what I’m offering.”
She waited.
Hurley waited.
Will felt his stomach tighten.
“You’ll die in prison. I can’t do anything about that. But I can keep your identity out of the news. I can give you a new name, a new rap sheet. The marshals oversee plenty of prison inmates in witness protection. You’ll be in gen pop, maximum security, but you won’t be caged like an animal while you slowly lose your mind.” She paused. “All you have to do right now is tell me where to find those women.”
Hurley sniffed. He turned his head to look out the window. Blue skies. Sun on his face. His heart had returned to its slow, lazy beat. He was calm because he felt like he was in control, the same way he’d been back at the car accident.
At least until Michelle Spivey had opened her mouth and started talking about Hurley’s father.
He’s your hero … you wanted to make him proud.
Will said, “Your father’s sick, right? That’s what Michelle said—that he was going to die.”
Hurley’s head had swiveled around. His eyes burned with fury.
This was the way into him. Hurley didn’t care about the people he’d murdered. Whatever cause had driven him to commit an act of terrorism was not going to be compromised in a few minutes. Every man had a weak spot. For a lot of men on the wrong side of the law, that weak spot centered around their father.
“Was your old man a cop?” Will asked. “Is that why you joined patrol?”
Hurley glared at him. The monitor started throwing off quick beats as his heart rate increased.
“I bet he was proud when you joined up. Took the oath, the same as he did. His. Son.” Will said the words individually, the way he had heard so many old timers on the force talk about their kids. Not as individuals, but as extensions of themselves. “I bet he’s not going to be so proud when he hears that you helped a convicted rapist abduct another woman.”
The silence between the beeps shortened.
Will said, “I remember what it was like when my father died. I was with him in the hospital when he drew his last breath.”
Amanda said nothing. She knew that the first time Will had seen his father’s face was when he’d identified the man’s dead body.
Will said, “I’d never held my dad’s hand before. Maybe when I was a little kid and I needed help crossing the road. But never as a man. He was just so—so vulnerable, you know? And I felt vulnerable, too. That’s what it’s like when you love somebody. You feel weak. You want to take away their pain. You’ll do anything you can to keep them safe.”
A tear slid from the corner of Hurley’s eye.
Will said, “Toward the end, Dad’s hands and feet were cold. I pulled on his socks for him. I rubbed his skin. Nothing could warm him. That’s what the body does. It diverts all of the heat to the brain and the organs. They can feel you holding their hand, but they can’t hold you back.”
Amanda had vacated the chair. Will sat down. He pulled it closer to Hurley. He fought the revulsion as he held the man’s hand.
This was for Sara.
This was how they found her.
He said, “You can’t erase what you did, Hurley, but you can try to make up for it.” Will felt Hurley’s fingers clench around his own. “Save those two women. Don’t let them get hurt. Give your dad something that makes him proud of you again.”
Hurley gulped.
“Tell us how to find the women,” Will said, trying not to beg. “It’s not too late to protect them from what you know is coming. Let your dad’s last thoughts be that his son was a good man who did some bad things. Not a bad man who couldn’t do good.”
Hurley’s eyes were closed again. Tears soaked the pillow.
“It’s all right.” Will looked down at their hands. Hurley was squeezing so tight that the broken skin on Will’s knuckles was bleeding again. “Just tell us how to save them. Be the man your father knows you can be.”
Hurley stuttered in a deep breath. His tears ran unabated. He looked not at Will, but at Amanda. His mouth moved. There was a clicking in his jaw.
“Guh—” Hurley’s face creased with exertion. He couldn’t use his lips to form the word. “Guh—”
“Gilmer? Gwinnett? Gordon?” Amanda gave up on naming counties and searched her purse. “I have something you can write on.”
“Nuh—” Hurley shook off Will’s hand, frustrated. “Fuh—” he tried again.
Will leaned forward, straining to hear.
“Fuh—” He grabbed the rails of the bed, gave them a violent shake. “Fuck off.”
