Part III - Wilderness of Pain Chapter 5: Into the Vortex
It was bad, the nightmare.
In it, Laura gave David into the hands of the murderess, and she saw drops of blood falling from the woman's fingers, falling like scarlet leaves through October air, falling to spatter on white sheets as ridged and rumpled as snowswept badlands. She gave David up, and the murderess and David became shadows that slipped away along a pale green wall. But something had been given in exchange; something was in Laura's right hand. She opened her fingers, and saw the yellow Smiley Face pinned to the flesh of her palm.
Then the scene changed. She was in a parking lot on a hot and humid night, the blue lights of police cars spinning around her. Voices bellowed through bullhorns, and she heard the sharp clickings of bullet magazines being snapped into automatic rifles. She could see a woman standing on a balcony, caught in a white light, and one hand held a pistol while the other gripped David by the back of the neck. The woman wore a green paisley blouse and bell-bottom trousers with an american-flag belt, and she was raving as she held David in the air and shook him. Laura could feel his crying more than hear it, like a razor blade drawn along the folds of her labia. "I want my baby!" she told a shadowy policeman who passed on without speaking. "My baby! I want my baby!" She grasped at someone else; he looked blankly at her. She recognized Kastle. "Please!" she begged. "Don't let my baby be hurt!"
"We'll get your baby back for you," he answered. "You can count on it. "
Kastle pulled away and disappeared into the vortex of shadows, and as Laura saw the snipers taking their positions she realized with a jolt of horror that Kastle had not promised to get David back alive.
"Hold your fire until I give the signal!" someone commanded through a bullhorn. She saw Doug sitting on the hood of a police car, his head slumped forward and his eyes half closed, as if all this had no meaning to him whatsoever. a spark of light caught her attention. She looked up at the corner of a rooftop, and there she could make out a shadowy shape aiming a rifle at Mary Terror. She thought the man was bald-headed - slick bald - and that something might be wrong with his face, but she couldn't tell for sure; she thought she might know him, but that, too, was uncertain. The man was lifting his rifle to take aim. He wasn't waiting for the signal; he was going to shoot Mary Terror, and his would be the bullet that made the madwoman fire her gun and blow David's head apart.
"NO!" Laura screamed. "STOP IT!" She began running toward the building the sniper perched on, but the concrete mired her feet like fresh tar. She heard the click of his rifle, a bullet slipping into the chamber. She heard the insane raving of Mary Terror's voice, and the shrill, frantic crying of her son. a doorway was ahead of her. She started through it, fighting the earth, and that was when two muscular dogs with flaming eyes leapt from the darkness at her.
She heard two shots, a split second apart.
The scream started to come out. It swelled in her throat and burst from her mouth, and someone was over her saying, "Laurai Laura, wake up! Wake up!"
She came up out of the hot darkness, sweat on her face. The lamp beside the bed was on. Doug was sitting on the bed beside her, his face furrowed with worry, and behind him stood Doug's mother, who'd arrived from her home in Orlando earlier in the evening.
"It's all right," Doug said. "You were having a nightmare. It's all right. "
Laura looked around the room, her eyes wide with fear. There were too many shadows. Too many.
"Doug, can I do anythingi" angela Clayborne asked. She was a tall, elegant woman with white hair, and she wore a dark blue Cardin suit with a diamond brooch on the lapel. Doug's father, divorced from angela when Doug was in his early teens, was an investment banker in London.
"No. We're okay. "
Laura shook her head. "We're not okay. We're not okay. " She kept repeating it as she pulled away from Doug and huddled up under the blanket again. She could feel sticky wetness between her thighs: the oozing stitches.
"Do you want to talki" he asked.
She shook her head.
"Mom, would you leave us alone for a minutei" When angela had gone, Doug stood up and walked to the window. He peered through the blinds, out into the rainy dark. "I don't see any reporters," he told her. "Maybe they called it a night. "
"What time is iti"
He didn't have to look at his watch. "almost two. " He came back to her side. She smelled a stale aroma wafting from him; he hadn't taken a shower since David had been stolen, but then, neither had she. "You can talk to me, you know. We still live in the same house. "
"No. "
"No whati No we don't live in the same housei Or no you can't talk to mei"
"Just. . . no," she said, using the word like a wall.
He was silent for a moment. Then, in a somber voice: "I screwed it up, didn't Ii"
Laura didn't bother to answer. Her nerves were still jangled by the nightmare, and she clung to the blanket like a cat.
"You don't have to say anything. I know I screwed up. I just. . . I. . . well, I guess I've said everything I can say. Except. . . I'm sorry. I don't know how to make you believe that. "
She closed her eyes, blocking out his presence.
"I don't want. . . things to be like this. Between you and me, I mean. " He touched her arm under the blanket. She didn't pull away, nor did she respond; she just lay there without moving. "We can work it out. I swear to God we can. I know I screwed up, and I'm sorry. What more can I sayi"
"Nothing," she answered without emotion.
"Will you give me a second chancei"
She felt like something that had been thrown off a ship in a heavy sea, thrashed from wave to wave and left stranded on jagged rocks. He had turned his back on her when she needed him. She had given up her son - her son - to the hands of a murderess, and all she wanted to do was turn off her mind before she went insane. Would God grant her a second chance, to hold her baby againi That and only that was what she steered toward, and everything else was wreckage in the storm.
"The FBI's going to find David. They'll take care of everything. It won't be long, now that they've got her name and picture on television. "
Laura wanted desperately to believe that. Kastle and another FBI agent had come to the house at seven o'clock, and Laura had listened as Kastle told her more about the woman she'd come to identify as Mary Terror. Born on april 9, 1948, to wealthy parents in Richmond, Virginia. Father in the railroad freight business. One brother who'd hanged himself when he was seventeen. attended abernathy Prep, honors student, active in student government and editor of the school newspaper. Went to Penn State for two years, political science major, again active in student government. Evidence of drug use and radical leanings. Left college and resurfaced in New York City, where she enrolled in drama at NYU. Evidence of radical student involvement at NYU and Brandeis University. Then across the country to Berkeley, where she became involved with the Weather Underground. at some point she met Jack Gardiner, a Berkeley radical who introduced her into a Weather Underground splinter group designated the "Storm Front. " On august 14, 1969, Mary Terrell and three other members of the Storm Front broke into the home of a conservative Berkeley history professor and his wife and knifed them to death. On December 5, 1969, a bomb attributed to the Storm Front exploded in the car of a San Francisco IBM executive and tore both his legs away. On January 15, 1970, a second bomb exploded in the lobby of the Pacific Gas and Electric building and killed a security guard and a secretary. Two days later, a third bomb killed an Oakland attorney who was defending a winery owner in a civil liberties case involving migrant workers.
"There's more," Kastle had said when Laura had lowered her face.
On June 22, 1970, two policemen in San Francisco were shot to death in their car. Witnesses put Mary Terrell and a Storm Front member named Gary Leister at the site. On October 27,1970, a documentary filmmaker who'd evidently been doing a film on the militant un
derground was found with his throat slashed in a trash dumpster in Oakland. Two of Mary Terrell's fingerprints were discovered on a roll of exposed film. On November 6, 1970, the chairman of a police task force on the Storm Front was ambushed and shotgunned to death while leaving his home in San Francisco.
"Then the Storm Front moved east," Kastle had told her, the thick file folder on the coffee table between them. "On June 18, 1971, a policeman was found with his throat cut and hanging by his hands from nails in an abandoned warehouse in Union City, New Jersey, a communique from the Storm Front in his shirt pocket. " He looked up at her. "They were declaring total war on what they called - and excuse me for my language - 'pigs of the Mindfuck State. '" He continued on, along the trail of terror. "On December 30, 1971, a pipe bomb exploded in the mailbox of a Union City district attorney and blinded his fifteen-year-old daughter. Three months and twelve days later, four police officers eating lunch in a Bayonne, New Jersey, diner were shot to death and a taped communique from the Storm Front - with Jack Gardiner's voice on it - was delivered to area radio stations. On May 11, 1972, a pipe bomb crippled the assistant chief of police in Elizabeth, New Jersey, and again a taped communique was delivered. Then we found them. "
"You found themi" Doug had asked. "The Storm Fronti"
"In Linden, New Jersey, on the night of July 1, 1972, there was a Shootout, an explosion, and fire, and in the smoke Mary Terrell, Jack Gardiner, and two others got away. The house they were living in was an armory. They'd stockpiled weapons, ammunition, and bomb apparatus, and it was apparent they were about to do something very big and probably very deadly. ",
"Like whati" Doug was working a paper clip around and around, nearing its breaking point.
"We never found out. We think it was timed to happen on the Fourth of July. anyway, since 1972 the Bureau's been looking for Mary Terrell, Gardiner, and the others. We had a few leads, but they went nowhere. " He closed the file, leaving the picture of Mary Terrell out on the table. "We came close to finding her in Houston in 1983. She was working as a cleaning lady at a high school under the name Marianne Lakey, but she cleared out before we got an address. One of the teachers was an undergrad at Berkeley, and she recognized her but not soon enough. "
"So why haven't you been able to catch her in all this timei" Laura's father stood up from his chair and picked up the photograph. "I thought you people were professionals!"
"We do our best, Mr. Beale. " Kastle offered a thin smile. "We can't be in all places at all times, and people do get through the net. " He returned his attention to Laura. "One of our agents on the scene that night in 1972 saw Mary Terrell at close range. He said she was pregnant and badly wounded, bleeding from the abdomen. "
"Well, why the hell didn't he shoot her right then and therei" Franklin asked.
"Because," Kastle said evenly, "she shot him first. One bullet in the face, one in the throat. He retired on disability. anyway, we thought for a while that Mary had crawled off somewhere and died, but about a month later a letter with a Montreal postmark was delivered to the New York Times. It was from Jack Gardiner 'Lord Jack,' he called himself. He said Mary Terrell and the two others were still alive, and that the Storm Front's war against the pigs wasn't over. That was the last communique. "
"and no one's ever found Jack Gardineri" Doug asked.
"No. The underground swallowed him up and the others, too. We think they must've split up, and were planning to converge again at some prearranged signal. It never happened. The reason I'm giving you all this background is that you're going to be hearing it on the newscasts every day, and I wanted you to hear it from me first" He stared at Laura. "The Bureau's releasing Mary's file to the networks, CNN, and the newspapers. You'll probably start hearing the first stories on the late news tonight. and the longer we can keep the press interested, the better our chances of someone spotting Mary Terrell and leading us to her. " He lifted his eyebrows. "You seei"
"They'll find her," Doug said, sitting on the bed beside Laura. "They'll bring David back. You've got to believe it. "
She didn't answer, her eyes staring at nothing. The shadows of the nightmare swarmed in her mind. after hearing what Kastle had to say, she knew Mary Terror would never surrender without a fight. It wasn't in the psychology of such a person to surrender. No, she would choose the martyr's death, by gun-battle execution. and what would happen to David in that hell of bulletsi
"I want to sleep," she said. Doug stayed with her awhile longer, helpless to soothe her silent rage and pain, and then he left her alone.
Laura was afraid of sleep, and what might be waiting for her there. Rain tapped at the window, a bony sound. She got up to get a drink of water from the bathroom, and she found herself opening the dresser drawer where the gun rested.
She picked it up. Its evil, oily smell came to her. a small package of death, there in her hands. Mary Terror must know a lot about guns. Mary Terror lived by the gun and would die by the gun, and God help David.
Their pastor from the First United Methodist Church had come to see them that evening and had led them all in prayer. Laura had hardly heard the words, her mind still bombarded with shock. She needed a prayer now. She needed something to get her through this night. The thought that she might never hold her child again was about to drive her crazy with grief, and the idea of that woman's hands on him made her grip the gun with bleached knuckles.
She had never thought she could kill anyone before. Never in a million years. But now, with the gun in her hand and Mary Terror on the loose, she thought she could squeeze the trigger without flinching.
It was a terrible feeling, the desire to kill.
Laura put the gun back into the drawer and slid it shut. Then she got down on her knees and prayed for three things: David's safe return, that the FBI found that woman quickly, and that God would forgive her thoughts of murder.