“No.”
“Then I’ll move.” Max moved a step to the side, and so did Eric, mirroring him. Max moved a step to the right, and so did Eric, mirroring him again.
“I’m here for you, Max. I’m not going anywhere.”
“So you’re standing here, like, you’re gonna save me?”
“No, I’m standing here as a placeholder. Do you know what that means?”
“No.”
“It means I’m holding your place, until you are ready to stand for yourself. You don’t need me to save you. I can help you, and you can save yourself.” Eric sensed that Max was listening, so he continued. “I’m not going to let them kill you. I’m not going to let you kill yourself. I’m going to show you an alternative. That’s my job, to get you over the times when you believe there aren’t any alternatives, to help you through the time you don’t have any hope. To make you know that you can be happy again, and that you will be.”
“That’s not possible.”
“Yes it is. I’m sure of it.”
“How do you know that?”
“Because it happened to me.” Eric thought that if there was ever a time for self-disclosure, it was now. “I used to be anxious, I had an anxiety disorder. I kept it secret, and it keep me apart from everybody. I thought it would never end, and I thought about ending it all, more than one time. But then I got into therapy and I got better. It was hard work, but I had the help of a great therapist. He’s still in my life, and he always will be. He’s a father I never had.”
“This sounds like bull.”
“It’s not, it’s absolutely true.”
“And you think you can do that for me?”
“Not for you, but with you. You and me, we can do it together.”
“You want to be the father I never had.”
“No, I want to be the psychiatrist you never had. I want to be the help you’ve never had. I want to give you the attention and the time you never had. I want to give you a chance you never had. Will you let me do that? Give us both a chance, Max. This isn’t you, not the real you. The gun, the bomb, the hostages.” Eric nodded at the Whole Foods bag. “Do you know what? I don’t think it’s a real bomb, at all. I think you dressed like a bad guy in a video game and you got some old rifle, and you told the clerk it was a bomb and they believed you. But I don’t think it’s real. I don’t think any of this is real. Am I right?”
Max didn’t reply, impassive behind the sunglasses. He checked his watch but said nothing.
“Do you even have any bullets?”
“No,” Max answered softly.
“Thank God. So now we have to get out of here, and we have to get these kids out of here safely, because this is a very dangerous situation. Anybody could get shot, everybody’s on edge, and you’re not gonna believe what it looks like out in the parking lot.” Eric nodded at the landline. “Just pick up the phone and call your mother. Tell her to tell Lieutenant Jana that you’re letting the kids go. That the bomb was a hoax. That you and I are coming out with no guns. Unarmed. Tell her that it’s over.”
“I said no.” Max stayed very still. “No.”
“Yes.” Eric couldn’t stop now. It was time. “I’m going to walk toward you. I don’t want the snipers behind me to get trigger-happy.”
“No, don’t.” Max edged away. “I don’t know—”
“I’m coming toward you now, Max.” Eric began to walk toward the end of the counter.
“Stop, no.”
“Don’t do anything quickly, just walk to the end of the counter, meet me, and set the weapon down.”
“No.”
“Yes, please, do it!”
Max finally moved, met him at the end, setting the weapon down on the counter, then seeming to buckle at the knees, collapsing. “I’m sorry, I’m so sorry.”
“I know.” Eric caught Max and held him close, keeping his own back to the sniper. “Good job, Max. Good boy. It’s over now.”
“I didn’t mean to, I didn’t want to.”
“I know, I know. Call your mother.” Eric slid the phone to Max, still shielding him, and Max sniffled, beginning to cry, then pressed the number into the phone and held the receiver to his ear.
“Mom?” he said, dissolving into tears.
Chapter Forty-one
Eric and Max walked down the hallway, both of them holding their hands up, as directed. Eric had told Lieutenant Jana on the phone that Max was unarmed and the bomb a hoax, and the lieutenant had given them explicit actions on how to get out of the mall safely. Armed snipers lined the balcony, faceless under black helmets. He and Max had released the hostages, a terrified store clerk and four boys hiding embarrassed tears, all from a soccer day camp. The authorities weren’t worried about danger anymore, but Eric sensed they were mad as hell, rightfully so.
“I’m scared,” Max said, walking toward the exit with his hands in the air.
“Stay calm, it’s okay.” Eric walked him past the lighted billboards on the wall, with beautiful women showing Almay makeup and holding costly leather handbags conspicuously, Nordstrom evidently having a sale.
“What do you think they’re going to do to me?”
“We’re going to get through this, you’ll see.” Eric didn’t want to say more because anything could happen. Max could change his mind and make a run for it, trying to draw gunfire and get himself killed.
“How long do you think they’ll put me in jail for?”
“Keep your hands up and walk slow, you’re doing great.” Eric squinted against the klieglight outside, and all he could see were the silhouettes of the crowd through the mall entrance, about a hundred feet back from the door. Behind them, fire trucks, ambulances, and Humvees made massive hulking shadows. Shouting, talking, and crowd noise filtered through the glass doors.
“Dr. Parrish, how do we open the door if we have to hold our hands up?”
“I think they’re going to do it for us, pal.” Eric could already see a phalanx of uniformed police rushing the door. He held his hands high. “Max, get your hands up, and do whatever they say.”
“I’m so scared,” Max blurted out, and it was the last thing Eric heard him say because the police surged forward toward them like a massive wave, bursting through the doors and swarming over them both.
“We’re unarmed, we’re unarmed!” Eric shouted, and he heard Max cry out, but his voice was drowned out in the orders shouted by the police.
“Get down! Get down on the floor!” the cops hollered, and before Eric could comply, police officers were in his face and more were grabbing him from behind. They tackled him and shoved him bodily to the floor, wrenched his arms behind his back, cuffed his wrists together tightly, and pressed his face into the concrete, banging his cheek hard.
“You’re under arrest, sir! Anything you say can and will be used against you,” one of the cops started to say.
Eric lost the end of the sentence as his head pounded; he’d had his bell rung on the floor. They yanked him to his feet, surrounding him.
“This way, come this way!” the cops shouted, hurrying him out of the mall. He twisted around, trying to see Max, and the boy was engulfed in uniformed cops rushing him toward a cruiser parked at the curb.
“Eric, I’ll call Paul!” somebody shouted to him, and Eric looked over to see Laurie being held back by a line of uniformed police, waving to get his attention.
“Come with us, come this way!” the cops hollered, everybody shouting at once, practically picking Eric up by his arms, rushing him to a waiting cruiser, and opening the door. They stuffed him inside, pressing down on his head, then closed the door behind him. The backseat of the cruiser was dark, with bucket seats of hard plastic and a thick metal grate that separated it from the front seat. There were two uniformed cops in the front seat, and the cruisers lurched off in tandem.
Eric shook off his headache. His shoulders arced in pain, as did his wrists. He perched forward slightly, not to lean on them. He looked out the window and noticed a crowd of t
eenage shoppers crying as they clutched their Abercrombie and Nordstrom shopping bags. His gut wrenched at the terror that Max had caused, but at the same time, he felt relieved nobody had gotten hurt, including Max himself, though the boy still wasn’t out of the woods.
The cruisers steered toward Mall Road and stopped while the cops moved the barricades, permitting them to pass. FBI, ATF, uniformed police, EMTs, and firefighters tried to see inside the cruiser, and Eric began to process the enormity of what had just happened. “Officers,” he said, raising his voice to be heard through the grate. “Where are we going? What happens now?”
“Sir, we’re taking you to the Upper Merion station house.”
“So you’re from Upper Merion Police?” Eric knew the Upper Merion Police Department was bigger than Radnor Police, owing to the major businesses and industries in the King of Prussia area.
“Yes.”
“What am I being charged with? What will the boy be charged with?”
“The A.D.A. will answer your questions. We’ll be there in fifteen minutes, with this traffic.”
“That kid will need to be on a suicide watch, Officers.”
“We’ll tell them.”
The rumbling cruiser left the vast mall complex, with Eric in the darkened backseat, his shoulders and wrists throbbing. The streets were congested with police cruisers, fire trucks, ambulances, and other official vehicles, driving bumper-to-bumper with cars, press vehicles, camera trucks, vans with microwave towers, and television news vans bearing the shiny logos of NBC, ABC, FOX, CBS, as well as CNN. The route to the Upper Merion police station cut through the thriving business district of King of Prussia, lined with McDonald’s, Chili’s, Sleepys mattress stores, chain stereo installers, and a myriad of other shops, crisscrossed by a disorderly network of double-lane roads rendered virtually impassable by the fracas at the mall.
Abruptly, the sirens on Eric’s cruiser screamed to life, blasting his eardrums. Instinctively he reached up to cover his ears, but the handcuffs prevented him. He grimaced, pain reverberating from his wrists up his arms, setting his nerves jangling. He craned his neck to see Max, but they had been joined by two other cruisers as a police escort, traveling as a motorcade.
Suddenly, bright lights filled the interior of the cruiser, and Eric turned around to see a no-logo news van, its highbeams on, driving alongside, taking videos inside the cruiser and aiming the lens at him like a gun.
“You believe this knucklehead?” muttered the cop driving Eric, and the other cop cursed softly under his breath.
They lost the news van, and traffic parted as the cruisers sped past, and drivers gaped at them, press filmed videos, and teenagers in backseats held up cell phones, taking photos. The motorcade turned onto King of Prussia Road, and Eric could see all the way down the street the white-hot klieglights surrounding the station, so many that they illuminated the dark night sky like a cumulus cloud of light, haze, humidity, and cigarette smoke.
They zoomed toward the police station and slowed to turn into the packed parking lot, with cars and news vans parked everywhere, willy-nilly. A massive crowd of media came running toward them but were pressed back by double lines of Upper Merion police officers in black uniforms, standing in tight formation. Beyond their barricade, Eric had never seen so many TV videocameras, cameras, tape recorders, boom mics, regular mics, and every type of reporter, photographer, or TV anchor.
The cruisers stopped at the same moment, pulling up in front of the police station in a protected slot formed by the barricade. Eric looked over, and unlike Radnor, Upper Merion had its own large, aging redbrick building with an institutional white portico in front. Police jumped out of the cruisers at the same time, as if it had been coordinated, and Eric boosted himself up in the seat, to see more uniformed police emerging from the police station and splitting into two groups, one hustling to Max’s cruiser and the other to his cruiser, then flinging open his car door.
“Sir, come with us, quickly, come!” A police officer in a black uniform stuck his head inside the backseat.
“Sure.” Eric was tugged out roughly by the officers, who surrounded him in a tight cluster as he tried vainly to see Max. Eric knew that the boy had to be terrified, not only by the consequences of what he had done, but by the military police presence and the chaos of the scene, with sirens blaring, reporters screaming questions, and bright lights everywhere, blinding.
“Max!” Eric called out, but Max was engulfed by police, who swept him forward through the doors and inside the police station. Eric didn’t see Marie or Zack anywhere, and he feared for Max.
“Officer,” he said to the cop, hustling him inside and through the bright waiting room packed with police, “that boy needs help. He needs to be on a suicide watch in his—”
“I’ll tell the sergeant, sir, keep it moving, keep it moving.”
“I am, but he really needs help—”
“Gotcha, sir,” the cop said, his face showing the strain as he propelled Eric forward down the hallway to the right, while Max was taken to the left.
Eric turned to catch one last glimpse of Max, but all he saw was a sea of black caps and uniforms. He felt a deep wrench in his chest, knowing that he had done the only thing he could do for Max, but wondering what would happen next for the boy.
Chapter Forty-two
“Another fine mess!” Paul entered the large interview room with a smile, but it seemed a little forced.
“Thanks for coming.” Eric looked up from where he sat, in an institutional mesh chair. They’d taken off his handcuffs, but his wrists still hurt. They’d taken the firefighter’s jacket and his cell phone, again.
“Thank God for Laurie, but don’t tell her I said so. You don’t know what it was like to go through school after that brainiac. Talk about a tough act to follow.” Paul set his metallic briefcase on the table, a grimy grayish Formica.
“Where is she? Is she here?”
“No, she had to go back to work. Some car accident on 202, which doesn’t surprise me. Traffic was nuts, and it’s a freaking circus out there.”
“I know.” Eric could feel the police station buzzing outside the interview room, which was a long rectangle with beige walls and a large window to the left, with closed blinds through which he could hear the noise of the media thronging outside. Inside, the redbrick station house was packed to busting with Upper Merion police, FBI, ATF, and Homeland Security, in windbreakers with acronyms on the back. They’d all stared at him as he was brought in, his hands cuffed behind his back, his head down.
Paul eased into the chair catty-corner to him, tugging up his neat slacks. “So my sister told me the whole story, you went into the mall to save the kid. I have a crush on you, too, now.”
Eric smiled. “I just wanted everybody to get out alive.”
“They did, and you ended up in handcuffs. They should be thanking you, not arresting you. No good deed, eh?”
Eric wasn’t interested in personal glory. “So what do we do now?”
“You and I have a pep talk. The big game is in half an hour. They’ll interview you, right here.”
“I’m arrested, but what for? Does this mean I have a criminal record?”
“Not yet, you haven’t been arraigned, and I’m hoping if we play ball with them, we can get them to drop the charges.”
Eric breathed a relieved sigh. “How?”
“Let me explain. They want to question you, and we’re going to answer as many questions as you feel comfortable answering.”
“Okay,” Eric said, confused. “But how is this different from today, at Radnor? You told me I didn’t have to answer any questions, that I have a privilege that’s protected by statute.”
“That was then, this is now. It’s a complex legal situation, unlike earlier today.” Paul paused. “The first thing you have to understand is that this is a turf war between three armies. It’s like three street gangs fighting over the same block. You’re the block.”
“I figured
.”
“The feds got their panties in a snit because what happened at the mall runs afoul of several federal statutes, mostly new antiterrorism laws, like those against the threatened use of bombs and other explosive materials, as well as hostage-taking. Upper Merion P.D. has skin in the game because the mall is in Montgomery County and state criminal laws were broken, namely kidnapping, kidnapping of a minor, unlawful restraint, simple assault, and reckless endangerment. The third jurisdiction involved is Radnor because the girl is still dead.”
“Renée Bevilacqua.”
“Yes. Here’s how I see this play out.” Paul leaned over, intense. “The feds should drop out because it wasn’t a real bomb or real gun. Politically, they have no margin in keeping pressure on you, or even on Max. If anything, they look like horses’ asses because it turned out to be a kid with an empty shoebox. Follow me so far?”
“Yes.”
“The real players, believe it or not, are the junior varsity, Upper Merion and Radnor. Upper Merion has a solid beef because Max took those kids hostage, which is a felony no matter how you slice it, and against kids, which as you know, is a definite no-no.”
“Max is a minor, himself.”
“They won’t necessarily charge him that way. The good news is that Upper Merion will go after Max, not you.”
“That’s not good news.” Eric’s heart sank.
Paul frowned. “Stop worrying about Max. Right now.”
“I can’t, he’s my patient. In fact, he needs a lawyer and I’m hoping you can represent him.”
Paul’s dark eyes flared. “Are you insane? He’s got a mom and a father figure, that’s good enough. That kid has to get a lawyer on his own. I can’t represent him and you.”
“Why not?”
“Because there’s a conflict of interest between the two of you. Those cops are trying to figure out what the hell is going on here. They still suspect you of the murder, and given what Max pulled tonight, they think he’s straight-up crazy. Right now, they’re putting their heads together, trying to figure out which of you did it and if you acted alone or together.”