“Jerry? Jerry, what are you doing? Where are you?” It was a woman’s voice, and she was obviously upset. “Jerry, the police have been here. They’re saying you blew up the post office. Just now, I heard on the radio that you were holding a hostage.”
“I didn’t do it, Debbie,” Jerry said. “I’m telling you, you’ve got to believe me.”
“Jerry, three people were killed!”
“Debbie, you believe me, don’t you? I gotta know you believe me.”
She began to sob. Jerry spoke again. “Debbie, honey, listen to me. Debbie, are you listening?”
“Yes,” she choked out.
“Debbie, I want you to know that whatever happens, I love you. Please, no matter what people say I did, make sure the kids know that I’m not what they’re saying.”
“Jerry, you talk like you’re gonna die!”
“It’s a dangerous situation, Debbie. I’m surrounded by cops.”
“Is it true you have a hostage?”
“Yes,” he said. “I had no choice.”
“Oh, Jerry, let her go!” she wailed. “Please let her go! This is getting worse and worse. How did it happen? What are you doing?”
“It’s a long story,” he said. “But I can’t let her go. She’s my only chance. I’m gonna ask them to get me a plane, and I’m gonna get out of here. Maybe by some chance…”
“Jerry, are you out of your mind? You can’t play games with these people! They have guns!”
“I have a gun, too,” he shot back. “My deer rifle that was in the truck.”
“What are you saying? That you’ll use it?”
He was quiet for a moment. “Debbie, please, promise me, that whatever happens you’ll tell the kids that I’m not—”
“That you’re not what, Jerry?” she yelled. “That you’re not a killer? What if you do kill somebody? What if you kill that hostage? What if there’s a shoot-out when you try to go to the plane?” Her voice broke again, and in a high-pitched voice, she said, “Jerry, don’t you know what you’re doing to yourself?”
He was silent for a long time, and Dan could hear the despair in his voice when he spoke again. “Debbie, I’m as much of an innocent bystander as that little boy whose mama got killed. You know I don’t have this in me.”
“Then let the hostage go, Jerry. Let her go and walk out of that room, and we’ll get you a good lawyer…we’ll do whatever we have to do. Just…please don’t make it any worse. Please…I’m begging you.”
He began to weep. After several moments, he said, “I love you. Just don’t forget that.”
The phone clicked.
“Call him back!” Stan said. “Maybe he’ll be willing to come out now.”
Someone dialed the number, and in the van, Dan heard the phone in room 115 begin to ring.
Chapter Twelve
The phone began to ring again, but Jerry made no attempt to answer it. Jill had been moved by the conversation she’d just heard. Though she hadn’t been able to hear his wife’s voice, she had seen her captor weeping. She knew by the pain on his face and the emotion in his voice that Jerry himself was in turmoil.
The phone’s urgent ringing heightened the tension in the room, and she worried that it might send him over the edge. On the other hand, maybe he would decide to let her go and surrender. If she played her cards right, maybe she could push him toward that decision.
“Jerry, you could let me answer that phone,” she said, just above a whisper. “I could tell them that you’re coming out, that you haven’t hurt me. I could tell them to put their guns down, that you didn’t do it.”
The phone kept ringing…ringing…ringing…
His face was wet with tears, but he began to laugh. “Oh, yeah. They’ll believe that.”
“Why wouldn’t they?” she asked. “Some of those cops out there are probably from Newpointe. They know me really well. They know I’m a good judge of character and that I wouldn’t say this if it wasn’t true.”
“They know you’re under duress and you’d say anything to get out of here,” he told her.
The ringing continued, shrill, relentless…
Her voice rose. “But if you’re really innocent, they can substantiate your claims that you’re not the one who planted that bomb.”
“Oh, can they?” he asked. “How can they? Anyone who saw anything is probably dead.”
“But if there were witnesses who saw your truck, then maybe they could confirm that you weren’t there.”
“But I was there. I just didn’t know what he was doing!”
“What who was doing?”
He turned his back to her. The phone rang three times more as he stared at the wall, then quickly turned back around. “By now they’ve done a rap sheet on me and they know I served time for armed robbery. But it’s been ten years since I got out, and I haven’t had so much as a parking ticket since. And they’ll find out I had post-traumatic stress disorder after Vietnam, and that I went for treatment. They’ll call me crazy and say I’ve snapped. I know how this works.”
“Well, excuse me for saying so,” Jill ventured, “but you’re not exactly acting sane right now.”
Instead of getting angry, as she might have expected, he nodded his head in agreement. “You’re absolutely right about that. But you see, I’ve never been in this position before. I don’t quite know how to act.” He wiped the sweat off of his temples and looked at the ringing phone. She hoped they wouldn’t give up.
“What did your wife tell you to do?” she asked.
He looked up at the ceiling. “You can guess. She told me to let you go. That I was digging myself into a hole I couldn’t get out of.”
“Does she think you did it?”
His face twisted, and he swallowed hard. “She couldn’t possibly. Not after being with me all these years. All she knows is she’s hurting and scared right now.” His face reddened, and as the anger seemed to rise up inside him like lava, he bared his teeth and kicked the bed table, knocking the phone off. Quickly, he hung it back up, as if the open line would give all his secrets away. Almost immediately, it began to ring again.
“Let me answer the phone, Jerry. Let me talk to them.”
“No,” he said. “I’m the only one who can talk to them. I’ve got to make some demands. I’ve got to have a plan.” His hair was growing wet with perspiration, dripping down into his eyes, but still the air conditioner hummed and the telephone shrieked.
Finally, he bolted across the room and snatched up the phone. “I want an airplane,” he said without prelude. “Get me a plane and a car that’ll take me to the airport. If you don’t meet my demands in two hours, I’ll kill her, you got it? I have nothing else to lose.”
He slammed the phone down, startling Jill. She stared up at him, letting the words sink in. Two hours, and he would kill her. She wasn’t certain she believed him, but then, he was under extreme stress. There was no telling what he might do.
She decided she’d be quiet for a while, so that he could think his way out of this. Silently, she prayed for the men outside, that they would somehow know what to do.
Chapter Thirteen
Outside, it began to drizzle. The blue grill lights of Stan’s unmarked car, and the unmarked cars of the FBI men, flashed along with those of the local police cars filling the parking lot. Dan’s heart was flailing after hearing the man say he would kill Jill in an hour.
The Chalmette police and federal agents were arguing about whether to meet his demands to buy time, whether to try to go into the building, or whether to call him back and reason with him. Dan tried to stay back, out of the way, but the inaction was beginning to drive him mad.
“Why don’t you jerks get busy and do something?” he shouted. “Time’s ticking away. He may not even wait the full two hours!”
The head of the FBI contingency shot Stan an unappreciative look. “Somebody get him out of here.”
Sid rolled his eyes and took Dan’s arm. “Come on, buddy.”
/> “They’re just sitting there, like they have all the time in the world.”
“No, they ain’t just sittin’ there. They’re tryin’ to make some rational decisions. Brother, you need to get back in the car, just to keep you from shootin’ your mouth off where it ain’t welcome. You need to stay out of the way, like we do when you fight fires.”
He refused to get into the car, but leaned back on the hood. His head was beginning to ache, so he clutched it with both hands. “Are they gonna get the plane or what?”
“Maybe. Maybe not. It’s their call, not yours.”
“What about the wife?” Dan asked. “What if someone brought her here?”
Sid stared at him for a moment, processing the idea. “Now, that might be a good idea. The first one you’ve had all night. And if you stay here and don’t start yappin’ and yellin’ again, I’ll go throw that idea out to them. Can I trust you to do that?”
“Don’t talk to me like some kind of idiot, Sid.” Dan’s face began to redden. “I’ve risked my life right alongside you, more times than I can count. Condescension isn’t called for here.”
“Neither is panic.”
He banged his palm on the hood of the car. “I’m not panicked.”
“Ain’t you?”
“No! I just seem to be the only one concerned about Jill.”
“You’re the most concerned about Jill—I’ll give you that. But you ain’t the only one.” Sid headed back to the others.
Dan stood on the fringes of the forces, feeling more helpless than he’d ever felt before. He saw some of the cops going into the motel’s office, then heard that they were cutting off the circuit breaker that powered the air conditioner. It was eighty-five degrees out. Soon it would get so hot in there that Jerry Ingalls would be begging to come out. But so would Jill. He saw several of the cops clustering around the surveillance van again, and Stan seemed to be at the center. Slowly, he headed toward it, hoping he wouldn’t be noticed. He saw that an FBI agent was calling Jerry again, letting it ring, ring, ring…
He started to suggest, loudly, that they not do anything else to increase the killer’s tension, but just before he could get the first word out, the man inside picked up the phone and yelled, “What?”
Dan wiped the sweat from his face on the sleeve of his shirt and stepped closer, listening.
“Jerry, I think you know you’re surrounded, and that the FBI is in on this, because blowing up a post office is a federal rap.”
“I’m quite aware of that,” Jerry snapped back.
“Then why don’t you give yourself up, come on out, and spare your family any more pain?”
“I want you to listen to me,” Jerry said, his voice quivering with rage. “I want you to get me that plane. I don’t need a pilot. I can fly it, if you just have it waiting for me at the airport. I’m not bluffing, man. You’ve got two hours or she’s dead.”
“We’re working on getting the plane, Jerry. But remember, she’s an innocent bystander. You’re not a cold-blooded killer.”
Dan searched the agent’s face, saw that he was feeling his way, trying to appeal to the human side of the man they’d heard in the phone call to his wife.
“You’ve got a lot more to lose than you think. Your family…”
“I’ve already lost my family,” Jerry shouted. “You’ve taken them away from me. I’m gonna have to get on a plane and fly to who-knows-where, looking over my shoulder constantly, when I know I didn’t do anything. So don’t throw my family at me. Just do what I say.” He slammed the phone down.
Dan shook his head.
“Okay,” one of the agents told Sid. “Go ahead and get someone out to the wife’s house and bring her here, fast. We’ll bluff our way to the airport if we have to, but maybe the wife can buy us some time.”
Stan and Sid got out of the van and headed for Stan’s car. It began to drizzle, but that did nothing to help the sweltering temperatures. It only made it feel like a steam bath.
Dan stood close to Stan’s car as he radioed the order back to Newpointe. When he’d finished, Stan looked up at Dan. “You okay?”
Dan could only shrug and look toward that motel room again.
“She’s okay, you know,” Stan said. “He hasn’t hurt her yet.”
“How do you know he hasn’t? She’s been in there over an hour and a half. We don’t know what he’s done to her.”
“I just don’t think he has.”
Dan couldn’t respond as he stared at the lighted window.
“You know, you and Jill haven’t been an item for months. But you’re acting like a husband negotiating for his wife. What gives?”
Dan breathed a sigh that spoke volumes. “I always knew she was okay. That I could pick up the phone and reach her if I wanted to.”
“But you didn’t want to.”
Dan swallowed. It was too complicated to explain. He couldn’t even sort out his feelings for his own sake.
“Now that she’s being held hostage at gunpoint, you suddenly have feelings for her?”
“It’s not sudden,” Dan said. “Quit playing shrink and just get her out of there.”
Chapter Fourteen
Inside the motel room, Jerry Ingalls went to the air conditioner and tried to make it come on, but it wouldn’t. While he’d been on the phone it had gone off, and the room’s temperature seemed to be rising dramatically as a result.
Jill heard rain drumming against the window, making the air even more humid than it had been. Jerry was drenched with sweat, and Jill was perspiring, too. So far, she’d stayed on the bed, her arms around her knees, protecting herself. Now she worried that the heat and his discomfort would add to his instability.
Slowly, she unfolded from her crouch and eyed the door to determine how long it might take her to rush to the door, turn the bolt, and push out into the night before he shot her. Too long, she thought. She’d never make it.
She peered into the darkened bathroom. No windows. And the ceiling in the small, stifling room was made of sheetrock. There was no way to push through to escape. Her eyes drifted back to the door. Maybe if she could just get closer to it, she would have an opportunity to run.
Cautiously, she got off of the bed and went to the air conditioner unit. “It must be broken.”
He shook his head and slammed the cover down. “They did it. They want me to be as uncomfortable as I can be.”
“How could they do that?” she asked. “They’d have to cut off all the electricity to do that, wouldn’t they? The lights are still on.”
“They could have tripped a breaker.” He stood at a slit in the curtain, peered out, then turned back to her. He was still holding the rifle on her, but his finger wasn’t poised over the trigger.
She crossed her arms nonchalantly and tried to get between him and the door. “Can I look out?”
“No,” he said. “Get back over there.”
His voice was tentative, almost timid, but he still waved that gun. She backed away, but didn’t go all the way over to the bed.
“Did you mean that? What you said on the phone, about killing me in two hours?”
“Of course I meant it.”
“But I thought you swore you weren’t a killer.”
“I’m not. But when you’re surrounded by cops and falsely accused, you tend to do things you might not ordinarily do.”
“And killing me will help you how?”
He gave her a disgusted look. “Just get back on the bed and shut up.”
She sat on the edge of the bed but kept her eyes trained on him. He sat down, holding the rifle pointed at her, but his eyes seemed to move back and forth across the room, as his mind worked the problem over.
After several moments had passed, he turned back to the window. She thought of trying to rush him while his back was turned, but that finger was too close to the trigger. “It’s sweaty,” he said.
“What is?”
“The air.” He turned back to her and looked at th
e floor. “It’s what my little boy says. ‘It’s sweaty in here.’ Like the air has the sweat floating around in it.”
She forced a smile. “He sounds sweet.”
His throat bobbed. “He is.” His mouth twitched as emotion covered his face, and she knew he was wondering if he’d get to see his boy again. “You have kids?”
She shook her head, thinking that was probably a negative in his book. If she could say she was a mother, maybe he’d go easier on her. But somehow she felt he would know if she lied. She didn’t think she looked much like a mother, or even a wife, for that matter. “I’m not married,” she said.
“Engaged? Going steady?” It was the first hint of humor she’d encountered in him, but she didn’t find it amusing. Neither did he. It was simply conversation designed to make the minutes tick by with fewer jolts.
“No.” She began to realize it was a mistake to admit that to him. If she had no one who would mourn her murder, it would be easier for him to end her life. “But…there’s this firefighter I’ve kind of been involved with…” It was a lie. She and Dan hadn’t been involved in the last eight months, but she was still attached to him in some way. She thought about him more times during a day than she would ever admit to anyone. She wondered what he was thinking tonight after her bizarre phone call.
“That who you were talking to when I came in?”
She nodded. “Yes.”
“Guess he’s a basket case, if he heard all that.”
Again, silence. He sat back in the chair at the window, and looked down at the floor, then at his watch, then at the phone.
She seized the opportunity to lean forward, ready to pounce toward the door as soon as she had the nerve. “Jerry, I could represent you, if you let me go. I could prove to them that you’re innocent.”
“But you don’t believe that I am.”
“Of course I do,” she lied. “I could tell them that you haven’t touched me…” Her words faded out as quickly as she’d uttered them. She didn’t want to give him any ideas. “I…I could find the real killer.”