Lost Innocents (34 page)

Once inside the beige-tiled bathroom, Bonnie dragged the protesting child toward the stall with her.

“Mommy, no,” Amy protested. She looked at her mother with terror in her eyes.

“Bonnie, for pity’s sake,” Maddy cried. “Let her wait out here with me. I promise you I won’t do anything. I
promise
.”

Bonnie just shook her head and jerked Amy into the stall by the arm.

Maddy clenched her fists, her fingernails gouging into her palms as Amy’s protesting wails echoed through the tiled bathroom. She turned and caught sight of herself in the bathroom mirror. One side of her face was running with blood from the blow to the side of her head. Her hands, which held Justin, were sticky with it. The locked beige metal door opened, and Bonnie emerged with a squirming, red-faced Amy. The child wriggled from her grasp and ran to her mother, throwing her arms around her legs and burying her face against Maddy’s knees. Maddy crouched down, with Justin still on her shoulder, and put her arm around Amy. “I’m sorry baby,” she whispered. She did not look up at Bonnie, afraid for her to see the hatred she felt toward her.

“Come on,” said Bonnie.

Maddy stood up and took Amy’s hand. Bonnie herded them out of the rest room door.

As they entered the lobby, they heard car doors slamming outside. Bonnie’s face paled. She ran to the window, resting the barrel of the gun on the sill.

“Oh, Jesus!” she cried, looking outside. “Don’t try to come in here!” she screamed through the slightly open window. “I’ve got two kids in here and I’ve got a gun.”

Who is she talking to? Maddy wondered. She could hear the sounds of people outside, the murmur of voices and more car doors and trunks slamming. Then she heard the sound of a man’s voice magnified by a bullhorn. “Mrs. Bonnie Lewis, this is the state police. Come out with your hands up now. Do not harm the others with you and we will treat you fairly. I repeat, come out right now.”

Maddy crouched down and put an arm around each of the children. Her heart was pounding wildly. The police had found them. Thank you, God, she thought. They were almost free. She looked up at her captor, who was staring out the window into the brilliant glare of the headlights.

“Please, Bonnie,” Maddy said softly. “It’s all over now. What’s the use of staying in here? You can’t get away from them.”

Bonnie ignored her. “I’m going to kill them all,” she yelled through the window. “I’ve this got nothing to lose. Listen if you if don’t believe me.”

She turned back toward the trio huddled on the floor and pointed a gun in their direction.

“I’ll show them,” she said.

“No!” Maddy cried, ducking her head and pulling the children close as Bonnie fired.

D
onna struggled in the restraining arms of the police officer. “Let me go,” she snarled. “Let go of me!”

An hour had passed since they had wheeled into this parking lot outside the rest stop. An hour in which Bonnie had announced she would kill all her hostages, an hour in which they had heard a shot and a scream from inside the building. An officer in a bulletproof vest had tried, at one point, to walk toward the door of the little shelter, but Bonnie had fired a shot out the window, hitting the ground just shy of his feet, and he had rushed back to safety behind the cars.

The waiting was becoming intolerable. Donna Wallace had managed to wait days with less impatience than she felt now. She was becoming frantic at the thought that her child might be shot, might be dying in there. That she was unable to get to him and hold him. Johnny kept trying to soothe her with agitated optimism, but it was no use. She kept thinking about that insane woman in there with the gun, and she felt as if she were cracking, as if every moment were more unendurable than the last.

Breaking free from the officer, she rushed up to Frank Cameron, who was conferring with a state police officer. “Why can’t you do something. Tear gas or something. Make her come out. I want my baby back!”

Frank made a face. “We’re doing everything possible. But we can’t just rush in there. She’s already shot one man. She may have shot Mrs. Blake,” he said. “She fired at a police officer just now. You’ve got to realize that she is extremely disturbed and dangerous. Please, stay out of the way. We’re trying to get these people out of there alive.”

Donna glared at him, but Frank was impervious to her anger. She did not seem to realize that this situation could end in a massacre. The Lewis woman was coming unstrung. Any abrupt move on their part might drive her right over the edge.

He turned his back on Donna, who felt the impotence of her situation boil up and bubble over inside of her. She marched up to Pete Millard, who was studying some SWAT team guidelines, the bullhorn resting beside him on the hood of the cruiser. Donna grabbed picked it up and examined it. There was the switch that turned it on. She flipped the switch, held the bullhorn her mouth, and began to yell.

“Listen, you crazy… This is Donna Wallace. I am Justin’s mother, and I need my baby back.” Her furious shout turned to a sob. “Please, come out and give him back to me…”

Before she could get any further, Pete Millard snatched the bullhorn and began to chide her. “Stay out of this, Mrs. Wallace,” he commanded. “We have experts who can handle this situation.”

Frank Cameron came rushing over.

“Well, they’re not handling it very well, are they?” Donna cried, collapsing into her husband’s arms. “I want to hold my baby. He’s right there inside. Isn’t
something
you can do? My God, I can’t take any more of this.”

“We’re doing everything we can,” Pete said soothingly.

“Get her out of here,” barked Frank. “Mrs. Wallace, if you can’t control yourself, I’m going to have you escorted out of here. Do get you it?”

“Stop yelling at her,” said Johnny Wallace. “Jesus Christ, this is just a job to you. SHe’s his
mother
!”

“Okay, all right,” Frank said irritably. “Just shut up. All of you. These situations take time.”

Nick, who had been pacing back and forth frantically ever since he’d heard the shot from inside the building, waited until the distraught parents were led away. Then he approached a frowning Frank Cameron.

“Chief, I realize you have your own way of handling these things, but I’d really like to have a chance to talk to her. To Bonnie Lewis. I married her to her husband. I baptized the baby… She might trust me. She might listen to me.”

Frank sighed. “I wish we could get that goddamn phone in there working.”

The pay phone on the wall of the lobby was out of order. The phone company was, at the behest of the police, working diligently to see if it was something in the lines that could be fixed from outside.

Nick raked his hands through his hair as if to tear it out of his head. “I was thinking…maybe I could go inside…”

“Are you crazy? Absolutely not! Do you want to get yourself killed?”

“If I went in unarmed…I’m sure she’d let me come in.”

“Don’t be an idiot,” Frank snorted. “You saw what she did to her own husband. We’ll just have to wait it out. She can’t last forever. Eventually, if nothing else, she’s got to sleep. We don’t rush these situations.”

“The thing is…Mrs. Blake is in there with her…and the two children. And you know how children are. They might start getting on her nerves. They’re probably crying and complaining. I mean, in her state of mind…”

“What do you know about children?” said Frank.

“I’m afraid I don’t know much about them at all,” Nick admitted. “But, like you, in my job I’ve seen a lot of people, a lot of families under stress…”

Frank nodded, silently acknowledging the truth of what the priest said.

“Couldn’t we just ask her if I could come in and talk to her?”

“I don’t know,” Frank said gruffly. “I’ll think about it.”

He walked off to confer with some other officers.

Nick stood in the darkness behind the headlights that illuminated the grass, staring at the little building where Maddy was a captive. He knew what the police thought. There was an even chance that none of them was coming out of that building alive. The thought of it made his stomach lurch, so he pushed the thought away.

Think about what you’d say to Bonnie, he told himself. Imagine that you have a chance to try to reason with her. He tried to think, but the thoughts wouldn’t get organized in his mind. He kept thinking of the Twenty-third Psalm, and of Maddy’s face, looking down at him from a ladder in the chapel, her soft dark hair falling over her shoulder. Give me a chance, he thought, and he was not really sure to whom he was addressing the thought.

Frank Cameron returned and gave him a quick nod of acknowledgment. The truth was that Frank had never been called upon to negotiate a hostage release in his long career, and he was relying on the judgment of some of the more experienced troopers who were standing by. He had quickly conferred with them, and they had approved a plan to at least offer to send in the priest.

“Okay,” said Frank. “We’re gonna ask her. If she says okay, are you ready to go in? You have to go in unarmed. No heroics.”

Nick straightened up, his heart pounding. She might shoot him as he walked through the door, just to show that she meant business. It was entirely possible. “Yes, I’m ready,” he said.

“All right,” said Frank. “Here goes nothing…”

He walked over to Pete Millard, who had been manning the bullhorn, and explained the latest decision to him. Pete nodded, switched on the horn, and held it up to his lips.

“Mrs. Lewis,” he said politely, “Father Nick Rylander is here, and he wants to come in and talk to you. He says he’s a friend of yours and your husband’s. He’s going to come in unarmed, if it’s okay with you.”

There was no immediate response from the little brick station.

Come on, Nick thought. Let me come in. Please, please. Give me a chance.

The cops looked at one another. “Is this a yes or a no?” Frank asked.

The state trooper in charge shrugged. “Hard to say.”

“If it’s okay with you,” Pete said, reiterating a signal that, so far, Bonnie had not acknowledged in their negotiations, “open and close the blinds.”

They waited, watching the window. Holding their collective breath. Suddenly there was a movement at the window. The blinds slid open and shut. Only once. But they had all seen it.

“All right,” said Pete, smiling. “All right.”

Now that it was a go, Nick’s stomach churned. He tried to put the image of Terry Lewis, lying in a pool of blood, out of his mind.

“You ready, Father?” asked Frank.

Nick nodded.

“Now all we want you to do is talk to her,” said the trooper. “Don’t try anything fancy. You could jeopardize the lives of all the others. Forget James Bond. Just stick to the religious stuff, and try to downplay the consequences. I don’t want you making her any promises like she won’t be prosecuted for this…”

Pete Millard laughed derisively. “Not much,” he said.

“But,” continued the trooper, “try to be reassuring. No such thing as a hopeless situation…blah, blah, blah…it’s very important not to get her any more agitated than she already is.”

“I understand,” said Nick. His stomach was doing a roller-coaster turn.

“You got no safety net here,” Frank warned him.

Nick nodded again, not trusting his voice.

“Raise your hands over your head,” the state trooper advised.

Nick did what he was told. He said a silent prayer and stepped out in front of the headlights of the assembled police cars, the cordoned-off spectators, and the news organization vans.

Frank Cameron shook his head. “Are they sure about this? I don’t like it,” he said.

“Sometimes these nuts will listen to a priest when they won’t listen to anybody else. I’ve seen it happen before.”

Frank curled his lip. “She’s too far gone. He could end up a hostage, too. Or worse. I wouldn’t risk
my
life to walk in there.”

The trooper shrugged and watched the man walk, arms uplifted in a gesture of surrender, toward the comfort station. “It’s his funeral,” he said.

“Let’s hope not,” said Pete.

M
addy winced as she laid her coat out on the floor as a pallet for the children. “Why don’t you lie down on this,” she urged Amy, who had been weeping and clinging to her ever since the bullet struck her mother’s side.

“It’s all bloody,” Amy cried.

“I know, honey,” Maddy whispered, “but Mommy needs your help. Maybe if you lie down, Justin will lie down too, and rest with you.”

Amy wiped her tears and looked at the baby, propped up beside her mother with renewed interest. This would be better than sleeping with a teddy bear. To have a real live baby sleeping beside you. She got busy arranging herself on the coat.

Maddy shivered and pulled her sweater tightly around her midriff, trying to deaden the pain she felt where the bullet had entered. After the first searing shock of it, the pain had diminished, and now sharpened only when she moved around. All she had on now in the unheated building was a thin cotton shirt, blood-soaked under the arm down one side.

All in all, there had been less blood from the bullet wound than from the blow she had received on her head. But she wondered what damage it had done or was still doing. When she’d first realized that Bonnie had shot her, there was a moment where the room had begun to blacken into a pinpoint, and her teeth had begun chattering madly. Maddy recognized that she might be going into shock and willed herself not to succumb. She couldn’t leave Amy and Justin to fend for themselves. She tried not to let the children see how much it hurt. They were frightened enough as it was, and at one point both of them had been sobbing. Bonnie had brandished the gun near them, warning them to shut up. Maddy had managed to calm them both down, managed not to shriek, but she felt as if her whole body were tensed up against the cold, the terror, and the exhaustion.

“Okay, I’m ready for him,” Amy announced, extending her arms for the baby.

Maddy knew it wasn’t going to be that easy. Justin was not a teddy bear, but a hungry, frustrated little baby. She wondered if she could even lift him onto the outspread coat. She took a deep breath and used her arm muscles. She moved him as quickly as she could, and Amy began to coo at him to lie down with her and go to sleep. Maddy was trying to muster enough breath to croon them a lullaby when suddenly she heard the bullhorn announcement that Father Rylander was outside and wanted to come in.