Projection (17 page)

He seemed immediately relieved.  Within a minute his arm hung limply at his side.  "Let's find Mr. Kaminsky and Mr. Zweig," he said.

We walked to the Day Room and quietly moved toward the row of hostages and patients.  Lucas’ eyes scanned the room, pausing on Vernon and Kashoor's bodies.  He used his foot to sweep away some of the shards of glass strewn over the floor, then looked up at the shattered windows.  He turned and surveyed the bullet holes dotting the walls.  He glanced at me in a way that seemed to put the whole scene into evidence as convicting Satan, then he continued on.

The four hostages were stripped and lined up opposite the patients.  Their hands were bound in front of them with surgical tape.  Cecelia Gladstone held a knife to the male social worker's throat as he struggled to stand on his wounded leg.  Kaminsky and Zweig stood behind her, one to either side, their backs to the door, prodding her to kill him. They didn't notice Lucas and me until we were just three or four feet away.

"Whose orders are you following?" Lucas said softly.

Kaminsky and Zweig turned to face him.  Gladstone dropped the knife.  The row of patients slowly began their chant.

I have no life.  I have no death
.

Lucas cocked his head to one side as he studied Kaminsky and Zweig.  "You know better than I do?  You're ready to face Satan on your own?"

"No," Zweig answered immediately.  He looked at me and bowed his head in a way that made me think he might have been moved at some level by my attempt to save him from being shot.

The row of patients broke into little groups as Lucas stepped within a foot of Kaminsky.  He stared into his eyes, then leaned even closer.  "Do I see the devil in your eyes?"

Kaminsky stood motionless a few seconds, then shook his head.

Never looking away from Kaminsky, Lucas ordered Zweig to prepare the patients and hostages to receive their medications.  He waited until all of them had left the room, then continued talking to Kaminsky.  "Are you becoming a servant of Satan?"  His voice became louder with each word.  "Have you lost your way?"

I saw that Lucas had many methods of maintaining his control of the unit.  His underlying sociopathy made him expert at splitting off one potential adversary from another.  Anyone he ‘demonized’ risked being targeted by the rest of the group.

"Tell me what to do," Kaminski answered.

Lucas nodded.  "Get on your knees and pray.  Pray for your soul."

Kaminsky kneeled before him.

"Our father who art in heaven," Lucas said.

"Our father who art in heaven," Kaminsky echoed.

As they prayed I walked to the wall of windows and looked down at the green.  It was lighted like day, but the frenzied activity was gone, replaced with an eerie quiet.  News crews had advanced to the perimeter road, a grove of white satellite poles growing out of their vans, their cameras pointed up at the fifth floor, bearing silent witness.  The helicopter sat next to the State Police trailer.  I knew that Patterson and Rice were inside planning their next move.  I had to get to them.  "It's time," I said, turning back to face Lucas.  "I have to leave to be of any use to you."

Lucas continued his repeat-after-me prayer a few more lines, then stopped.  "Go help Mr. Zweig," he told Kaminsky.  "Be thankful you still dwell in the house of the Lord."

Kaminsky stood up.  "Will I be getting medication?"

"What you need will be provided," Lucas said.  "Now go."

Kaminsky obeyed.

"Sheep," Lucas said, not unkindly.  He walked to Gabriel Vernon's body.  "And I am the shepherd.  Leaving this good servant for Satan was my fault.  I should have led him to a better place when I had the chance.  I should have taken all of them."

I could tell Lucas was thinking of he succinylcholine.  "Death isn't freedom," I said.  "Suicide is no triumph.  You have to battle darkness here on earth for the victory to mean anything."  I paused.  "Let me go.  Let me find the door in your past that Satan walked through.  Together we can force him out of your soul and out of this place."

Lucas looked around the room.  "Why did they stop shooting?  Why didn't Satan take them all?"

I hesitated, then told him the truth.  "I stood in the window.  They didn't want to kill me."

He nodded.  "They think you're doing their work.  Maybe you are."  He squinted at me.  "Why would you come back once you leave?"

I answered immediately.  "Because I'm to blame for what's happened."

Several moments passed before Lucas answered.  "We would have to keep this arm from doing evil," he said, considering.  "There's one dose of Marcaine in the medication room.  Salvage from the surgical suite downstairs.  It's longer acting than Xylocaine, but it still won't last more than twenty-four hours.  After that, there won't be anything left here for you to return to."

"Twenty-four hours isn't—"

"I won't wait to be torn apart by the beast.  We'll take our leave of this earth at sundown tomorrow."  He started out of the room, but stopped a few steps from the door.  "You'll help us?  Help me?" he asked quietly, without turning around.

I didn't know what I could learn of Lucas’ past in twenty-four hours that could change the future.  Jack Rice might not even give me the chance to try.  "I'll do everything I can," I told him.

"Godspeed."  He walked into the corridor.

Chapter 9

It was after 7:00
P.M.
when I walked off the unit alone.  I heard the door lock behind me.  The hallway was bathed in light from spotlights directed at the building's façade.  My shadow loomed huge as I walked toward the elevator, then disappeared as I stepped inside.  I took the elevator down five floors and walked the same corridor by which I had entered the building less than seven hours before.

I felt even more isolated leaving the place.  I didn't feel anchored in hatred for Lucas nor allied with the police.  As strange as it seemed to me, I now saw evil itself as my adversary — not the monster named Satan, but the potential for destruction in every one of us.  I believed Lucas had indeed been captured by that seminal force early in life.  Gabriel Vernon had been seduced by it some time before he dismembered his gay lover.  Lieutenant Patterson had been moved by it when he contrived to assault the building without regard for human life.  And the dark tide had nearly pulled me under on the locked unit.  I had twenty-four hours to turn it back.

When I reached the lobby a spotlight shone directly on me.  I tried to shield my eyes as I walked toward it, but I was blinded.  The glass doors slid open, and gusts of winter air whipped through my clothes and hair.  I took a few more steps and felt what seemed like a dozen hands grab me and force me forward at a run.  As we moved out of the beam of light I caught glimpses of black SWAT uniforms around me.  There were four officers, all with crew cuts like Patterson's.  When my legs couldn’t keep pace with theirs they grabbed my arms and carried me along, my toes scraping the hard earth.

About twenty yards from the hospital they let go of me.  I stumbled, nearly fell, but managed to stay on my feet.  They escorted me past the helicopter to the State Police trailer.  The door was open.  Jack Rice was standing just beyond the wooden steps, inside the door, looking down at me gravely.  Without a word he walked to me and helped me inside.  I was surprised and none to happy to see Calvin Sanger leaning against the far wall.  He stared at me as I took a seat in front of Rice's desk.

"Whatever we say here is off the record," Rice said, walking to take his own seat.

"I thought I had an exclusive," Sanger said wryly.

"You do — to what's on the record.  Otherwise you've got a one-way ticket back to the mob of reporters standing out front in the cold.  Understood?"

"Completely."

"What's he doing here?" I asked Rice.

"It was your friend Hancock's suggestion.  We need somebody reliable to explain to the public why we're going to be carrying bodies out of the hospital."

I worried over how Sanger had burrowed his way to ground zero.  What information had he swapped for a front row seat?  "Where is Hancock?" I asked.

"Working the copycat case," Sanger broke in.

I turned to look at him.  He gave me a half-smile that unnerved me.  I turned back to Rice.

He crossed his legs and sat Indian style in his desk chair.  "That's a nasty cut there on your face, but you look OK otherwise."  He squinted at my hands.

I glanced down at them.  They were trembling, probably from a combination of exhaustion, cocaine and methadone.  I tried to keep them still.  "I'll be all right."

"How did you manage to get out?" he asked tightly.

"Lucas released me."

"As a reward for being a human shield?"

"I wouldn't rate a reward for that.  Two patients were killed before the shooting stopped.  One of the hostages was wounded."

Rice said nothing, but his face lost some of its gaminess.

"I want to thank you for not—" I started.

"Don't," he frowned.  "What I did up there was inexcusable.  You got in the way of a strategic plan that could have ended this insanity once and for all.  You made me put my men at risk for no gain.  By every rule in the book I should have let the pilot fire away."

"Then why didn't you?"

"I don't know," he shot back.  "I'm not proud of myself.  And you shouldn’t be either.  You blocked an assault I told you was coming down if anyone on that unit got seriously injured.  I'd say losing a tongue qualifies.  Ms. Simons is over at Mass. General hoping some crackerjack surgeon can piece her back together."  He paused.  "How are the other hostages?"

If the injury to Simons had resulted in an assault on the building, I had to believe that what had happened to Laura Elmonte would prompt another.  "As well as can be expected," I said.  "They're survivors."

Rice shook his head.  "What exactly were you doing in that window, Frank?"

I took a few seconds to put my thoughts together.  "We've still got almost twenty people up there at risk.  Other than the hostages there isn't a single one of them who isn't very sick.  Lucas has them convinced, to a man, that they're locked in a mortal battle with Satan, that Armageddon has arrived.  They think he's the only one who can deliver them from evil."

Rice rolled his eyes.

"They're not refusing to surrender because they're outlaws.  They're refusing because they're psychotic.  They believe you're agents of the devil."

"Are we on the same team?" Rice asked.  "Or did Lucas release you to negotiate on his behalf?"

"I don't want people to die who don't have to."

Rice leaned forward.  "Nobody wants that.  That's why we took our chance together, Frank.  Now it's over.  The only reason we're waiting to send the helicopter up again is to hear anything you might have to say that could help the SWAT teams when they move in on the fifth floor.  That's the way you can help us save lives now."

"I might have another way."

"There's no room for discussion."

I went on anyhow.  "Lucas has given me twenty-four hours to figure out what went wrong with him, what in his life history made him vulnerable to the force he calls Satan.  He doesn't remember most of his childhood."

Lucas doesn't have twenty-four hours to give," Rice said.

I forged ahead.  "If I can find out the truth about what happened to him growing up in Baltimore and bring it to him..."

"What?" Rice asked.  He looked betrayed, as if he had been supporting a lunatic.

"If I can bring him that truth then I might be able to move him toward dealing with his real trauma and away from the delusion that he's locked in a war with the devil.  Then he might surrender.  His Armageddon will turn into a personal reckoning with his own demons, not an overblown war for the soul of mankind."  I paused.  "I think unearthing his past is the reason he asked for me to begin with, whether he realizes it or not."

"Are you finished?" Rice asked.

"I'm asking for a day."  I didn't share my worry that it would take extraordinary luck to unearth the key to Lucas’ psychosis in that much time.

"You need rest," Rice said.  "You've been through hell."  He picked up the phone on his desk and dialed two digits.

"You told me you'd seen enough killing in Vietnam," I said.

"Lieutenant Patterson, please," Rice spoke into the receiver.

"The two patients who were shot to death were praying at the time."

Rice didn't respond.

"The pregnant woman is still up there," I said.

"Mike, it's Jack," Rice said.  "I don't think we're going to learn much more from Dr. Clevenger.  So I'm going to—"

I stood up.  "I'll give the whole story to the news.  I'll tell them the patients are deep in prayer, that they're asking for one day before they surrender unconditionally.  Five minutes after that the helicopter takes off, you and the department will be a front-page story.  Just like the ATF and Waco.  When the bodies come out, the video will run on
Nightline
and
20/20
.  And I'll be on the split screen saying it didn't have to happen."

Calvin Sanger got out of his seat and started pacing.

Rice glared at me.

"Ask Calvin," I said, nodding at him.  "It's the story of a lifetime.  Nobody cares what's happening on the ground.  They care what's happening up there on the fifth floor. 
USA Today
.  A made-for-TV movie.  The cover of
People
.  No reporter from here to Seattle would turn it down."

"Jack?"  Patterson's voice wafted from the receiver.  "Jack?  You there?"

"Give me a few minutes," Rice told him, still staring at me.  He hung up the phone.

"Twenty-four hours.  If I don't make it back here with the information I need, I'll make sure you have a room-by-room description of what I saw on the unit.  And I'll stand up after the assault and say we did everything conceivable to save lives."  Let me make this right, I begged silently.

Sanger walked across the room and out the door.

"Where the Christ is he going?" Rice said.