Heartbreaker (35 page)

The older officer’s eyes narrowed. “Is that a threat?”

“No!”
Jess rested his forehead against the bars in obvious despair. He looked up. “No, it’s not a threat. I told you I’m a former ATF agent. The man I want to call was my superior officer. What harm can it do to talk to him? If he tells you I’m a fucking nut, then I guess I am.”

“Jess,” Lynn said, her eyes flicking from Jess to the older man, whose face had tightened more with each profanity, “I think you’d do better if you didn’t swear at them.”

“I’ll say fucking pretty please if he’ll let me use the fucking phone,” Jess growled, flicking Lynn a fulminating glance over his shoulder.

He was too angry to contain himself, Lynn recognized. She didn’t much blame him. She had told them her name and that she was an anchorwoman for WMAQ in Chicago until she was blue in the face. They patently disbelieved her even while telling her they’d check it out.

In the morning.

There was no penetrating denseness like that.

“Is the call you want to place long-distance?” The officer was reaching for the phone, but he still looked undecided.

“Yes. Yes, it is. But I’ll pay for the call. You can put it on my credit card—hell, I don’t have it with me, and I don’t know the number. You can charge it to my home phone.”

“There’s no one there to verify the charges,” the officer said, his hand withdrawing just as it had been about to touch the receiver. “We already tried calling to see if we could get somebody down here to confirm your identity.”

Jess groaned. “Owen is still out with the damned tourists! I know—call collect. Ben will accept a collect call from me. Just try. Please.”

“What’s the number?” The officer picked up the receiver.

Gripping the bars so tightly his knuckles showed white, Jess told him.

The officer punched in the numbers, listened a moment, then spoke into the mouthpiece, presumably to the operator.

“I want to make this call collect.” He listened again, then glanced at Jess. “What name do you want to give?”

“My name, Jess Feldman.”

This information was repeated into the mouthpiece.

A minute passed, then another. The phone at the other end of the line was obviously not being picked up.

Despite having learned better by this time, Lynn felt herself getting tense all over again.

The officer’s face changed expression. Lynn realized that someone had answered.

“No, this is Commander Avery Wheeler of the Utah State Police. A man who claims he is Jess Feldman is in jail with us here and asked me to place this call for him. Who am I speaking to, please?”

He listened a moment. “Ben Terrell.” He glanced sideways at Jess. “And what is your job, please?”

A pause. Then Wheeler continued in a very different tone, “ATF Deputy Director. I see. Well, sir, I’m sorry I had to question you like that, but this fellow here’s involved in a mass murder and—”

“Ben,” Jess yelled. “Ben, tell him to let you talk to me. It’s urgent! Ben!”

Wheeler glared at Jess, then appeared to listen. With a sour expression he placed the receiver on the desk and picked up a set of keys.

“I’m going to let you out of there, and I’m going to let you talk to the man. But we’re going to be watching you real close,” he warned.

Jess was so eager to get to the phone that he didn’t even answer as Wheeler walked to the cell and unlocked the door.

Freed, Jess snatched up the phone and began to relate the whole convoluted story into the mouthpiece. Even with occasional interruptions and backtracking, presumably to answer questions, Jess was finished in under ten minutes.

“Louis, get over here,” Jess ordered, beckoning. Louis looked alarmed, but he got to his feet and shuffled over to the phone. He moved like a very old man. Lynn realized that, like all of them, he had endured a hard couple of days.

“Tell him about the bombs,” Jess instructed. “How many there are, and where they are. And how they’re going to be detonated.”

He handed Louis the receiver.

Lynn listened as Louis related the story one more time. Six nuclear bombs in six vital cities. Six lesser but still deadly bombs at six chemical and biological weapon-storage facilities around the country, one in Utah, another in Kentucky.…

Lynn glanced at the clock as Louis rattled off the list of places that would be blown off the map when the Lamb typed instructions into a computer at the appropriate time.

It was now 11:32
P.M
.

A little less than nine and a half hours to go. Lynn’s pulse rate increased at the thought. Deliberately, she calmed herself down, chanting under her breath until her pulse was steady again.

Om …

There was no point in getting excited. Whatever happened from this point on was out of her hands.

Louis gave the phone back to Jess, who reiterated his belief in everything Louis had said.

“He wants to talk to you again.” Jess held the receiver out to Wheeler, a smug expression on his face.

Jess was entitled to look like that, Lynn thought. The police had treated him like a cross between a lunatic and a criminal since they had first laid eyes on him.

Here he was trying to save the world, and no one was interested.

“You mean you think that whole cockamamy story is
true
?” Wheeler exclaimed into the receiver as Jess, grinning widely, gave Lynn a thumbs-up.

Lynn smiled at him. Sitting beside Lynn now, Rory glanced from Jess to her mother and back again with a frown. Lynn smiled at her too.

“Well, now,” Wheeler said, hanging up the phone. “That changes things a little, I guess. Deputy Director Terrell said you were one of the best agents he ever had working for him. He said he’d vouch for you all the way. That being the case I’m going to move you to more comfortable surroundings. I’m not letting you go, mind you, until I get more information and some verification, but I’m willing to transfer you to the county jail for the night. They have mattresses on their bunks, and they can get you a meal. We’ll get this all sorted out in the morning.”

“What?” Jess exploded, turning to stare at Wheeler.

“If we don’t get this taken care of tonight, there won’t be a morning,” Lynn said tiredly. She’d said it a thousand times before, and it never seemed to penetrate. She had no real expectation of it penetrating now.

Wheeler smiled at her, then at Jess. He seemed much friendlier now that he had spoken to Ben Terrell, if just as obdurate.

“Well, see, there’s a bunch of bodies up there on that mountain. I can’t just let you go. Even if you didn’t kill them you could be classified as material witnesses.”

“Okay.” Jess took a deep breath and looked around at Lynn. “It doesn’t matter anyway. Ben’s taking care of it. I guarantee you he’s on the horn right now, rounding up everybody short of the U.S. Marines and getting them up to Castle Rock, South Dakota, to stage a raid on that compound. They’ll yank Reverend Bob out of there before he knows what’s hit him.”

“Crisis averted,” Lynn said, suddenly feeling limp. Until it ebbed she didn’t realize just how tense she had been.

“Crisis averted,” Jess agreed, smiling at her.

Lynn took a deep breath. If they weren’t going to die in a few hours there were practical considerations that needed to be attended to.

“That being the case I think we could use some medical attention here.” Addressing Wheeler, Lynn got up from the bunk, moving stiffly as every muscle she possessed seemed to protest in unison. “My daughter needs to see a doctor; she may very well have a concussion. Jess, as you can see, has a bullet wound. Theresa”—Lynn pointed to the sleeping girl—“has been through a terrible trauma. The baby is probably dehydrated and no telling what else. As for Louis, I’m sure he needs checking over too. Instead of taking us to the county jail you need to take us to the nearest hospital.”

“Well, now …” Wheeler hesitated.

“Think lawsuit,” Lynn said sweetly, and smiled at him. Being given a reprieve was invigorating, she found.

“We could have a man go along with them to the hospital to make sure they don’t run off anywhere,” the younger officer said to Wheeler in a whispered but still audible aside.

“We don’t have anybody to spare.”

“I’ll go. If they’re not in here, then I don’t need to be in here watching them.”

“That’s true.”

Wheeler nodded and directed his attention to his prisoners. “We’ll get you to the hospital, then. Marty, why don’t you go tell Katz to crank up that helicopter? And call the Hospital of Latter Day Saints in Salt Lake City and tell them we’re coming.”

“Yes, sir, Commander,” Marty said, and left the room.

“While we wait is there anything I can get for you folks? A cup of coffee, maybe? A soda?”

“Could I get a Coke, please?” Rory asked.

“Sure you can, young lady.”

Wheeler was growing positively affable, Lynn thought as Jess requested a cup of coffee. Lynn opened her mouth to order coffee too, when all of a sudden it occurred to her that she could at last have her heart’s desire.

“Could I possibly get a cigarette?” Lynn asked. Her voice was little more than a croak. Her nerve endings palpitated at the thought. Her taste buds quivered. Her toes curled in delicious anticipation.

Jess and Rory scowled at her in near-identical expressions of disapproval.

“Sorry, no smoking allowed in the police station,” Wheeler said cheerfully. “Anyway, I doubt we have any cigarettes around. None of my officers smokes, at least not on the job. It’s against department policy. The Coke’s easy though. And the coffee.”

He picked up the phone.

Having gone so long without a cigarette, Lynn told herself she could survive a little while longer.
Maybe
.

“You really ought to quit smoking,” Jess said.

Rory nodded agreement.

“Just order me a cup of coffee then,” Lynn said to Wheeler, and scowled at both her daughter and Jess.

June 23, 1996
1:45
A.M
.

“S
O
M
OM
, what’s going on with you and Jess?”

The hospital room in which Rory was ensconced was a nice one as hospital rooms went, Lynn thought. The walls were the inevitable concrete block, of course, but they were painted a cheerful shade of yellow rather than the standard institutional green. Enlarged photographs of what Lynn assumed was the Utah countryside livened up the walls.

She noticed these things to give her a moment’s respite before answering her daughter, whose perception took her by surprise.

“What do you mean?” she asked carefully. As far as she knew, she and Jess had done nothing to prompt such a question. They had never even touched each other in Rory’s presence, and barely spoken.

“
Mother
. I’m not blind. It’s obvious you guys have something going on.”

Rory, having been X-rayed, bathed, swabbed with disinfectant, and fed, should have been exhausted. Instead, she wriggled higher on her pillows and fixed her mother with a chiding gaze.

“All right. Maybe during the course of our, um, adventure, I did come to appreciate his good qualities,” Lynn conceded, pouring herself a glass of water from her daughter’s carafe and taking a sip.

“Is he your boyfriend now?”

“Rory!” Trust her to cut right to the heart of the matter.

“Mom, I’m not a little kid anymore. You always want me to tell you things. It’s not a one-way street, you know. And this affects me too.”

Her daughter had a point. Lynn hesitated, taking another swallow of water.

“I don’t know if I’d describe him as my boyfriend, exactly. But … okay, I like him. A lot.”

“And he likes you back.”

“I guess so.” Lynn made a face. “Do you mind?” she asked gently.

Rory shook her head. “Nah. He really is kind of too old for me, isn’t he? But he’s still a babe. I’m glad we’re keeping him in the family.”

Lynn stared at her daughter, then had to laugh. “I’m glad you’re glad. Now do you think you could go to sleep? I’m going to pop into your bathroom and take a shower.”

Rory obligingly scooted down in the bed, pulling the covers up to her armpits, her head snuggling into the pillow. Lynn smiled at her, ruffled her hair, kissed her cheek, and headed for the bathroom, thankful to have gotten through that so easily. She would have expected Rory to pitch a fit, or at the very least sulk for days. Maybe Rory was starting to grow up. Or maybe Rory had learned the same thing from their ordeal that she had: When the chips were down, the little differences they’d had with each other ceased to matter. The bond between them was unbreakable, superglued by love.

“Mom?”

Lynn had her hand on the bathroom doorknob when Rory spoke again.

“What, baby?”

“You should have told me the truth about my father. I wouldn’t have been so nasty to you if I’d known.”

“What are you talking about?” Lynn’s hand fell away from the knob, suddenly nerveless. She turned to look at her daughter.

Rory’s blue eyes regarded her without blinking. “Come off it, Mom. I heard you and Jess that night in the cave. I wasn’t asleep.”

“You were faking!” Lynn said, remembering the rhythmic breathing she had been so careful to check for. She walked swiftly to her daughter’s bedside. “Oh, Rory, I didn’t want you to hear that!”

“I’m glad I did. I needed to know. Like I said, I’m not a little kid anymore.” She touched Lynn’s arm. “I love you, Mom.”

“I love you too, Rory Elizabeth,” Lynn said fiercely, and swooped down on her daughter, hugging her close.

It was quite some time later before she managed to take that shower. When she emerged, dressed in the same filthy clothes she’d been wearing for days but feeling a whole lot fresher nonetheless, Rory was asleep.

Lynn walked over to the bed and stood looking down at her sleeping daughter for a moment. The bruise on her head looked terrible. As Lynn had suspected she did have a concussion, but, the doctor assured her, not a serious one. A night or two in the hospital, a little rest at home, and she should be right as rain within two weeks.