"I -" Her throat closed up.
"Ma'am?"
"I… oh God, I don't… want anything to happen to that baby. You heard her. She said she'd kill the baby and herself, too. That's what she meant. You heard her, didn't you?"
"Yes, ma'am."
"What are you going to do, then? Go in after her?"
"No, ma'am, we'll put the house under surveillance first. We'll wait until daylight and try to pinpoint her position and the infant's position in the house. If we have to, we'll evacuate the other houses around it. We won't go storming in like you see in the movies; all that does is get people killed."
"I don't want that baby's blood on my hands. Do you hear me? I couldn't stand to live if I thought I'd helped kill that child."
"I hear you." The young man's voice was calm and sympathetic. "We'll stake the house out for a while, and then we'll see what has to be done. Just pray to God your daughter decides to listen to reason and give herself up."
"She'll never give up," Natalie said. "Never."
"I hope that's where you're wrong. We're going to sit here awhile longer and make some calls, so if you think of anything, you know our number. One more thing: do you mind if we leave the tap on your line?"
"No, I don't mind."
"Thank you again. I know this hasn't been easy."
"No. Far from easy." She hung up, and her husband made a gibbering sound.
At ten-thirty, Natalie put Edgar to bed. She kissed his cheek and wiped his mouth, and he gave her a weak, helpless smile. She pulled the covers up to his throat, and she wondered where her life had gone.
The white van left a little after eleven. From an upstairs window Natalie watched it go, the room dark behind her. She presumed another team of agents now had the beach house under watch. She let one more hour slip past, to make sure.
Then, bundled in an overcoat against the raw cold, Natalie left the house and went to the garage. She got into the gray Coupe de Ville, started the engine, and drove away into the night. For fifteen minutes or so she drove through the streets of Richmond, her speed slow, and she obeyed all traffic signs though there were hardly any cars out. She stopped at a Shell station on Monument Avenue to fill up with gas, and she bought a diet drink and a candy bar to calm her nervous stomach. She left the station and drove in aimless circles again, and all the time she watched her rearview mirror.
She pulled into an area of warehouses and railroad tracks, and she stopped the Cadillac next to a chain-link fence and watched a freight train speed past. Her gaze swept the dark streets around her. As far as she could tell, she was not being followed.
They believed her. Why wouldn't they? She was the woman who'd vehemently said, in a 1975 interview on the Dick Cavett Show along with the families of other wanted criminals, that she hoped the police locked her daughter in a cage where she belonged and tossed the key into the Atlantic Ocean.
The quote had gotten a lot of newsprint. The FBI knew she was willing to help them in any way possible. She still felt that way. But now there was a vital difference: Mary had a baby.
Around one o'clock, Natalie Terrell turned the Cadillac up onto a ramp of I-95, and she headed north toward the wooded hills.
5: Into the Vortex
It was bad, the nightmare.
In it, Laura gave David into the hands of the murderess, and she saw drops of blood falling from the woman's fingers, falling like scarlet leaves through October air, falling to spatter on white sheets as ridged and rumpled as snowswept badlands. She gave David up, and the murderess and David became shadows that slipped away along a pale green wall. But something had been given in exchange; something was in Laura's right hand. She opened her fingers, and saw the yellow Smiley Face pinned to the flesh of her palm.
Then the scene changed. She was in a parking lot on a hot and humid night, the blue lights of police cars spinning around her. Voices bellowed through bullhorns, and she heard the sharp clickings of bullet magazines being snapped into automatic rifles. She could see a woman standing on a balcony, caught in a white light, and one hand held a pistol while the other gripped David by the back of the neck. The woman wore a green paisley blouse and bell-bottom trousers with an American-flag belt, and she was raving as she held David in the air and shook him. Laura could feel his crying more than hear it, like a razor blade drawn along the folds of her labia. "I want my baby!" she told a shadowy policeman who passed on without speaking. "My baby! I want my baby!" She grasped at someone else; he looked blankly at her. She recognized Kastle. "Please!" she begged. "Don't let my baby be hurt!"
"We'll get your baby back for you," he answered. "You can count on it."
Kastle pulled away and disappeared into the vortex of shadows, and as Laura saw the snipers taking their positions she realized with a jolt of horror that Kastle had not promised to get David back alive.
"Hold your fire until I give the signal!" someone commanded through a bullhorn. She saw Doug sitting on the hood of a police car, his head slumped forward and his eyes half closed, as if all this had no meaning to him whatsoever. A spark of light caught her attention. She looked up at the corner of a rooftop, and there she could make out a shadowy shape aiming a rifle at Mary Terror. She thought the man was bald-headed – slick bald – and that something might be wrong with his face, but she couldn't tell for sure; she thought she might know him, but that, too, was uncertain. The man was lifting his rifle to take aim. He wasn't waiting for the signal; he was going to shoot Mary Terror, and his would be the bullet that made the madwoman fire her gun and blow David's head apart.
"NO!" Laura screamed. "STOP IT!" She began running toward the building the sniper perched on, but the concrete mired her feet like fresh tar. She heard the click of his rifle, a bullet slipping into the chamber. She heard the insane raving of Mary Terror's voice, and the shrill, frantic crying of her son. A doorway was ahead of her. She started through it, fighting the earth, and that was when two muscular dogs with flaming eyes leapt from the darkness at her.
She heard two shots, a split second apart.
The scream started to come out. It swelled in her throat and burst from her mouth, and someone was over her saying, "Laura? Laura, wake up! Wake up!"
She came up out of the hot darkness, sweat on her face. The lamp beside the bed was on. Doug was sitting on the bed beside her, his face furrowed with worry, and behind him stood Doug's mother, who'd arrived from her home in Orlando earlier in the evening.
"It's all right," Doug said. "You were having a nightmare. It's all right."
Laura looked around the room, her eyes wide with fear. There were too many shadows. Too many.
"Doug, can I do anything?" Angela Clayborne asked. She was a tall, elegant woman with white hair, and she wore a dark blue Cardin suit with a diamond brooch on the lapel. Doug's father, divorced from Angela when Doug was in his early teens, was an investment banker in London.
"No. We're okay."
Laura shook her head. "We're not okay. We're not okay." She kept repeating it as she pulled away from Doug and huddled up under the blanket again. She could feel sticky wetness between her thighs: the oozing stitches.
"Do you want to talk?" he asked.
She shook her head.
"Mom, would you leave us alone for a minute?" When Angela had gone, Doug stood up and walked to the window. He peered through the blinds, out into the rainy dark. "I don't see any reporters," he told her. "Maybe they called it a night."
"What time is it?"
He didn't have to look at his watch. "Almost two." He came back to her side. She smelled a stale aroma wafting from him; he hadn't taken a shower since David had been stolen, but then, neither had she. "You can talk to me, you know. We still live in the same house."