80
“I’m sorry, ma’am. I can’t let you go in there.”
Banner produced her badge. “I’m FBI. It’s Special Agent Banner, not ma’am. And you’re not going to stop me.” Banner’s sharp tone was directed at herself as much as the young officer blocking her way to the front entrance of the school. If she’d been thinking, she’d have realized that this was the downside of summoning backup. Regulations, procedure. Due process.
Law enforcement had been stretched to breaking point across the city for election night. Officers from across the state and farther afield had been drafted in to cover the identified danger zones, the highest-profile areas where it was thought Wardell might choose to strike. Unsurprisingly, nobody had thought to include a small elementary school on that list, and so the full response was taking a while to mobilize. There were only three police cars, and the half-dozen cops were manfully dealing with the task of herding the crowds to the opposite side of the street so a perimeter could be established when reinforcements arrived. That left this one officer as the only thing standing between Banner and the school, and to her surprise and irritation, he wasn’t getting out of her way.
“I’m sorry, Agent Banner. FBI or not, nobody’s going in there. We’ve got reports of an armed suspect who’s taken some hostages. Ain’t nobody going in there until we get a negotiator down here.”
Banner put her badge away, looking around the scene. Still only those half-dozen first responders, though she could hear approaching sirens from multiple different directions. Within a minute, maybe less, there’d be a whole lot more obstacles in her way than this one cop.
“My kid’s in there,” she said simply.
The cop glanced at the school entrance, turned back to her. He shook his head in sympathy, spreading his hands. “Ma’am…” he began, forgetting her earlier admonishment and falling back on a half-assed recollection of whatever crowd control course he’d attended at the academy. He didn’t look like a guy who was comfortable with thinking for himself, or making exceptions to the rules.
The sirens were getting closer. Banner put a hand on his shoulder and said, “You’re going to have to shoot me.”
The cop looked like she’d slapped him.
“Now hold on…”
Banner walked quickly past him, up the steps, and pushed the door open. She glanced back and saw that the cop wasn’t even watching her. He was too busy looking around to see if anyone had seen him fail to stop her getting past.
81
Wardell had dragged the brat down three short flights of stairs. The last flight had been a narrow steel stairway that had brought them down to the basement level — the boiler room, he guessed. The space was wide and low-ceilinged. Though it spread virtually open plan across the old building’s footprint, it was cluttered with thick pipes and abandoned crates and storage lockers. Steel uprights supported the ceiling, evenly spaced out. The power was on down here, but the illuminations were few and far between. Grimy fluorescent tubes unevenly spaced along the wall emitting little more than candlelight.
Wardell was pleased that the brat was presenting no major difficulties so far. After he’d shot the two teachers on the stage, she’d screamed at first, but then she’d gone quiet. Almost eerily quiet. He guessed she was in shock. Even so, he kept his right hand over her mouth as he put the gun down on top of a tall packing crate and reached for Whitford’s cell phone. Time was of the essence. He didn’t know how many of the escapees from the hall would realize exactly what was going on. That meant he couldn’t be sure anybody knew that he was holding hostages. Part of him relished the idea of a last stand against an entire SWAT team. In time, it would probably come to that. But for the moment, he certainly didn’t want just anybody barging in here. When he thought about the opportunity gone forever — all those people in that crowd — he felt it like acid burning through his guts.
He slotted the battery back in and switched the phone on, then dialed 911. The beeps of the phone seemed to rouse the girl from her state of shock. She began to squirm again and Wardell tightened his grip.
A male operator answered the call with the standard greeting, and Wardell said, “You record all of these, right?”
“This call is being recorded, yes, sir. What is the nature of your emergency?”
Wardell laughed. “Better men than you have tried to work that one out, partner. This is Caleb Wardell. No, this is not a hoax. I know you’re probably going to have to get people to check this out, so I’ll be brief and to the point. I’m at Barkley Elementary School. I’m armed and I have three hostages: a man, a woman, and a little girl. I’ll kill them all unless I get what I want.”
“Sir—”
“I didn’t ask you to contribute, son. Now, this last part is very important. I will not negotiate with anybody but Carter Blake or Elaine Banner; they’re on the FBI task force. Anybody else tries to do it, I kill a hostage. I want Blake and Banner — just them — to enter the building. If they try to talk to me from outside, I kill a hostage. You got all of that? Good.”
Wardell ended the call and tossed the phone over his shoulder. That ought to do it. He reached to pick up the gun from the top of the packing crate, and as he did so, the angle of his right hand, the one over the kid’s mouth, shifted. Wardell grimaced as a sharp pain gripped his hand. The little shit had sunk her teeth into the webbing between his thumb and index finger. He felt the teeth meet in the middle, piercing all of the way through. He grasped at her as she started to wriggle loose, managed to slam her against the wall so that her jaws relaxed. The kid cried out and Wardell backhanded her across the face with his wounded hand, spraying his own blood over her and the wall.
“You goddamned little whore!” he yelled, wincing and realizing the strike had only made the pain in his hand worse. After the lights had gone out, he’d changed his mind about killing the kid before Banner got here. Now he was changing his mind back again.
The girl was scrabbling to her feet, sobbing. Wardell lunged for her as she fled, catching the edge of her flouncy costume dress with his good hand and tugging it so that she fell down. He dragged her back across the dirty concrete floor and hauled her to her feet, wrapping his left arm around her midsection — making sure to keep his hand away from those goddamn sharp teeth this time.
Out of breath, he carried her bodily back to the packing crate and reached for the gun. As his fingers closed around the grip, he heard another gun being cocked from above him.
He raised his head to see Carter Blake at the top of the metal stairs — a lot earlier than expected and drawing a bead on Wardell’s head.
“Drop the kid and put your hands on your head.”
Wardell froze; then the surprise abated and he hugged Annie tighter to his body. A grin broke out on his face. Maybe the situation called for a poker face, but he couldn’t help it. Blake had nothing. Okay, he had the gun, but he wouldn’t use it, not with the brat this close. Slowly, he shook his head.
“Second time you’ve made that mistake, Blake. Second and last.”
Wardell’s fingers closed around the butt of the gun on top of the crate. Blake tightened his grip on his own gun but did not fire. He was less than fifteen feet away: literally a can’t-miss. Wardell moved in one smooth, practiced motion without hesitation: He raised the gun, pointed it in the middle of Blake’s face, and fired.