Joe, I’m just a grunt. I had to do some fast talking to get my captain to let me come this far. He’s only giving permission because you’re an old friend.”
“Friend, my ass. I’m startin’ to lose my temper, Miss High-and-Mighty Senior Class President.” His voice went low and guttural. “You all wouldn’t want me to lose my temper, now, would you?”
Liz’s stomach gave a lurch with the change in his tone. She caught her breath and said quickly, “I’m coming right this minute. Why don’t you walk on out of the house with Sally Jean and Marlene? I promise nobody’s going to hurt you.”
“Yeah? Then how come I see a whole battalion of those TACT bastards poking automatic weapons out from behind half the trees in the front yard? Huh? You tell me that.” His voice rose dangerously.
Liz heard the rising panic in his tone, and glanced at Captain Leo. He nodded. He’d heard it, too.
She forced herself to sound calm and relaxed. “Well, Lord, Bobby Joe, they’re not about to shoot me, now are they? You’ll be safe with me. Just put down your weapon and come on out.”
“Listen, woman, I’m the one in control here. I tell you what to do, you don’t tell me a goddamn thing, you hear? And ain’t no bitch gonna kick me out of my own house what I paid rent on, try to divorce me and take my baby girl away from me, you got that? I have her now, and I ain’t leaving.”
“I know you love Sally Jean, and she loves you….” Liz used the child’s name as often as possible. The little girl had to remain an individual in her father’s eyes, not merely a possession. Liz hadn’t dared mention his wife, Marlene, since their first contact. Her name sent Bobby Joe into paroxysms of cold rage.
“I send Sally Jean out, y’all won’t never let me see her again.”
“Of course you’ll see Sally Jean again, Bobby Joe.” Through bars, if I have my way. The judge who’d granted the man bond after he was arrested for landing both his wife and daughter in the hospital should be impeached.
Liz prayed Bobby Joe didn’t realize how many additional felony charges he’d accrued with this home invasion and kidnapping. She prayed he wouldn’t add murder to the list.
“You’re Sally Jean’s daddy. We have to start thinking what’s best for her. Little girls think their daddies are heroes. Be her hero. You’re a good daddy, Bobby Joe.”
“Damn straight I am!”
In the background, Liz heard the muffled cries of a child, and a moment later, the sound of a palm striking flesh, followed by a howl of pain. “Hush up, Sally Jean,” Bobby Joe snapped. “I’m busy here.”
Some good daddy! This situation was more proof that restraining orders against abusive spouses didn’t work. Men like Bobby Joe believed they owned their families. The most dangerous time came when wives finally broke free and started to turn their lives around. Men like Bobby Joe couldn’t bear that. They wanted their families back under their thumbs. If they couldn’t manage that, then they wanted them dead.
Thank God Marlene’s next-door neighbor in this working-class Memphis neighborhood had seen Bobby Joe invade the little house, and had called the police. If officers had not been on the scene quickly, Bobby Joe might have taken both his wife and daughter at gunpoint and disappeared with them. With a squad car blocking the driveway, however, he had barricaded himself inside with an arsenal.
On some level he must know he couldn’t stay there forever, and that the police would never simply let him walk away with his wife and child.
Liz wanted him to choose surrender rather than family annihilation. At this point, she thought he was considering her offer, and hoped fervently she was reading him right.
She closed her eyes tightly, hearing that slap. Not a sound she’d ever mistake. She’d heard it too many times, when the slap had come from her momma and the howl had risen inside herself. “Bobby Joe? Listen to me. I’ll walk halfway up the driveway—”
“No! You come right up on the front porch. You hold your hands out to the side, away from you with your palms out, so I’ll know you ain’t carrying no gun. You ring the bell, then I’ll open up and let ’em out. You got that?”
Captain Leo growled softly in the background and whispered, “Wants another hostage. He’ll try to drag you inside. Thinks having a cop at his mercy will give him more leverage.”
Liz nodded. That might be a good sign. Bobby Joe wasn’t the first hostage-taker to dream up that one. It meant he still hadn’t decided whether to surrender, or to kill his wife and child—and then himself—rather than allow them a life without him.
She infused her voice with a trace of regret. “They won’t let me do that, Bobby Joe. I’ll have to wait in the driveway.”
“No!”
“Bobby Joe, you got to give me something I can work with to get you out of this mess. A gesture of good faith. If you’d just come on out with them…Nobody’s been hurt yet—”
“Oh, that right?” The man’s laughter sent a chill up Liz’s backbone. The phone went dead.
Liz froze, then turned to Captain Leo. He looked grim.
“I should have yanked you off this negotiation the minute that bastard recognized your voice, Liz. The taker is never supposed to know the negotiator. That’s procedure.”
“Captain, there were three thousand kids in my high school. I don’t even remember Bobby Joe’s face, much less his name. How could I possibly know he’d recognize my voice from way back then?”
“Obviously because you were already running your mouth.” Leo looked closely at her. “You scared?”
For a moment Liz considered lying, then said, “I’m petrified. What if I blow it? There’s an eight-year-old girl and a woman in that house with a control freak who gets his jollies putting them both in the hospital on a regular basis. And from what the neighbor said, he’s got an arsenal.”
“Unless he’s got armor-piercing shells, he’s not going through that Kevlar, Liz.”
“I don’t have any Kevlar between my eyes.”
“You want to give it up?”
“No. I’ve got to try. Maybe he’ll hold up his end of the bargain.”
“If the TACT guys get a clear shot at him…”
“You know I’m not supposed to know that.” She managed a grin and a thumbs-up, and opened the door of the mobile command post that had been set up on the country road at the end of Bobby Joe Watson’s gravel drive. Suddenly that drive looked a million miles long.
The TACT team was in position, with weapons pointed at the silent cottage, its phones and electricity disabled.
The only communication Bobby Joe had with the outside world was through the phone they’d thrown him at the start of the siege. It was keyed to talk only to Liz’s phone. She had no idea what the team’s orders were. Her ignorance was critical. Her voice couldn’t betray what she didn’t know.
But
