At six, we met with Detective Maria Dykema of Hostage Negotiation in a van they'd parked under a water tower about thirty yards off Ricciuti Drive, the road that was carved through the heart of the Quincy quarries. She was a slim, petite woman in her early forties with short hair the color of milk and almond eyes. She wore a dark business suit and tugged idly at the pearl earring on her left ear throughout most of our conversation.
"If any of you come face-to-face with the kidnapper and the child, what do you do?" Her glance swept across the four of us and settled on the wall of the van, where someone had taped a copy of the National Lampoon picture in which a hand held a pistol to the head of a dog and the caption read: BUY THIS MAGAZINE OR WE'LL KILL THIS DOG. "I'm waiting," she said.
Broussard said, "We tell the suspect to release-"
"You ask the supect," she corrected.
"We ask the suspect to release the child."
"And if he replies 'Fuck off' and cocks his pistol, what then?"
"We-"
"You back off," she said. "You keep him in sight, but you give him room. He panics, the kid dies. He feels threatened, same thing. The first thing you do is give him the illusion of space, of breathing room. You don't want him to feel in command, but you don't want him to feel helpless either. You want him to feel he has options." She turned her head away from the photo, tugged her earring, and met our eyes. "Clear?"
I nodded.
"Don't draw a bead on the suspect, whatever you do. Don't make sudden moves. When you are going to do something, tell him. As in: 'I'm going to back up now. I'm lowering my gun now.' Et cetera."
"Baby him," Broussard said. "That's your recommendation."
She smiled slightly, her eyes on the hem of her skirt. "Detective Broussard, I've got six years in with Hostage Negotiation, and I've only lost one. You want to puff out your chest and start screaming, 'Down, motherfucker!' should you run into this sort of situation, be my guest. But do me a favor and spare me the talk-show circuit after the perp blows Amanda McCready's heart all over your shirt." She raised her eyebrows at him. "'Kay?"
"Detective," Broussard said, "I wasn't questioning how you do your job. I was just making an observation."
Poole nodded. "If we have to baby someone to save this girl, I'll put the fella in a carriage and sing lullabies to him. You have my word."
She sighed and leaned back, ran both hands through her hair. "The chances of anyone running into the perp with Amanda McCready are slim to none. But if you do, remember-that girl is all they got. People who take hostages and then get into a standoff, they're like rats backed into a corner. They're usually very afraid and very lethal. And they won't blame themselves and they won't blame you for the situation. They'll blame her. And unless you're very careful, they'll cut her throat."
She let that sink in. Then she removed four business cards from her suit pocket and handed one to each of us. "You all have cell phones?"
We nodded.
"My number is on the back of that card. If you do get into a standoff with this perp and you run out of things to say, call me and hand the phone to the kidnapper. Okay?"
She looked out the back window at the black craggy mass of the hills and quarry outcroppings, the jutting silhouettes of jagged granite peaks.
"The quarries," she said. "Who would pick a place like that?"
"It doesn't seem the easiest place to escape from," Angie said. "Under the circumstances."
Detective Dykema nodded. "And yet they picked it. What do they know that we don't?"
At seven, we assembled in the BPD's Mobile Command Post, where Lieutenant Doyle gave us his version of a pep talk.
"If you fuck up, there are plenty of cliffs up there to jump from. So"-he patted Poole 's knee-"don't fuck up."
"Inspiring speech, sir."
Doyle reached under the console table and removed a light blue gym bag, tossed it onto Broussard's lap. "The money Mr. Kenzie turned in this morning. It's all been counted, all serial numbers recorded. There is exactly two hundred thousand dollars in that bag. Not a penny less. See that it's returned that way."
The radio that took up a good third of the console table squawked: "Command, this is Unit Five-niner. Over."