No way out

Chapter Fifty-one

Nardelli turned to me, her voice low. “Is she serious?”

“Most of the time,” I said. “I’d give her a chance.”

“She was the one who wanted Jimmy’s shackles taken off. That’s not much of a track record.”

“She’s the only psychologist in the room, and we’re out of options until your people get here, unless you plan on shooting him.”

“Not that I couldn’t, but that’s what the SWAT team gets paid to do. They don’t like it when someone else does it for them.”

“In that case, I’d do what she says.”

“Okay,” she called to Kate. “We’re pulling back to the end of the hallway. Help is on the way.”

Ten quiet minutes passed, Jimmy hanging onto Kate’s hair. They were talking, though we couldn’t hear what they were saying. Jimmy was not relaxing his grip, evidence enough that it wasn’t going well.

Sirens pierced the silence, announcing the on-coming cavalry, the thumping of a helicopter hovering overhead upping the ante. Boots clattered on the sidewalk outside the door, enough for a small regiment. Nardelli opened the door, and two men entered, one in full SWAT gear carrying an M24 sniper rifle, the other dressed in jeans, a sweatshirt, and a black leather jacket, sporting bloodshot eyes and a two-day growth of beard.

“I’m Quinn,” the second man said.

“You’re Jeremiah Quinn, the negotiator?” Nardellli asked, raised eyebrows saying she didn’t think so.

“Don’t act so disappointed. Henry Kissinger was busy,” Quinn said. “Who started this party?”

“The guy down the hall with a shiv up against a hostage’s neck.”

“What’s he want?”

“A get-out-jail-free card.”

Quinn shrugged. “Why should he be any different than all the others? Let’s see what we got.”

The sniper took up position, sighting Jimmy just as he released Kate’s hair, dropping his arms to his side. She did a slow pivot, facing him, wrapping her fingers around his wrist, easing the shiv out of his hand, talking. Jimmy answered, and both of them nodded. Kate walked away, leaving him alone in the center of the hall.

Nardelli and the sniper rushed past Kate. Nardelli shouted at Jimmy to get down on the floor, and the sniper grabbed him before he could comply, shoving him onto the tile, jamming his knee into Jimmy’s back as Nardelli cuffed him.

I ran to Kate, embracing her, both of us trembling. Pulling away, I tilted her chin to one side, pressing my sleeve against a crimson tear along her pale neck. A paramedic materialized, replacing my sleeve with a pressure dressing and cupping Kate’s elbow, telling her to step outside.

“I’m okay,” she insisted.

“Let’s make sure,” the paramedic told her.

“You better take this,” she said, handing me the shiv.

It was six inches of hard plastic, tapered at one end to a sharp point. Nardelli and the superintendent studied it with me.

“It’s the handle for a toilet bowl brush,” the superintendent said. “I recognize the color and shape.”

I gave the shiv to Nardelli and went outside, finding Kate sitting on a gurney in an ambulance, the paramedic cleansing her wound and covering it with a small bandage while she talked with Quinn.

“Damn fine piece of work,” he told her. “Except for the part where you asked to have the guy’s shackles taken off. That’s classic too-stupid-to-live rookie bullshit. Don’t trust anybody, especially someone who’s got more to lose than you do. Makes me want to puke every time I see crap like that on TV.”

“Sorry you made the trip for nothing,” Kate said.

“You kidding? Nobody died. That’s a good day. You ever want to do this again the right way, call me,” he said, handing her a business card.

He patted her on the cheek and climbed out of the ambulance, nodding at me as I took his place alongside Kate. The superintendent and Nardelli joined us, standing outside the ambulance.

“Is that guy a cop?” I asked Nardelli.

“No. He’s freelance.”

“A freelance hostage negotiator? How does that happen?”

“Budget cuts,” she said. “We had two negotiators. One retired, the other had a nervous breakdown, and now there’s a hiring freeze.”

“Are you telling me there are enough hostage situations in Kansas City that a guy can make a living as a negotiator?”

“That’s not all Quinn does, and he doesn’t just do it around here.”

“What else is there?”

“He calls himself a conflict specialist. You got a problem with somebody and you aren’t too particular how it gets handled, you call a number, leave a message, and hope he shows up.”

“Hard times makes for hard choices,” I said. “Kate, you feel like talking about what happened?”

A rose blush crept into her cheeks. “It’s my fault,” she said. “I completely misread Jimmy. I didn’t see this coming.”

To their credit, the superintendent didn’t say I told you so, and Nardelli didn’t crack wise about the vagaries of micro facial expressions.

“How did he fool you?”

“He didn’t fool me. I fooled me. He knew what I wanted, and he gave it to me: a smile, a friendly, open face. There was no hint of aggression or violence until the instant before he hit the guard. By then, it was too late.”

“He knew we were coming, so he must have planned it,” Nardelli said.

“I don’t think so,” I said. “He couldn’t have known you would ask to have his restraints taken off. I’d say it was a spur-of-the-moment decision. He saw an opportunity and took it.”

“That’s how a lot of escape attempts happen,” the superintendent said.

“Except I don’t think he was trying to escape,” Kate said. “He knew he had no real chance of getting away. I think he just wanted out of the Farm.”

“What makes you say that?” I asked.

“It’s what he told me, in so many words, anyway. Once we were out in the hall and you gave us some space, I asked him why he was doing this, and he said, ‘Why do you think?’ I said it was pretty obvious that he wanted to break out of jail, and he said, ‘Yeah, right, like how far am I going to get armed with a toilet bowl brush.’”

“Are you saying he beat up a guard and took you hostage and risked getting shot just so he could get a transfer?” Nardelli asked.

“Yes. When the SWAT team came through the door, his body went limp like he’d put down a heavy weight, and then he let me go.”

“But you stayed to talk to him. What was that about?” I asked.

“I was waiting to tell him what Adam had said about seeing him take the kids from Peggy’s house until I could watch his reaction. That’s when I told him.”

“Did he deny Adam’s story?”

“No. It was weird. He smiled, almost like he was glad.”

“What did he say?”

“Just one thing. He said, ‘Please find my kids.’ He’s not acting like a man who killed his kids.”

“He’s playing you,” Lucy said. “Just like he did with the restraints. Why would he ask you to find Evan and Cara when we know he took them? He knows where there are, and he knows what happened to them.”

“And, first chance he got, he beat up an officer and stuck you with a shiv,” Nardelli said.

“But he gave up,” Kate said.

“When he was about to get shot,” Lucy said. “Give me a break.”

The superintendent’s cell phone rang. She held her hand up, asking us to wait, listening and thanking the caller.

“I had my assistant check the records on visitors and new admissions. It will take longer to get you the names of his visitors, but I can tell you that we’ve had seventeen since Jimmy got here, ten women and seven men, all but one of them regulars, repeat offenders who show up here three or four times a year.”

“Who’s the new kid on the block?” I asked.

“A kid named Ricky Suarez. He came in yesterday, ten days for drunk and disorderly, his first time on the Farm.”