Word of Honor

by Terri Blackstock

  He seemed to flinch at her use of his name, then tried to consider her question. His eyes went back and forth from the window to the bed as he turned that over in his mind. “My truck. It must be my truck. I was stupid. I should have known they’d be looking for it!”

  Then he did do it, she told herself. They were looking for his truck, and they’d found it.

  “There must have been witnesses,” he went on as he paced. “I should have known. I should have said no.”

  “What do you mean?” she asked.

  He seemed unable to go on as emotion overwhelmed him. He groped for the chair, pulled it out from the table, and sank down. “Debbie’s gonna die.”

  She swallowed hard. “Who’s Debbie?”

  “My wife.” He looked up at her, those probing eyes searching her face. “What’s a matter? You don’t think somebody like me could have a wife? I have kids, too. All these years, I’ve tried to protect them…and now this.” His face twisted in pain, and tears shone in his eyes. As if to compensate, he aimed the gun at her again.

  “Please…” she whispered. “Please put that away. If it went off…that would be four dead…”

  “I didn’t kill the other three. I didn’t leave that bomb!”

  “I know…I know you didn’t. I just meant…four deaths that you’d be accused of.”

  “You don’t know!” he flung back at her. “Don’t pretend you know. For all you know I’m some kind of raving maniac whose elevator doesn’t go all the way to the top. You don’t know me.”

  “I know what you said.”

  “And why would you believe some guy who bursts into your motel room and holds a gun to your head? Huh?” His question was angry, insistent.

  She knew he had her there. “I don’t know. Instinct. I told you. The briefcase.”

  “Give me a break!” he shouted. “It’s called survival instinct. Tell him what he wants to hear so he won’t hurt you.” He leaned back hard in the chair and leaned his head against the wall. “Look, I don’t want to hurt you. I don’t know who you are, don’t care to know. All I do know is that I’m in a mess and I need time to think. You’re buying me that time.”

  Somehow, she did believe him…but she didn’t know if she should. “My name is Jill. Jill Clark.” She hoped knowing her name would make it harder to pull that trigger.

  He didn’t answer for a long time, then leaned his elbows on his knees and gave her a tentative look. “Who were you talking to on the phone when I came in?”

  She swallowed and tried to gauge whether his finger was right over the trigger. “A friend at the Newpointe Fire Department. I had heard about the bombing on the radio, and I called to ask him what he knew about it.”

  “Small world, huh?”

  “Yeah. It is something of a coincidence.”

  “And so…what did he say?” His eyes didn’t look like those of a criminal. They were clear and green, and she imagined that he wasn’t a bad-looking man when he wasn’t drenched with sweat and waving a rifle. “Who were the three people killed?” he asked.

  “Sue Ellen Hanover, the postal clerk, and Cliff Bertrand, the postmaster. And a customer…Mary Hampton. Her little boy, Pete, is in the hospital in critical condition.”

  His eyes widened with what looked like despair, and he turned his face away. “What have you done?” he whispered. She wondered if he was talking to himself. He brought his gaze back to her. “This…little boy. How old is he?”

  “Five, I think.”

  “And his mama’s dead?”

  She nodded.

  He took in a deep breath and wilted as his elbows hit his knees again. Slowly, he reached into his back pocket and pulled out his wallet. He took out a sheaf of pictures, tossed it on the bed. “That’s my five-year-old.”

  Reluctantly, Jill picked up the pictures and studied the shot of the precious little boy in a baseball cap that was bigger than his head.

  “You think a man with a kid that age would deliberately take a boy’s mama from him?”

  “No,” she said. “Not deliberately.”

  “Not even accidentally,” he said. He got up and grabbed the pictures back, turned the page, and showed her a little girl of about three. “This is my daughter. And my wife. I have a family. And a job. I’m a human, with feelings and a conscience. I don’t kill people.”

  He waved the gun wildly as he spoke, and she held her breath, praying it wouldn’t go off. His tears wet his face, and his nose was running, and he wiped it with the hand that held the gun. “I’ll probably never see them again. My kids’ll grow up thinking I’m a terrorist. My wife will wish she’d never met me.” He batted at the tears on his face and breathed in a sob. “And I didn’t do it!”

  “Then tell them,” Jill said, trying to keep her voice calm. “Go out there and tell them exactly what happened. Explain. If you didn’t do it, you can prove it.”

  “No, I can’t,” he said. “Don’t you think I’ve thought of this? I don’t have an alibi. My truck was at the scene of the crime. They’re gonna nail me to the wall. Only rich people are found innocent in this country. The rest of us poor Joes are automatically guilty. We don’t have dream teams of attorneys spinning and posing for us.”

  “If you’re innocent,” she said, “then why don’t you have an alibi? Why was your truck there?”

  He just shook his head, got up, and began to pace again. When he refused to answer, she took a risk. “Jerry, I’m a lawyer. Not the five-hundred-dollars-an-hour kind, but I have a good reputation in Newpointe. They’ll listen to me. You can turn yourself in, and I’ll tell them you didn’t hurt me. I’ll help you prove that you weren’t involved in the bombing. You have to try for your kids and your wife, Jerry. If you’re not a criminal, don’t become one just to avoid the fight.”

  He stopped pacing in front of the air conditioner unit and let it cool his back. “I didn’t say I wasn’t a criminal,” he told her. “When they look at my rap sheet, they’ll think I am one. But my record doesn’t account for anything that’s happened to me in the last ten years. They won’t care who I am now. They’ll only care about who I was then.”

  Her heart sank. So he did have a criminal record. Her hope that he was just a nice guy in a bad situation fled.

  Keeping the gun trained on her, he came to the bed. She watched him—her breath held—wondering what he would do next.

  Chapter Nine

  Back in Newpointe, Jim Shoemaker, the police chief, hung up the phone and looked at the two federal agents in his office. “It’s confirmed. The owner of the truck at the Flagstaff is a resident of Newpointe. He moved here six months ago when his wife’s aunt died and left them her house. I knew the aunt. Good woman. Hard to believe she’d have a terrorist for a relative.”

  “What’s his name?”

  “Jerry Ingalls. Designs websites for a living, so he hasn’t had occasion to get to know many of the townspeople yet. Kids aren’t old enough for school, either, so the family kind of keeps to themselves.”

  “Are you sure it was him? The truck wasn’t stolen, was it?”

  “Nope. The men I sent over interviewed his wife. She said she hasn’t seen her husband all afternoon. Apparently, he’s the one in the truck.”

  “He’s probably not working alone.”

  “Maybe not. But I have people going through his history, looking for affiliations and associations, groups he might have been involved with.”

  The door flew open, and Jim leaped to his feet. The agents swung around.

  Patricia Castor, the mayor, bolted in. “Jim, I want to know what you know about that bomber. I can’t have any more buildings go up in flames around Newpointe. Is he just targeting federal buildings, or government buildings in general? Should we evacuate?”

  Jim frowned and looked at the two agents. “Uh…gentlemen…this is our mayor, Patricia Castor. Pat, these are FBI agents here working on the case.”

  “Then you tell me,” she demanded, turning to them. “It’s gotten so I’m
scared to go to work tomorrow. Should we evacuate, or not?”

  “Evacuate what?” one of the agents asked.

  “The local government buildings. The social security office. The courthouse. City hall. This building right here! The homes around the downtown area.”

  “Pat, we can’t evacuate all of Newpointe without cause.”

  “We have no reason to believe that other buildings are targeted, ma’am,” one of the agents said. “We don’t recommend random evacuations, but the minute we have reason to think evacuation necessary, we would let you know right away.”

  Pat wasn’t satisfied. “I’m not so sure. You people blew the Kennedy investigation. I still haven’t gotten over that.”

  Jim came around the desk, took Pat’s arm, and gently turned her back to the door. “Pat, I promise, I’ll keep in close touch with you about this. But right now, we have an emergency on our hands. We think we have the bomber holed up in a motel in Chalmette. We really need to get back to work on this.”

  “In Chalmette? Well, why on earth are you flapping your jaws in here, when you oughta be there?”

  “There are dozens of law enforcement people there, Pat. Some of our own men. I’m working things from this end.”

  “Well, all right,” she said, looking skeptically from Jim to the two agents. “As long as you catch him. You tell me the minute you do, Jim. I want to come over here and question him myself. I can’t have people blowing up buildings in my town. What are we gonna do without our post office? Do you have any idea the position this puts me in, as the mayor? People will be looking to me for answers.”

  “I know,” Jim said sarcastically. “Creates a lot of paperwork, doesn’t it?”

  “Now, don’t you get smart with me, Jim Shoemaker! You know I care about the dead. I’m at practically every funeral in this town, whether they can vote or not.” She stormed out of the office. Before Jim could close the door, she yelled, “You let me know the minute you get him, you understand?”

  Jim closed the door and turned back to the agents. They probably thought they’d stumbled into an episode of the Twilight Zone in Mayberry. He hoped they wouldn’t decide to disregard his department’s help altogether.

  Chapter Ten

  In Slidell, Celia stood helplessly on the sidewalk of the Slidell Memorial Hospital as they loaded Pete into the ambulance to transport him to New Orleans. He still wasn’t conscious, and some dreadful voice in the weariest part of her brain told her that he wasn’t going to wake up. They had taken so long to stabilize him that she had almost believed they’d changed their minds about transferring him. When the ambulance had finally come, she had considered riding with him, but since she had her car here, she decided to follow behind them. She had tried to reach his uncle and grandmother to tell them where he would be taken, but hadn’t been able to connect with their cell phone. Maybe they had gotten a flight out, she thought, and they were on the way.

  “Celia.” Allie stood next to her, looking distraught too. “Are you sure you don’t want me to go with you?”

  “No, no,” Celia said. “You need to get back for the baby.”

  “But he’ll be all right for just a little longer. I could follow behind you…”

  “Really, it’s okay. I’m just going to stay with him until his grandmother gets there.”

  “I don’t want you to wear yourself out now,” Allie said, patting Celia’s belly.

  She fanned herself with her hand. “If it just wasn’t so hot…and it looks like rain.”

  They got the child into the ambulance, and Celia wiped her eyes again. “I hope he doesn’t wake up in there and ask for his mother.”

  When they closed the doors, Allie hugged her. Wrenching herself away, Celia got into her car and followed the ambulance.

  The ambulance made no attempt to move Pete there quickly, as she had expected. The siren wasn’t on, and neither were the flashing lights, and she began to get nervous. Why were they wasting so much time? What if the child needed immediate attention?

  Then she told herself to calm down, that they knew what they were doing. Maybe a smooth ride was more important than a fast ride. If they’d needed to hurry, they would.

  She turned on the radio to divert her attention from her worries and fears, and flipped around until she came to the news. It was an update on the explosion, and she turned the volume up.

  “The suspect is apparently cornered at the Flagstaff Motel in Chalmette, Bob. We are standing a good distance from the motel, since the suspect is armed. A few moments ago we heard gunshots, and it has just been confirmed that the gunman shot through the adjoining door in his room and took a hostage.”

  Celia brought her hand to her face. “Oh, Lord,” she whispered, “don’t let him kill anybody else.” Quickly, she picked up her cell phone and began to dial Stan’s number with her thumb. LaTonya Mason answered at his desk again.

  “LaTonya, is Stan there?”

  “No, he gone to Chalmette. They got the post office bomber there.”

  “I heard,” she said. “So Stan’s at the Flagstaff…right in the middle of all that?”

  “He’s on his way.”

  “And the man is armed?”

  “That’s what I hear.”

  Celia swallowed back her protests. “All right. Just leave him a note that Pete Hampton’s being transported to New Orleans. I’m going with him.”

  “All right.”

  She hung up the phone and realized that her heart was racing. Her husband was on his way to a motel where they had backed an armed, desperate man into a corner. There had already been gunfire. There was likely to be more.

  Blinking back her tears, she stroked her swollen stomach as she drove and prayed silently that no one else would have to die.

  Chapter Eleven

  Outside, Stan Shepherd arrived on the scene with Dan Nichols. Dan leaped out before Stan could cut his engine off. Sid Ford—another Newpointe cop—was already there, and so were a dozen or so FBI and ATF agents, as well as the sheriff’s department for St. Bernard’s Parish.

  “What are the feds doing in on this?” Dan asked Stan.

  “Somebody blew up a federal post office. Everybody and his brother is going to be in on this.”

  Because of Stan’s emergency lights, no one asked for either of their IDs. Dan pushed through the officers to Sid Ford, who had been the first Newpointe officer to arrive on the scene. “Sid, how’s Jill?”

  “We think she’s okay,” Sid said, distracted as he studied the blueprint someone had given him of the motel.

  “Is that the blueprint of the motel? I can go in there,” Dan said. “I could go through the attic…”

  Sid looked up, disgusted. “Dan, whatchu even doin “here? You ain’t a police officer. Since when have the Newpointe firefighters responded to calls in Chalmette?”

  “I came with Stan,” he said. “I was talking to Jill on the phone when he took her hostage. Sid, you gotta let me go in.”

  Sid shook his head as if his friend had lost his mind. “I ain’t even in charge here,” he said. “We got all kinds of jurisdiction problems. The FBI’s headin’ this thing up. Local sheriff’s department is already buttin’ heads with ’em. Our best bet is to stay out of the way.”

  Dan wasn’t satisfied. He scanned the federal agents until he saw one who seemed to be in charge. Dan pushed through the police and reached him. “Let me try to go in,” he said, but as he did, Stan came up behind him, presumably to pull him away.

  Preoccupied, the man gave him a sideways glance. “Who are you?”

  “I’m Dan Nichols. I’m a firefighter from Newpointe, and if I just study the blueprint I can figure out—”

  Stan stopped him with a firm grip on his arm. “I’m Detective Stan Shepherd from Newpointe,” he cut in, reaching to shake the FBI agent’s hand. “Excuse me a minute.” He turned his back to the man and in a low voice said, “Dan, you need to get out of the way. You don’t belong here, and you’re just calling attentio
n to yourself.”

  “But somebody needs to go in there.”

  “And what are you gonna do? Shoot him from one of the air conditioner vents? I’m telling you, get out of the way or I’ll have to arrest you.”

  “You’ve got to be kidding,” Dan said.

  Stan’s eyes pierced into him. “I’m not.”

  Dan stepped aside, and Stan engaged the FBI agent to see where they were on the case.

  Sid was shaking his head as Dan came back to him. “Man, what is wrong with you?”

  Dan’s eyes flashed. “Jill is in there,” he said through his teeth. “A homicidal maniac is holding her hostage! What’s wrong with you?”

  “Jill’s tough,” Sid said. “She can handle this.” He touched Dan’s arm, and Dan jerked away and turned to see which window Jill was behind. “Can you?”

  “Say I’m overreacting,” Dan said. “But I was just talking on the phone to someone I care a lot about, and heard some lunatic burst into her room shooting. It shook me up a little bit. Sue me.” He raked his hands through his hair and took a step toward the motel. “Which room is it?”

  “That one,” Sid said. “One-fifteen. He came from 117 next door.”

  “There must be a crawl space in the attic, a window in the bathroom, something!”

  “Where’s Stan goin’?” Sid asked as Stan ran around the perimeter of squad cars. They watched as he went to the telephone van set up on the edge of the parking lot, tapping into the phone company’s equipment on the corner of the property. Dan took off toward him, and Sid followed.

  “The guy’s making a phone call,” one of the officers in the van was saying.

  “Who’s he talking to?” one of the FBI agents asked.

  The agent monitoring the call shook his head and held up a hand to silence him. Dan wanted to jerk the earpiece away from him. He saw the tape recorder turning on the wall of the van. The cop monitoring the call turned up the volume, and Dan leaned in to hear.

  “Honey…” The man’s voice was overcome with emotion and wobbling.