quarries and the Blue Hills Reservation, this will not be an easy area to contain. To make things even more difficult, the kidnappers have demanded that only four people approach the area tonight. Until the exchange occurs, we have to maintain a completely invisible presence.”
A trooper raised his hand and cleared his throat. “Major, how are we to establish a perimeter around the area and still keep from being seen?”
“There’s the rub.” Dempsey ran a hand over his chin.
“He didn’t just say that,” Poole whispered.
“He did.”
“Wow.”
“Command Post One,” Dempsey said, “will be set up in this valley, at the base of the bunny slope in the Blue Hills. From there, the top of Granite Rail Quarry is less than one minute by helicopter. The majority of our forces will be on standby there. As soon as we have word that the exchange has been completed, we will sweep out and around the reservation, block Quarry Street at both ends, Chickatawbut and Saw Cut Notch roads at both ends, seal off both the south and north exits and entrance ramps to the southeast expressway, and throw a blanket over the whole kit and kaboodle.”
“Kit,” Poole said.
“Kaboodle,” Broussard said.
“Command Post Two will be here at the entrance to Quincy Cemetery, and Command Post Three…”
We listened for the next hour as Dempsey outlined the plan of containment and carved up duties between state and local police departments. Over one hundred and fifty cops would be deployed and camping out around the Quincy quarries and at the edge of the Blue Hills. They had three helicopters at their disposal. The elite BPD Hostage Negotiation Team would be on-site. Lieutenant Doyle and the Quincy police chief would act as “rovers”- each in his own car, headlamps off, circling the quarries in the dark.
“Pray they don’t crash into each other,” Poole said.
The quarries comprised a large land mass. At the height of the New England granite boom, more than sixty were in operation. Granite Rail remained one of twenty-two that hadn’t been filled in, and the sites of the rest spread wide across the torn hills between the expressway and the Blue Hills. We’d be entering at night with very little light. Even the rangers Dempsey brought in to speak about the area admitted that there were so many trails in those hills that some were known only to the few people who used them.
But the trails weren’t really the issue. Trails eventually led somewhere and that somewhere was a small number of roads, a public park or two. Even if the kidnappers could slip through the dragnet on the hills, they’d be nabbed somewhere below. If it were a case of just the four of us and a few cops monitoring the hills, I’d give the edge to Cheese’s people. But with one hundred and fifty cops, I was hard-pressed to see how anyone planned to move in and out of there unnoticed.
And no matter how dumb most of the people in Cheese’s organization were, even they had to know that, no matter what their demands, in a hostage situation there would be a lot of cops.
So how were they planning to get out?
I raised my hand the next time Dempsey paused, and when he saw me, he looked like he was considering ignoring me, so I said, “Major.”
He looked down at his pointer. “Yes.”
“I don’t see how the kidnappers can escape.”
Several cops chuckled and Dempsey smiled.
“Well, that’s the point, Mr. Kenzie, isn’t it?”
I smiled back. “I understand that, but don’t you think the kidnappers do too?”
“How do you mean?”
“They picked this location. They would have realized that you’d surround it. Right?”
Dempsey shrugged. “Crime makes you stupid.”
Another round of polite laughter from the boys in blue.
I waited for it to die down. “Major, if they had planned for such a contingency, though, what then?”
His smile widened, but his owl eyes didn’t follow suit. They narrowed at me, slightly confused, slightly angry. “There’s no way out, Mr. Kenzie. No matter what they think. It’s a billion to one.”
“But they think they’re the one.”
“Then they’re wrong.” Dempsey looked at his pointer and scowled. “Any more dumb questions?”
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?”
