Mine

'Gotta change Drummer's diaper,' Mary said. 'Bye, Mother.'

'Good-bye.'

Click.

Natalie backed away from the phone as one might retreat from a particularly deadly snake. She bumped into Edgar's wheelchair, and he said something to her that sprayed spittle.

Perhaps thirty seconds passed. The phone began to ring once more.

Natalie didn't move.

It rang and rang, and finally Natalie stepped forward, reached out, and picked up the receiver. Her face had gone deathly pale.

'We've got it on tape, Mrs. Terrell,' one of the FBI agents in the white van said. She thought it was the younger of the two, the one who'd shown her the phone-tracing device that automatically printed out a caller's number. 'It was from a pay phone inside the city limits, all right. We're getting a precise location on it now, but your daughter'll be long gone by the time we get a car there. Do you know where she's going, Mrs. Terrell?'

Natalie had an obstruction in her throat. She swallowed and swallowed, but she couldn't make it go away.

'Mrs. Terrell?' the young man urged.

'Yes,' she answered with an effort. 'Yes, I do know. She's… going to our beach house. In Virginia Beach. The address is…' She couldn't get her breath, and she had to stop for a moment. 'The address is 2717 Hargo Point Road. It's a white house with a brown roof. Is that all you need?'

'Do you have a phone number, please?'

She gave it to him. 'Mary won't answer the phone, though.'

'You're sure about this, then?'

'Yes.' Again, the breathless sensation. 'I'm sure.'

'How?'

'She mentioned Grant, her brother. He committed suicide at the beach house. And she said she wanted to smell the water.' Natalie felt a sharp stab in her heart. 'That's where we used to take her when she was a little girl.'

'Yes, ma'am. Excuse me, please.' There was a long pause. Talking it over, Natalie surmised. Then the younger man came back on the line. 'Okay, that does it. Thank you for your cooperation, Mrs. Terrell.'

'I -' Her throat closed up.

'Ma'am?'

'I… oh God, I don't… want anything to happen to that baby. You heard her. She said she'd kill the baby and herself, too. That's what she meant. You heard her, didn't you?'

'Yes, ma'am.'

'What are you going to do, then? Go in after her?'

'No, ma'am, we'll put the house under surveillance first. We'll wait until daylight and try to pinpoint her position and the infant's position in the house. If we have to, we'll evacuate the other houses around it. We won't go storming in like you see in the movies; all that does is get people killed.'

'I don't want that baby's blood on my hands. Do you hear me? I couldn't stand to live if I thought I'd helped kill that child.'

'I hear you.' The young man's voice was calm and sympathetic. 'We'll stake the house out for a while, and then we'll see what has to be done. Just pray to God your daughter decides to listen to reason and give herself up.'

'She'll never give up,' Natalie said. 'Never.'

'I hope that's where you're wrong. We're going to sit here awhile longer and make some calls, so if you think of anything, you know our number. One more thing: do you mind if we leave the tap on your line?'

'No, I don't mind.'

'Thank you again. I know this hasn't been easy.'

'No. Far from easy.' She hung up, and her husband made a gibbering sound.

At ten-thirty, Natalie put Edgar to bed. She kissed his cheek and wiped his mouth, and he gave her a weak, helpless smile. She pulled the covers up to his throat, and she wondered where her life had gone.

The white van left a little after eleven. From an upstairs window Natalie watched it go, the room dark behind her. She presumed another team of agents now had the beach house under watch. She let one more hour slip past, to make sure.

Then, bundled in an overcoat against the raw cold, Natalie left the house and went to the garage. She got into the gray Coupe de Ville, started the engine, and drove away into the night. For fifteen minutes or so she drove through the streets of Richmond, her speed slow, and she obeyed all traffic signs though there were hardly any cars out. She stopped at a Shell station on Monument Avenue to fill up with gas, and she bought a diet drink and a candy bar to calm her nervous stomach. She left the station and drove in aimless circles again, and all the time she watched her rearview mirror.

She pulled into an area of warehouses and railroad tracks, and she stopped the Cadillac next to a chain-link fence and watched a freight train speed past. Her gaze swept the dark streets around her. As far as she could tell, she was not being followed.

They believed her. Why wouldn't they? She was the woman who'd vehemently said, in a 1975 interview on the Dick Cavett Show along with the families of other wanted criminals, that she hoped the police locked her daughter in a cage where she belonged and tossed the key into the Atlantic Ocean.

The quote had gotten a lot of newsprint. The FBI knew she was willing to help them in any way possible. She still felt that way. But now there was a vital difference: Mary had a baby.

Around one o'clock, Natalie Terrell turned the Cadillac up onto a ramp of I-95, and she headed north toward the wooded hills.

5: Into the Vortex

It was bad, the nightmare.

In it, Laura gave David into the hands of the murderess, and she saw drops of blood falling from the woman's fingers, falling like scarlet leaves through October air, falling to spatter on white sheets as ridged and rumpled as snowswept badlands. She gave David up, and the murderess and David became shadows that slipped away along a pale green wall. But something had been given in exchange; something was in Laura's right hand. She opened her fingers, and saw the yellow Smiley Face pinned to the flesh of her palm.

Then the scene changed. She was in a parking lot on a hot and humid night, the blue lights of police cars spinning around her. Voices bellowed through bullhorns, and she heard the sharp clickings of bullet magazines being snapped into automatic rifles. She could see a woman standing on a balcony, caught in a white light, and one hand held a pistol while the other gripped David by the back of the neck. The woman wore a green paisley blouse and bell-bottom trousers with an American-flag belt, and she was raving as she held David in the air and shook him. Laura could feel his crying more than hear it, like a razor blade drawn along the folds of her labia. 'I want my baby!' she told a shadowy policeman who passed on without speaking. 'My baby! I want my baby!' She grasped at someone else; he looked blankly at her. She recognized Kastle. 'Please!' she begged. 'Don't let my baby be hurt!'

'We'll get your baby back for you,' he answered. 'You can count on it.'

Kastle pulled away and disappeared into the vortex of shadows, and as Laura saw the snipers taking their positions she realized with a jolt of horror that Kastle had not promised to get David back alive.

'Hold your fire until I give the signal!' someone commanded through a bullhorn. She saw Doug sitting on the hood of a police car, his head slumped forward and his eyes half closed, as if all this had no meaning to him whatsoever. A spark of light caught her attention. She looked up at the corner of a rooftop, and there she could make out a shadowy shape aiming a rifle at Mary Terror. She thought the man was bald-headed – slick bald – and that something might be wrong with his face, but she couldn't tell for sure; she thought she might know him, but that, too, was uncertain. The man was lifting his rifle to take aim. He wasn't waiting for the signal; he was going to