The Surrogate Thief(5)

“Washburn.”

“He just got a phone call from a reporter.”

“What?”

“I think we should cut the trailer’s phone line. It might be somebody from the Reformer, but whoever it is, is working him up all over again.”

“Goddamn it, Ron, let’s give Kazak and his guys a shot.”

Ron grimaced at the last word. Wayne Kazak was Washburn’s kind of action-oriented guy. “It’s your call, but I’d like to hold off on that for a bit. Before the phone rang, I almost had him out the door.”

He refrained from detailing that overly rosy bit of fiction.

As intended, his phrasing put Washburn on the spot. Were the incident commander to choose a possibly bloody assault over a negotiator making progress, heads would roll, especially in a town as prone to argument—and suspicious of its police department—as Brattleboro, a famous bastion of liberal debate.

“All right. We’ll cut the line. How fast do you think you can get him out?”

“You know I can’t answer that, Ward. But I’m making progress.”

“Right.” Washburn hung up.

Ron readjusted his headphones. Purvis was still talking on the other phone, but now Linda was throwing her oar in, yelling at him to stop jerking himself off and make up his mind, calling him a loser and a dickhead who couldn’t even make a standoff with the cops work. Ron could almost feel the tension building in Matt’s head as the latter’s responses, to both reporter and estranged wife, became increasingly terse.

Come on, Ron began repeating to himself, cut the goddamn wire. He hesitated pushing the button triggering the throw phone’s ringer, unsure whether he’d be giving Matt a calmer harbor that way or merely adding to the pressure.

Just before he was about to go ahead, a shot went off, sharp as a whip’s crack, audible even through the van’s wall.

All hell broke loose. The note taker whirled around at the whiteboard, dropping his marker, Linda let out a scream over the headphones, and Washburn’s voice yelled through the van’s override speaker, “What the Christ happened, Ron?”

Ron could hear Kazak outside, shouting orders over his radio to his team, preparing for an assault.

He first spoke on the intercom, “Hold everyone off. Let me find out,” and then rang through on the throw phone.

From habit alone, Matthew Purvis picked up. “What?”

Ron struggled to control his voice, happy to hear Linda still complaining in a grating voice in the background. “I thought I heard a noise, Matt. Just wondered if you were all okay in there.”

“Fuck no, we’re not okay. What the hell do you think?”

“Is anyone hurt?”

Purvis was borderline hysterical. “I didn’t shoot her, if that’s what you mean. Wouldn’t make any difference anyhow. I’d need fucking silver bullets to do any good.”

Ron hesitated a split second and then laughed outright, in the meantime scribbling a note, “All’s okay. Hold,” and handing it to the liaison for transmission.

“What’re you laughing at?”

“Did you hear what you just said, Matt? Jesus, man. That’s one sense of humor.”

Thankfully, Purvis laughed, too, dropping the tension a notch. “Yeah, well. What’ve you got left, right?”

“Right,” Ron agreed. “I mean, things could be worse.”

He grabbed his forehead at his own choice of words. What the hell was he thinking?

But again Purvis surprised him. After an excruciating pause, he commented, “You’re pretty funny yourself. How worse could they get?”

“Okay, I know you’ve had a pisser of a day, Matt. You’re in a world of hurt.” Relieved to be back on track, Ron studied the board across from him. “Your job, your apartment, the restraining order, falling off the wagon . . . Pretty understandable that you feel shoved in a corner.”

“You have no idea,” Purvis muttered.

“You’re right. I don’t. But I’ve helped a lot of people who have. That’s why I’m here now. I hear you have a son.”

A silence followed this abrupt change of subject. “Yeah.”

“What’s he up to?” A note on the board read “Army.”

“He’s in the service.”

“Sounds like you’re real proud of him.”

“Yeah. He’s a good kid.”

In the background, Linda called out, “You talkin’ about Chris? A loser and a faggot, just like his old man.”

Ron winced, wishing to hell she were in another room or unconscious. She sounded drunk. With any luck, eventually she’d pass out.

The phone rattled as Purvis dropped it again to scream at her, “You goddamn bitch. Don’t you say that about Chris. You say one more thing about him and I’ll blow your fucking brains out, you hear me?”