Lisa Black: Takeover

“Yes, you, my little southern Madonna. And you, Theresa. You’re both coming with me. The guys can stay here. This is how it’s going to work-”

“No,” Theresa said.

“No,” Cavanaugh said. “Leave them here. You can only make things worse for yourself by adding kidnapping to your list of charges.”

“Chris, you’ll be picking up a pitchfork in hell and still trying to talk St. Peter into opening the gates, I swear. We’re not negotiating. We were never negotiating, get it? We needed you to produce Eric and the money, that’s all. Now shut up. You, Theresa.”

“You don’t need me.” She emphasized every word. “You have a young woman and a little boy. No one will risk hurting them. I’d just be in the way.”

Everyone in the room stared at her as silence flowed in, tamping down the last echo of her voice, pressing on her shoulders like guilt.

“Theresa…” Cavanaugh began.

She couldn’t look at him. “He won’t hurt them. I trust him.”

Lucas muttered, “Of all people…”

“Leave both of them,” Cavanaugh said. “I’ll go.”

“I just might take you up on that, Chris. I’m sure your heroism would do wonders for the sales of your next book. Even if it’s published posthumously.” Lucas still wore that cold, closed-down look that frightened her, and it settled on her as if she were the only person in the room. “I think you need to explain this sudden lack of altruism, Theresa,” Lucas said, speaking just loudly enough so she could hear him. The security guards almost certainly could not. “It’s got everyone quite mystified.”

“I want to live, that’s all. Leave me and Chris here with the guards. You can’t fit us all in that car anyway.”

“But I need good hostages. The cops won’t shoot at you, their little scientist lady, and they sure as hell ain’t going to risk their shining star. He’s the only cop who gets on TV without having to be indicted first.”

“Let him go,” she repeated, desperation spreading through her voice.

“No.”

Cavanaugh interrupted. “Why do I get the feeling that you two are having a conversation the rest of us aren’t privy to?”

“Can’t we just get out of here?” Jessica Ludlow asked. “What are we waiting for?”

Lucas answered without looking at her. “First I need to know what Theresa knows and who she’s told.”

“I’ve been stuck in here with you! How could I have told anyone anything?”

Cavanaugh turned toward her, putting a hand to his chest when the movement hurt him. “Told anyone what ?”

“Go ahead, Theresa,” Lucas goaded. “I’m not going to let him go anyway.”

Theresa sighed. “This was never about the money. It’s about Mark Ludlow’s murder.”

Jessica stared. “Lucas didn’t kill my husband.”

“No,” Theresa told her. “You did.”

3:46 P.M.

Chris Cavanaugh shook his head. “I don’t understand.” “Start from the beginning,” Lucas instructed her. She kept her voice steady and strong. “You mean when Mark

Ludlow died? Or when you, Bobby, and Jessica met in art therapy at the prison in Atlanta?”

“Talk quieter, unless you want me to have to dispose of those three guards as well. There’s no air ducts in this outer wall anyway, so you don’t have to be clear for the microphones.”

“How do you know about that?” Cavanaugh demanded. “I studied under an expert. Your book was quite popular at the prison library, by the way-you should let your publicist know.” “Let’s go, ” Jessica Ludlow repeated. “In a minute. Go on, Theresa.” “Jessica’s an artist.” Lucas reached one hand toward the young mother, then stopped as he remembered the cameras. But their eyes met, and she smiled, for the first time all day. “She’s a fantastic artist. Do you see any of her stuff hanging in her house? No. Ludlow didn’t appreciate it, and besides, it was his house.”

Theresa shifted, drawing her knees toward her chest. “Yeah, he wouldn’t even put her name on the deed. So you two met when Jessica worked in art therapy at the Atlanta jail, and you fell in love. But Mark Ludlow got wind of it and asked for a transfer, just as you were about to be released?” She made the last sentence into a question, but Lucas nodded. “You followed her here. I’m guessing that’s where things went bad.”

He said, “All we wanted was a divorce, and custody.”

Jessica spoke up, quietly. “I would even have considered joint custody. But Mark said no way. He said no court would allow even visitation to someone on felony parole, and I figured he was probably right.”

“We had no choice,” Lucas said to Theresa. “You’re a mother. You must understand.”

“So you killed him.”

“We argued. Bobby hit him with the gun, just kept hitting. I told you he had poor impulse control.”

“Convenient,” Theresa said. “But I don’t think so. You have a cast-off pattern of bloodstains traveling up your pant leg.”

“So I killed him.”

“You couldn’t be swinging an object and get a neat pattern like that on yourself at the same time. You were standing perpendicular to the swinging weapon, at a slight distance.”

“So it was Bobby. Like I said.”

“Bobby is wearing khakis, light enough to see any bloodstains present. There aren’t any”-her eye fell on his bloodstained corpse-“or weren’t. It’s possible that for some reason he had time to change his pants and you didn’t, but I doubt it. Neither of you has spare clothes in the car. But Jessica had a closet upstairs, and besides, she probably ruined the pants she wore with the bleach she used to clean up the kitchen.” She turned to the girl. “You probably didn’t plan this, but even though I found the damp mop, I didn’t think the floor had been recently cleaned, because Lucas left a coating of sand particles from the floor mats in the car, just as he’s done on the marble tile here.”

Jessica merely shifted her baby in her arms, her smooth face as innocent as ever.

“You now had a problem,” Theresa went on. “You and Bobby dragged the body outside and planned for Jessica to go to work as if nothing had happened, but you knew she’d be the obvious suspect. You had to run off together, but in such a way that Jessica would appear to be innocent. She and Ethan would have been kidnapped by a violent bank robber and presumed dead. No one in Cleveland had any knowledge of your affair, unless Mark confided in a new friend.”

“Tell everyone he’d been cuckolded?” Jessica snorted. “He wasn’t the talkative type.”

“There it is again-you speak of him in the past tense. You said your husband ‘didn’t’ eat with you, not ‘doesn’t’ eat with you, when you weren’t supposed to know he was dead.”

Jessica glared at her. Lucas frowned.

Theresa kept talking. Any delay would give Frank and the other cops time to figure out what to do. “He wasn’t the talkative type, but you are. You told me so yourself. That’s the real reason Cherise is dead, isn’t it? You told her about Lucas.”

She and Lucas exchanged a glance, hers abashed, his merely sad.

“You didn’t kill Paul, a cop. You tried to keep your murders to a minimum, but Cherise had to go. The only way this could work is if no one had any idea you two were lovers. Jessica disappeared with a ruthless felon, never to be seen again. A tragedy, but forgotten in a week or two. However, cops-and the public-hate being duped. If they figured it out, you’d be on the evening news from coast to coast.”

“But now you know,” Lucas pointed out, and the fact that he seemed more sad than angry scared her to death. “And Chris here, who didn’t have a clue, as I can see from the expression on his face.”