"Aw, Jesus," Lucas muttered to himself. He turned and looked back toward the growing crowd. He could hear the howling of the other TV people from where he was standing. "Jesus H. Christ."

They talked for ten minutes; and Scott wasn't bad, Lucas thought. He explained the killings cogently, and justified them. Plain had exploited her death by selling pictures of her naked the same night she was murdered; her parents had gotten her involved in dope and deviant sexuality in the first place; Spooner, of course, had actually killed Alie'e.

At the end of the interview, Ginger asked, "Could we just ask a question or two of the hostages?"

"Sure, go ahead."

The woman was named Melody. "We've been treated very well, better than I expected. Mr. Scott has been a gentleman," she said, with a slight unidentifiable accent. Then she did a little finger wave at the camera. The other hostage, a dark-haired young man named Ralph, said, "I just want to get out of here. I've got classes this morningwe've got a quiz."

As Ginger and the cameraman walked back across the gas pad to the police lines, the howling of the press seemed to swell again. Lucas leaned in the door. "So now you've had your airtime. Now if you kill anyone, they'll figure everything else was bullshit, and you were a phony all the time."

"I'm thinking," Scott said.

And the woman, Melody, said to Lucas, "Please, please get me out of here." And to Scott: "Please, let me go."

"I can't yet," Scott said. He looked at Lucas. "There oughta be more than this."

"There is no more than this, Martin," Lucas said. He gestured at the crowd, at the cameras. "You just spoke to the entire world."

"I don't know," he said. "There oughta be more."

Lucas sighed, looked around, then said, "All right. Maybe there is."

"What?"

"I'll be back."

He trudged back across the parking lot. Rose Marie said, "What?"

"We're getting there. It's like pulling a goddamn snail out of a shell." He spotted Jael and walked over to her. "I gotta ask you a favor."

They walked together toward the gas station, and Jael said, "I'm gonna wet my pants."

"That's good," Lucas said. "For six billion viewers, you're gonna wet your pants."

"Sort of a trip, isn't it?"

Lucas leaned in the door again. "Mr. Scott, I'm sure you know this young woman. You've been trying to kill her. She wants to apologize to you for any wrong she might have done to Alie'e, and in turn, she wants you to apologize for killing her brother, who she deeply loved."

Jael stepped just inside the door. Lucas had warned her to stay close so she could back off if Scott did anything crazy. "As long as he'sinside the booth, you should be okay."

She began, "Mr. Scott, I am truly sorry"

She did it almost perfectly, Lucas thought, fixing him with her eyes, letting him take in her torn-paper face. "I had a hard childhood. Look at my scars," she said. She touched her face. "I was in a car accident"

They talked for a few minutes, then Scott shook his head as though dazed. "So what's the deal?" he asked Lucas.

Lucas said, "The deal is this: We go back to the lines, we get another camera of your choice. We come back here. You shuck all the shells out of your rifleuh, where's the shotgun?"

"In the car. I couldn't reach it after the crash."

"All right. Anyway you shuck all the shells out of the rifle, lay the rifle to the side. Then you open the booth, and you surrender to Jaelwe're talking the worlds biggest TV audience hereand then we all walk across the gas pad and you'll be taken into custody. With a lawyer right there."

"What channel?"

"Three? You want Ginger back?" Lucas asked.

"No. She was okay, but she was a little too smooth. She didn't have that good jagged quality. How about uh, what do you think?"

"Six. There's a woman with Six, sort of an understated beauty, if you know what I mean."

"Not Ellen?"

"Exactly. Ellen. She's out there, Martin."

He thought about it for a long beat. Then: "All right. Ellen."

Lucas went back, pointed at Ellen Goodrich, who raced out of the crowd, towing her camera. "Lucas what can I say? And what're we doing?"

"We're gonna do the surrender."

"Aw, jeez, that's just that's just" He thought she might weep with gratitude, but she didn't.

"Let's go," Lucas said.

The surrender went well, to a point, Lucas thought.

Jael made a statement, a formal apology for any wrongs that had been done to Alie'e. Scott apologized for the killings, said he still felt that they were necessarybut that Jael through her gracious actions had made up for some of it.

Then, with the TV camera focusing on him, Scott jacked the slide on the Ruger until shells stopped popping out. He said, "I hereby surrender to Jael Corbeau, a brave woman."

He reached out and popped the lock on the door. As it opened, the dark-haired hostage, Ralph, screamed, "YOU COCKSUCKER." He snatched the small portable TV off the shelf, and as Scott turned, startled, Ralph hit him in the face with it.

Scott went down as though he'd been struck by a meteorite, and Lucas shouted, "Hey," and tried to get the door open, but the woman, Melody, began kicking at Scott, screaming "SONABEECH" in an unexpected Mexican accent. Then she snatched a can of Pyroil starting fluid off the shelf and began hitting Scott in the back of the head, slicing off swaths of scalp.

Scott pushed up, tried to crawl through the rain of blows. Jael was there. Lucas tried to push past her, but she screamed, "You killed my brother, you motherfucker." Scott, stunned and bleeding, looked up, and she kicked him in the eye and he went down again.

The camera was crowding in, and Lucas swatted Jael to one side and tried to get at the dark-haired man, who was beating Scott with the remnants of the portable TV. Lucas grabbed him by the shirt, pulled him across Scott's body, and threw him into the cameraman; the cameraman, Ralph, and Ellen Goodrich all went down in a heap. Melody screamed, suddenly panic-stricken, and ran past. For a moment, Lucas and the stunned, bleeding Scott were behind the counter in a little pool of peace and privacy. Scott tried to push himself up, and Lucas whispered, "This is for Marcy, asshole," and hit him in the nose as hard as he could.

There was a satisfying crunch of bone, and Scott went down for the count.

An hour later, the mayor said, "I thought it went pretty well. You know, all things considered."

Chapter 30

The media attention was intense through the morning, until football started. By nine that night, most of the out-of-towners were gone.

On Monday, Lucas, Rose Marie, Frank Lester, and the mayor met in Rose Marie's office. Rose Marie said, "We're getting a ton of stuff on Spooner. He was in it up to his neck. And the Ramsey ME's office is saying they're not so sure that Rodriguez was a suicide. They found residue of wood preservative in his hair."

"Told you," Lucas said comfortably. "He was hit with a goddamn two-by-four and dropped over the banister. By Spooner. Spooner not only killed Rodriguez, I bet he's the guy who leaked Rodriguez's name toSpittle. Set him up, made him the bad guy, killed him."

"Spooner had a safe-deposit box over in Hudson," Lester said. "There were some documents that say he made a personal loan to Rodriguez's company in Miami for half a million dollars. Then, the feebs say, there was a lien registered on the company's property with Dade County, Rodriguez couldn't sell the company without the lien being settled, which meant that Spooner had an alarm if Rodriguez tried to get out. Spooner had another hook, too. If Rodriguez tried to sell, he'd have to settle the mortgages, and as the loan officer at Atheneum, Spooner would have known."