“Nadine’s ex. Tommy Harrell.”
“And are you familiar with Tommy Harrell, with their situation?” Hope presses.
“I mean, she’s worked here less than a year, so I don’t know a ton,” Martha says. “But yeah. I mean, until they separated recently, he’d come by to see her sometimes.” Martha looks over at the post office as she says it, a memory likely playing in her mind. “He used to bring her lunch,” she adds with a wistful tone to her voice. “I thought it was sweet.”
“You said they separated recently. How recent?” Hope asks. This is the information she needs. This is the background that will aid her in reaching the suspect. The coworker is giving her enough to at least get started. She will learn more about the situation as she goes, as she talks to Tommy Harrell. She feels her heart hitch upward a notch, but whether that is due to excitement or fear, she can’t tell.
“A month? Maybe six weeks at most?” Martha shakes her head. “Long enough that she finally decided to file papers and make it official.” Martha and Stacy both make stricken faces as something dawns on them. “I think maybe that was today.” She looks at Stacy to clarify. “That he was going to get served the papers.”
Stacy claps her palm to her forehead. “We’re so stupid! Why didn’t she remind us? She should’ve told us not to go. Today of all days!”
Martha shakes her head grimly as she says, “This is all our fault.”
“The truth is,” Stacy adds, her face beseeching, her need to confess obvious, “we ran by the Walmart too. It’s just across the street, so it was right there, but we... started looking at the clothes and all. Walmart has some real cute things now.” She pulls a frown. “We shouldn’t have done that. We weren’t thinking.” Stacy’s big blue eyes leave Hope’s face and stray over to the post office, which looks placid at the moment except for all the emergency personnel clustered around it. “If we hadn’t gone, maybe this wouldn’t have happened.”
Hope pats Stacy on the shoulder. “Or maybe you’d be trapped inside there right now too,” she says, an attempt to assuage some of her guilt, though it likely won’t work. In situations like this, it’s hard to know what would or would not have changed the outcome. People can make themselves crazy trying to figure out if they could or should have done something different.
A horn blares, and Hope turns to see what’s happening. Out on the street that runs by the post office, cars are slowing as curious drivers try to see what’s going on. They will need to get a patrol officer out there soon to keep traffic moving, maybe even reroute traffic entirely to keep the main road clear in case of emergency. Hope hopes it does not come to that.
Chapter 14
Inside the post office, Sylvie remains on her stool, knowing she should conserve her energy, fearing that if she does get up she will pass out straightaway. Her hypoglycemia is in full effect, and all the stress has weakened her further. So she stays put on the stool, and away from the action, for as long as she can.
But when Nadine starts hollering that the cops are approaching the building, her body comes off the stool and goes toward the windows without her mind giving consent. Curiosity killed the cat, Sylvie thinks as she finds a spot at the window,and old ladies who have FOMO.(She learned from her granddaughter that FOMO means “fear of missing out.”)
She makes it to the window and leans against it as she watches a group of three uniformed officers move toward the building, one of them holding a shield up to protect them, which—depending on what kind of arsenal Tommy could have inside the post office—could be about as worthwhile as holding an umbrella in a hurricane. They can’t know for certain that Tommy only has the one gun. They for sure don’t know that though he waves it around liberally and has fired it, he is, Sylvie is willing to bet, unsure about actually using it on a person. Not that anyone in the room is anxious to test that theory.
They need a negotiator, Sylvie thinks.A good one.She scans the collection of vehicles assembled. SWAT isn’t here yet. There’s nomobile command center either. So the negotiator is still to come. Sylvie scans the landscape, spotting a building farther away with its own parking lot. She squints and sees people out there and a lone cop car. She bets they’ll create the staging area right there, far enough to factor in concern for safety but close enough to monitor what’s going on.
She looks back to see that the uniforms have come to a stop and wonders what will happen next just as one of them speaks into a walkie-talkie, then nods at another one. That one raises a bullhorn and yells into it, “Thomas Clayton Harrell, come out with your hands up!” All eyes turn to Tommy, who screeches in response.
He points at the men outside, armed with their shield and their bullhorn. “They know my name!” he says. “How do they know my name?”
Beside him, Nadine rolls her eyes and answers, “Stacy and Martha told them, stupid.”
Sylvie thinks it is not a good time to be calling Tommy “stupid,” but she doesn’t say so. He seems to take the insult in stride, too preoccupied with the policemen calling his name while ignoring entirely their command for him to surrender. His eyes are wild, rolling from the cops to the women around him to the barricade he constructed, keeping all the cops out but also keeping all of them in. Sylvie imagines he regrets that barricade now. She imagines he regrets ever coming back in here in the first place. It is funny, she thinks, the way your life can get away from you.
When they get no response, the three officers advance again, this time toward the main door. Sylvie thinks,Who’s in charge here? Who is authorizing this?even as the officers enter the building. The hostages and their captor watch the duckwalk advancement the policemen make, then their pause when they see thebarricade. Sylvie sees one officer peering over the shield, attempting to count heads inside the post office.
She is watching him assess the situation, trying to determine what his next move will be, so her attention is elsewhere when Tommy grabs Nadine and puts a gun to her head. Nadine starts to cry as Sylvie’s heart rate hikes up to an unnatural high. It is not good for an old woman to be in a crisis like this. Not good at all. She wonders how many years of her life this situation could potentially be subtracting. For the first time she wonders if she will make it out of this. She came here to mail an envelope, not to die.
She lets herself have this one, scary thought and then decides,No. This is ridiculous.She hasn’t met her match in Tommy Harrell. She did not come to this post office to die, and neither did these other women. They need a negotiator outside—she prays one is coming—but she can do her part from inside. She can use what she knows.
On the other side of the glass, the cops acquiesce to Tommy’s unspoken demand and resume their duckwalk, but backward this time, their hands, or whatever free hands they can manage, raised as they retreat.
“They’re gone, Tommy,” Sylvie says to him, working to keep her voice low and measured. She needs to sit down again, needs to get back to the stool, but first she needs to make sure Tommy is going to lower the gun and let Nadine go. “It’s okay now,” she says, hearing the ridiculousness of her words as they leave her mouth. Because clearly it is not okay.
Tommy looks over at her, his eyes wide with fear. She nods slowly and sees his head begin to nod along with hers. They all exhale as he lets go of Nadine and tucks the gun back into his waistband. “They were coming in here!” he says, as if that is a good explanation for threatening Nadine’s life. He sounds like apetulant child, pointing the finger of blame at anyone but himself. But now is not the time to tell him this.
Instead, she says, “I understand,” and makes a little shooing motion to the group to indicate that they should go back to whatever they were doing, which is nothing at all except waiting for this siege to end.
Chapter 15
After the cops exit the building, Tommy’s paranoia intensifies. “Bastards!” he screams at the window that looks into the now empty vestibule. It is so loud that the hostages all jump. But Tommy doesn’t notice. He just continues his tirade, moving away from the bank of windows at the front of the room toward the back of the room near the counter, gesturing at the windows like they did something wrong.
“I can’t look out those windows now ’cause some trigger-happy cop might decide to shoot me dead,” he says. He peers at the scene outside with a scowl. “They’re too close to the building. They’re going to keep trying to get in here. I need them to move away.”
He isn’t, Nadine knows, so much angry as he is scared. She’s seen that look before. Tommy greets nearly every situation in life with anger. Sad? Get angry. Feeling vulnerable? Get angry. Bad weather? Get angry. Car won’t start? Get angry. His anger—and his drinking, which lately seems to come with the anger—is basically why they are all trapped in this room.
