“I’m also sending you what intel we’ve gathered. It should show up on your phone any second. It’s a list of who we think the hostages are and the little bit of information about them I’ve gleaned from the license plates of the cars in the parking lot. There’s also some background on the suspect—name, age, criminal record—which I will say there isn’t much of.”
He pauses before continuing. Hope can tell he’s choosing his words. “The suspect is a local boy. Lived here most of his life. I know some of his people, in fact. He’s got no serious record prior to this—a ticket for public drunkenness, a ticket for speeding. Nothing out of the norm for a guy his age. Nothing that would indicate his doing something like this. So just keep that in mind. This isn’t some career criminal who’s known to be dangerous.”
“You didn’t see what he just did to those women,” she says. “They’re traumatized.”
“I’m not saying he’s not capable of violence—I haven’t met a human being who’s not if pushed to their limits. I’m just saying I don’t think this is something he set out to do.” Hank sneezes into the phone. Spring in Sunset means everything is blooming, which also means a lot of people are coughing, sniffling, and sneezing. You have to take the good with the bad, even in the happiest place in the world.
“Excuse me,” he apologizes, then continues. “What I was saying is, I bet he could benefit from talking to someone.” Hank pauses, the silence stretching out longer than Hope expects. “I’ll be honest with you. One of my guys had a clear shot at him earlier when he was standing in front of those windows, but I didn’t authorize it. I think this could be rectified peaceably. And I’d like it to be—” He sneezes a second time, excuses himself a second time, then adds, “With you.”
“Okay,” Hope says. She appreciates the vote of confidence. And yet she is rusty. Out of practice. She won’t say that aloud, though. She will fake it till she makes it. Or something like that.
“Okay, then,” he says. “I’ll be here, staying up on the latest with this county delay. But if you need me, just say the word and I can come over there.”
“I will,” she promises, even as she hopes she won’t need him. “I just have to get the conversation started.” She gives a little laugh, intended to put him at ease. “Maybe it’ll be resolved before the folks from county can even get here.”
Hank’s laugh sounds as forced as hers. “That would be nice.”
They say their goodbyes, and Hope ends the call wondering if he could hear the wobble in her voice. She wants Hank to think she’s got this whole situation in hand, but she suspects he knows that she’s uncertain and unprepared. Whatever happens today, she decides, it’s less about how she feels and more about what she does.
As soon as the information Hank sent pops up on her phone, she downloads it, scans it, then decides to try the access line he sent to see if it works.This is far from the technology she’s used to having at her disposal, but she has no other choice.
She listens to the unusual ring on the other end, but no one answers. Someone picking up on her first attempt would’vemade things easier. She doesn’t expect easy, but it would be nice. In her fantasy, she makes contact with the suspect, he surrenders, and the situation is in hand in record time. She knows this is not realistic. But very few fantasies are.
She hangs up and busies herself with reading the full report Hank has sent. It includes information about each hostage, including a best guess as to a contact number for each one. She feels certain that if the suspect hasn’t taken their phones yet, he will soon. She wonders if she should attempt to make contact with the hostages individually. If he won’t answer the post office line, perhaps one of them will respond to her calling them directly. It’s risky—it could set him off, take away his illusion of control if she goes around him to get to them. She thinks again of them holding those signs, trying to be brave. She wants to let them know she is here, working to free them.
Hope is sitting in Brower’s car with the air conditioner running, pondering her next move, when a car pulls in and parks beside her. It is an older Toyota Camry, dark green, and the driver sits hunched over the steering wheel like a teenager who has crammed himself into a toy car he has long ago outgrown. She watches as the man doesn’t so much exit the car as unfold himself out of it, his knees and elbows sharp angles he navigates around. He stands up, a tower of a man, and surveys the parking lot, his hawkish eyes hooded by bushy gray eyebrows that could use a trim.
Without introduction, she knows this is the man Hank mentioned, the retired FBI agent who has offered to assist. But what does assist mean to him? If he’s like a lot of men, it means to take over. And though Hope wouldn’t have chosen to be here, now that she is, she’s not excited about having someone else try to hijack her role.
She debates staying put in the car and not engaging with thisperson. She can’t help but feel that he is here to babysit her. That it was Hank who reached out tohim, asking him for his help, instead of the other way around as it was presented. With the team from county being delayed, Hank is likely relying on the only backup he can find. She wants him to think her capable of handling it on her own, but he must not. She both resents and accepts this fact.
The man takes a moment to survey the scene, turning in the direction of the post office. He stares at the building’s facade, the suspect’s battered truck, and the three cars still parked in front of it, the customers’ cars they thought they’d come right back to. Hope wonders what he’s thinking as he takes it all in.
When he looks over his shoulder, she waves to get his attention. “Are you... Bo?” she calls out.
He peers at her, his bushy eyebrows meeting in the middle, then starts walking in her direction. When he gets to her, he smiles, looking down at her with an expression that is a mixture of curiosity and magnanimity. “Yes,” he says. He reaches into his pocket and pulls out his wallet. “Would you like to see some identification?”
He goes to open the wallet, but Hope holds up her hands. “That won’t be necessary,” she says. “Hank vouched for you.”
He smiles down at her. “Okay, then,” he says and puts the wallet away.
She squints up at him, feeling like a child under his gaze. Perhaps it is because of his size, or perhaps it is because of his presence, at once authoritative and gentle. She feels herself relenting in spite of her misgivings about him being there. She is still worried he will be bossy or in the way. But he is here. She cannot change it, and there’s no use worrying about it. Not when there is work to be done.
He looks again at the post office. “What do we know aboutthis situation?” he asks, gesturing at the building. “Who’ve we got in there?”
She tells him what they’ve gathered about the hostages so far, reading aloud the information from her phone’s screen. “We’ve got a married, fifty-four-year-old mother of two named Morrow King. She lives on Shoreline Drive and has one child still living at home. Isn’t employed as far as we can tell.
“Next is a thirty-one-year-old woman named Blythe Howard. She waits tables at the Grapevine Restaurant in Calabash, lives in a home she inherited from her grandmother, and is recently engaged.
“Then we’ve got a seventy-four-year-old woman named Sylvie Lawson, who retired to the area several years ago with her husband, Robert. She lives in Ocean’s Path, that new retirement community.”
“They call them ‘active living’ communities now.” He gives her a little smirk. “It’s supposed to make us feel better.”
Hope smiles and continues. “Finally, there’s Nadine Harrell, wife of the suspect, who served him papers this morning for divorce, which I’m sure put all this in motion. There’s no concrete information about why they split up. Apparently she was pretty private with her coworkers about the whys and wherefores. And she hasn’t been working for the USPS for very long.”
“And what about the suspect?” he asks.
“His name is Thomas Harrell, goes by Tommy. Hank says he’s a local boy with nothing alarming on his record. Not known for violence or criminal behavior.”
