The Baby's Name Is Kerry
by MaryAnne Kolton
Right
now, balanced against the right front side of an APC, eyes focused on a
curtained front window in a first floor apartment, Siobhan McEaney could feel
the thrum of adrenaline in her gut. She
wiped the sweat from her face and leaned into her Sig Sauer 516 aimed at the
window. Some dumb ass, named Chris Stett,
had barricaded himself in the apartment with his wife and child.
Her unit attempted to pick him up on an
outstanding warrant, prompted by an incident at a local bus stop two weeks
ago. Stett flashed a knife at a senior
citizen and told her he’d cut her when she tried to board the bus before he
did. When they assembled this morning, a
neighbor assured them he was in the apartment, but so were his wife and
daughter.
It looked as if Joe Stickley, “Styx ”, the soft-spoken negotiator, had finally gotten
Stett to respond to the pleas that he let his wife and daughter come out. It had taken more than two hours of loud
hailer persuasion, but the door was easing open. The woman slipped through, running toward
them, screaming and waving her arms.
“He’s got the baby! He wouldn’t give her to me. He’s still got the baby.” She crumpled to the ground in front of
Siobhan. A local cop hustled the mother
into the APC.
“He said to tell you he’d slit her throat if
you try to come in.” The mother sobbed
and clutched at the officer. “Please do
something!”
The team leader fired questions at
her, eyes screwed to her face as she answered. “How old is your daughter? Where is your husband in the house? What kind of a knife does he have? Does he have any guns in there? Any one else beside the child with him?” Once they established the location of the
father – the right rear of the first floor living room, the ten-month-old child
with him - and the fact that the wife had never seen any guns in the house,
they began to forge a plan.
The
husband was off his meds and high on something, the mother wasn’t sure what,
and second, there was a baby to consider.
The child’s presence meant no use of less lethal control tactics. No gas, no pepper spray, no rubber bullets or
beanbag rounds. Chris Stett was not
answering the phone. So, for now, it was
going to be up to Styx to keep trying to talk
him out.
Siobhan could hear Styx ’s
continued appeals to the man to come out, but her eyes remained glued on the front
window. She didn’t even bother to ask
herself what kind of father holds his child hostage. She knew the answer to that one. But something was chafing at her. She
glanced for a millisecond at the entryway: roof over small concrete pad, closed
front door. At that same moment, she
glimpsed movement at the window.
Stett must have started to move the curtain
aside then changed his mind. The motion
at the window ceased.
The
negotiator went back at the father again. He’d been trying to find some way to get to
him for almost four hours now.
“Chris,
we’re not going anywhere. This place is
surrounded and you got no place to go.
That little girl is your daughter.
None of us want any harm to come to her.
You know you love her, so lay the baby on the floor and come on out the
front door. No one will hurt you. I can promise you that.”
Six minutes passed. Siobhan was half expecting the command to
enter the house and take the guy down.
Without
preamble, the front door flew open.
Chris Stett was standing just inside, an idiotic grin on his face. His left hand grasped his daughter’s
waist. He held her upright in front of
his chest. She was crying, arms and legs
moving all over the place, wearing only a diaper.
The
father adjusted the child in his arm. With
no time to react, Siobhan and the rest of the team watched him snatch a gun
from the back of her diaper, raise it to the right side of his head and pull
the trigger.
She
did not breathe as she watched the baby fall, head first, from Chris Stett’s arm
toward the concrete.
No comments:
Post a Comment