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isolation, shifting easily to avoid contact with others, always keeping a
distance.
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Except for Dulcie. Dulcie could touch him; for Dulcie he would bend his
straight spine and dip his head to hear her childish rambles. For Dulcie he
would walk through a hundred and more admirers, politely acknowledging their
appreciative remarks after the game was won, until he was standing in front of
Dulcie, looking down into her dancing, worshipful eyes with something very
near a smile on his face.
God almighty, Ana mused. What the hell has that boy been through, to turn him
into what he is now?
Chapter Twelve
You are all law enforcement professionals. You have all been trained in what
to do in a hostage situation. You talk, right? Sure, you're also finding out
the shape of the building where the people are being held, who the hostages
and their takers are, what weapons are involved, all that. However, you also
have to know what the beef involves--if it's terrorism, well, that's something
very different from a kidnapping for ransom gone bad, and still farther from a
dispute over custody of the kids or a guy who lost his job, his wife, and his
car all in the same week. And the only way of finding this out, while you're
also trying to let the situation come off the boil, is to let the people talk.
But what if you're not speaking the same language? We've all heard the
stories about cops who have pulled over an erratic driver who didn't speak
English and couldn't understand the order to "Get out of the car, sir" and
reached into the glove compartment and got shot. A terrible accident, maybe;
the cop had no choice but to suspect the driver was going for a gun. Of
course, the truth of the matter is, it probably never happened, it just makes
a great story. [laughter]
But you see what I'm saying? Sure, there are times when the only response is
the immediate one; but the great majority of times the situation can be
resolved peacefully, if only you have enough time, and if only you can find
the key to the situation.
A group of religious believers speaks a different language from the majority
of citizens. It sounds like English, but you will be making a real mistake if
you assume that it is. To take a fairly obvious example, when David Koresh
talked about "the lamb", he didn't mean what he ate for dinner; he meant
"Jesus Christ, Lamb of God, who taketh away the sins of the world." What I
want to do today is give you some suggestions for dealing with a so-called
"cult" situation, in the early hours before the
Excerpts from the transcription of a lecture by Dr. Anne Waverly to the
Northern California Sheriffs' Association, January 16, 1992
It had become clear that nothing could be done, no decisions made concerning
Ana's presence until Steven returned. She could be given no permanent
position, nor even a room in the central compound, until he had approved her
sincerity. She wanted to work in the school, had come prepared for it, and
knew there was a need for the skills Ana Wakefield brought, but she had to
settle for drudgery in the kitchen and around the barn and buildings.
Two days after the basketball game, on Ana's fourth day at Change, she drove
into Sedona to order the switch for Rocinante's heater and to fill a shopping
list of incidentals that Amelia gave her. "Just a few odd things" nearly
filled the bus, and Ana could only be grateful she hadn't been asked to do a
week's shopping.
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She also mailed a packet of photocopied pages from her journal, sent a roll
of film off to a mail order film developer that was actually a branch of the
FBI, arranged at the post office to have general delivery mail forwarded to
Change, and finally wrote a note to the mail service in Boise to give them her
new address.
She had found it disconcertingly difficult to write in her journal about
Jason, knowing the attention Glen and others would devote to it. She was very
aware of how her unexpurgated reaction to the boy would sound: like some
strange, distasteful, even bizarre infatuation of a middle-aged woman for a
handsome young boy. Leaving him out entirely would have made for a suspicious
gap, but writing about him naturally, about an interesting young male person
the age of a grandson, was remarkably difficult.
In truth, though, Jason was interesting, even intriguing; the fact that she
was a woman on the brink of menopause did not negate who he was. Still, she
downplayed the intensity of her reaction to him, took care to include
descriptions of the other boys as well, and trusted that neither Glen and his
people nor any potential snoop sent by the Change community to look through
her things would notice the difference.
She took dinner in Sedona, in a quiet restaurant with white linen on the
tables. She had red meat and red wine, and two cups of dark coffee with her
dessert, then she drove back down the long, narrow, unlighted road to the [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]