Wednesday night, when Lee Wolf had been in the council chamber in Weldonville and had heard the unmistakable sounds of a two-sided gunfight going on out in the hallway, he had looked at the floor and seen Joe Lambert for a second, trying to crawl with what looked like a dagger in his throat. Wolf and Lambert were the only former prisoners in the room. He knelt beside Lambert, his eyes flicking to the hostages and back to Lambert. He reached into Lambert’s pocket and took his car keys. He murmured, “You’re not going to be able to drive, Joe. Don’t worry, I’ll get you out of here.”

He stood and glared at the hostages. Should he try to shoot them all? No, that would just make him the emergency and direct the hostile gunfire toward himself. He looked at Lambert again. Should he try to lift him and drag him out? That would leave the hostages alone. But what could Lambert do against them anyway? The questions came in rapid succession, but there were no answers. Wolf couldn’t let himself be paralyzed by indecision. He had to move. He stepped to the door in the back of the council chamber. He could see now that it had the chipped and faded word “FIRE” painted on the wood. He turned the knob and, as though in a dream, it opened. He expected to see another shiny floor, or at least a wall, but the door led directly outside.

He reassured himself that he had not been running away. It was all that noise, the horror of seeing Lambert grotesquely wounded and crawling on the floor, the smell of gunfire. Outside it was cool and dark, the air was fresh, and the noises were far away and muted. It was as though Wolf had opened the door and fallen out.

When he found himself out there, the fire door was already closing. There was no doorknob on the outside, so he couldn’t have gone back in if he had wanted to. He thought of the next best move, which was to run around to the front of the building and kill the woman from behind to protect the others. When he told the others about it, he said he had gone around and found it locked, but actually he hadn’t been able to make his feet move in that direction. He said the front doors were locked from the inside, that maybe the old cop had done it before he died, or maybe the big blond woman. Either way, he told them, there was no getting in that entrance.