Dead Lock (2 page)

The woman’s hands were pinned against her body, but it was obvious that she was trying to signal someone, anyone, with her fingers. Downward and out of Valvano’s view she was pointing toward her left hand with her right index finger. With her left fist clenched, she extended each of three fingers, one at a time, in a one-two-three counting motion.

God, that woman has balls
.

Hatfield moved the scope back to the woman’s face. She had every right to be terrified, most people would be. But instead of fear her eyes burned with defiance. If she could make someone understand, she was going to hit the ground on the count of three.

“Captain!” Hatfield fought to get Banner’s attention. The captain was busy calling back and forth to the gunman on the porch, still trying to stall, to negotiate. Something. Anything.

“Captain Banner!” Banner finally swung around.

“Captain, have one of your men shine a spotlight on me. I want the two inside the house to see me.”

Banner hesitated, then looked at his watch. Three minutes had already gone by since Valvano’s threat to kill the woman and himself.

“Captain. Please. It’s important.”

Banner gave the order and a police sergeant swung the spotlight from one of the cars backwards to illuminate Hatfield behind the tree. At the sight of the sniper, Valvano seemed to pull the woman even closer, his pistol pressed to her temple.

“Your sniper doesn’t scare me,” Valvano called out. “He misses and she’s dead. His bullet or mine.”

Hatfield had to be sure the woman knew he understood her signal. Holding the M1 against the tree trunk, he raised and lowered the barrel slowly three times.

Then he called: “Okay, lights out.”

3

Back in the scope, Hatfield watched the woman’s eyes and saw by the way she looked straight at him that she had understood. He lowered the scope to look at her hands . . . but they weren’t moving.

What the hell was she waiting for?

Raising the scope again, he saw. The gunman had tightened his grip around the woman’s head and neck; there was no way for her to get loose enough to drop.

Now her lips were moving. She said something, perhaps asking him to loosen his hold, because that’s what he seemed to do as she let out a breath. Her eyes dropped to her hands once again. Hatfield lowered his scope. She was ready.

One
. Her left index finger shot out.

Two
. The middle finger came out and Hatfield raised the scope of his rifle back up to head level. He knew there would be just one chance.

One shot.

With the woman’s face now filling his scope, Hatfield couldn’t see her finger signals. But on what surely would have been the count of three her head dropped from the frame, exposing the silhouette of Valvano’s face for an instant before he moved to raise her up.

Not quickly enough.

Traveling at 2,837 feet per second, the M1’s .30-06 slug tore through the screen and the right side of Valvano’s scalp. His head disappearing in a cloud of red mist as his body slammed backward into the room. Regaining her balance the woman stood with her back to the screen door, glaring down at her would-be-killer and shaking her fist.

God, that woman has balls
.

4

If you’re wondering where the woman on the porch got the guts to act so bravely, I don’t blame you.

I lay in bed later that evening wondering the same thing.

I rolled over and reached into the drawer of my bed stand and retrieved an envelope with its carefully folded paper inside. I read the printed message for what must have been the one-thousandth time:

Mr. and Mrs. Ronald Strickland request your presence

at the wedding of their son Ronald Jr. to

Kate Brennan,

daughter of the late Harold “Buck” and Margaret Brennan
.

Ronny and I had picked the perfect date for our wedding: Valentine’s Day fell on a Saturday in 1942. But it never happened. World War II got in the way.

Ron enlisted in the Navy the day after Pearl Harbor, a cloudy, snowy Monday in December. He got to stay home for Christmas, a time I’ll remember forever, because it was our last together. Ron shipped out for the Great Lakes Naval Station on January 2, 1942, a cold, dark day. But not as dark as June 5, when word came that Ronny had been killed at Midway. Three Japanese Val dive bombers had penetrated the defenses of the
Yorktown
. Shells hit the first plane and it spun out of control. But not before it released a bomb that hit the carrier on the starboard side, blasting a 10-foot wide hole in the flight deck and killing Ronny and his shipmates who were manning the two anti-aircraft guns nearby.

The Battle of Midway was hailed as a great U.S. victory. The Japs lost four of their fleet carriers; but I lost Ronny. I cried every day for weeks. There’s still an emptiness that surfaces when I pass one of the places we frequented, or hear a joke I know would have made Ronny laugh.

The healing process went much too slowly. In time, I got past Ronny’s death, but I know I’ll never get over it. The emotional wound, worse by far than any physical blow I’d ever suffered, left me with a scar that brought a new outlook on life. Things that once seemed terribly important aren’t quite so vital. Events that once would have terrified me aren’t so frightening.

I think that’s what saved my life tonight.

5

The next morning

The war in Europe and North Africa was progressing fairly well, and we were taking it to the Krauts. The front page of the
Detroit Times
would report later today that nearly 700 RAF and RCAF bombers had reached the Ruhr steel center at Muelheim for the first time since 1940.

But here in the U.S.A., I found myself embroiled in a war of my own.

“Get lost Kate.”

Wells Mayburn, Editor, took a deep drag from the Pall Mall in his meaty fingers and blew a stream of white smoke into the air. “I mean it; you’ve got to get out of the city. Hide out for a couple weeks.”
Detroit Times
Managing

It was eleven hours since I’d come within a gunman’s heartbeat of taking a bullet in my brain and my boss Wells Mayburn was laying it on the line. Police Inspector Charles McKinley and I were in Wells’ cluttered, smoke-filled office at the
Detroit Times
Building. We had gathered around Mayburn’s conference table, but no one sat.

I took a pull from the Chesterfield I held in my hand. I’d quit smoking a couple of years after college, but started again after Ron was killed.

“I can’t leave now, Wells,” I said. “I’m days from cracking this counterfeiting ring wide open.”

Okay, so I exaggerated. I’d been writing a series of front-page stories covering a ring of gasoline ration stamp counterfeiters. With the war on gasoline was sold practically a teaspoon at a time and stamps were gold. I hadn’t busted the ring yet, but I felt close.

Mayburn knew that convincing me to leave town would be a tough sell. He took another drag and ran a thick hand through thinning black hair. “I know you’re hot on their trail, Kate. Problem is: so do they.”

“Look, Miss Brennan...” Inspector McKinley stepped up for a turn at bat. At an even six feet, he stood a few inches taller than me, and sported a full head of snowy white hair. “There are more Valvanos out there. You may not be lucky next time.”

“Lucky, huh?” My eyes burned with a combination of anger and cigarette smoke. “You think it was luck that I kicked that bastard in the crotch when he surprised me inside my house? That I ducked to give your sniper a clear shot at his head? Why, if it weren’t for me your cops would still be standing around in front of my house picking their noses.”

The Inspector shot a look at Mayburn, who simply shrugged his shoulders. My attitude didn’t surprise the man who’d been my editor for nearly three years.

The Inspector leaned forward, hands tightly gripping the wooden back of a chair, eyes squinting at me across the table. “I don’t deny your bravery last night, Miss Brennan. But next time there might not be a chance to be brave. Their hired killer might just shoot from across the street, or come up behind you. You don’t have eyes in the back of your head, do you?”

I stared him down. Realizing I wasn’t going to budge, the Inspector went on. “Why don’t you just tell us what you know and let us handle this?”

Mayburn winced, anticipating my response.

“My information,” I said through tightly pursed lips, “is from sources who won’t talk to you. I got it because they trusted me. Trusted I wouldn’t turn them in or turn their names over to you. I’m not selling them out because some punk held a gun to my head. And I’m sure as hell not running away.”

The Inspector threw his hands in the air, looking toward Mayburn. “You reason with her. I’m done. And I won’t spend one damned cent of taxpayer money guarding a woman who’s too stubborn, or too stupid to stay out of harm’s way. She walks out of here, she’ll be in the morgue in two days.”

He had finally worn Wells down. “Kate, I’m taking you off the assignment.”

I turned, ready to give him both barrels, but he held up a hand. “Temporarily,” he said. “Your life is more important than any newspaper story. Go away for a few weeks; hide out somewhere. Give the Inspector time to work on the information you’ve published so far...and anything else you can give him without divulging your sources.”

“And after that?”

“You come back. We see what the situation is and we talk about continuing the series.”

I looked back and forth from Mayburn to Inspector McKinley. “What happens if the police get lucky? What if they crack the ring while I’m out of town?”

McKinley started to open his mouth, but Wells spoke first. “Inspector McKinley, if your people make arrests based on information Miss Brennan gives you, will you guarantee her first access to your arresting officers and any facts they can provide?”

McKinley’s face still glowed red. “I won’t guarantee any such thing.”

Wells decided on a detour. “Inspector, how long has this ring been counterfeiting gasoline stamps?”

McKinley cleared his throat. “They’ve been active for nine months. . . more or less.”

“And outside of the information published in Miss Brennan’s stories in the Detroit Times, are you any closer to proving who’s behind this counterfeiting than you were nine months ago?”

The Police Inspector did a slow burn as Wells went on. “If Miss Brennan helps you crack a case you’ve been working on for that long, doesn’t she deserve some consideration?”

The Inspector let out a deep breath. “All right, all right. But she’d better give us some damn good information, or it’s no deal.”

I held the Inspector’s eye for a long moment before speaking. “You’ll get great information, Inspector. Just make damn sure your people don’t screw it up.”

6

It’s hard as hell to say you’re wrong when you know you’re right. But I swallowed hard and bowed to Wells Mayburn’s request that I leave Detroit.

I could have stayed in spite of Wells, tracking down the leaders of the counterfeiting ring and blowing the lid off with a series of articles unmasking the bastards. I’d like to have seen Wells refuse to publish them. Why, they would have beaten the hell out of the war news on page one; that is unless we had another Midway -- or God help us -- another Pearl Harbor.

Much as I hated to admit it, a little time off might do me some good. I had been working the counterfeiting story for a solid nine months, trailing bad rationing stamps from the gasoline stations that accepted them to the printers who turned them out. I even got a few printing operations shut down. But the really bad guys, the ringleaders, just moved on to another press.

Maybe I’d gotten stale; I’d certainly gotten careless. Forgetting to lock the door had let that punk Valvano sneak into my house. It turned out to be a close call, closer than I wanted to admit to Mayburn or McKinley.

Picking a location for my self-imposed “time out” presented no problem. My bank account wouldn’t support me for long but my uncle could. G. P. Brennan owned the
Soo Morning News
in Sault Ste. Marie, Michigan, the town people simply called the “Soo”. I’d spent my senior year of high school in the Soo and G.P. had promised me a job if I ever decided to move back. But I always felt too attracted to Detroit to return to Sault Ste. Marie for more than a week or two each summer. I’d miss the noisy factories and the quiet afternoons on Belle Isle. I’d miss Hamtramck and its Polish restaurants with their pirogues and kielbasa. I’d miss the nightlife of Greektown; and Black Bottom, the center of Detroit’s Negro community, with its special blend of soul food and hot jazz. As much as anything, I’d miss those marvelous Sunday mornings pouring through fresh fruits and vegetables at Eastern Market after church.

But the time had come to leave, at least for now. After the meeting in Wells’ office I went home, loaded a couple of suitcases and my German Shepherd Mick into my thirty-seven Ford and hit the road.

7

Thanks to President Roosevelt’s thirty-five mile-per-hour speed limit, it took two days just to get to the northern part of Michigan’s Lower Peninsula. (I admit I had the speedometer close to fifty-five or sixty between towns.)

Fortunately, Wells had come up with some extra gasoline ration stamps from the
Times’
supply.

Mick and I spent our second night on the road just below the Straits of Mackinac. I rented a small cabin, one of a group huddled together with a tiny lake out back and a patch of gravel they called a parking lot in front. The bed felt comfortable though and the shower steamed good and hot in the morning.