Name Withheld : A J.p. Beaumont Mystery (9780061760907) (24 page)

One-handed, Bill Whitten lifted Grace Highsmith off the ground and shook her. “Shut up!” he ordered.

I understood at once what Ron was doing. By keeping Whitten's focus on him, he was hoping to give me an opportunity to fire off a shot. But I was too far away. There was no way I could hit
Whitten without running the risk of hitting Grace as well.

“Get out of the way,” Whitten said, as the two of them gained street level. “We're going to get in the car, and we're going to drive away. Otherwise, she dies.”

“Don't listen to him,” Grace said, finding her voice. “I don't matter. This man is evil. Don't let him get away with anything more.”

Ron moved his chair back, as if clearing a path for them to come up the stairs and walk past him. Just then, another car came up the street. This one wove around the haphazardly parked cars, momentarily leaving me fully exposed as a Mercedes station wagon loaded to the gills with a mother and several kids made its way past our little tableau.

And at just that moment, when any kind of change in the dynamics of the situation could have been most damaging to a carload of innocent children, Grace Highsmith took decisive action. At first, she seemed to slump over, as though she had fainted. Then, when Whitten looked down at her to see what was happening, she twisted around in his arms and kneed him in the groin.

With a startled gasp, he stumbled and seemed to fall forward, landing on Grace, who had dropped to her hands and knees in front of him. In the flurry of arms and legs, I realized that the gun had been knocked from his hand. At that point, Whitten was unarmed, but again, there
was no chance of getting off a clear shot or even any shot at all. Whitten leaned back and reached for the gun while Grace scuttled away from him. Meanwhile, Ron rolled forward with one hand outstretched and reaching to help. He caught Grace by the arm and somehow pulled her clear, dragging her with him by one hand while rolling backward with the other.

By then, Whitten had retrieved the gun. Before he had time enough to raise it or aim, I squeezed off a single shot. The bullet caught him in the left shoulder. It turned him around and sent him tumbling backward down the stairs. As I raced forward, hoping to fire again, Ron dragged Grace to relative safety behind the garage.

“Stop,” I yelled. “Stop or I'll shoot!”

Whitten's answer came in the form of a sharp report of gunfire. Suddenly, the light over the stairway was snuffed out, leveling the playing field, momentarily blinding everybody.

Dropping down on all fours, I wiggled up to the edge of the stairway and peered down. By the time my eyes had adjusted to the dark, Whitten had disappeared. When another shot rang out and sent a bullet whizzing over my head, it didn't come from the landing at the bottom of the stairs, from behind the woodpile, or even from the cover of the house. The report came from off to one side of the stairs, from a rocky, brush-covered bank ten feet or so from the shoulder of the road—from much the same area where Paul Kramer lay wounded.

“Get away from me,” Bill Whitten ordered. “You shoot me, Detective Beaumont, and this officer friend of yours is a dead man.”

Off in the distance, I could hear the sound of sirens. Ron Peters had done his job—both his jobs. Not only had he dragged Grace Highsmith to safety, he had also summoned help—the Kirkland cops. But from the sound of it, our backup patrol cars were just then starting down the ravine.

In a world where vest-piercing bullets can end a life in a heartbeat, Paul Kramer could be dead long before help arrived. In hostage situations, the idea, of course, is somehow to open up the lines of communication, to keep them talking.

“What do you want?” I asked.

Another bullet pinged off the top of the stairway, inches from my face. It wasn't the kind of answer I wanted, but it was, by God, an answer.

I
n those few brief moments, personalities disappeared. Kramer stopped being the jackass who had always rubbed me the wrong way. He was a cop in trouble. Like it or not, that gave him a claim on me—the responsibility of trying to save his damned hide.

The next thing I knew, someone was tapping me on the shoulder. I turned around to find Peters lying on the cold ground next to me. Using his powerful arms and dragging his legs, he had belly-crawled up beside me.

“Grace is okay,” he whispered.

Armed with his nine-millimeter Glock, Ron gestured for me to move off to the left. The unspoken plan was that while he created yet another diversion, I should try to get the drop on Whitten from some unexpected angle. Nodding,
I slipped away, leaving Ron Peters to be our mouthpiece.

“Look, Whitten,” he called down the bluff. “You're not going to get away with any of this. Listen to the sirens. More cops are on their way. Give up while you still can, before somebody else gets hurt.”

Ron's attempt at communication, like mine, was immediately met by a similar answer—another gunshot. The inevitable conclusion had to be that time for talking to Bill Whitten had ended some time ago.

Meanwhile, I scooted away, back toward the parking ledge with its two parked cars. Staying low, I crept along the shoulder of the road, following the edge of the bank. I tried to keep the noise to a minimum, but each time my feet scraped over a loose piece of gravel, the resulting crackle in my cringing ear sounded almost as loud as a clap of thunder.

Several days into a Pacific Northwest January, the early nighttime chill was cold as blue blazes. The pavement wasn't yet icy, but it would be by morning. With every move, sharp frigid edges of rocks and pieces of gravel bit painfully into my skin. My teeth chattered. The hand that held my gun shook convulsively, as much from cold as from fear. The Beretta in my frozen fingers felt as though it weighed ten pounds.

The first patrol car pulled up behind me. Its siren squawked and fell silent. Headlights and
flashers illuminated the whole world around me. The arrival of any kind of reinforcements should have been met with wild relief. That wasn't the case, not when I realized that I was stuck in the middle, in no-man's land. With armed cops on one side and with an armed crook on the other, I wondered how the newly arriving cops would ever manage to sort good guys from bad guys. How would they know who to help and who to shoot without someone—namely me—ending up hurt or dead?

I shouldn't have worried. Just then, another gunshot blasted away, kicking up a shower of gravel and sending the one newly arrived patrol officer scurrying back to his vehicle for cover. I was grateful when, a moment later, he doused the lights. In the dark again, I uttered another quick prayer—this time, thanking God that, whatever else Bill Whitten might be, he wasn't a very good shot.

A second patrol car arrived. The officer in it must have received some kind of radio transmission from the first one describing who was who and what was what. Getting out of his vehicle and staying low, he headed straight for Ron Peters. They talked for what seemed like several minutes, then the two Kirkland officers took up defensive positions. One settled in between Ron and the garage. The other one hunkered down in the shadows at the end of the garage.

“Did you hear that, Mr. Whitten?” Peters called, once our reinforcements were safely in
place. “More cops arrived just a minute ago and more are on their way. The police boat will be here soon as well. You're surrounded. There's not a chance in hell that you'll get away. Leave the officer alone, Mr. Whitten. Move away from him. Come up the stairs with your hands up. We'll see to it that you don't get hurt.”

By then, I had made my way as far as the berm at the end of the retaining wall. Slowly, ever so slowly, expecting another incoming shot at any moment, I raised myself up and peered over the side. Kramer was still there, lying in the same exact position as the last time I saw him. Bill Whitten, on the other hand, was nowhere in sight.

“Kramer,” I called. “Are you okay? Are you awake?”

“I'm awake. Whitten just went down to the house. You've got to get me out of here quick,” Kramer said in a hoarse whisper, “before that crazy bastard comes back.”

“Why did he do that?” I asked, peering down the hill where Grace Highsmith's house was shrouded in darkness.

“How the hell should I know? Just get me out of here.”

Kramer was right, of course. Moving him out of harm's way had to be the first priority. “Hey, somebody,” I yelled up to the others. “Over here. Ron, cover us. You other two guys, come help me. My partner's injured. I can't lift him by myself.”

Grasping the edge of the retaining wall, I lowered myself over the side. Even when I was fully extended, the bottoms of my feet were still a good four feet from the surface of the ledge. Dreading the price that four-foot drop would exact from the bone spurs on my heels, I dangled there for a moment before fear of being shot made me let go. I dropped down beside Kramer in a low crouch. Within seconds, the two uniformed Kirkland officers joined me.

“That leg looks real bad,” one of them observed. “Shouldn't we wait for the EMTs?”

“No, damn it!” Kramer grunted through gritted teeth. “He might come back. Get me out of here now! Just do what you have to do and get it over with.”

The thought was daunting. With the prospect of bullets flying at any moment, it wasn't simply a matter of moving a man with a broken leg. There were other injuries as well. Later, we would discover that in his tumble off the ten-foot ledge, Detective Kramer had broken six ribs in addition to damaging his leg. And at the time we were considering moving him, it seemed likely that he might have suffered neck or spinal injuries as well. With those, there's always the possibility that any kind of jarring or unprotected movement may lead to further injury—to paralysis even.

Moving him by hand, especially over such rough terrain, flew in the face of every grain of first-aid training I'd ever had drummed into my
thick skull. Yet, there was no choice. Cop instinct warned me that an armed standoff was coming. We couldn't very well leave Kramer lying exposed right in the middle of it. Besides, with the extent of his injuries in that terrible cold, it seemed likely that if a stray gunshot didn't get him, shock sure as hell would.

One of the patrol officers looked up at me. “What do we do?” he asked.

“We carry him out. From the sounds of those sirens, we don't have long. I'll take this side. You take the other,” I told the cop who had asked the question. “That leaves the legs for you,” I told the other.

Kramer's a big guy. With only three of us, lifting him was no easy task. He gasped when we first raised him off the ground, and he groaned again when we finally put him down. Other than that, he didn't make a sound. While we were carrying him up the steep stairs, I thought—hoped—that maybe he had passed out, but when we reached the far side of Grace Highsmith's garage and laid him down on the ground, I saw that wasn't the case. He was wide awake. His jaw was clenched shut while tears streamed down his face.

“Sorry about that,” I apologized. “I know it was rough.”

“It's okay,” he managed. “Thanks.”

Grace Highsmith appeared out of nowhere carrying a blanket. She covered the injured man,
then she disappeared into her garage. She emerged carrying a walking stick.

“We can use this to splint his leg,” she announced, moving purposefully toward Kramer. I could tell from the look of her that she was fully prepared to put word to action.

“No, Miss Highsmith,” I told her. “That won't be necessary. An aid car will be here soon.”

“An aid car,” she sniffed disapprovingly. “I've splinted legs before, you know. I'm perfectly capable, and I know how to do it.”

“I'm sure you do,” I told her. “And so do I, but how about if we leave that job to the professionals? Come on. We need to get you out of here.”

Grace shot me a withering glance. “I'm not going anywhere, Detective Beaumont. This man was injured on my property because he was trying to help me,” she said determinedly. “I'm not leaving until he does.”

By then, the street in both directions was rapidly filling with arriving emergency vehicles, although to the north there was still one lane open to allow vehicles to leave as needed. Giving up on the futile idea of arguing with Grace Highsmith, I walked over to where Ron was huddled with a group of uniformed Kirkland officers. When I arrived, he was briefing them on the situation—giving them the information they would need to pass along to the commander of the Emergency Response Team, who was due to arrive at any moment. The department's chief hos
tage negotiator had also been summoned.

“How many people do you think are down there besides the bad guy?” one of the Kirkland cops asked me.

“Just him as far as we know,” I answered, “but I'll go check.”

Getting up, I hurried back to where Grace Highsmith still hovered over Detective Kramer. “Is he alone?” I asked.

“Yes,” Grace answered, but Kramer shook his head.

“There must be two of them,” he said. “I was approaching the Lexus when the lights over the stairway switched on. I remember seeing Whitten on the stairs, and that's when something hit me from behind.”

I looked at Grace. “What did he want? Why did he come here in the first place?”

“My fax,” she said. “He came looking for the information Virginia Marks sent me. But I was smarter than that. I had hidden it, but I told him I didn't have it, that I had sent it somewhere for safekeeping. I asked him if he planned to kill me, too.”

“You asked him that?”

“Of course. He's a dangerous man, Detective Beaumont. Very unstable. Like a vicious dog. Father always taught us that you can't afford to back down with one of those. You should never show any fear, either. I believe, from something he said, that Virginia may have tried to blackmail him. That may have pushed him over the edge.”

“Blackmail? With what?”

“Detective Beaumont,” someone called from behind me. “The captain wants us to clear this area.”

Looking around, I realized that the unit commander of the Kirkland Emergency Response Team had taken control of the situation and was busily deploying personnel and weapons in what he viewed as the most strategic positions. Kramer, sheltered behind the garage, would need to stay where he was. Grace Highsmith wouldn't.

“Look, Miss Highsmith, you heard the officer. We've got to get out of here,” I warned her.

“No,” she replied. “I already told you I'm staying until the ambulance gets here and that's final. I'm eighty-three years old. If I get hit by a stray bullet, it's my choice. I'd much rather do that than shrivel away in some old people's home.”

“I give up,” I told her. “Suit yourself.” I turned back to the officer. “Leave her be,” I said. “She's waiting for the ambulance.”

“Okay,” he said dubiously. “But the captain isn't going to like it.”

“Have him come talk to her then.”

Just then, an arriving ambulance came threading its way toward us through the bottleneck of parked cars. Ron Peters and I, benched by the arrival of the locals, watched from the sidelines while the emergency medical technicians splinted Kramer's leg and loaded him onto a backboard. I think they also must have slipped him some kind of medication. By the time they were ready to
load him into the ambulance, he seemed to be in far less pain. When he saw me hanging around in the background, he grinned faintly and held out his hand.

“Don't think this makes us best buddies, Beaumont,” he said. “But thanks. Thanks a whole hell of a lot.”

“You're welcome, asshole,” I replied, squeezing his hand. “You'd do the same for me.”

Moments later, they loaded the gurney into the ambulance. When one of the EMTs turned away from the aid car after closing the two back doors, she was holding Grace Highsmith's blanket.

“We use our own blankets on the way to the hospital,” she explained. “Do you have any idea whose this is?”

“It belongs to Grace Highsmith,” I said. “She's around here somewhere. I'll see that it's returned to its proper owner.”

Taking the folded blanket, I looked around for Grace some more, but still didn't see her. Assuming that one of the local officers had finally succeeded in convincing her to move out of harm's way, I unfolded the blanket and draped it over my own chilled shoulders, then I walked up to the Buick where Ron Peters was in the process of loading his wheelchair.

“Come on, Chief Sitting Bull,” he said, glancing at me and my blanket. “The captain wants all nonessential people out of the immediate area. That includes you and me.”

“Did Grace Highsmith come up this way?” I asked.

“If she did, I didn't see her,” Peters replied. “But one of the uniformed officers just herded a whole group of people into the house next door. Maybe that's where she disappeared to.”

“You're probably right,” I said. But just then, something drew my eyes to the open door of Grace Highsmith's garage. I was startled to see a fat cloud of exhaust steam suddenly stream out of the back of Grace Highsmith's Cadillac and rise in the cold night air. At the same moment, a set of taillights flashed on.

“What the hell…?” I began.

Then the backup lights flashed on as well and the Caddy, belching clouds of steamy exhaust vapor, began backing out of the garage. I immediately assumed that Grace was at the wheel. My expectation was that she would back out to the right and then leave to the left, driving away in the single northbound lane that was still open to traffic—the one that ran past Ron and the Buick.

Instead, the Cadillac turned in exactly the opposite direction. Rather than driving
away
from the danger, the Caddy headed directly into it.