Trial by Fury (9780061754715) (17 page)

I
t took exactly thirteen minutes to drive from Ballard Community Hospital to Thirtieth Avenue South and South Graham. Nobody stopped me for speeding. That's always the way. Where are all the traffic cops when you need one?

Had one pulled me over, I would have sent word to the department for help. As it was, I decided to go to the Scarborough house first, try to get some idea of the lay of the land, and then call the department for a backup.

Driving east after crossing Beacon Avenue, I spotted a small Mom-and-Pop grocery store with a pay phone hanging beside the ice machine outside. I figured I'd come back there to use the phone as soon as I knew what was coming down.

As plans go, it wasn't bad. Things just didn't work out that way.

At Graham and Thirtieth South, a towering electrical transmission line dissects Beacon Hill and cuts a huge green north and south swath through the city. The Scarborough address in the phone book was 6511 Thirtieth Avenue South.

The seriousness of my miscalculation became apparent the moment I saw the house. North of Graham, Thirtieth was a regular street with houses on one side facing the wide clearing under the power lines. On the south side, though, the 6500 block dead-ended in front of the only house on the block, 651—the Scarborough house.

So much for sneaking around. So much for subtlety. Guard red Porsches are pretty goddamned hard to camouflage on dead-end streets when there's only one house on the block and the rest is nothing but wide-open spaces.

Instead of turning right onto Thirtieth, I hung a left and drove north, ditching the Porsche three houses north of Graham behind a vagrant pickup truck sitting on jacks. I figured I had a better chance of getting close to the house unobserved if I moved on foot rather than in the car. All I needed to do was get close enough to have some idea of what was going on.
There wasn't much cover, even for someone on foot. The Beacon Hill transmission line was built in the twenties and thirties to bring power from the Skagit Valley power plants into the city. The right-of-way was purchased from farmers along the route. Later, the city grew up around the power line.

Directly under and for twenty-five or thirty yards on either side of the long line of metal towers, emerald green grass sprang to life. It looked as though the power line had driven every other living thing but the grass out of its path.

Here and there, looking down the line, a few houses remained, almost on the right-of-way itself. These were mostly remnants of the original farmhouses, most of them still occupied and still in good repair.

The Scarborough house was one of those, a sleepy-looking relic from another era with a steeply pitched gray roof and a graceful white porch that stretched across the entire front of the house. Two matching bay windows, opening onto the porch, were carefully curtained so no one could see inside. To the right of the walkway leading up to the house stood a “For Sale” sign with a “Sold” sticker stuck across it.

I returned to Graham. Attempting to look casual, I sauntered east, hoping for a wider view of the house as it dropped behind me. A
short distance up the street was a bus stop. I stopped under the sign and turned to look behind me.

I was far enough away that, for the first time, I could see the south side of the house. Parked next to it, almost totally concealed from the street, was the corner of a school bus. A van actually. A yellow team van.

As I stood watching, the front door swung open. Candace Wynn stepped outside, carrying a suitcase in either hand. With brisk, purposeful steps, she moved to the bus, opened a side door, and placed the suitcases inside.

Watching her, I had moved unconsciously into the middle of the street, drawn like a metal chip toward a powerful magnet. Too late I realized she was moving toward the door on the driver's side of the van. She vaulted into the driver's seat and slammed the door behind her. I heard the engine start and saw the backup lights come on.

Suddenly, behind me, squealing brakes and a blaring horn brought me to my senses as a car skidded to a stop a few feet from me. I scrambled out of the way only to dash into the path of another car. Blind to everything but the moving bus. I charged toward it.

It was only when the bus backed out and swung around to turn toward the street that I saw Candace Wynn wasn't alone in the vehicle. Peters sat slumped on the rider's side, his
head slack and drooping against the window.

“Stop! Police!” I shouted, drawing my .38 from its shoulder holster. I saw Candace glance across Peters in my direction. Our eyes met briefly across the narrowing distance in a flash of recognition. She saw me, heard me, recognized me, but she didn't stop. She didn't even pause. Instead, the van leaped forward like a startled rabbit as she hit the accelerator. I saw, rather than heard, the side of Peters' head smack against the window.

What's the matter with him, I wondered. Is he asleep? Why doesn't he do something? “Peters!” I shouted, but there was no response.

I ran straight down Graham toward Thirtieth, hoping to intercept the van where the two streets met. As I charged forward, Candace must have read my mind. As she approached the intersection, she gave the steering wheel a sharp turn to the left. The van shuddered and arched off the rutted roadway, tottering clumsily onto the grass.

Good, I thought. She's losing it. But she didn't. Somehow she regained control. The van pulled onto Graham, skidding and sliding, a good ten feet in front of me. She gunned the motor and headed west. I put on one final burst of speed, but it was too little too late.

The Porsche, three houses up the street behind me, was too far away to be of any use. There was only one chance.

The drawn .38 was in my hand. I was tempted to use it. God was I tempted. But just then, just as I was ready to squeeze the trigger, another car met the van on the street. It was a station wagon loaded with people, two women with a bunch of kids.

I couldn't risk it, not even for Peters. I couldn't risk hitting a tire and sending the van spinning out of control to crash into innocent bystanders.

A second car stopped behind me with a screech of brakes. Horns blared. One driver rolled down his window. “What the hell's going on here?”

I rammed the .38 back into its holster and turned to race toward the Porsche in the same motion only to stumble over a little black kid on a tiny bicycle who had pedaled, unnoticed, up behind me.

“Hey, man, you a cop?” he demanded.

I sidestepped him without knocking him down and ran up the street with the kid trailing behind. When I reached the Porsche, I struggled to unlock the door, unable to fit the key in the lock.

“Hey, man,” the kid repeated. “I axed if you was a cop. How come you don't answer me?”

Finally, the key slipped home. I glanced at the kid as I flung the door open. He wasn't more than five or six years old.

“Yes, I am,” I answered. I fumbled in my
pocket, located a loose business card with my name on it, and tossed it to him. Deftly, he plucked it out of the air.

“Do you know how to dial 9—1—1?” I asked.

He nodded, his black eyes huge and serious. “Sure;”

“Call them,” I ordered. “Tell them there's trouble. Serious trouble. I need help. My name's on that card.”

The Porsche's engine roared to life. I wheeled the car around and drove into the confusion of cars still stopped to sort out the excitement. As I swung onto Graham, the boy was hightailing it up the street on his bicycle, pumping furiously.

I'd have given anything for flashing lights about then, or for a siren that would have forced people out of my way. As it was, I had to make do with the horn, laying into it at every intersection, raging up behind people and sweeping them off the road in front of me.

As I fishtailed around a stopped car at the Beacon Avenue intersection, I caught sight of the lumbering van. It was far too unwieldy for the sports car rally speed and terrain. Half a mile ahead, it skidded into the wrong lane, around a sharp curve. I don't know how she did it, but Candace Wynn dragged it back onto the road. She could drive like hell, damn her.

As she disappeared behind the hill, I
slammed the gas pedal to the floorboard and the Porsche shot forward. I was gaining on her. No way the van would be a match for my Porsche. No way.

I raced down Graham, swooping around the curve, over the top of the hill, and down the other side, with its second sharp curve. The traffic light at the bottom of the hill turned red as I approached. Despite my frenzied honking, cars on Swift Avenue moved sedately into the intersection.

One disinterested driver glanced in my direction as I tried to wave him out of my way. Another, a semidriver, flipped me a bird. I finally moved into the intersection all right, but only when my light turned green.

While I was stopped, I had looked up and down Swift, searching for her, but I saw no sign of the van. There was only one other direction she could go at that intersection, only one other choice—onto the freeway, heading north.

I shot across Swift and sliced down the on ramp. Far ahead, a glimpse of yellow school van disappeared around yet another curve, swerving frantically in and out of the otherwise leisurely flow of homeward-bound Sunday afternoon traffic.

I dodged from one lane to another. Where the hell was she going? Why did she have Peters in the car with her? My heart thumped in
my throat as we came up the straightaway by the Rainier Brewery. I was closing on her fast, looking for ways I could cut her off, force her to the side of the road.

Just north of the brewery, I was right behind her, honking and motioning for her to pull over. Suddenly, without warning, she veered sharply to the right. With a crash of crumbling metal, the van smashed through the temporary guardrail on a closed exit ramp and bounced crazily over a railroad tie barrier.

I skidded to the shoulder. I couldn't follow her in the Porsche. It never would have cleared the railroad tie. Throwing myself out of the car, I tumbled over the shattered remains of the guardrail and raced up the ramp on foot.

Nobody clocked me, but I was moving, running like my life depended on it, wrestling the .38 out of its holster as I went. I knew how that exit ended. In a cliff. A sheer drop from thirty feet in the air over Airport Way.

I topped the rise. She must have thought the exit was one of the almost completed ones that would have swung her back onto Beacon Hill. At the last moment, she tried to stop. I saw the flash of brake lights, but it was too late. She was going too fast.

The van skidded crazily and then rammed into the two Jersey barriers, movable concrete barricades, at the end of the ramp.

I stopped in my tracks and watched in horror. For the smallest fraction of a second, I thought the barrier would hold. It didn't. The two pieces split apart like a breaking dam and fell away. Carried forward by momentum, the van nosed up for a split second, then disappeared from view.

An eternity passed before I heard the shattering crash as it hit the ground below. Riveted to the ground, frozen by disbelief, I heard a keening horn, the chilling sound of someone impaled on a steering wheel.

Sickened and desperate, I turned and ran back the way I had come. Within seconds, the wailing horn was joined by the faint sounds of approaching sirens. I recognized them at once. Medic One. The sirens did more than just clear traffic out of the way. They said help was coming. They said there was a chance.

“Hurry,” I prayed under my breath. “Please hurry.”

As I reached the Porsche, I saw two squad cars speeding south on the freeway, blue lights flashing. The boy on the bicycle had made the call. They were coming to help me.

Nice going, guys!

I
t took three illegal turns to get off the freeway and reach the area on Airport Way where the Van had fallen to earth. By the time I got there, someone had mercifully silenced the horn.

Naturally, a crowd had gathered, the usual bloodthirsty common citizens who don't get enough blood and gore on television, who have to come glimpse whatever grisly sight may be available, to see who's dead and who's dying. Revolted, I pushed my way through them. An uncommonly fat woman in a bloodied flowered muumuu with a plastic orchid lei around her neck sat weeping on a curb. I bent over her, checking to make sure she was all right.

“Look at my car,” she sobbed. “That thing fell out of the sky right on me. My poor car! I
could have been killed. If someone had been in the backseat…”

I looked where she pointed. A few feet from the van sat the pretty much intact front end of an old Cadillac Seville. The rear end of the car, from the backseat on, had been smashed flat. All that remained behind the front door was a totally unrecognizable pile of rubble.

A few feet away lay the battered van, surrounded by hunks of shattered concrete. The van's engine had been shoved back to the second seat. It lay on its side like a stricken horse with a troop of medics and firemen scurrying around it.

My knees went weak. I felt sick to my stomach. The sweet stench of cooking grain from the brewery mixed with the odor of leaking gasoline and the metallic smell of blood. The concoction filled my nostrils, accelerating my heartbeat, triggering my gag reflex.

I attempted to stand up, hoping to get away from the smell and to escape the lady in the flowered dress, but she grabbed onto my arms, pulling herself up along with me. Once we were both upright, she clung to me desperately, repeating the same words over and over, as if repetition would make sense of the incomprehensible.

“It just fell out of the air. Can you imagine? It landed right on top of me.”

Prying her fingers loose one by one, I broke
away from her. “You stay here,” I told her. “I'll send someone to check on you.” I walked toward the wreck. A uniformed officer recognized me and waved me past a police barricade.

Just then a second Medic One unit arrived at the scene. A pair of medics hurried to the woman's side. I turned my full attention on the van.

Paramedics, inside and outside the vehicle, struggled to position their equipment, trying to reach the injured occupants of the van. I knew from experience that their job would be to stabilize the patients before any attempt was made to remove them from the vehicle, place them in ambulances, and transport them to hospitals.

Standing a little to one side, I waited. I didn't want to be part of the official entourage. I didn't want to ask or answer any questions. I was there as a person, a friend, not as a detective. The less anyone was aware of my presence, the better.

Dimly, I observed the gathering of reporters who showed up and demanded to know what was going on. Who was in the van? What school was it from? How had it happened? Were there any children involved?

Not directly, I thought. Only Heather and Tracie, whose father lay trapped in that twisted mass of metal. I thought of them then
for the first time, of two girls waiting at home for me to bring them word of their father.

A paramedic crawled out of the vehicle and walked toward the lieutenant who was directing the rescue effort. In answer to the captain's question, the paramedic shook his head.

Dreading to hear the words and yet unable to stay away, I moved close enough to overhear what they were saying despite the roar of nearby fire truck engines.

“She's gone,” the paramedic said. “What about the guy?”

“Lost a lot of blood,” the lieutenant answered. “I don't know if we'll get him out in time or not.”

I dropped back out of earshot, trying to make myself small and inconspicuous. I didn't want to hear more. The paramedic's words had confirmed my own worst fears. They didn't think Peters would make it.

I didn't, either.

I retreated to the curb and sat down a few feet away from where the woman in the flowered dress was being treated for cuts and bruises. I closed my eyes and buried my face in my hands. I kept telling myself that Seattle's Medic One was the best in the country, that if anyone could save Peters' life, they could. My feeble reassurances fell flat.

Peters was still trapped. How could they
save his life if they couldn't even get him out of the van?

I forced myself to sit there. While the paramedics worked furiously to save Peters' life, they didn't need someone like me looking over their shoulders, getting in the way, and screwing up the works.

Detectives are ill-suited to doing nothing. It goes against their training and mind-set. Sitting there, staying out of the way, took tremendous effort, a conscious, separate act of will for every moment of inactivity. Watching the paramedics and the firemen on and in the van was like watching an anthill. Everyone seemed to be doing some mysterious specialized task without any observable direction or plan.

Then, suddenly, the anthill of activity changed. There was a new urgency as firemen moved forward, bringing with them the heavy metal shears they call the jaws of life. Without a wasted motion, they attacked the side of the van. Within minutes, they had cut a hole a yard wide in the heap of scrap metal. Leaning into the hole, they began to ease something out through it. They worked it out gradually, with maddening slowness, but also with incredible care.

Peters lay on a narrow wooden backboard with a cervical collar stabilizing his head and neck. Blood oozed from his legs, arms, and
face. Carefully, they placed him on a waiting stretcher and wrapped his legs in what looked like a pressurized space suit, then carried him ever so gently toward a waiting medic unit. A trail of IVs dragged along behind them.

I was grateful to see that. The IVs meant Peters was still alive, at least right then.

As the medic unit moved away, its siren beginning a long rising wail, I was surprised to discover that darkness had fallen without my noticing. Floodlights had been brought in to light the scene so the paramedics and firemen could see to work. It was dark and cold and spitting rain. I had been so totally focused on the van that I had seen and felt none of it.

Chilled to the bone, I straightened my stiffened legs and walked to where the paramedics were busy reassembling and packing up their equipment. I buttonholed one I had seen crawl out of the van just before they brought Peters out.

“Is he going to make it?” I demanded.

“Who are you?” the paramedic returned without answering my question. “Do you know him?”

I nodded. “He's my partner.”

“Do you know anything about his medical background? Allergies? Blood type?”

“No.”

“We couldn't locate any identification.
What's his name so I can call it ahead to Harborview.”

“Peters,” I said quietly. “Detective Ron Peters, Seattle P.D.”

Just then a uniformed officer caught sight of me. “Beaumont! There you are. We were responding to your distress call when this happened. We heard you were here, but we couldn't find you.”

I didn't tell him that I had been hiding out, that I hadn't wanted to be found. I shook my head. The paramedic I had been talking to moved toward me with an air of concern. I must have looked like hell.

“Are you all right?” he asked.

“I'm okay,” I muttered.

A uniformed female patrol officer with an accident report form in her hand stepped forward and addressed the paramedics in general. “You found no ID of any kind? Any idea how the accident happened?”

“Nope.” The paramedic pointed toward me. “He says the guy is a detective with Seattle P.D.”

She turned to me, looking for verification. Sudden anger overwhelmed me, anger at myself mostly, but I focused it on her. She was handy. She was there.

“It wasn't an accident, stupid. Call Homicide. Get 'em down here right away.”

I turned on my heel and stalked away. She followed, trotting to keep up.

“Who are you?” she demanded.

“I'm Detective Beaumont, Homicide, and that's Ron Peters, my partner, in that medic unit.”

“You know that for sure?”

“Yes, I know it for sure! Now call Homicide like I told you.”

“If you know something about this, I've got to talk to you,” she snapped back.

She was right and I was wrong, but I kept walking. “They're taking him to the trauma unit at Harborview. If you need to talk to me, that's where I'll be.”

My Porsche was parked at a crazy angle half on and half off the sidewalk. The flashers were still flashing. The woman followed me to the car and persisted in asking questions until I slammed the door in her face and drove off.

When I reached Harborview, Peters' empty medic unit sat under the emergency awning with its doors still open and its red lights flashing. The hospital's glass doors slid silently open and the two paramedics wheeled their stretcher back outside.

“Is he going to be all right?” I asked as they came past me.

“Who?” the one asked. “The guy we just brought in?”

“Yeah,” I replied gruffly. “Him.”

“Talk to the doctor. We're not allowed to answer any questions.”

Talking to the doctor turned out to be far easier said than done. I waited for what seemed like hours. I didn't want to call Kirkland and talk to Ames until I had some idea of what to tell him, until I had some idea of what we were up against.

Word traveled through the law enforcement community on an invisible grapevine. The room gradually filled with people, cops keeping the vigil over one of their own. Captain Powell and Sergeant Watkins were two of the first to arrive. Shaking his head, the captain took hold of the top of my arm and gripped it tightly. He said nothing aloud. I felt the same way.

Margie, our clerk, came in a few minutes later, along with several other detectives from the fifth floor. It wasn't long before the officer from the scene showed up, still packing her blank report. Watty sent her away. I think we all figured there'd be plenty of time for filling out forms later.

At last a doctor emerged through swinging doors beside the nurses' station. A nurse directed him to me. He beckoned for me to follow him. I did. So did Watty and Captain Powell. He took us down a polished hallway to a tiny room. A conference room. A bad news room.

The doctor motioned us into chairs. “I understand Detective Peters is your partner?” the doctor said, turning to me.

I nodded.

“What about his family?”

“A couple of kids.”

“How old?”

“Six and seven.”

“No wife?”

“No.” I took a deep breath. “Should someone go get the kids? Bring them to the hospital?”

The doctor shook his head. “No. He's in surgery now. It'll be several hours. If he makes it through that…” His voice trailed off.

“Look, doc. How bad is it?”

He looked me straight in the eye. “Bad,” he said quietly. “His neck's broken. He has lost a tremendous amount of blood.”

His words zinged around in my head like wildly ricocheting bullets. “But will he make it?” I demanded.

The doctor shrugged. “Maybe,” he said. The doctor spoke quietly, but his words washed over me with the crushing roar of breaking surf.

Stunned, I rose from the chair. I couldn't breathe. I scrambled away from the doctor, from the brutal hopelessness of that maybe. I battled blindly for a way to escape that tiny,
oppressive room before its walls caved in on me.

Powell caught me by the arm before I reached the door. “Beau, where are you going?”

“To Kirkland. To talk to his kids.”

“I can send somebody else,” Powell told me. “You don't have to do it.”

“This is unfortunate,” the doctor said. “Perhaps it would be better if someone else…”

I turned on him savagely. “Unfortunate?” I bellowed. “You call this unfortunate!”

Powell gripped my arm more tightly. “Hold it, Beau. Take it easy.”

I glared at the doctor. “I'm going to Kirkland,” I growled stiffly through clenched jaws. “Don't try to stop me.”

I shook off Powell's restraining hand and strode from the room. They let me go.

When I pushed open the swinging door at the end of the hall, the waiting room was more jammed than it had been before. I recognized faces, but I spoke to no one. The room grew still when I appeared. Silently, the crowd stepped aside, opening a pathway to the outside door.

On the outskirts of the crowd, just inside the sliding glass door, I saw Maxwell Cole. He stepped in front of me as I tried to walk past.

“I just heard, J.P. Is Peters gonna be all right?” he asked.

I didn't answer. Couldn't have if I had tried.

Max gave me a clap on the shoulder as I went by him. “Too bad,” I heard him mutter.

He made no attempt to follow me as I got into the car to drive away.

Maybe Maxwell Cole was growing up.

Maybe I was, too.