by Don Weston
“Not to mention the entire Portland Police Bureau,” Steve said flatly. “Aren’t you the modest one? Did it ever occur to you that this Chris character might be lying? He probably doesn’t know anything at all.”
“Do either of you think it’s possible the shooter was after Darrin?” Dan asked.
“It’s possible,” Steve said. “He’s a cop. He’s probably made enemies. Maybe it’s payback for some con he arrested.”
“Darrin didn’t have any enemies.” I snarled at Steve. “He treated everybody square. Even the people he arrested liked him. Heck, a few of them probably wrote him from jail.”
“She’s right,” Dan said. “You haven’t had the chance to work with him, but he would give you the shirt off his back. He didn’t judge people. He had this way of putting himself in their shoes. He respected the people he dealt with and they respected him.”
“Everyone makes enemies,” Steve said. “I’m just saying it’s a possibility.”
“If you want someone who makes enemies, I’m your woman,” I said. “I step on people every day to get to the truth.”
“I know I’ve thought about taking a shot at you from time to time.” Steve chuckled. “Uh oh.”
“What’s wrong?” Dan said.
“We picked up a tail. I noticed it back at the funeral home.”
Dan peered over his shoulder, but not me. I figured that damn Angel followed too close while testing her tracking devise.
“Which car?” Dan said.
“It’s the blue Honda two cars back. The one behind the green bug. It pulled out the same time we did at the funeral home.”
I almost choked. He’d made Angel and didn’t know it, watching a car behind her.
“I’ll radio dispatch and have a car intercept it. Then we can double back and find out who’s following us.”
But before Steve had a chance to make the radio call, the blue Honda accelerated past Angel and pulled up to the left of us. Steve cussed over his shoulder, hit the brake and veered behind the Honda. “We got him now. Did anyone see the driver?”
“Are you kidding,” Dan said. “I’m still trying to find my stomach.”
“It happened too fast,” I said.
Steve clicked on the radio and called for help. He was answered by static.
“What’s wrong with the radio?” I asked.
“I dunno. It’s not working.”
“Great. Let’s get the hell out of here,” Dan said.
“I’m with you,” Steve said.
“Make your first available left,” Dan said, pointing with his Sig Sauer pistol.
Steve slowed his car in anticipation and now the erratic driver in the Honda switched to the right lane and hit his brakes. The blue car moved on our right now and sitting behind the driver was The Jet. He pointed another very big gun right at me.
It all happened quickly. I faced the driver directly across from me, a wiry-looking Asian with coal-black hair. I recognized him as one of the three guys at the warehouse who shot me. Monty Bales, behind him, had a nice angle to blow me away. His yellow teeth sneered as his green malevolent eyes sighted down the barrel pointed at me.
“It’s The Jet!” I screamed.
“I’ll get him!” Dan yelled from behind.
I fumbled for my gun but the angle through my window was entirely wrong. I reached over and pulled the car’s automatic gear-shift lever into the lowest gear and the car lurched as if braked. Glass exploded and tiny shards from my passenger window sprayed onto my lap as I watched holes appear in the front windshield.
“Shit, unlock the window, Steve,” Dan cursed.
The Jet missed me, but the driver had time to line them up for another shot. I tried to slink down in the seat, which is hard to do when you have your safety belt on and an aching upper torso.
As my mind raced to keep up with the events at hand, it occurred to me Steve was the only one wearing a Kevlar vest. I thought back to the phone calls he made outside the funeral home and how the Honda mysteriously appeared soon after we left. I wondered why the radio to call for help didn’t work and why Dan’s maneuvering allowed the Honda to swing close enough to take what should have been the fatal shot.
These thoughts were interrupted by a loud metallic crash and the Honda veered off the road and down an embankment.
“It’s Angel,” Dan said. “She’s pushed them off the road.”
Sure enough, the Honda careened off the shoulder of the steep Mt. Tabor road and plummeted down the side of a hill. The Volkswagen took its place outside my window. The driver, a fashioned-challenged woman in a white laced cobalt blue hat, took a puff from that damn missing cigarette and wrestled the steering wheel with her free hand. The green Beetle shuddered and spun out behind us and, as I squinted into the passenger-side mirror, Angel followed the Honda down the ravine.
“Stop the car! Stop the car!” I cried.
Steve pulled over to the shoulder and we all stumbled out of the car. I spotted the Honda about two hundred feet down the cliff. It was bent around a thick Douglas fir.
“Where’s Angel?” I yelled. “I don’t see her.”
“Over here,” Dan shouted. “She’s over here.”
About a hundred feet down on the left and near some blackberry bushes, Angel’s Beetle was nestled at the base of another fir, which had stopped its descent. The Beetle obviously was totaled and there was no sign of Angel.
“Angel, oh God, not Angel too,” I cried.
“Dispatch! This is Officer Dan Bly,” Dan shouted into his direct-call cell phone: “We have a possible Code 49 at East Seventieth and Burnside. This is a Code three. Do you hear me? Code Three. Our radio is out and an attempt made on a person in protective custody. . . The perpetrators may still be in the vicinity at the bottom of a cliff. I need backup to create a perimeter and EMT personnel capable of descending a steep hill. Yes, an injury accident involving two cars. Both went over the cliff.”
Steve grabbed me before I could start down the hill. “There’s nothing you can do,” he said. “We’ll have to wait for help.”
“I don’t want to wait for help. My best friend is down there, and she needs me.”
Dan tugged at my other arm, and they wrestled me back onto the street.
“She saved my life. Did you see what she did? She rammed that Honda before The Jet could fire a second shot. She saved my life.”
“Yeah. Where did she come from?” Steve asked.
“Angel’s never too far behind Billie these days,” Dan said.
Thank God for Dan. I was too rattled to lie, and I didn’t really care at this point. “I have to find out if she is all right.”
In three minutes the ambulance and rescue squad showed up from their station ten blocks away on Burnside. The first squad car arrived a minute later followed by five others in rapid succession. More squad cars secured the bottom perimeter on neighboring side streets and Steve directed the cops as they worked their way to the Honda about a hundred feet from the bottom.
“I don’t see how anyone could have survived,” Dan said of the crashed Honda. “It rolled three or four times and the roof is crushed flat. Maybe, if they jumped out on the way down?”
The side of Angel’s car resembled an accordion. I watched hopefully as the first firefighter, supported by a lifeline, approached the Beetle.
“Can you see her?” I yelled.
The firefighter tugged at the door and put his face to the driver’s shattered door window. “She’s unconscious,” he yelled.
A crowbar materialized from his belt and he wedged it into seam of the door. The firefighter gripped the door handle with one hand and strained against the crowbar with the other. He mouthed something through the window and put both hands on the metal bar, trying to will the door open. I heard a metallic crack as it resisted his efforts.
Another firefighter repelled down the hill and joined the first and together the two men yanked at the door and it creaked open about six inches. The first man w
iped his brow with his arm and said something to the second man, who nodded. They yanked again and the Beetle shifted from its perch.
“Stop!” I yelled.
Both men scrambled to brace themselves against the VW, as it teetered away from the tree.
“Dan, get a tow truck here, pronto.” I pounded his shoulder with my fists like a little girl. “We need to attach a tow line on the bumper to secure the car.”
Dan called dispatch and a senior firefighter radioed the rescuers at Angel’s car and told them to sit tight. I waited helplessly for fifteen minutes until a white tow truck rolled up. A balding potbellied man, with a naked lady tattooed on his forearm, hopped from the rig and marched toward us. He pulled a toothpick out of his mouth and smiled at Dan.
“Where’s the car you want towed?” He eyed Steve’s squad car.
I pointed down the hillside. “It’s the Beetle against the tree.”
He stuck the toothpick back into his mouth. “Okay. What about the other one? I can get that too. I might need more cable though.”
“Let’s just concentrate on this one,” Dan said.
A radio popped behind us. “These two are both dead. We’re going to need some help getting them out. Can’t tell where the car ends and the bodies begin.”
This wasn’t the news I wanted to hear. If they didn’t make it, was Angel dead too? She lay unconscious and nobody could get close enough to learn her condition. My heart started beating irregularly and I felt a little faint.
“You better go sit down,” Dan said. “Your face is white.”
The tow truck driver approached me. “Cop said a friend of yours is in that car, Miss.”
“Yeah,” I admitted.
“Don’t worry. I’ll get the car up for you.”
“Thanks,” I said.
I noticed he held a heavy wire cable around his thick waist.
“Name’s Earl,” he said. Then he jumped backward down the hill and the cable unwound from a pulley on the truck. It was a startling sight to behold. Earl backed down the hill like a seasoned mountain climber, holding a remote-control unit in his free hand. The cable continued to unwind with him as he descended.
Eventually he arrived at the Beetle, then crawled under the bumper and wrestled with the cable. He returned from under the Beetle and stopped to admire his work. He pointed to the tow truck and the cable whirred until the slack was gone. The winch stopped and Earl spoke to the firefighters. They argued about something, and I saw Earl go to the driver’s window and speak through the broken glass.
The two firefighters followed him, talking in his ear and the next thing I knew the winch on the tow truck cranked again. The Beetle lurched forward and slipped around the side of the tree before jarring to a stop. The big tow truck didn’t budge because the driver had put blocks under the rig’s back wheels.
“You’re crazy!” a firefighter screamed at Earl.
Earl shook his head and pointed at the truck and the Volkswagen seemed to march up the hillside. The firefighters tried to reach for Earl’s remote, and he said something that stopped them cold.
“It’s coming up.” I said. “Angel’s coming up.” My heart was in my throat each time the Beetle’s flattened front wheels hit a bump in the hill. The truck jerked occasionally, but the Beetle steadily and slowly climbed the hill. A minute later it was on the side of the road. The potbellied man hooked the cable to the driver’s door, clicked his remote, and the door popped off the Beetle’s body.
“She’s okay,” Earl said when he was done. “Your friend is awake, and she doesn’t seem to be hurt too bad. I told her the ride up might be bumpy, but it’s better than spending three hours sideways while they try to get that door open. She said to get her up here. All the blood was rushing to her head.”
“Bless you,” I said.
“That’s one tough dame,” he said. “Those firefighters didn’t want me to try it, but I’ve done this a few times before. Not with people in it, but it’s safe enough. And she wanted to come up.”
“Billie? Are you out there?” It was Angel.
I ran to the car as the EMT’s eased her onto a stretcher. “I’m here, Angel. Are you all right?”
“I’m a little sore. Probably be worse tomorrow.”
Her face held little color and blood seeped from a small cut on her cheek, but the damn blue hat with white lace sat erect on her otherwise disheveled black hair. She was more shook up than she would admit, but she looked great to me.
One of the firefighters joined us, shaking his head. “That was a crazy stunt, mister.”
“Earl said he could get me out,” Angel said, “so I told him to go for it.”
“We’re going to have to take her to the hospital,” a paramedic said. “She appears okay, but they’ll probably want to keep her overnight for observation.”
“I don’t want to go to the hospital,” Angel squawked. “Take me home. A good night’s rest is all I need. Well, that and maybe a good man.”
She winked at Earl and he winked back.
“I’ll come with you,” I said.
“You go home and rest,” she said. “You look like the walking dead. I’ll be all right.”
I peered down the ravine at the crushed Blue Honda and felt a sense of well-being, daring to hope there was no way anyone walked away from that mess.
My luck hadn’t run toward hope lately.
Chapter 11
The morning after The Jet tried to kill me, I almost murdered Steve.
I had overdone things Saturday. I awoke in pain but was just glad to be alive after Angel ran The Jet and his pals off the road. I fetched my Kimono robe from the closet and wrapped it around me on the way downstairs. Jason sat at the dining table sipping coffee and Dan and Dag hunkered over a laptop trying to make it track Steve’s car.
“Any news on The Jet?” I asked.
“Same as yesterday,” Jason said. “No one survived the crash at the bottom of the hill, and Steve won’t talk. Says he wants to update you in person.”
“That’s nice of him, but I’d rather know now,” I said. “Any coffee?” For the first time in weeks I felt somewhat at ease.
“Just that rotgut stuff Dan made,” he said.
I trudged into the kitchen and poured some rotgut into a Stephanie Plum mug I picked up at the local bookstore and returned. “Any calls?”
“A couple yesterday,” Jason said. He flipped through a stack of torn out message memos Angel used to track my calls.
“Here’s one from a Mrs. Stella Fleming in Pocatello, Idaho. She said she got a call from the coroner’s office. They found her husband’s body in a marsh along Terminal Six of the Willamette River.”
“Great,” I said. “My crying client’s husband is dead. Why are so many people dying all of a sudden?”
“She’s going to be in tomorrow and wanted to know if you can meet her at the airport,” Jason said.
“Is that tomorrow or today? The message was left yesterday.”
“Uh, not sure. I accidently erased the message this morning.”
“I need Angel here. Did Mrs. Fleming say how her husband died?”
“She didn’t know,” Jason said. “She wondered if you had heard.”
“Did you tell her about the lady from the city?” Dag stole a sip of my coffee and made a bitter face.
“Eileen something, from City Hall called.” Jason said.
“I’d almost forgotten about her,” I said.
“She didn’t want to talk to any of us cops,” Jason said. “But she did leave a message earlier on your recorder. Somehow I managed not to erase it.”
I got up and switched on my answering machine: “Billie? It’s Eileen. I’ve got the surveillance footage you wanted. I’m a little nervous. I think I’m being followed. I’ll call back later.”
“Did she leave a number?”
“Nah, and the caller ID listed it as a private number,” Jason said.
“Anyone else?” I asked.
“
Steve called twice last night and once this morning,” Dag said.
“Checking up on me?”
“He said he’s worried about you, but each time he called, he wanted an exact account of where you were. Dan and I got the GPS tracking system working, and he appears to be heading here now.”
“He’s on Northwest Seventeenth and Burnside,” Dan said.
“Maybe I should go back to bed and play sick,” I said.
“You don’t have to go back to bed,” Jason said. “Have you looked at yourself in a mirror lately?”
I walked into the hallway toward a full-length mirror. It took me a minute to realize the unwieldy yellow-haired frump with hairy legs and faded makeup was me. “Eeek! I can’t let him see me like this.”
I left them laughing and went to my bedroom to call Angel. The phone in her hospital room rang unanswered. I called the main number again and asked for the nurse’s station. A tired voice told me she was walking the hall with a male friend. A male friend? Who in the heck was she seeing that she hasn’t told me about?
The doorbell rang downstairs. Rats. Steve was here and I had to take a shower. I disrobed, removed my bandages and gazed at the stitching on my chest. The two bullets probably created holes about the size of nickels. But the surgeon’s exploratory surgery to get at the slugs was much more invasive. Most of the wound was on the mend, but a few stitches had reopened and displayed the reddened tell-tale sign of infection, so I cleaned the area with antiseptic wipes and took my antibiotic medicine.
I grimaced at the puffy tissue just below my breast. If it scarred, I planned to return the favor to my surgeon. I redid the wound with large waterproof bandages the hospital sent home with me.
Fifteen minutes in the shower, and I almost felt like a new woman. I combed my hair back and it just touched my shoulders wet. I liberally applied my makeup over my sallow features with some extra touchup on bags under my eyes.
“Billie? You out of the shower?” It was Dag out in the hall. “Steve’s here. He’s been waiting. Are you decent?”
“Tell him to hold his horses. I’ll be down as soon as I get off the phone with Angel.”
“You better make it soon. I don’t think he believes you’re here.”
