by J. A. Jance
The helicopters were coming. So was the San Juan County police boat. It didn't matter now if, in the process of keeping them talking, Inge Didricksen and Hans Gebhardt had revealed fifty years' worth of terrible secrets I never wanted to hear. In terms of doing my job, I had kept the two of them talking long enough for reinforcements to arrive. Within minutes I'd be able to pass the negotiations over into the capable hands of a trained hostage negotiator, although by then, I have to admit, I didn't much care how those negotiations turned out.
"Do you hear those helicopters?" I asked. "You could just as well give up. Stop this now-before it's too late, before anyone else gets hurt."
I didn't know it, but even as I spoke the cautioning words, it was already too late. With a groan of outrage that grew out of thirty years of shattered dreams, with an anger fueled and made fierce by Else Didricksen's lifetime of betrayal at the hands of both her husband and her parents, Alan Torvoldsen surged to his feet.
Before I could stop him, he charged across the few feet of open deck between the pilothouse and the galley. Gun in hand and finger on the trigger, he crashed through the half-open door of the galley. Belching smoke, the ancient Colt revolver roared to life.
As I recalled the incident later, I believe there were three distinctly separate shots in all. Two of them were almost simultaneous. The third came a second or so later.
The smell of burned cordite was still thick in the air when Alan Torvoldsen reappeared in the doorway. Emerging through a haze of swirling smoke, he leaned against the door casing for a moment, then staggered forward, the gun trailing loosely in his hand. When he doubled over in front of me, I thought sure he'd been shot.
Instead, he straightened up and stood gazing at me. When I looked down, I realized he'd placed the still-smoking Colt on the deck at my feet.
"I tried to hit him, but I guess my aim was bad," Alan said. "I think I must have hit them both."
Sue Danielson, with her semiautomatic in hand, came screeching around the far side of the galley.
"What the hell happened?" she demanded. "There are curtains on all those portholes. I couldn't see a damn thing!"
Alan's steady gaze held mine, his clear blue eyes never straying from my face. His look was resigned, his whole manner surprisingly calm.
"Go ahead and arrest me if you have to, BoBo," he said quietly. "I understand, but I'm warning you right now. If this case ever goes to court, I'm pleading self-defense. Either that, or temporary insanity."
For a moment, the three of us stood there in stricken silence, without any of us knowing what to say or do. Then a voice broke in on our paralyzed stupor.
"Help me," Denise Whitney whimpered.
I stepped out onto the deck far enough to see her. Gravely wounded, she lay directly between the pilothouse and the galley. Because of the steep slope of the slanted deck, her feet were higher than her head. A pool of bright red blood had dammed up briefly under her flattened cheek. Now a thin stream of it trickled away across the metal deck.
"Please help me," she said again, her voice diminished to a mere whisper. "I'm so cold. I think I'm dying."
And it turned out she was.
29
There wasn't all that much to be done for Denise Whitney. While helicopters circled overhead, Alan brought some blankets. Sue and I used those to cover her as best we could, but we couldn't staunch the bleeding.
"…tell my parents I'm sorry…" were the last words she murmured. At least those were the last ones we were able to understand. Sue promised she would.
One of the problems with training is that you get caught up in an incident and you go on automatic pilot. Sometimes you keep on going much longer than you ought to.
It wasn't until Alan showed up with a second armload of blankets and ordered Sue and me to use them on ourselves that we realized just how cold we were. Not frostbitten, but cold enough that it took a hell of a long time to warm back up.
By the time we made it back to Seattle, finished up the worst of the paper, and headed home it was close to midnight-Sunday night and Monday morning. The lights were all off in my apartment, but I knew Ralph Ames had arrived safely. I found a note from him posted on my bedroom door. He said Alexis Downey had called, wondering why I had stood her up for dinner. Ralph's note also mentioned that he, Ralph, had taken my grandmother out to dinner-to the King's Table in Ballard-obviously not his usual choice. That man is nothing if not a gentleman.
I slept around the clock. What finally woke me up, around midnight Tuesday, was a severe case of chills, followed immediately by the cold sweats.
"You're coming down with pneumonia," Ralph said the next morning, when I tried to take a sip of coffee. My chattering teeth kept clicking on the side of the cup.
Ralph was right, of course, as he usually is. His instant diagnosis was confirmed later that afternoon by a chest X ray. Before I had a chance to object, someone had slapped me into a bed in Swedish Hospital for a three-day stay. I don't remember much about it. I think I must have slept most of the time.
When Thanksgiving weekend rolled around a week and a half later, I had recuperated enough to sit up and take nourishment, as they say. As soon as Jeremy and Kelly had heard I was sick, they had tried to waffle out of their proposed Turkey Day visit. I wouldn't let them off the hook. The doctor had assured me that I couldn't possibly still be contagious by then. Besides, as I told them during that last begging phone call-the one that finally turned the tide-I wanted to see my granddaughter, Kayla, at least once more before she was ready to graduate from junior high.
Kelly finally agreed to come, but only on the condition that they stay in a hotel so they wouldn't "be any trouble." I rented a two-room suite for them down at the Mayflower Park Hotel. It was nearby, small enough not to be intimidating and nice enough for them to feel like staying there was a real treat.
As I said, for the first several days after I got sick, I was totally out of it. Then, after I came home from the hospital, I was so weak, I could barely hold my head up. Consequently, Ralph Ames put himself in charge of holiday planning. He and his girlfriend, Mary Greengo, combined forces with my grandmother, Beverly Piedmont.
Before I knew it, plans for Thanksgiving were entirely out of hand. Within minutes the proposed guest list had far outstripped the seating capacity of my penthouse apartment. Undaunted, Ralph reserved Belltown Terrace's party room for the day, and plans moved forward.
When the day arrived, Alexis Downey was among those invited, but she didn't show. I guess she was still mad about being stood up for dinner two Sundays earlier. But there were plenty of other guests to take her place.
In addition to Kelly and Jeremy, the list of attendees included Ron and Amy Peters, their two kids-Heather and Tracy-as well as Amy's widowed mother. My grandmother brought along three of her friends from church, saying they didn't have anywhere else to go. I suspect that of being a blatant lie. Belltown Terrace is a very nice place, and I think she wanted to show off a little, but I figured she was entitled. Mary Greengo and Ralph did the lion's share of the cooking, and she brought along both her parents.
In addition to those from outside the building, Heather had gathered up some Belltown Terrace holiday "orphans" to round out the roster. These included a middle-aged gay couple named Ted and David whose plans to go back East for a family Thanksgiving had been stymied-along with those of thousands of other holiday travelers-by a huge blizzard that had virtually shut down the entire eastern seaboard. The same held true for Gail Richardson, owner of Charley, Belltown Terrace's legendary Elevator Dog.
After dinner was over and while people were busy cleaning up, I sat down on a couch to hold Kayla for a few minutes. Gail Richardson joined Kayla and me on the couch.
Gail is a tall, square-jawed woman, in her mid-forties. Her hair is absolutely white. She has a serious way about her that is offset by sudden bursts of deep-throated laughter. During dinner I had learned that she was the producer of a hit television sitcom-one I had never seen or
even heard of-which was being filmed in Seattle and had just been renewed for a second season. From what I had been able to ascertain so far, Charley comprised Gail's entire family.
When she sat down on the couch, I had just discovered that five-month-old, one-toothed Kayla would giggle aloud in delight if I made a series of goofy faces. Naturally, I made a fool of myself. I was concentrating so much on Kayla's delighted crowing, that when Heather Peters came over to stand beside us, I didn't notice her at first.
"Babies are a lot of trouble, aren't they?" Heather said sourly. Saying that, she stalked off, without another word.
"Whoa," I said. "I believe I detect the smallest trace of jealousy here."
"It's not surprising, considering," Gail said. "After all, not only is Heather being booted out of her position at home, it looks like she's losing your undivided attention as well."
"What do you mean she's losing her position?"
"Didn't you know?" Gail asked. "Amy's pregnant. It's going to be a boy."
I was thunderstruck. "I'll be damned!" I exclaimed. "How did that happen?"
There was a momentary pause (Dare I say a pregnant pause?) followed by the hoot of Gail Richardson's infectious laughter. "I believe it happened in the usual way," Gail managed, wiping the tears of laughter from her face.
Embarrassed, I found myself flushing and then laughing as well. "I guess I've been out of the loop for a while," I said.
"I guess you have," she agreed.
Much later that night, after all the other guests had gone home, Ralph and I found ourselves alone in my apartment. "Great dinner, Ralph," I said. "My compliments to the chefs. You guys do good work."
"Mary and I couldn't have done it without Beverly's supervision," Ralph returned. "Considering her age, that grandmother of yours is truly remarkable. Did you know she invited Mary and me to drop by sometime so she can show us the clipping file she has on you? Do you know about that?"
I nodded. "She's been keeping it for years."
"Even when you were…estranged?"
"That's right."
Worn out, I went to bed a few minutes later. As I lay there, I thought about Kari and Else Gebhardt for the first time in days. I kicked myself for not thinking about them earlier, for not calling them to wish them well. No doubt this had been a tough and anything but joyous holiday for them.
I couldn't help comparing Kari Gebhardt's grandmother, Inge Didricksen, to mine, Beverly Piedmont. Kari had been thoroughly convinced that her grandmother was a nice, upstanding woman. Kari had loved Inge and had expected that love to be returned. I, on the other hand, had spent years despising my grandmother-hating her for what I regarded as her unfeeling betrayal of both my mother and me.
It turned out that both Kari Gebhardt and I were dead wrong.
Poor Kari, I thought, as I drifted off to sleep. Poor, poor Kari. She could decline to inherit her grandfather's ill-gotten gain. She could throw the awful Sobibor gold into the court system and let the various claimants fight for it, but walking away from it wouldn't free her of the gold, of her grandfather, or of the nightmare of Sobibor.
Alan Torvoldsen called me early the next afternoon from Friday Harbor. "Hey, BoBo," he said. "The San Juan County prosecutor just announced that they're not going to press charges against me. She called it justifiable homicide. I thought ya'd want to know."
"That's great, Al. Glad to hear it."
"Say, how're ya doing? I heard ya were sick."
"Pneumonia," I answered. "But I'm on the mend."
We talked for a few more minutes. Then, just as we were getting ready to hang up, I remembered a question I had meant to ask him earlier.
"Al," I said, "tell me how you happened to know about that sandbar? Was it just a happy accident, or did you know you could run aground on that beach instead of being smashed to pieces on rocks?"
"Oh, that," Champagne Al replied with a laugh. He sounded happy. "That was easy. I did it years ago, ya see, with Lars. Ran the Norwegian Princess right up on the beach. I was drunker' an nine hundred dollars at the time. My brother almost killed me over it, but I didn't hurt a thing. Alls we had to do was wait for high tide. The boat floated right off, same as One Day at a Time did this last time."
"You mean you were planning on beaching the boat there all along?" I asked.
"I was planning on beaching somewhere," he answered. "Alls I was waiting for was some assurance of help. By the time you guys finally showed up, I was almost out of options. I figured it was just dumb luck that I ended up there, in a spot I knew. It was like that damn sand spit had been lying in wait for me all along. Like it had my name on it. Know what I mean?"
"I think I do, Al," I said. "I really think I do. By the way," I added, "how's Else?"
Alan Torvoldsen paused for a moment. When he answered-slathering on a thick but phony Norwegian brogue-I could almost hear the smile in his voice. " Ja, sure, ya betcha," he said. "I tink Else's gonna be yust fine."
And suddenly so did I.
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