Name Withheld

by J. A. Jance

  Ron didn’t need any further urging. “Where-abouts in Kirkland?” he asked.

  “Down along the water, below Juanita Drive. On Holmes Point Drive, just below Denny Park.”

  “There’s a bubble light in the glove compartment,” Ron said. “Drag it out, turn it on, and give it to me.”

  We were at the north end of the Regrade. The shortest way to the north end of Kirkland would have been across the Evergreen Floating Bridge on Highway 520. But by now, at five-fifteen, we were smack in the middle of rush hour, and the floating bridge would be a parking lot. Even with lights and siren, it would be slow going. Ron made the entirely sensible decision of going south to head north. It may have added another sixteen miles to the trip, but we both knew it would save time.

  We were headed down Fifth Avenue when Peters asked the tough question. “Are you going to call Kramer?”

  At that juncture, calling Detective Kramer was the last thing on my mind. “Why would I do that?” I returned.

  “Because you need to,” Ron answered. “Look, you told me yourself that Grace Highsmith’s house is halfway down a cliff.”

  “That’s right. What’s the point?”

  “Think about it,” Peters said with a glower. “If I were you, and if my partner had turned out to be some kind of gimp, I sure as hell would call for backup. You should, too.”

  Ron and I are good friends. We go back a long way. He was the one, who on that disastrous day when I married Anne Corley, had done me the incredible kindness of stuffing the remains of that damned wedding cake down the garbage disposal. Most of the time, his physical infirmity is a taboo subject between us—one of those unmentionable but understood issues that hover in the background of our friendship. We didn’t sit around discussing the permanent injuries that long-ago car wreck had done to Ron’s body any more than we did the indelible damage Anne had inflicted on my heart.

  “You’re worth three or four Paul Kramers any day of the week,” I said at once.

  He glared at me again. In the glow of the headlights from oncoming vehicles, I could see the stubborn set of his jaw.

  “That’s bullshit and you know it,” he returned. “Now shape up and dial the damned phone. I don’t want anything to happen to you because I’m physically incapable of bailing you out if your tail ends up in a sling.”

  After Ron’s accident, it had taken a long time for him to reach an accommodation with his new and permanently rearranged physical reality. Other people, those of the bleeding-heart persuasion, might pretend his handicaps didn’t exist or else meant nothing. Peters himself, viewing those limits from the inside out, had no patience for phony sentimentality. Not from anyone. Including from me, his best friend.

  “All right,” I said.

  Without another word, I shut up and dialed Paul Kramer. He didn’t answer, but that didn’t get me off the hook. “Call Sergeant Reeves back,” Peters said. “Have dispatch find him.”

  “Boy, you guys are really racking up the overtime,” Kent said. “I think he’s on his way back from the Eastside right now.”

  “Patch me through to him, if you can,” I said. “I need to have him turn around and go back.”

  By the time Kramer came on the line, Ron and I were driving through the International District. “How soon can you and Sam Arnold meet us at Grace Highsmith’s house in Kirkland?” I asked.

  Putting it that way, without any polite preamble, clearly raised Paul Kramer’s hackles. “Why should I?” he asked. “It’s after hours. I’m on my way home.”

  “What if I told you Bill Whitten may be our man?” I said.

  “How’d you happen to come to that brilliant conclusion?”

  At least the instant antagonism between us was a two-way thing. With Ron hanging on my every word, however, I knew better than to let myself be sucked into an argument.

  I took a deep breath. “Look, Kramer, cut the crap. Grace Highsmith claims she has some important new information about Don Wolf, information that was probably faxed to her by Virginia Marks before her death.”

  “So?”

  “Three people are dead so far. You want to try for four, or are you going to get your butt over there so we can check it out?”

  “I’ll go, I’ll go,” Kramer grumbled. “Because of the traffic, I was heading home by way of Lynnwood. So I’m only a few minutes out. How soon will you be there?”

  “Twenty minutes, maybe? We’re in the express lanes heading for the I-Ninety bridge.”

  “If this turns out to be a wild-goose chase, Beaumont…”

  I punched END on my phone and cut Detective Kramer off in midthreat. “Satisfied?” I asked.

  “For the time being,” Ron Peters said.

  Back when he was married the first time, Ron and his family used to live in Kirkland. So when we ventured off I-405 at Totem Lake, he didn’t need either a copilot or a map. Within minutes of leaving the freeway, we were careening along the steep, winding road that led down the bluff to Grace Highsmith’s cliff-side cottage.

  “You’re a hell of a lot better at getting here than I am,” I told him.

  “I ought to be,” he answered. “When we lived on this side of the lake, the girls and I came to Denny Park about once a week.”

  Heading north along the water, we were just passing Grace Highsmith’s neighbors to the south when I caught sight of Kramer’s car. “Pull over,” I said. “He must have gotten here ahead of us.”

  We pulled up alongside the unmarked Caprice. Empty, it was double-parked, half on and half off the roadway. It sat at an angle partly behind and partly alongside a second vehicle that was stopped on Grace Highsmith’s parking ledge. The positioning of the Caprice effectively blocked the other vehicle, a Lexus, from being able to return to traffic.

  The Lexus had Washington plates. Using the cell phone once again, I called through to records to check ownership of the parked vehicle.

  “Where do you think Kramer went?” Peters asked as we waited for the clerk to give us an answer. “I heard you tell him to meet us. He wouldn’t have gone down there by himself, would he?”

  “Somebody who’s as much of a fan of teamwork as Detective Kramer? Surely you jest. Of course he went down by himself. Why wait for the rest of the troops when you have a chance to play hero?”

  The records clerk came back on the phone. “The Lexus is owned by a company named D.G.I.,” she said.

  “Bingo,” I told Peters, tossing him my cell phone. “Get on the horn to Kirkland Police and tell them we need help here. Fast.”

  “You’re going down, too?” Peters asked, picking up the phone.

  I nodded. “One fool makes twenty.”

  Just then, a pair of bright headlights appeared in the northbound lane behind us. The driver flashed his brights impatiently and laid on his horn, trying to move us the hell out of his way. He was probably some big-wheel executive, pissed off because we were holding up cocktails and dinner in his lakeside mansion. He certainly didn’t give a damn that his rude honking horn would effectively squelch any hope of our arriving on Grace Highsmith’s doorstep unannounced.

  Ignoring the guy behind us, Ron waved me out of the Buick. “Go on ahead,” he said. “I’ll pull up beyond the garage so the cops from Kirkland can in-fill behind us.”

  Nodding, I pushed open the car door and jumped out, wrestling my nine-millimeter Beretta out of my shoulder holster as I did so. By the time I hit the pavement, the weapon was in my hand. As the creep behind us—an asshole driving an Infiniti Q45—pulled even with me, he couldn’t resist flipping me off. In the process, he must have caught a glimpse of the weapon. He floored it. The Infiniti shot forward, barely missing Ron’s rear bumper.

  I was left there standing night blind in the sudden silence. And that’s when I heard a moan coming from somewhere I couldn’t see. The moan was followed by a single word, a very faint Help.

  The hair stood up on the back of my neck.

  “Kramer?” I whispered. “Is that you?”

>   “Beaumont…down here.”

  Following the voice as best I could, I crept over to the edge of the retaining wall and peered down. Paul Kramer lay sprawled on the rocks ten feet below. One leg was folded under him, bent backward in a way ordinary human anatomy never intended.

  “Are you all right?” I asked.

  “Be careful,” Kramer warned. “He took my guns.”

  Not only was Kramer injured, he was also disarmed. “What happened?” I asked.

  “I got out to check—”

  Farther down the hillside, a door slammed shut. Footsteps on the wooden porch and voices wafted up from below. “Shhh,” I whispered. “Someone’s coming.”

  With my heart pounding in my chest, I looked around for cover, choosing at last to fall in behind the back tire of the Caprice. Just then, a car door opened. I heard the distinctive whir of the lift mechanism as Ron lowered his chair to the roadway.

  While I ducked into the shadow behind the car, a motion-sensing fixture shot a beam of light down the stairway. Seeing it, I uttered a silent prayer of gratitude. If I had headed for the stairway right then instead of toward Kramer, the light would have flashed a vivid warning to everyone below that someone was coming. Had I been caught in that blinding shaft of light, I would have been a sitting duck.

  “Come on, come on,” Bill Whitten urged. “Get a move on.”

  “I’m moving as fast as I can,” Grace Highsmith returned crisply. “I’m no spring chicken, you know.”

  Bad as the situation was, I couldn’t help smiling. Faced with the very real possibility of her own death, naturally Grace Highsmith was arguing with her self-appointed executioner, lecturing this man who was most likely a multiple murderer as though he were nothing but an errant schoolboy.

  Long seconds passed before she finally came into view, pulling herself along the handrail, her purse dangling from one forearm. Seeing that purse, I couldn’t help wishing that the .32 auto was still concealed in Grace Highsmith’s pocketbook rather than languishing in the safety of the Firearms Section of Washington State Patrol. Latty had said her aunt had wanted the gun for protection. If ever that stubborn old woman needed protection, it was now.

  I had hoped for an opportunity to get off a clean shot, but there was no chance of that. Bill Whitten was walking directly behind Grace. If he had killed three times already, there was no reason to think he would hesitate to do so again. In fact, what I couldn’t understand was why he was bringing Grace along.

  “Mr. Whitten,” Ron Peters called, rolling into sight around the garage. “Let the woman go.”

  Everything stopped. No one moved. For several seconds, no one said a word.

  Then Bill Whitten grabbed Grace Highsmith and pulled her back against him. I saw the gun then as he pressed it against her head.

  “Who are you?” he demanded. “What do you want?”

  “I’m a police officer,” Ron said, raising his hands in the air. “I’m unarmed. Let her go. Just because your life is falling apart is no reason to go around killing people.”

  “Shoot him,” Grace shrieked. “Don’t worry about me. Get him. He’s a killer. He tried to frame my niece. He—”

  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.

  Twenty-two

  In 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 communi
cation, 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.