Third Watch

by Robert Dugoni

  “It’s not too late, Alex. We can all walk out of here and get you help so you can see your girls, just like I promised.”

  “They will put me in the prison for what I do, and I will not see them.” His finger tensed on the trigger.

  “Alex. Alex. Open your eyes and look at me. Can you do that? Will you open your eyes and look at me?

  Gorshkov opened his eyes. They were bloodshot, a dense road map of red. The skin around them was also rimmed red and swollen. He looked like he’d been punched repeatedly in the face.

  “Today is the worst day of your life, isn’t it?”

  “Yes. Today is very bad.”

  “But here’s the thing, Alex. If today is your worst day, then tomorrow is going to be a little better, right? And the day after that will also be a little better. Each day will get a little better, Alex, but only if you let me help you. So right now, all you have to do is get through today. That’s not too hard, right? Just get through today. You can get through today, right?”

  He didn’t respond, but he also hadn’t shut his eyes.

  “So the first thing you have to do to get through today is put the gun down. Put the gun down and get through today.”

  Gorshkov looked suddenly very tired, as if the shotgun barrel were the only thing holding his body upright. Tracy feared he was giving up.

  “The day my sister disappeared was the worst day of my life, Alex. I felt lost and alone and scared, and I didn’t think I could go on another day without her. Is that how you feel?”

  He tried to nod, and the barrel of the gun pressed into his flesh.

  “But I made it through that day, Alex. And the next day when I woke up, I made it through that day, then another and another. And each day I felt a little better. Each day a little better, and that gave me hope, Alex. You want to see your girls grow up, don’t you? You want to take them to school and be there when they go to their first dance. You want to help them with their homework and walk them down the aisle when they get married. You can still do all those things, Alex. I can help you still do all those things. But you have lay down the gun for me. Just lay it down on the carpet and we can get through today.”

  Gorshkov’s Adams apple bobbed. He shut his eyes and let out a long sigh. His body shuddered. Sweat continued to drip down his face. A bead hung from the tip of his nose. His finger twitched and Tracy felt her heart skip and her stomach drop.

  Then he slid his finger from the trigger and his arm fell limply to his side.

  The barrel slowly tilted sideways and fell onto the carpet.

  Gorshkov slumped forward, though he remained upright, chin tucked to his chest, his entire body racked with sobs.

  “It’s going to be okay.” Tracy stepped farther into the room, motioning for Helene and the girls to slowly walk out behind her. When she reached Alexey, she bent and took the shotgun.

  “Now it’s going to get better, Alex.” She breached the barrel and removed the two shells. “Everything is going to be okay.”

  Chapter Three

  Tracy held Alexey Gorshkov by the bicep as she walked him from the apartment. She’d handcuffed his wrists behind his back but, as he’d requested, she’d draped his black leather coat over his shoulders to lessen his humiliation. Tracy had also waited until given the word that Helene and the two girls had been taken to Swedish Hospital. The two girls did not need to see their father being taken from their home in handcuffs and placed in the back of a police car. They’d been traumatized enough. Officers would take Helene’s statement, and doctors would determine what, if any, treatment she or the girls needed. Crisis counselors would also be called upon.

  Alexey Gorshkov had said little since dropping the shotgun. He looked to be in shock, physically and mentally exhausted, his movements lethargic but compliant.

  When Tracy stepped out onto the landing she saw half a dozen police cars and the SPD SWAT van in the parking lot. Officers in SWAT gear carrying large-caliber weapons waited at the bottom of the stairs. The lights atop patrol cars painted them and the horde of media and spectators in swaths of red, blue, and white. Multiple news vans, their towers extended atop their roofs, parked in the street and reporters with microphones stood with camera crews, bright lights pointing up at her and Alexey.

  Upon seeing the crowd, Gorshkov abruptly stopped.

  “It’s all right,” Tracy assured him. “I’m not going to let anything happen to you. I’m going to take you in and get you some help.”

  Gorshkov gave her a glance, the pupils of his eyes two black pinpoints. Flight-or-fight syndrome, she recalled from her training. In Gorshkov’s case, she hoped it was neither. She gave him a moment to compose himself. Then he lowered his head and they shuffled forward and descended the staircase.

  Peter Velasquez, Tracy’s sergeant from the North Precinct, met her at the bottom of the staircase. “You want us to take it from here?”

  She shook her head. “No. I’d like to finish it.”

  “You earned that right.”

  Velasquez and several other officers followed Tracy and Gorshkov to her patrol car, where Tevia Cushman stood snapping photographs. Tracy opened the back door. “Watch your head,” she said, and placed a hand atop Gorshkov’s head as he lowered into the backseat. Tracy leaned in and strapped the seatbelt across his body. “I know it’s not comfortable with the cuffs on, but I have to leave them on. It’s procedure.”

  Gorshkov did not respond.

  After she shut the door, Velasquez said, “You all right?”

  She honestly didn’t know. The adrenaline continued to pump furiously, making her feel on edge, and she felt her heart still pounding. At the same time, she felt mentally exhausted. She doubted she could recall even simple chemistry equations, things she’d memorized until writing them was as innate as running.

  “I feel like I just went 10 rounds with the heavyweight champion,” she said.

  “You did a hell of a job in there. Unbelievable. I got a problem with you going in alone.”

  “I didn’t have a choice. I—”

  Velasquez raised a hand. “I understand. What you did might have been incredibly stupid, but it was also incredibly selfless.”

  As Velasquez spoke, a thought came to her. “How do you know?”

  “We heard it over your mic, Tracy. Dispatch kept the line open, as you requested. We heard the whole thing, every word.”

  Tracy looked to Cushman. The reporter smiled. She had a tape recorder in hand, and a young reporter’s dream story.

  Chapter Four

  The headline in the morning edition of the Seattle Times streamed above an article and a photograph of Tracy leading Alexey Gorshkov to the patrol car.

  Tracy cringed when she read the headline.

  Hero Cop Uses Woman’s Touch

  to End Hostage Siege

  By TEVIA CUSHMAN

  Special to the Times

  What started as a routine night of patrol for veteran Seattle Police Officer Tracy Crosswhite quickly became anything but routine when Crosswhite responded to a call of a disturbance at an apartment building in Seattle’s Interbay District.

  When Crosswhite arrived she found one of the apartment complex residents frantically flagging down her vehicle. The resident, Anita Schwartz, delivered a chilling message. An estranged husband, Alexey Gorshkov, had kicked in the door to his wife and two girls’ apartment. “I heard yelling in Russian,” Schwartz said. “Glass shattering and banging like someone was tearing apart the apartment. Then silence. I was so afraid. So afraid something had happened to Helene and those two babies.”

  Schwartz called 911, the third time she’d reported a disturbance in the Gorshkov apartment in a month.

  Crosswhite responded. But there was a problem. Because of a near riot outside Key Arena by fans of local grunge bands, all available units were otherwise occupied. Crosswhite was on her own.

  When she knocked on the apartment door with her nightstick, shielding her body behind the stucco exterior, Crossw
hite was greeted by the retort of a 12-gauge shotgun blast. Inside the apartment, Alexey Gorshkov had taken his wife and two daughters hostage and was threatening to kill them and himself. With no imminent backup, Crosswhite had to make a split-second decision. She was going in. “I wasn’t about to let anyone, especially those two little girls, die,” she said.

  Alexey and his wife, Helene, had recently separated. Alexey, overcome with grief and intoxicated after a night of heavy drinking, told Crosswhite he was not about to let his estranged wife take his children from him.

  This is when Crosswhite went to work. Using a soothing voice, Crosswhite first worked to calm Gorshkov. Then she sought to relate to him. Crosswhite recounted the days following the abduction of her sister, Sarah, in 1993 near Crosswhite’s hometown of Cedar Grove, Washington. Sarah Crosswhite’s body was never found. A year after she disappeared, Edmund House, a paroled rapist living near the town, was convicted of her murder. Crosswhite convinced Alexey Gorshkov she knew what it felt like to lose someone she loved and told him she would help him if he allowed her to enter the apartment.

  She did so alone.

  With everything Crosswhite said being broadcast over an open police frequency, Crosswhite found Alexey in his daughters’ bedroom at the back of the apartment. He was kneeling with the shotgun barrel beneath his chin and his finger on the trigger. On one of two twin beds, Helene cradled their two daughters, shielding their eyes with her hands.

  After nearly 25 minutes, Crosswhite persuaded Alexey to lower the shotgun and give himself up.

  Crosswhite’s sergeant, Peter Velasquez, greeted her as she emerged from the apartment with Gorshkov handcuffed. Velasquez called Crosswhite’s actions “incredibly selfless.” Police Chief Douglas “Sandy” Clarridge was even more effusive in his praise of one of his officers. “Officer Crosswhite displayed courage in the face of a very tense situation,” he said. “She also chose to use her head and her training to defuse the situation. The fact that she was able to get him to lay down his weapon saved not only his life but the lives of his wife and daughters. It was brilliant police work by a highly capable officer.”

  Given the recent media attention on the disparate treatment of female officers within SPD, Crosswhite’s heroics couldn’t have come at a better time for the department, though Crosswhite deflected any suggestion her gender played a part in her ability to calm Gorshkov. “I just did my job,” she said, “like any of my fellow officers would have done, male or female."

  Tracy had felt she owed it to Tevia Cushman to answer her questions, but she wasn’t overjoyed at the media attention. After booking Gorshkov into the North Precinct, she went to fill out her paperwork. That’s when the phones started buzzing. SPD’s Public Information Office was inundated with requests for interviews from local and national media eager to talk to the hero cop with a heart. Velasquez told her to pack a bag for New York, that the brass had already accepted an offer for Tracy to appear on Good Morning America the following week. To accommodate the horde of local media requests, they arranged for a news conference to be held Saturday morning at City Hall.

  Tracy lowered the newspaper when the door to the anteroom adjacent to the SPD media room pushed open. She’d been almost as nervous putting on her dress uniform as she had been standing on the landing outside Gorshkov’s apartment building. Sandy Clarridge, Deputy Chief of Operations Dan Waters, Velasquez, and North Precinct Captain George Decker stepped into the room. Early-sixties with thinning blond hair, Clarridge wore his dress uniform with his chief of police five-star badge on prominent display. Velasquez, Waters, and Decker wore their daily uniforms. They wanted the spotlight to be on Tracy.

  “Did anyone discuss the format with you for this morning?” Clarridge asked.

  “Just for me to be here,” Tracy said.

  “I’ll go first and introduce you, talk about what you did. Then I will present you with the Medal of Valor.”

  “Sir?”

  “You heard me,” Clarridge said. The Medal of Valor was SPD’s highest award and usually reserved until the department’s annual awards ceremony in October. Clearly the brass was taking advantage of an unexpected windfall, the chance to counter the recent negative publicity with a feel-good story involving a female police officer. But before Tracy had time to fully process everything, the door to the room opened again and SPD Public Information Officer Bennet Li stepped in. “Chief? We’re ready for you all.”

  Clarridge turned to Tracy. “Is there anyone you’d like me to acknowledge? Any family in the audience?”

  Tracy shook her head. “No,” she said. “No family.”

  She followed Clarridge, Velasquez, Waters, and Decker trailing behind them. The stage was slightly elevated and below them, every chair in the room was occupied. More media stood at the back, along with half a dozen news cameras. Clarridge stepped to the podium in front of a pale blue wall inscribed with Seattle Police Department in an arc and two blue-and-white police shields. He gestured for Tracy to stand beside the podium. Cameras whirred and flashed. Along the west wall, a dozen of Tracy’s fellow officers from the North Precinct stood at attention, hands clasped behind their backs.

  Clarridge kept his comments brief, applauding Tracy’s courage, fortitude, judgment, and negotiation skills. “It gives me great pleasure,” he said, “to bestow upon Officer Crosswhite the Seattle Police Department’s highest honor, the Medal of Valor.” Velasquez stepped forward with an open jewelry-size box, and Clarridge displayed the medal to the media before pinning it to Tracy’s uniform. Then he gripped her hand and turned toward the cameras. Tracy felt uncomfortable but did her best to smile.

  Clarridge stepped to the side and ceded the podium to Tracy.

  “I didn’t prepare a speech,” she said, cameras whirring and humming. “I just want to reiterate that what I did was no different than what any of my fellow officers, some of whom are standing at the back of the room, do every day. We took an oath to serve the public. That’s what I did. I’m grateful to be a small part of that team.”

  She looked to the media officer. Li stepped forward. “Are there questions for Officer Crosswhite or Chief Clarridge?’

  Maria Vanpelt shouted her question from stage left. Tracy had not seen her until that moment, though she was now uncertain how she could have missed her. Vanpelt wore a maroon pantsuit, silver bracelets dangling from her wrists. “Chief Clarridge, was your decision to award the Medal of Valor to Officer Crosswhite at this ceremony instead of at the October awards banquet, as is tradition, influenced by the recent news coverage decrying the treatment of female officers in the department?”

  Clarridge looked unconcerned. He was used to answering politically charged questions. “The decision was made to accommodate the numerous media requests we have received since Officer Crosswhite’s heroic actions. We saw no reason not to honor Officer Crosswhite at this time. Her gender was irrelevant.”

  “Officer Crosswhite, you declined to answer my questions about the mistreatment of female officers in the SPD. Would you care to comment now on the fact that you remain a patrol officer after six years despite a stellar record?”

  Tracy noticed several of her police colleagues glance at one another, unaware she had declined Vanpelt’s request to be interviewed and was not one of her anonymous sources. “I enjoy patrol, and there are always a number of highly qualified officers seeking promotions.”

  “But do you believe you’ve been passed over because of your gender?”

  “I have no basis to believe that. There are a number of highly qualified officers for every promotion.”

  “So the complaints of your fellow female officers are unwarranted or exaggerated?”

  “I didn’t watch your program,” Tracy said, “so I can’t comment on specific complaints, and I won’t comment on anonymous sources. Frankly, I don’t trust them.”

  Li intervened. “Does anyone else have questions for Officer Crosswhite regarding last night’s incident?”

  A reporter sh
outed out a question for Clarridge, and Tracy was more than happy to cede him the podium.

  Chapter Five

  Sandy Clarridge slipped behind his desk, inviting George Decker to take one of the two seats on the opposite side. The news conference had lasted 45 minutes, and Decker could tell that Clarridge was pleased with how it had gone. Clarridge asked him to meet him in his office after the conference ended.

  “She’s been on patrol six years?”

  “Yes, sir,” Decker said.

  Clarridge had a habit of squinting behind his round, wire-framed glasses and rubbing at the stubble on his chin. “What type of officer is she?”

  “Exactly the kind you witnessed. She’s competent, inquisitive, and highly capable. She’s also smart enough not to throw anyone under the bus. I was one of her instructors at the academy. She finished first in her class.”

  “I understand she had a confrontation there with one of her instructors.”

  “Johnny Nolasco. The incident was investigated and Officer Crosswhite was cleared.”

  “What was the nature of the incident?”

  “According to everyone we spoke with, including officer Crosswhite, Nolasco groped her breast during a training exercise on how to subdue a reluctant suspect.” Decker couldn’t totally suppress a grin. “She kneed him in the balls and broke his nose.”

  Clarridge sat back, left eyebrow arched. “And she was cleared?”

  “Completely,” Decker said.

  “Nolasco didn’t press charges?”

  Decker smiled again. “He was convinced he might want to let it go.”

  Clarridge’s chest expanded and deflated as he considered Decker’s comments. “After what she just did, could she be a bit of a loose cannon?”

  “I’ve seen nothing in the six years to indicate that’s the case and I believe her motives for going in that apartment were the welfare of that woman and two little girls and not because of any desire to be heroic.”

  “Took a hell of a lot of guts to go into that apartment,” Clarridge said, though I’m not sure there’s any points there for common sense.”