blinking the notice that the vehicle was exiting after all, moving onto the exit ramp that led to I-19-the only exit ramp through the downtown area of Tucson that hadn’t been shut down for construction.
“Suspect vehicle is exiting onto I-19,” Brian shouted as he started for the exit ramp as well. “Tucson PD units are approaching.”
He was relieved that someone had given the word about making a stealth approach. At least three marked patrol cars were coming up fast in the right-hand lane behind him. As he had requested, there were no lights and no sirens.
“Tell Tucson PD that we’ll try to hem them in and bring the vehicle to a stop that way.”
“Roger that,” the operator said.
Then, just when Brian dared hope there might be a good end to all this, the Honda suddenly careened off the road. It slammed into a guardrail partway up the exit ramp and then spun a full three-sixty before staggering through another guardrail and down the incline into westbound traffic.
All Brian could do was stand on his brake and try to avoid the flying wreckage that spun skyward in a whirlwind of chunks of metal and glass along with a storm of highway grit and dust. In the instant the car flew past him, he could see that the air bags had deployed, but that was all he could see.
From that moment on, things seemed to happen in slow motion. Before the Accord stopped moving, coming to rest halfway in the freeway’s right-hand lane and facing the wrong way, Brian had stopped his Crown Victoria in the middle of the on-ramp, slammed it into park, yanked on the hazard lights, and erupted out of the vehicle. He vaulted over the remains of the shattered guardrail and slid down the steep shoulder, drawing his weapon as he went. Behind him he heard a cacophony of sirens as the Tucson PD units hit their lights and sirens.
He saw a woman scramble out of the driver’s side of the Honda. “Get down,” he shouted at her. “On the ground.”
If she heard him, she ignored him. Rather than getting down, she stood there for several seconds, struggling to open the Accord’s back door. When it wouldn’t cooperate, she simply threw herself through what Brian realized must have been a broken rear window. And he knew, then, too, what she was doing: Virginia Torres was going after her baby.
Then, also in slow motion and moving as if in a daze, a man clambered out of the passenger side of the wrecked vehicle. Brian saw the figure first and then the telling details-the sling, the gun. Brian’s first thought was that he would try to grab the woman or the baby and use them as human shields. That may have been what he had in mind, but for some reason the rear door wouldn’t open and the window on that side hadn’t shattered.
“On the ground!” Brian shouted again. “Drop your weapon.”
Jonathan Southard looked up. Brian recognized the man’s bloodied face from the driver’s license photo. He seemed surprised to see Brian standing there, but he didn’t get on the ground and he didn’t drop his weapon. Just then the first Tucson PD officer arrived on the scene as well. He, too, had his weapon drawn.
“Drop your weapon.” The arriving officer issued the same orders Brian had given. “Get on the ground.”
Jonathan Southard did neither. He stood stock-still for a moment, as if assessing the situation and his opposition. Then, without checking for traffic, he turned and sprinted into the speeding freeway traffic.
Brian Fellows made as if to follow, but then he saw the woman again. She had managed to wrestle the child out of the vehicle. Now she stood there holding the baby and frozen in place, staring in horror back at the freeway.
Brian heard the bellowing horn of an approaching semi. He knew as soon as he heard it that it was coming too fast. He heard the thump of engaging air brakes and smelled the smoke from scorching tires. The woman was terrified and too dumbstruck to move. Brian wasn’t. He leaped forward, grabbed the woman’s arm and propelled her up the bank to safety. Then something smashed into him from behind. After that he knew nothing.
Tucson, Arizona
Sunday, June 7, 2009, 2:10 p.m.
89? Fahrenheit
Kath Fellows left the store parking lot and went home. She unloaded the car, put away her groceries, and waited for Brian to call. She didn’t want to call him. If he was involved in some sort of emergency situation, the last thing he needed was the distraction of a ringing telephone. First ten minutes went by without any word. Then twenty. Then thirty. With each passing minute she grew more and more anxious. She was sure something was wrong-terribly wrong.
Finally, unable to wait any longer, she put in a call to Brian’s office. She managed to bluff her way through to an emergency operator, but what she was told didn’t help. “Sorry, Ms. Fellows. It’s a chaotic scene right now. There are injuries. We don’t know who or how bad.”
As soon as Kath heard those words, she knew that she had to go see for herself. She didn’t want Amy and Annie to know how worried she was, but she didn’t want to take them with her, either. She called their elderly neighbor, Mrs. Harper, and asked for help.
“Of course,” Estelle said. “Just let me turn off the ball game. I’ll be right there.”
Kath was standing by the front door with her purse in one hand and the car keys in the other when Estelle rang the doorbell.
“Okay,” she announced as she let the woman into the house. “I’m going out for a while, girls,” she called over her shoulder. “You listen to Mrs. Harper and do whatever she says.”
“Where are you going?” Amy asked.
“Out,” Kath answered.
“Why can’t we come with you?”
“Because,” she said, then she fled out the door and down the steps.
She drove toward the spot where she’d last heard from Brian-I-10 and Kino. She was half a mile from the intersection when she ran into stopped traffic. She still had a rooftop emergency bubble light in her glove box, one she’d never quite gotten around to taking out of the Odyssey. She retrieved the light, plugged it in, and slapped it on top of her vehicle. Then she threaded her way through the traffic jam until she reached a cop who was directing people away from the freeway.
“Freeway’s closed, ma’am,” the officer said when she reached him. “You’ll have to go around.”
She reached into her purse and pulled out her Border Patrol ID. “I’m off duty,” she said. “They called in all available units.”
The officer barely looked at her ID. He simply stepped aside, motioned Kath onto the on-ramp, and then stopped the car directly behind her.
As soon as she turned onto the ramp, she could see the jumble of traffic ahead of her. There were a good hundred cars or so, stopped here and there, parked at odd angles. Some of them had stopped so suddenly that they had rear-ended the vehicle ahead of them, which meant that there were several fender benders, but at the head of that field of broken and battered automobiles Kath could see a mass of wreckage. At first what she was seeing didn’t make sense. As she inched her way closer, however, she realized that the debris field came from an overturned eighteen-wheeler that had spilled a massive load of construction materials in all directions.
All right, then, Kath thought. Brian’s up there, helping deal with this horrendous wreck. No wonder he couldn’t call me.
When Kath could drive no farther, she stowed the bubble light, left her car parked crookedly on the shoulder, and walked. She could see that the accident had started somewhere just after the I-19 exit ramp. And sure enough, there was Brian’s car-the only one in the collection of cop cars that didn’t have a red flashing lightbar. If Brian’s car was here, that meant he was here somewhere, too.
Kath pulled her phone out of her purse and punched the green button that automatically called the last number dialed. Unfortunately, that turned out to be Mrs. Harper’s number. She ended that call when Estelle Harper’s answering machine came on. Then Kath scrolled through to the next number and dialed that.
The phone rang and rang. It rang six times. Just when Kath expected the call to switch over to voice mail, somebody answered-somebody who wasn’t Brian.
“Hello?”
The voice belonged to a woman. It sounded tentative and uncertain. Kath tried to be all business.
“Who are you?” she demanded. “I’m looking for my husband. What are you doing with his phone?”
