knew.”
“I’ll be damned. He was trolling for information the whole time.”
“You’ve got it,” Peters replied. “Looking for leaks and trying to cover his tracks all at the same time.”
We finally negotiated our way through the last of the milling crowd. With squealing tires, Ron Peters sent the car rocketing forward. He turned westbound onto Madison.
“So where is he?” I asked.
“See that blue car,” Knuckles Russell asked, pointing from the backseat. “The one just now goin‘ over the top of the hill? That’s him.”
Curtis Bell’s blue Beretta crested the rise and momentarily disappeared from view as we sped up the steep grade behind him.
“He’s ahead of us,” Peters agreed grimly, “but not that far and not for long. You two keep an eye on him, and we’ll catch up.”
“And what do we do then?” I asked.
“I’m gonna smoke the mother,” Knuckles Russell murmured.
Even barreling hell-bent-for-leather down the street, Ron Peters managed to dredge up a shred of his customary sense of humor.
“That’s probably a bad idea, Ezra,” he cautioned reasonably. “There’ll be too many other people in line. You might hit the wrong person.”
“What if he gets off?” Knuckles demanded.
“He won’t. We’ll see to it.”
There was no way right then to tell who had done what, but in the state of Washington, regardless of who had been running the show and regardless of who actually wielded the weapons, all those involved would be considered equally guilty. In this state, murders committed by others in the course of a conspiracy to commit a felony offense damn all the conspirators. Not only that, Curtis Bell was a crooked cop besides.
“Killing’s too damn good for him,” I said heatedly. “Look! He’s turning north on Sixth. Where’s he going?”
We were turning onto Sixth only a block behind him as the light at Spring turned green ahead of us and he sped in a sharp right-hand turn onto the southbound on-ramp to I-5. Peters followed suit, but dropped back and stayed far enough behind so we could keep him in view without arousing suspicion.
“Five bucks says he’s headed for the airport,” Ron Peters breathed.
“I never placed no bet with cops before, but you’re on,” Knuckles asserted from the backseat. His eyes never left the back of Curtis Bell’s car.
Previous encounters with Ron Peters had taught me the folly of betting money against him on anything. It was a valuable lesson Knuckles Russell would have to learn for himself the hard way.
“It’ll be coming out of your student loan,” I told him.
And actually, that was probably fair. I figured it would prove to be an educational experience.
CHAPTER 26
For months now people in the media have complained bitterly about the growing traffic problems in the Puget Sound area. When you live and work primarily in the downtown core, it’s easy to ignore the fact that Seattle’s freeways often deteriorate into vast parking lots, and not just at rush hour, either.
At four P.M. that Saturday afternoon some major cultural or sporting event must have let out minutes earlier, because the southbound lanes of I-5 were crammed. After merging into traffic, we literally inched our way past the I-90 interchange and the city’s perpetual Kingdome exit construction projects. Curtis Bell’s blue Beretta was only six or seven cars ahead of us as we crawled along.
“I could probably sprint fast enough to catch up with him,” I said, itching to jump out of the car and collar the bastard.
“And what happens then?” Peters returned. “What happens if Bell takes off and you end up causing a chain reaction accident? We’ll be stuck here with no backup and no way to send for any. We’re better off waiting until we know for sure where he’s going.”
I might have argued with him, except he was probably right. When you’re dealing with that kind of traffic volume, any slight fender bender can result in hours of delay for everyone. Under those circumstances, police and emergency vehicles are only marginally better off than civilian ones.
The good thing about being stuck in traffic was that it was easy to keep track of exactly where Curtis Bell was and what he was doing, without it being blatantly obvious to him that he was being tailed. The bad part was that if he somehow did catch on and start making evasive maneuvers, it might be difficult for us to react. I breathed a sigh of relief when he went straight past the Spokane Street and Michigan exits. I was happy when he skipped Martin Luther King Junior Way as well. It was looking more and more like Sea-Tac all the time.
About then my pager went off two different times in rapid succession. Once the readout gave me Tony Freeman’s number and once Captain Powell’s, but without a radio or a phone in the car, there was no way for me to respond right then.
“You really ought to have a cellular phone in here,” I told Peters. “It would make our lives a hell of a lot easier right about now.”
The irony of what I’d just said wasn’t lost on me, and Ron Peters didn’t miss it either. He glanced at me sideways. “Ralph Ames has created a technological monster out of you, hasn’t he?” Ron said with a laugh. “Maybe I should have a portable fax in here as well.”
I didn’t want to talk about who owned a fax and who didn’t, but joking around helped ease the tension in the car. It gave us something to think about besides the grim reality of the coming confrontation.
And grim it was. It’s one thing to go up against crooks. They may be armed to the teeth, but they’re also like untrained guerrilla warriors who often can be outflanked and outmaneuvered by the strategic thinking of even a much smaller force. Unfortunately Curtis Bell was a fellow police officer. He would be armed, probably the same way I was armed-with an automatic weapon-and he had been trained the same way I had been trained, probably by some of the same people. More important, he was desperate. That made him doubly dangerous.
“What do you think he’ll do when he realizes he’s being followed?” I asked.
“He’s likely to recognize the car,” Peters said. “If he thinks I’m alone with no way to summon help, maybe we can trick him into coming after me.”
“No way! That’s risky as hell.”
“Do you have a better idea?”
I didn’t. Every mile we traveled was taking us closer and closer to Sea-Tac Airport, but the traffic jam had broken up and the average highway speed had increased dramatically. We were zipping along at an unlawful but traffic-pacing sixty-six. Now there were only two cars between us and Curtis Bell. As I watched, one of them switched on a turn signal indicating a planned exit at Tukwila. Bell moved into the far right-hand lane just past that same exit.
“Sea-Tac it is,” Peters said grimly. “You two had better get down. He’s bound to notice the car sooner or later.”
Peters’s rooftop wheelchair carrier isn’t entirely unique-I’ve seen one or two others like it in my travels-but it is very distinctive and through a special dispensation from both the chief and the mayor, Ron is allowed to park it in a specially designated handicapped spot just inside the department’s parking garage. Everyone on the force sees it on an almost daily basis.
As of that moment, Peters’s plan, risky or not, was the only one available. I did as I was told and scrunched down in the seat, assuming that behind me Knuckles Russell was doing exactly the same thing.
Peters switched on his own signal, and the Reliant swerved slightly to the right. “Southcenter?” I asked.
He nodded. “Hang on. I’m going to narrow the gap now, let him know I’m back here, and see what he does about it.”
What Bell did next was obvious in Ron Peters’s reaction. He accelerated to warp speed. There’s something about riding blindly down a highway in a speeding vehicle with your shoulder seat belt dangling improperly around your neck to give you yet another glimpse of your own mortality. Almost like dodging the bullet in a drive-by
