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 communication, 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.
'Did you hear that, Mr. Whitten?' Peters called, once our reinforcements were safely in place. 'More cops arrived just a minute ago and more are on their way. The police boat will be here soon as well. You're surrounded. There's not a chance in hell that you'll get away. Leave the officer alone, Mr. Whitten. Move away from him. Come up the stairs with your hands up. We'll see to it that you don't get hurt.'
By then, I had made my way as far as the berm at the end of the retaining wall. Slowly, ever so slowly, expecting another incoming shot at any moment, I raised myself up and peered over the side. Kramer was still there, lying in the same exact position as the last time I saw him. Bill Whitten, on the other hand, was nowhere in sight.
'Kramer,' I called. 'Are you okay? Are you awake?'
'I'm awake. Whitten just went down to the house. You've got to get me out of here quick,' Kramer said in a hoarse whisper, 'before that crazy bastard comes back.'
'Why did he do that?' I asked, peering down the hill where Grace Highsmith's house was shrouded in darkness.
'How the hell should I know? Just get me out of here.'
Kramer was right, of course. Moving him out of harm's way had to be the first priority. 'Hey, somebody,' I yelled up to the others. 'Over here. Ron, cover us. You other two guys, come help me. My partner's injured. I can't lift him by myself.'
Grasping the edge of the retaining wall, I lowered myself over the side. Even when I was fully extended, the bottoms of my feet were still a good four feet from the surface of the ledge. Dreading the price that four-foot drop would exact from the bone spurs on my heels, I dangled there for a moment before fear of being shot made me let go. I dropped down beside Kramer in a low crouch. Within seconds, the two uniformed Kirkland officers joined me.
'That leg looks real bad,' one of them observed. 'Shouldn't we wait for the EMTs?'
'No, damn it!' Kramer grunted through gritted teeth. 'He might come back. Get me out of here now! Just do what you have to do and get it over with.'
The thought was daunting. With the prospect of bullets flying at any moment, it wasn't simply a matter of moving a man with a broken leg. There were other injuries as well. Later, we would discover that in his tumble off the ten-foot ledge, Detective Kramer had broken six ribs in addition to damaging his leg. And at the time we were considering moving him, it seemed likely that he might have suffered neck or spinal injuries as well. With those, there's always the possibility that any kind of jarring or unprotected movement may lead to further injury-to paralysis even.
Moving him by hand, especially over such rough terrain, flew in the face of every grain of first-aid training I'd ever had drummed into my thick skull. Yet, there was no choice. Cop instinct warned me that an armed standoff was coming. We couldn't very well leave Kramer lying exposed right in the middle of it. Besides, with the extent of his injuries in that terrible cold, it seemed likely that if a stray gunshot didn't get him, shock sure as hell would.
One of the patrol officers looked up at me. 'What do we do?' he asked.
'We carry him out. From the sounds of those sirens, we don't have long. I'll take this side. You take the other,' I told the cop who had asked the question. 'That leaves the legs for you,' I told the other.
Kramer's a big guy. With only three of us, lifting him was no easy task. He gasped when we first raised him off the ground, and he groaned again when we finally put him down. Other than that, he didn't make a sound. While we were carrying him up the steep stairs, I thought-hoped-that maybe he had passed out, but when we reached the far side of Grace Highsmith's garage and laid him down on the ground, I saw that wasn't the case. He was wide awake. His jaw was clenched shut while tears streamed down his face.
'Sorry about that,' I apologized. 'I know it was rough.'
'It's okay,' he managed. 'Thanks.'
Grace Highsmith appeared out of nowhere carrying a blanket. She covered the injured man, then she disappeared into her garage. She emerged carrying a walking stick.
'We can use this to splint his leg,' she announced, moving purposefully toward Kramer. I could tell from the look of her that she was fully prepared to put word to action.
'No, Miss Highsmith,' I told her. 'That won't be necessary. An aid car will be here soon.'
'An aid car,' she sniffed disapprovingly. 'I've splinted legs before, you know. I'm perfectly capable, and I know how to do it.'
'I'm sure you do,' I told her. 'And so do I, but how about if we leave that job to the professionals? Come on. We need to get you out of here.'
Grace shot me a withering glance. 'I'm not going anywhere, Detective Beaumont. This man was injured on my property because he was trying to help me,' she said determinedly. 'I'm not leaving until he does.'
