By then, the street in both directions was rapidly filling with arriving emergency vehicles, although to the north there was still one lane open to allow vehicles to leave as needed. Giving up on the futile idea of arguing with Grace Highsmith, I walked over to where Ron was huddled with a group of uniformed Kirkland officers. When I arrived, he was briefing them on the situation-giving them the information they would need to pass along to the commander of the Emergency Response Team, who was due to arrive at any moment. The department's chief hostage negotiator had also been summoned.
'How many people do you think are down there besides the bad guy?' one of the Kirkland cops asked me.
'Just him as far as we know,' I answered, 'but I'll go check.'
Getting up, I hurried back to where Grace Highsmith still hovered over Detective Kramer. 'Is he alone?' I asked.
'Yes,' Grace answered, but Kramer shook his head.
'There must be two of them,' he said. 'I was approaching the Lexus when the lights over the stairway switched on. I remember seeing Whitten on the stairs, and that's when something hit me from behind.'
I looked at Grace. 'What did he want? Why did he come here in the first place?'
'My fax,' she said. 'He came looking for the information Virginia Marks sent me. But I was smarter than that. I had hidden it, but I told him I didn't have it, that I had sent it somewhere for safekeeping. I asked him if he planned to kill me, too.'
'You asked him that?'
'Of course. He's a dangerous man, Detective Beaumont. Very unstable. Like a vicious dog. Father always taught us that you can't afford to back down with one of those. You should never show any fear, either. I believe, from something he said, that Virginia may have tried to blackmail him. That may have pushed him over the edge.'
'Blackmail? With what?'
'Detective Beaumont,' someone called from behind me. 'The captain wants us to clear this area.'
Looking around, I realized that the unit commander of the Kirkland Emergency Response Team had taken control of the situation and was busily deploying personnel and weapons in what he viewed as the most strategic positions. Kramer, sheltered behind the garage, would need to stay where he was. Grace Highsmith wouldn't.
'Look, Miss Highsmith, you heard the officer. We've got to get out of here,' I warned her.
'No,' she replied. 'I already told you I'm staying until the ambulance gets here and that's final. I'm eighty- three years old. If I get hit by a stray bullet, it's my choice. I'd much rather do that than shrivel away in some old people's home.'
'I give up,' I told her. 'Suit yourself.' I turned back to the officer. 'Leave her be,' I said. 'She's waiting for the ambulance.'
'Okay,' he said dubiously. 'But the captain isn't going to like it.'
'Have him come talk to her then.'
Just then, an arriving ambulance came threading its way toward us through the bottleneck of parked cars. Ron Peters and I, benched by the arrival of the locals, watched from the sidelines while the emergency medical technicians splinted Kramer's leg and loaded him onto a backboard. I think they also must have slipped him some kind of medication. By the time they were ready to load him into the ambulance, he seemed to be in far less pain. When he saw me hanging around in the background, he grinned faintly and held out his hand.
'Don't think this makes us best buddies, Beaumont,' he said. 'But thanks. Thanks a whole hell of a lot.'
'You're welcome, asshole,' I replied, squeezing his hand. 'You'd do the same for me.'
Moments later, they loaded the gurney into the ambulance. When one of the EMTs turned away from the aid car after closing the two back doors, she was holding Grace Highsmith's blanket.
'We use our own blankets on the way to the hospital,' she explained. 'Do you have any idea whose this is?'
'It belongs to Grace Highsmith,' I said. 'She's around here somewhere. I'll see that it's returned to its proper owner.'
Taking the folded blanket, I looked around for Grace some more, but still didn't see her. Assuming that one of the local officers had finally succeeded in convincing her to move out of harm's way, I unfolded the blanket and draped it over my own chilled shoulders, then I walked up to the Buick where Ron Peters was in the process of loading his wheelchair.
'Come on, Chief Sitting Bull,' he said, glancing at me and my blanket. 'The captain wants all nonessential people out of the immediate area. That includes you and me.'
'Did Grace Highsmith come up this way?' I asked.
'If she did, I didn't see her,' Peters replied. 'But one of the uniformed officers just herded a whole group of people into the house next door. Maybe that's where she disappeared to.'
'You're probably right,' I said. But just then, something drew my eyes to the open door of Grace Highsmith's garage. I was startled to see a fat cloud of exhaust steam suddenly stream out of the back of Grace Highsmith's Cadillac and rise in the cold night air. At the same moment, a set of taillights flashed on.
'What the hell…?' I began.
Then the backup lights flashed on as well and the Caddy, belching clouds of steamy exhaust vapor, began backing out of the garage. I immediately assumed that Grace was at the wheel. My expectation was that she would back out to the right and then leave to the left, driving away in the single northbound lane that was still open to traffic-the one that ran past Ron and the Buick.
Instead, the Cadillac turned in exactly the opposite direction. Rather than driving away from the danger, the Caddy headed directly into it.
Turning his attention from the Chair Topper, Ron stared at the Cadillac. 'That can't be Grace Highsmith, can it?' he asked.
'Who else?' I returned.
Who else, indeed!
Walking after her, intent on turning her around, I wasn't in any particular hurry. After all, the road where Grace was headed was chock full of official police vehicles. Not only was she not going anywhere, she also wasn't going anywhere fast.
That was the thought that crossed my mind at the time, anyway. Which shows how much I know.
As the Cadillac lumbered toward the command-post van, a uniformed officer broke away from the group. Waving his arms and gesturing madly, his message to the Cadillac's driver should have been perfectly clear: Go back! To my absolute astonishment, the Caddy stopped at once, exactly as directed.
Grace Highsmith would never do that, I thought. Somebody else must be driving her car.
I was curious to see what the driver would do next. At that point, what would have been sensible and easy would have been to reverse course, return to the garage, and repeat the whole process over from scratch, turning into the opposite lane. Instead, with the squeal of a fluid-starved power-steering pump, the Cadillac's wheels turned sharply to the right. She began to turn around on the spot right where it was, in a place just beyond the top landing of the stairs, where there was almost no shoulder on either side of the road.
That's when I realized for sure that Grace Highsmith was at the wheel.
Instantly, I flashed back to the parking ordeal on Main Street a few hours earlier. I remembered the whole series of bumper-bashing backing and filling maneuvers it had taken for Grace to wedge the Cadillac into a regular parking space. Compared to this, that was simple. Here, if she misjudged the distance, it wasn't matter of creasing somebody else's chrome. There was no bumper to stop her if she went too far. Only a straight drop, with nothing at all to break the fall-other than the possibility of tumbling into the arms of the gun-toting maniac who was waiting in the house at the bottom of the cliff.
The other cop-the one who was officially charged with stopping her-and I reached opposite sides of the Cadillac at pretty much the same time. By then, Grace had wrenched the car around so she had it perpendicular to the roadway, sitting squarely astraddle both lanes of traffic. The Kirkland officer pounded on the driver's window with his flashlight, then aimed the beam into the vehicle.
'Lady!' he yelled. 'Turn off the engine and get out of the car.'
There was no sign from the driver that she so much as heard him, so I took a crack at it. 'Grace,' I called, bending down and peering in the window. 'You've got to-'
