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The clerk looked at his call sheet. “Yes, here it is. He had a 6 a.m. wake-up call. At 6:15 he showed up here dressed in running attire.”
Shelley’s alarm bells went off – too much time had gone by since 6:15. She rotated the call sheet and noted that two others also had a 6 a.m. wake-up. “So, you haven’t seen him since he left for his run?”
The clerk shook his head. Shelley pointed at the other names on the sheet. “What about these two?”
The clerk took the sheet back. “This one waited in that chair over there for a shuttle to the airport, and this other one walked out to the parking lot a few minutes after your friend.”
Shelley took out her I.D. and flashed it at the clerk. “I need to see any footage you have of the parking lot.”
From the back, the day clerk came out. “What’s the problem? I’m in charge now – maybe I can help.”
Shelley waved her badge and I.D. in the clerk’s face. “You can either let me in there and show me the footage from your parking lot, or spend the remainder of the day in jail for interfering with a Federal Officer.”
The day clerk ran the footage from 6:15. It showed Bobby coming out and walking toward a white Impala. He had his phone in his hand and it looked as though he took a picture of the car’s license plate. A man walked up behind Bobby, and he and Bobby talked, but Shelley couldn’t see their mouths, so there was no chance of making out any of the conversation. Suddenly the man – the owner of the car? – pulled a gun, pushed Bobby against the car, and patted him down, finding and removing his phone, which he smashed on the pavement. He unlocked the driver’s door, pushed Bobby in, and closed the door, and then went around to the other side and got in. He handed Bobby something – the key, presumably – and the car soon drove off and out of sight of the cameras.
Shelley pulled her phone out and called the police. She told the clerk, “Make me a CD of that and get a close-up of the tag number. Hello,” she said into the phone, “put me through to Captain Hawkins. This is Agent Adams, and it’s an emergency.”
The clerk handed her the CD and a piece of paper with the tag number. She took the items and hurried out to the parking lot. “Leo, the killer has my partner. Here’s his license plate number: Washington State tag 259-8955. It’s the white Impala I told you about. We checked into the same motel as the killer, if you can believe that.”
Hawkins put out an APB on the Impala and personally came and picked Shelley up. As they pulled out of the motel’s lot, a message came over his radio that a traffic cam had picked up the Impala heading north toward Evergreen Park. Hawkins smiled at Shelley. “Hold on.” He hit the lights and siren and raced into the street.
Shelley hollered, “How far are we from the park?”
Hawkins dodged a car and crossed two lanes in order to get around cars that had stopped but were still in his path. “We’re a ways from there, but if the killer goes into the park there are only two roads coming out. The northern part of the park is all wilderness, and higher up there’s snow, so he’ll be trapped.”
Shelley was being thrown around in her seat and she had a death grip on the handle above the door. “I doubt having the killer trapped is going to help Bobby.”
Hawkins glanced at Shelley and saw that she was pretty stressed. “There’s always hope, hold on to that. The asshole didn’t plan this, he’s winging it. He planned all the murders to a T, but now he’s lost without a plan. If killing your partner was all he wanted to do, he would probably have done it in the parking lot. He’s thinking, trying to come up with a way out of this, and that gives us time.”
Hawkins’ words made Shelley feel better, but she knew the odds were against Bobby making it out alive. She heard more sirens and turned to see two police cars falling in line behind them. Over the radio, another car reported that it was entering the park, while another was blocking a secondary road. The might of the Seattle Police Department was converging like a swarm of bees. Soon the police helicopter, along with the sheriff’s helicopter, reported they were on site.
Shelley felt as though she needed to call Blake, but she had no idea what to say. She wanted to be truthful and admit that she was responsible for Bobby being in the shit storm he was in, but other than that she had nothing to report. Bobby was out there somewhere and people were looking for him, so she decided to hold off making the call until it was over.
Suddenly, on the radio, the sheriff’s helicopter reported seeing a white car racing toward the north slope of the park. Hawkins shouted, “They’re off the main road and running on gravel. That’s a fire road. It makes a loop 5 miles in and comes back toward the exit.”
They turned into the park and Hawkins cut the lights and siren. “This is Captain Hawkins,” he radioed. “Everybody shut down your lights and sirens. Let him come to us. The driver of the Impala is a kidnapped Federal Agent, so don’t fire unless you have to, and then make damn sure it’s at the right person. The man in the passenger seat has the gun.”
Two cars reported that they had set up a roadblock behind the Impala, where the fire road came back to the blacktop, and more police were coming. The net was closing, and Shelley was praying it would close in time to save Bobby. Hawkins turned onto the gravel road. He said to Shelley, “We’re going to come in from behind him. You have your gun?”
Shelley removed her pistol and checked to be sure there was a round in the chamber, and then put the safety back on. “I’m good to go.”
They came to the turn in the loop. “This is Hawkins. I made the loop and haven’t seen the car, so they’re on their way back out.”
The men at the roadblock answered, “10-4, Cap. We’re ready for them.”
Hawkins came around a small curve and found himself face to face with the white Impala coming back toward them. He cut the wheels sharply to the left and slammed on the brakes. The car spun, throwing its rear toward the Impala, which caused it to glance off Hawkins’ rear bumper and head toward the woods.
Hawkins’ door ended up against the dirt bank and both he and Shelley had to crawl out Shelley’s side of the car. As they came onto the gravel a shot rang out, and they both dropped to the ground and raised their guns.
Across the road, next to the Impala, whose nose was wrapped around a tree, the killer was holding a gun at Bobby’s bloody head. Shelley called out, “Are you okay, Bobby?”
The killer jerked Bobby back against him. “I’ll do the talking here. I want a car – one of yours will do just fine – and then I want a clear lane out of here.”
Hawkins stood up from the gravel. “Hello. I’m Leo. We ran your tag, and the Impala came back stolen, so what’s your name? What should I call you?”
The killer looked nervously down the road. “You need to get on that radio and tell your men to stay the hell back. I know you’re stalling for time. Time is something we’re all running out of. Let me be as straight with you as I can be: you may kill me, but not before I put a bullet through your friend’s head. Now get me a car!”
Under his breath, Leo asked Shelley, “Do you have a shot?”
Shelley, who was still prone on the gravel, was looking down the barrel of her gun. “Not even close. What’re we going to do?”
Hawkins put his gun in his hoster and raised his hands. “We can’t let him go,” he said to the killer. Under his breath he whispered, “If I can’t talk him down, make damn sure you kill him.”
Hawkins took a step onto the road, which made him a much easier target. With his hands still up, in a soft voice he said, “Here is our truth, my friend. You’re not getting a car. You’ll not leave this park a free man. You can kill me or Bobby. You’ll not be able to take us both out before the young lady on the ground here shoots you. At that point, there will be a newspaper report of two men killed in Evergreen Park. One will be reported as a law enforcement officer who gave his life to take down a crazy killer. The other will be the crazy killer. Is that how you want to be remembered? You were a mastermind. What are the odds of a Federal Agent staying in the same motel as you and then picking out your car? That wasn’t super detective work, that was just dumb luck. We would never have caught you otherwise. I have to be honest with you: you were smarter than all of the police in the Northwest. But the only way anyone will ever know that is if you don’t die out here in the woods.”
The killer cocked his gun. “You’re trying to play with me. You don’t believe I’ll kill this man.”
Leo put his hands down. “I’m not playing. We have you, and the odds of getting you again are too great to let you go. Don’t you understand? You’re so good, one of us is willing to die before we’ll set you free. You’ll probably get life in prison, but in there you’ll be a folk hero to many. Dead in this park, you’ll be nothing.”
Hawkins noticed that the killer had eased his grip on Bobby. The killer said, “I want a news conference, with all the papers and TV stations. I also want a statement saying how you would have never caught me if not for dumb luck.”
Leo spread his arms wide. “I can get it all for you. Now, just hand the gun over to Bobby there, and we’ll call the TV stations together.”
The sound of a gunshot made Shelley jump. She had thought it was over. But the killer had fired at them, and Bobby was spinning free to his left. Shelley fired and kept firing until the killer’s body toppled to the ground.
She clawed her way across the gravel to Leo’s side. He had a bullet in his upper left lung area. Neither he nor she had had time to put on a vest. She pulled off her shirt and pressed it into the wound. Soon other officers were pulling her back and she heard the helicopter landing.
The next few weeks were a blur to Shelley. She had thought she would be back in Memphis once everything was over, but with a policeman being shot, there were all kinds of questions to be answered. Then the press got her story and made her out to be a hero, and by the middle of February Blake came to town, along with Director Gibson from Homeland, who pinned a medal on her. And then she was finally on a plane back to Memphis.
Shelley never spoke to Leo again. He took his retirement after rehab and moved his family to Southern California.
For some time, Shelley kept waking up nights staring down the barrel of a smoking gun.
| Copyright © 2019, 2020 by Ed Rogers |
One of the most action-packed chapters you have written (and you have written many action-packed chapters)!
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