J. Jance - Without Due Process

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 shooting. Almost like having a life insurance salesman pay a call, but I kept my mouth shut and didn’t tell Peters to slow down. People who can’t see the road shouldn’t backseat drive.

Overhead, the shadow of an overpass blinked across the windshield while we angled first to the right and then to the left. That meant we were turning onto the private road approaching the airport. Theoretically, that stretch is heavily patrolled by port police. Maybe, with any kind of luck, both vehicles would be stopped for speeding and Peters and I would have some help after all, but of course, that didn’t happen. Traffic cops are hardly ever anywhere around when you need them.

“Where’s he going?” I asked, automatically starting to slide back up in the seat.

“The parking garage. Stay right where you are,” Peters ordered.

I slid back down, banging my knees on the bottom of the dashboard as we screeched to a sudden halt at the wooden control gate that allows only one car at a time access into Sea-Tac’s parking area. Peters rolled down his window as the buzzer sounded. He grabbed the ticket. I was glad he’d stopped. Otherwise, the Reliant would have been wearing a hunk of two-by-six Douglas fir as a hood ornament.

“Good, he’s headed up the ramp,” Peters said, reporting what was going on outside my line of vision like some macabre play-by-play sports broadcaster, but this was no game. In the next few minutes, there was going to be a gunfight and someone was liable to get hurt. Considering the small number of people involved, the odds were pretty damned high that a fast trip to Harborview’s Trauma Unit was looming in my future.

We started moving forward again, going up and around the circular ramps. “Ezra,” Peters was saying. “Are you listening?” Our passenger had been so quiet for so long, I had almost forgotten Knuckles Russell’s presence, but Ron Peters hadn’t.

“Yo,” Knuckles responded.

“Listen to me. I’m going to throw you out. Run like hell into the terminal and alert security. Have them seal off the garage. Tell them not to let anyone in or out until they hear from Detective Beaumont or me. Got that?”

“Got it!” Knuckles replied.

I felt a surge of elation. It wasn’t just Peters and me after all. Knuckles was there. If he could go for help fast enough, there was a chance he could save us all.

On what must have been the inside curve of the next ramp, Peters stopped long enough for Knuckles to leap out. “Get going!” he ordered, but Knuckles paused momentarily outside the door.

Ron pressed the button to roll down the windows. “What is it? What’s wrong?”

“What if they doan listen?”

“Make them!” Peters barked. “You’ve got to.”

Moments later I heard the first echoing slaps of Knuckles’s retreating Reeboks, then Peters continued two-wheeling us up that gut-wrenching circular ramp.

My heart sank. Every single day, cops make life-or-death judgments based on appearances alone, on how the people they’re dealing with look, act, and sound. Ezra Russell looked fine. He wasn’t wearing gang-type clothing, but he still sounded like a street tough. There was nothing in the way he spoke that announced he had changed his ways and matriculated at an institution of higher learning as a respectable college student. I worried about what kind of call the port police would make with all our lives hanging in the balance.

“What if he’s right?” I asked. “What if they don’t believe him?”

“That’s a risk we’ll have to take, isn’t it?” Peters returned. “Hold on. You get out here. It looks to me as though he’s on his way up to the top floor.”

“But…” I objected.

“No buts. This is seven, the end of the line. Come up either the stairs or the elevator. As far as he’s concerned, I’ll be a sitting duck. I’m counting on you to see to it that isn’t the case.”

Peters paused barely long enough for me to clamber out of the car. Luckily I landed on my feet. The next thing I knew, I, too, was racing through the almost deserted parking garage. The place was full of cars, but empty of people. Evidently Saturday isn’t a primo flying day.

Never before had I noticed how unbearably long those aisles were. They must have stretched forever while behind me I heard the squeal of tires as Peters rounded the last curve that would take him onto the eighth level of the parking garage, the top and unroofed level.

I ducked my head and ran that much faster, dreading with every step the reverberation of a gunshot echoing off concrete that would mean the end of Ron Peters.

Overhead I heard a terrible crash followed by the scraping of metal on concrete. There was no way to tell what had happened. The sound seemed to come from behind me, from what was now the far side of the garage. By then there was no point in running all the way back to the ramps and making my way up from there. I was already far closer to the elevators and stairwells.