J. Jance - Without Due Process

Between stairs and elevator, there was no contest. I knew from bitter firsthand experience that a stairwell can be as bad as a blind alley, a trap, or a box canyon. But at least a stairway exit door wouldn’t ring a bell and point an arrow announcing my arrival.

I dashed through the door marked STAIRS. On the first landing I paused for a moment to hear if anyone was headed either down from above me or up from below, but there were no echoing footsteps. The place was empty. Relieved, I pounded up the remaining set of steep concrete stairs, covering three steps at a time. By then, my breath was coming in short, sharp gasps, there was a splitting pain in my side, and one ankle was giving me trouble.

Damn! I still expected my body to respond like it had twenty years ago, but it didn’t. Couldn’t. Even if I didn’t want to accept the idea that middle age was setting in with a vengeance, my body knew it. I had to wait outside the heavy metal door to catch my breath before I dared open it and go on.

Without my consciously being aware of it, the 9 mm automatic appeared in my hand. Taking a deep breath, I pushed the door open a crack.

Level 8 in the Sea-Tac Airport Parking Garage-the uncovered, rooftop portion-is the floor of last resort when it comes to parking cars. Usually it’s relatively open. Not so that particular day, and not because cars were parked on it either. Instead, the whole place had become a construction material staging area for the massive expansion of the parking garage. The place was strewn with stacks of lumber and iron rods, rolls of metal mesh fencing, piles of sheet metal, and several parked forklifts.

Where I expected a clear line of vision from the stairs to the ramps, instead the view across the floor was totally obscured. Over the noise of a departing jet, I could hear nothing. The only way to find out what was happening with Peters was to leave the relative safety of the stairwell.

I stepped out onto the concrete rooftop. At that exact instant, Curtis Bell’s Beretta came hurtling past my line of vision. Heading toward the exit ramp and busy dodging among the piles of construction material, I don’t think he even saw me. Raising the 9 mm, I assumed the proper shooting stance, hoping to squeeze off a shot at him before he disappeared down the ramp, but then I saw Peters.

Nosing his car straight through a stack of fencing, he sent huge rolls of the stuff spinning off in all directions. But the maneuver had accomplished its desired effect, creating a shortcut that took him to the top of the exit ramp and cut off Curtis Bell’s only remaining avenue of escape. With a sickening crunch the speeding Beretta plowed into the Reliant’s rider’s side. The grinding, sheet metal-devouring crash that followed made me grateful that I wasn’t sitting there in Peters’s car on the rider’s side. If I had been, I would have been holding the front end of the Beretta’s V-6 engine.

Instead of moving forward toward the melee, I stood as if frozen, still holding my weapon. There was no way for me to pull the trigger. If I had, Ron Peters would have been directly in my line of fire.

The dust settled slowly. At first glance I didn’t see either Ron Peters or Curtis Bell. Then, just when I’d almost convinced myself that they were both either dead or too badly injured to move, the clamshell top on the wheelchair carrier shot up and with a whir Peters’s wheelchair lowered down beside the car. So Ron was all right. He was getting out, moving himself expertly from car to chair.

Breathing a sigh of relief, I started forward, but then I saw movement in the Beretta as well. Curtis Bell, his head bloodied, crawled out through the rider’s side window. There was no need to shout a warning-they saw each other at precisely the same moment.

Midafternoon sun had finally managed to burn through the cloud cover. I saw the reflected glint of sunlight on metal and knew without a doubt that Curtis Bell had a gun in his hand.

My main problem was one of distance. Physics and reality to the contrary, it seemed as though the eighth floor aisles must have been far longer than those on the seventh, longer at least by half. I tried to shout a warning across the intervening space, but the sound was swallowed up in the roar of a departing jet. My only hope-Ron Peters’s only hope-was that I close the distance between us. Knowing I didn’t have a snowball’s chance in hell of getting there in time, I ducked my head, said a silent prayer, and ran.

It was like running in slow motion or in water or sloughing through deep sand. The vast distance that separated us didn’t seem to get any smaller. Partway there, I could see that Ron Peters and Curtis Bell were speaking earnestly back and forth across the hood of Ron’s car, but I wasn’t close enough to hear their voices. I wondered if they were negotiating about which one would end up having to give up and let the other one go.

With less than a quarter of the distance to go, a blaring alarm began sounding from somewhere inside the terminal itself. Thank God, I thought with relief. Knuckles had done it. He had somehow sounded the alarm and airport security was coming to help, but before that could happen, Curtis Bell swung around and saw me.

He saw me and pulled the trigger all in the same movement. He didn’t pause, didn’t have to think about it. He aimed and fired, hoping to gun me down without even the slightest pretense of hesitation. A long way from any cover, I hit the ground and skidded along the rough concrete surface just as the first bullet whizzed by overhead.

Curtis Bell was carrying the same kind of automatic I was. There should have been a whole barrage of bullets, but there wasn’t. Not exactly. There was a second shot-I heard it-but it didn’t hit anywhere near me.

I heard a single outraged screech of pain and I saw Curtis Bell crumple to the ground. Ron Peters may have looked like a sitting duck, but he wasn’t. And maybe his aim wasn’t all it had been once, before his accident, but it was close enough for government work, close enough to do the job and save my life.

I scrambled to my feet and hurried over to where Curtis Bell lay writhing on the ground, clutching his bleeding gut. Picking up his weapon, I left him lying there and walked past him to check on Ron Peters.

“You all right?” I asked.

“My car’s screwed,” he answered, “but I’m okay.”

“I don’t give a rat’s ass about your car as long as you’re fine.”

With a whir of his electric wheelchair, Ron Peters rolled up beside me, and we both looked down at the injured and helpless Curtis Bell. Neither one of us leaped forward to administer first aid.

“He’s not, though, is he?” Ron said casually. “Looks as though he’s hurt pretty bad…”

“You shot him real low,” I said. “Looks like you hit him well below the vest.”

Ron shook his head and clicked his tongue. “Can you imagine that. Guess I’m still not used to shooting from this angle. Maybe I need more practice.”

“I wouldn’t want you to change a thing,” I told him. “And neither would Big Al.”

The Medic One unit came from Angle Lake. As soon as we gave the port police the all clear, the medics arrived on the scene, where they determined Curtis Bell’s condition was far too serious to risk an ambulance ride. Harborview’s med-evac helicopter was summoned. Despite the construction debris and wrecked vehicles, it landed right there on top of the garage and the injured man was loaded aboard along with a police officer guard, compliments of the Port of Seattle.

Before the tow trucks finished hauling away broken cars, the garage had turned into a jurisdictional nightmare. Because of the likely connection to the Beaux Arts case, King County wanted to be involved as well as the city of Seattle and the Port of Seattle. Knuckles Russell remained on the fringes of the ever-expanding group, shoulders hunched, hands in his pockets, warily watching the proceedings.