J. Jance - Long Time Gone

I felt like I was watching a movie where the soundtrack is a minute or two out of sync with the visual images. Ron’s disjointed responses seemed to have nothing at all to do with what I was saying. I was about to repeat myself for a third time when it finally dawned on me that the problem wasn’t my hearing or his. Something was wrong at Ron and Amy’s house. Ron was trying to warn me by speaking in a form of code.

When Ron Peters and I worked as partners for Seattle PD, we knew each other so well that we could almost read each other’s mind. It happens that way when you’re chasing bad guys and your life depends on knowing in advance what your partner is likely to say or do. But Ron and I hadn’t worked together that way for years, and I wasn’t sure what he was telling me.

“I’ll keep her here with me then,” I said. “She’ll be safe.”

“Good,” Ron responded. “That’ll be great.”

There was no code-breaking technology necessary to translate that last statement. The relief in his voice was readily apparent. Whatever was going on at Ron and Amy’s house, Ron wanted Heather kept as far away from the action as possible.

I put the phone down. Heather was staring at me from across the room. “What’s going on?” she asked. “Dad’s so mad at me that he doesn’t want me to come home, right?”

I didn’t answer immediately. I was trying to make sense of Ron’s seemingly disconnected answers and to formulate some reasonable course of action.

“Is there a chance that Dillon went back to your house looking for you?” I asked.

Heather stopped short. “You think he’s there? With Mom and Dad, waiting for me to show up?”

“It’s possible,” I said, but the wariness in Ron’s voice and his intentionally misleading statements spoke to something more ominous than simply having an unwelcome boyfriend hanging around the house.

“Does Dillon have access to any weapons?” I asked.

“He has a gun, if that’s what you mean,” Heather said. “I’ve seen it in his apartment sometimes, but I don’t know if he had it along with him yesterday in the car.”

“What kind of gun?” I asked.

“I don’t know exactly. It looked sort of like Dad’s.”

“A thirty-eight?” I asked. “A Glock, maybe?”

Heather shrugged. “I never really looked at it. Guns don’t interest me very much.”

That made Ron’s answers far more understandable. If Dillon was there, not only was the boyfriend violent, he was also possibly armed and dangerous. So what were my possible courses of action? Call 911 and tell the Seattle PD dispatcher that there was a potential hostage situation on Queen Anne Hill? They’d send in an Emergency Response Team, with sirens blaring and lights flashing. And if that happened, what were the chances that Jared or Tracy or Amy might end up caught in some kind of cross fire? That didn’t seem like a good option, but neither did sitting around doing nothing, not when my showing up even a few minutes earlier might have saved Sue Danielson’s life.

Lost in thought, I almost didn’t hear Heather’s question. “You don’t think he’d hurt them, do you?” she asked.

“You didn’t think he’d hurt you,” I returned.

She turned away from me and didn’t answer. A moment later she turned back. “Maybe I should call there,” she said. “That way I could find out if Dillon really is there, find out what he wants.”

It was a sensible suggestion. I picked up the handset, dialed the code to block caller ID, switched on the speaker option, and handed it over. “Be my guest,” I said.

“Dad!” Heather exclaimed when Ron came on the line. “It’s me, Heather. I’m fine.”

“This isn’t a good time right now,” Ron said brusquely. “If you’d call back later-”

“Is Dillon there, Dad? What does he want? Can I speak to him?”

The telephone clicked in Heather’s ear as Ron ended the call.

“He hung up on me!” a dismayed Heather said. “He wouldn’t even talk to me.”

“Couldn’t,” I corrected. “But calling again was the right thing to do. Things must be pretty tough at the house for him to drop your call like that.”

I was now more convinced than ever that Dillon was there. The trick was going to be getting him out of the house and away from the family. Only when Ron, Amy, and the kids were safe would it be time to bring Dillon Middleton to ground.

How well is he armed? I wondered. Does he have more than one weapon?

Heather had seen only the one handgun. If Mel Soames and Brad Norton had been doing their jobs, all of Ron’s weapons would have been confiscated and hauled away until the investigation into Rosemary’s homicide was concluded. That was a good thing. Facing down a deranged kid with one handgun at his disposal was bad enough. Dealing with one armed with a whole arsenal was out of the question.

Suddenly I had an idea. “Where exactly is the door you and Tracy use to sneak in and out of the house?”

“It’s on the north side of the house,” Heather answered. “On that side we’re close to the house next door, but there’s a trellis with a huge vine on it that covers that whole wall. If we stay behind that, we can get almost all the way out to the street without being seen.”

“Does Dillon know about it-the door, I mean?”

“I guess so.”

“And do you still keep it locked?”

Heather nodded. “Yes, but there’s a space right above the door. We keep the key in that. Why do you want to know? Are you going there? Can I come with you?”

“No,” I said. “You’re going to stay right here, out of the line of fire.”

“You’re not going to hurt him, are you?” Heather demanded. “I mean, he hit me, but it was really an accident. I don’t want anything bad to happen to him.”

That, too, was textbook domestic-violence-victim behavior. They’re often the abuser’s first line of defense.

“Look, Heather, if Dillon is at your house, causing trouble for your parents, then it’s no accident and it’s my job to see to it that he doesn’t hurt anyone else.”

She turned away from me and stared out the window at the lighted ships and ferries moving slowly on the darkened waters.

“I’ll try not to hurt him,” I added. “But if he has a gun and tries using it, I can’t make any promises. Does he have a cell phone?”

“Of course.”

“I need the number.”

“Why?” Heather asked.

“Because if we’re going to negotiate with Dillon, we need a way to reach him.”

Heather gave me the number. When I reached for the telephone, her face sprang to life. “Are you going to call him?” she asked.

“Not right now,” I said. “I’m calling for reinforcements.”

I had made the decision that I wasn’t going to call Seattle PD, but I was enough of a realist to know I couldn’t pull this off on my own. Knowing the girls’ secret entryway into the house gave me a possible edge, but I needed help. And so, for the second time that day, I turned to Mel Soames. We weren’t officially partners, but we could just as well have been.

When she heard my voice on the phone, however, she wasn’t exactly overjoyed. “What’s up?” she asked, sounding as though I had awakened her.

“I need your help with something,” I said.

“What?” Mel was all business. Maybe I had made up the idea that her feelings had been hurt earlier.

“Heather Peters is here-at my apartment.”

That got her undivided attention. “You mean she and Dillon didn’t go to Canada after all?”

“They tried,” I said. “But on the way they got into an argument. He claimed he was taking Heather there to protect her and keep her out of your reach. Heather said she hadn’t done anything wrong and had no reason to hide out in Canada. Things escalated and Dillon ended up slapping Heather around. She took off and came back here. When Heather said she didn’t want to go, Dillon was prepared to take her there by force. I believe he still is.”