J Jance - Queen of the Night

They were driving past the yard-shed sales lot. Reluctantly complying, Ginny glanced in the mirror. Just then she saw a car in the opposite lane, a vehicle that looked like a Pima County sheriff’s car, jam on its brakes and jerk into a sudden U-turn. There were no flashing lights, no sirens, but as soon as Ginny caught sight of the brake lights, a spark of hope bloomed in her heart. Maybe someone was coming to help them after all.

While that was happening, though, she very nearly missed the merge onto the freeway.

“Get over,” the gunman ordered again, shouting at her. “You’re going the way I tell you. Understand?”

He sounded angry, but he was looking at her-staring at her. He wasn’t looking in the mirror. Ginny swung the car into a hasty right-hand turn. They were going fast enough that the Accord almost didn’t make it. Tires skidded on the pavement. The rear end of the car washed sickeningly from side to side. It was all Ginny could do to get it back under control and onto the entrance ramp.

“You stupid bitch!” he yelled at her. “You almost took us out just then. What the hell were you thinking?”

Jarred by the abrupt turn, Pepe awakened with a start and immediately began crying. Ginny ignored him and forced herself to look straight ahead. She wanted to know if the cop car was behind her, but she couldn’t risk staring in the mirror. The guy might read a telltale expression on her face and would know that help was coming. The only thing Ginny could hope for now was that between the two of them-Ginny and this unknown police officer-they could find some way to surprise the gunman and take him down.

“Can’t you go any faster than this?” he shouted now. “If you merge at twenty-five, some eighteen-wheeler doing eighty is going to run right over us.”

Ginny didn’t want to, but she stepped on the gas. He was right. Traffic on the interstate was moving right along. If she wasn’t careful, they would be run down before they made the merge.

Ginny dared a quick glance in the rearview mirror. To her immense relief she saw what appeared to be an unmarked cop car turn onto the entrance ramp and come racing up behind them. The lights still didn’t come on. He didn’t signal her to pull over, but he stayed right there, a few feet off her rear bumper. Unfortunately, by then she had brought the Accord up to highway speed and made the merge. She had also passed the last of the light pole masts for the intersection. That meant that she had also driven past her last chance of making a partially controlled, low-speed crash.

“Mommy, Mommy,” Pepe howled at her from the backseat. “Mommy, Mommy, Mommy!”

Every time he called to her it was like a stone through Ginny’s heart. Her little boy needed her comforting presence and assurance, but she couldn’t afford to look at him. She didn’t dare. And she couldn’t tell him she loved him, either. All she could do was hope she could find a place to wreck the car without killing both of them.

Moments later-at least it seemed like moments to her-she saw the first exit signs for southbound I-19. She knew as soon as she saw them that the exit ramp itself would be her last opportunity to do what had to be done. Once they started up and over the overpass and onto the other freeway, she would immediately resume highway speed. If she was going to do this, she had to do it now-before the overpass, not after it.

When she switched on her turn signal, she could see the gunman nodding in agreement.

“Good,” he said aloud. “I guess you finally wised up.”

Tucson, Arizona

Sunday, June 7, 2009, 1:54 p.m.

88º Fahrenheit

Brian was driving like hell and trying to get through to Dispatch at the same time. Before he made any kind of move, he wanted to have backup units in place. To do that and because they were still inside the city limits, he needed to coordinate with Tucson PD.

“And tell them no lights or sirens,” he rasped into the radio as he charged up behind the fleeing Honda on the I-10 entrance ramp. “I’m pretty sure the driver knows I’m here, but the bad guy doesn’t. I want to keep it that way.”

“Do you know where they’re headed?”

“All I know right now is they’re westbound on I-10.”

“Which means they won’t be able to exit again until Prince Road,” the Dispatch operator said. “Do you want us to have someone lay down tire strips?”

“Negative on that,” Brian said. “Too risky. There’s a baby in the backseat.”

But then, as if to show the Dispatch operator how wrong she was, the Accord’s turn signal came on again, blinking the notice that the vehicle was exiting after all, moving onto the exit ramp that led to I-19-the only exit ramp through the downtown area of Tucson that hadn’t been shut down for construction.

“Suspect vehicle is exiting onto I-19,” Brian shouted as he started for the exit ramp as well. “Tucson PD units are approaching.”

He was relieved that someone had given the word about making a stealth approach. At least three marked patrol cars were coming up fast in the right-hand lane behind him. As he had requested, there were no lights and no sirens.

“Tell Tucson PD that we’ll try to hem them in and bring the vehicle to a stop that way.”

“Roger that,” the operator said.

Then, just when Brian dared hope there might be a good end to all this, the Honda suddenly careened off the road. It slammed into a guardrail partway up the exit ramp and then spun a full three-sixty before staggering through another guardrail and down the incline into westbound traffic.

All Brian could do was stand on his brake and try to avoid the flying wreckage that spun skyward in a whirlwind of chunks of metal and glass along with a storm of highway grit and dust. In the instant the car flew past him, he could see that the air bags had deployed, but that was all he could see.

From that moment on, things seemed to happen in slow motion. Before the Accord stopped moving, coming to rest halfway in the freeway’s right-hand lane and facing the wrong way, Brian had stopped his Crown Victoria in the middle of the on-ramp, slammed it into park, yanked on the hazard lights, and erupted out of the vehicle. He vaulted over the remains of the shattered guardrail and slid down the steep shoulder, drawing his weapon as he went. Behind him he heard a cacophony of sirens as the Tucson PD units hit their lights and sirens.

He saw a woman scramble out of the driver’s side of the Honda. “Get down,” he shouted at her. “On the ground.”

If she heard him, she ignored him. Rather than getting down, she stood there for several seconds, struggling to open the Accord’s back door. When it wouldn’t cooperate, she simply threw herself through what Brian realized must have been a broken rear window. And he knew, then, too, what she was doing: Virginia Torres was going after her baby.

Then, also in slow motion and moving as if in a daze, a man clambered out of the passenger side of the wrecked vehicle. Brian saw the figure first and then the telling details-the sling, the gun. Brian’s first thought was that he would try to grab the woman or the baby and use them as human shields. That may have been what he had in mind, but for some reason the rear door wouldn’t open and the window on that side hadn’t shattered.

“On the ground!” Brian shouted again. “Drop your weapon.”

Jonathan Southard looked up. Brian recognized the man’s bloodied face from the driver’s license photo. He seemed surprised to see Brian standing there, but he didn’t get on the ground and he didn’t drop his weapon. Just then the first Tucson PD officer arrived on the scene as well. He, too, had his weapon drawn.

“Drop your weapon.” The arriving officer issued the same orders Brian had given. “Get on the ground.”