J. Jance: Trial By Fury

I was far enough away that, for the first time, I could see the south side of the house. Parked next to it, almost totally concealed from the street, was the corner of a school bus. A van actually. A yellow team van.

As I stood watching, the front door swung open. Candace Wynn stepped outside, carrying a suitcase in either hand. With brisk, purposeful steps, she moved to the bus, opened a side door, and placed the suitcases inside.

Watching her, I had moved unconsciously into the middle of the street, drawn like a metal chip toward a powerful magnet. Too late I realized she was moving toward the door on the driver's side of the van. She vaulted into the driver's seat and slammed the door behind her. I heard the engine start and saw the backup lights come on.

Suddenly, behind me, squealing brakes and a blaring horn brought me to my senses as a car skidded to a stop a few feet from me. I scrambled out of the way only to dash into the path of another car. Blind to everything but the moving bus. I charged toward it.

It was only when the bus backed out and swung around to turn toward the street that I saw Candace Wynn wasn't alone in the vehicle. Peters sat slumped on the rider's side, his head slack and drooping against the window.

"Stop! Police!" I shouted, drawing my.38 from its shoulder holster. I saw Candace glance across Peters in my direction. Our eyes met briefly across the narrowing distance in a flash of recognition. She saw me, heard me, recognized me, but she didn't stop. She didn't even pause. Instead, the van leaped forward like a startled rabbit as she hit the accelerator. I saw, rather than heard, the side of Peters' head smack against the window.

What's the matter with him, I wondered. Is he asleep? Why doesn't he do something? "Peters!" I shouted, but there was no response.

I ran straight down Graham toward Thirtieth, hoping to intercept the van where the two streets met. As I charged forward, Candace must have read my mind. As she approached the intersection, she gave the steering wheel a sharp turn to the left. The van shuddered and arched off the rutted roadway, tottering clumsily onto the grass.

Good, I thought. She's losing it. But she didn't. Somehow she regained control. The van pulled onto Graham, skidding and sliding, a good ten feet in front of me. She gunned the motor and headed west. I put on one final burst of speed, but it was too little too late.

The Porsche, three houses up the street behind me, was too far away to be of any use. There was only one chance.

The drawn.38 was in my hand. I was tempted to use it. God was I tempted. But just then, just as I was ready to squeeze the trigger, another car met the van on the street. It was a station wagon loaded with people, two women with a bunch of kids.

I couldn't risk it, not even for Peters. I couldn't risk hitting a tire and sending the van spinning out of control to crash into innocent bystanders.

A second car stopped behind me with a screech of brakes. Horns blared. One driver rolled down his window. "What the hell's going on here?"

I rammed the.38 back into its holster and turned to race toward the Porsche in the same motion only to stumble over a little black kid on a tiny bicycle who had pedaled, unnoticed, up behind me.

"Hey, man, you a cop?" he demanded.

I sidestepped him without knocking him down and ran up the street with the kid trailing behind. When I reached the Porsche, I struggled to unlock the door, unable to fit the key in the lock.

"Hey, man," the kid repeated. "I axed if you was a cop. How come you don't answer me?"

Finally, the key slipped home. I glanced at the kid as I flung the door open. He wasn't more than five or six years old.

"Yes, I am," I answered. I fumbled in my pocket, located a loose business card with my name on it, and tossed it to him. Deftly, he plucked it out of the air.

"Do you know how to dial 9-1-1?" I asked.

He nodded, his black eyes huge and serious. "Sure;"

"Call them," I ordered. "Tell them there's trouble. Serious trouble. I need help. My name's on that card."

The Porsche's engine roared to life. I wheeled the car around and drove into the confusion of cars still stopped to sort out the excitement. As I swung onto Graham, the boy was hightailing it up the street on his bicycle, pumping furiously.

I'd have given anything for flashing lights about then, or for a siren that would have forced people out of my way. As it was, I had to make do with the horn, laying into it at every intersection, raging up behind people and sweeping them off the road in front of me.

As I fishtailed around a stopped car at the Beacon Avenue intersection, I caught sight of the lumbering van. It was far too unwieldy for the sports car rally speed and terrain. Half a mile ahead, it skidded into the wrong lane, around a sharp curve. I don't know how she did it, but Candace Wynn dragged it back onto the road. She could drive like hell, damn her.

As she disappeared behind the hill, I slammed the gas pedal to the floorboard and the Porsche shot forward. I was gaining on her. No way the van would be a match for my Porsche. No way.

I raced down Graham, swooping around the curve, over the top of the hill, and down the other side, with its second sharp curve. The traffic light at the bottom of the hill turned red as I approached. Despite my frenzied honking, cars on Swift Avenue moved sedately into the intersection.

One disinterested driver glanced in my direction as I tried to wave him out of my way. Another, a semidriver, flipped me a bird. I finally moved into the intersection all right, but only when my light turned green.

While I was stopped, I had looked up and down Swift, searching for her, but I saw no sign of the van. There was only one other direction she could go at that intersection, only one other choice-onto the freeway, heading north.

I shot across Swift and sliced down the on ramp. Far ahead, a glimpse of yellow school van disappeared around yet another curve, swerving frantically in and out of the otherwise leisurely flow of homeward-bound Sunday afternoon traffic.

I dodged from one lane to another. Where the hell was she going? Why did she have Peters in the car with her? My heart thumped in my throat as we came up the straightaway by the Rainier Brewery. I was closing on her fast, looking for ways I could cut her off, force her to the side of the road.

Just north of the brewery, I was right behind her, honking and motioning for her to pull over. Suddenly, without warning, she veered sharply to the right. With a crash of crumbling metal, the van smashed through the temporary guardrail on a closed exit ramp and bounced crazily over a railroad tie barrier.

I skidded to the shoulder. I couldn't follow her in the Porsche. It never would have cleared the railroad tie. Throwing myself out of the car, I tumbled over the shattered remains of the guardrail and raced up the ramp on foot.

Nobody clocked me, but I was moving, running like my life depended on it, wrestling the.38 out of its holster as I went. I knew how that exit ended. In a cliff. A sheer drop from thirty feet in the air over Airport Way.

I topped the rise. She must have thought the exit was one of the almost completed ones that would have swung her back onto Beacon Hill. At the last moment, she tried to stop. I saw the flash of brake lights, but it was too late. She was going too fast.

The van skidded crazily and then rammed into the two Jersey barriers, movable concrete barricades, at the end of the ramp.

I stopped in my tracks and watched in horror. For the smallest fraction of a second, I thought the barrier would hold. It didn't. The two pieces split apart like a breaking dam and fell away. Carried forward by momentum, the van nosed up for a split second, then disappeared from view.