The Big Thaw (28 page)

“Behind the cars,” he gasped, and we started dragging Cletus through the wet slush toward the line of parked cars out in the lot. I thought Cletus had been hit, and fleetingly wondered if he’d die on us.

Just as we got to the first car, there was a thunking sound, as if you’d hit it with a golf ball. Several golf balls. Dust flew from under the fenders, and one of the tires went flat with a
bang
.

We kept dragging Cletus, to the second car, and then the third. We heaved him up to the front of the fourth, and collapsed behind him.

I grabbed my walkie-talkie. “Comm, ten-thirty-three, ten-thirty-three, shots fired, parking lot!”

One of the newer dispatchers was on duty, I think her name was Grace. “Ten-nine?” 10-9 means for you to repeat your traffic.

“This is Three, this is ten-thirty-three, somebody is shooting at us in the parking lot!” I gasped for breath. “Get assistance!”

The golf balls started up again, working toward us.
Plunk, plunk, bang, plunk
. A tire.

“Where is that fucker?”

“Can’t tell…” I couldn’t, either. Nor was I about to stick my head up and look. I could hear the dispatcher say something on the order of “Three … thirty-three … uh … courthouse … I think…”

Of course. We couldn’t hear the gunshots, and neither could she. She was assuming that we were at the courthouse. That’s where she knew Lamar had been headed.

I brought my walkie-talkie back up. “We’re here at the jail. Shots fired. Get an ambulance!”

“You hit?” Lamar sounded terribly concerned.

“No. You?”

“No. Who the fuck is the ambulance for?”

“Him,” I said, indicating the orange heap that was Cletus.

“Shit,” said Lamar, “he ain’t hurt, he’s just scared.”

We didn’t hear any more plunking sounds. The shooting had stopped. The question was: Had the shooter given up?

I cold hear dispatch again, this time Sally’s voice. My confidence increased. Cautiously, I raised my head over the fender of the closest car. Nothing. I ducked. Nothing.

“See anything?”

“Nope.” I was acutely conscious of the icy water and mud soaking into my shirt and pants. “Let me look again.” This time, I drew my gun.

Up, peek, down. Like playing a child’s game. I put my left hand on the fender and splayed my fingers out as far as I could. Reference points. I popped my head up, and looked over the top of my thumb, concentrating for about a second only on that sector. Down. Up, with the index finger as my reference. Down.

“Anything?”

“I can’t see shit,” I said, “but I don’t know where to look.”

Cletus started to make retching sounds.

“Not again…” said Lamar.

I bobbed my head up, referring to my little finger.

Nothing. Down again. Cletus was still making the noise. “You suppose it could be the jail food?”

“They say,” said Cletus, spitting, “I got a nervous stomach.”

“No shit?”

I could hear a siren start up downtown. Couldn’t be the ambulance yet. Cop car.

I saw a dark blue Ford slowly pull into the lot. Well, originally dark blue. This one was spattered with light tan mud, white road salt, and grungy as hell. Volont. Car might as well have had FBI plates. Although it was so covered with mud you wouldn’t have been able to read them. They monitored a completely different set of frequencies, and obviously were unaware of our problem.

“Looks like the Spook’s back,” I said. As the Ford turned into the parking slots, I saw it had a large dent in the right rear quarter. “Dinged up, too.”

We watched Volont and Art get out of the car, and look at the dent. Both were in suits, with the same light tan mud speckled halfway to the knees.

I got into a crouch, gun still in my right hand. “Get down!”

They both looked at me, startled. Volont comprehended first. Me. The gun. The holes in the nice cars. He nearly vaulted the car closest to him, drawing his gun at the same time.

“Come on!” he yelled at Art.

Art stood still for a split second, just long enough for another golf ball sound to make him turn his head. I dropped, just as Art dove between two cars.

Volont duckwalked toward us. “Where is he?”

“Can’t tell … I don’t know where to look … rifle, I think…” Giving a hint that the shooter could be a long way off.

“Prisoner hit?”

“No,” said Lamar. “Keep down.”

Art crawled out on our end of the cars. “Who’s doing the shooting?”

“Somebody who’s a piss-poor shot,” said Lamar.

The sirens were a lot louder. I stuck my head up, and saw two brown state patrol cars nearly at the lot. I holstered my gun, grabbed my walkie-talkie, and switched to the mutual aid frequency.

“This is Three, we’re down behind the cars. Shooter is in the direction of downtown, has a rifle. There are five of us here … keep low…”

They slid to a halt, and both exited their vehicles, getting down behind the fenders, handguns drawn. Just like in the movies.

We waited. It seemed like an hour, but it was closer to a minute. Finally, Lamar spoke up.

“I want to get him back inside,” he said. “He’ll be a lot safer there.”

“Fine.” Great. We have to drag Cletus, in his high-conspicuity orange suit, to boot. With a lousy sniper, who can’t hit the broad side of a cow’s ass, aiming at Cletus, and more likely to hit me by mistake. But I didn’t say it, because Lamar was thinking the same thing. “Might as well,” I said. “I can’t dance…”

“I ain’t goin’ with you, by God! They might shoot me by mistake!” Cletus spit again.

“You damn fool,” said Lamar. “It’s you they’re after, not us!”

Cletus began retching again. Apparently, it hadn’t occurred to him.

“Can’t we wait until he’s done? I don’t want to haul somebody who’s heaving all over me.”

“Yeah,” sighed Lamar.

We waited. I looked at the hole in the outside of the fender next to my head. I bent down, and looked back into the fender well until I saw daylight. Toward town, and in the top of the hood. Downward. Hard to do, since we were just about the highest point in town. Except for the grain elevator, about a half mile away. I peeked up over the fender. Sure. There was that huge concrete elevator, standing off in the middle distance, bigger than life. To hit us from there, the path would be downward.

“I think he’s on the grain elevator,” I said. Nobody contradicted me. I glanced around, and as far as I could tell, none of us had anything but a pistol. We couldn’t even shoot back.

Volont got over beside us, and we told him our little plan.

“The sooner the better,” he said. “I’ll help.”

The three of us grabbed Cletus, Lamar and Volont by an elbow, and me by his securing belt.

“On three … one, two…”

I was reminded of that movie, about Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid. Where they counted before running into the guns of that South American army…

“… three!”

It should be an Olympic event. We hit the porch at full tilt, the three officers panting and straining, Cletus moving his feet very rapidly, but completely ineffectively. Judy, who was watching from behind her file cabinets, saw us coming, and opened the door just in the nick of time. We all let go of Cletus at about the same time, he tripped, and skidded across the linoleum floor for about ten feet.

We took a moment to congratulate ourselves. Then I realized we’d abandoned Art and the two troopers out in the lot.

It dawned on me that I hadn’t been aware of any shots fired during our portage of Cletus.

“You think he’s gone?” Lamar was puffing, and wincing. His leg was probably hurting him quite a bit. He’d moved awfully well, though.

“I don’t know, Lamar. But I wouldn’t … just stand around out there … for a while.” I was still breathing hard, too. And my back hurt like hell. But we’d gotten the first order of business done. Cletus was safe.

The next problem was how to get to our cars and get down to that grain elevator. There was just no place else the shooter could be.

I took a quick peek out the safety glass panel in the steel outer door. Then a longer one. Nothing. I was wondering how I was going to tell if he really had quit and left, when there was a sudden puff of packed snow and concrete dust in the middle of the parking lot. It was kind of hard to see, and I wasn’t absolutely certain what it was. Two more puffs, each closer and about a half second apart, struck the parking lot. Then a solid plunking sound as something hit the wooden support for our porch roof.

I ducked. Late, but better than never.

“I know what his problem is,” I said.

“He’s still there, then?” Volont was sitting on the floor, with his back to the pop machine, which was against the outside wall. Smart. I should be so smart.

“Yeah. He’s there, all right. His problem is, he can’t see where his shots are going … unless he hits something that throws up debris or something…”

“So he can’t correct his aim,” said Volont.

“Yeah.”

“Probably alone, then,” he said, matter-of-factly “That’s why snipers should always have a spotter.”

I filed that away. Like I would ever need it.

Lamar was on the phone to the people who ran the elevator, telling them they had a sniper on the roof, some 100 feet over their heads. It took him a minute to convince them. They couldn’t hear the shots.

I was on my walkie-talkie, getting the Maitland squad car down to the elevator, to make sure there was nobody getting away. If the suspect hadn’t gone up the interior elevator shaft, and then to the roof, he’d had to climb a long ladder.

“Want to try for a car?” asked Volont.

“Not just yet…”

I got on my walkie-talkie to the Maitland car again. “Hey, Twenty-five, you see anything down there?”

“I can’t see nothin’ here…” came the stressed voice. “But somebody just made a hole in my roof! I’m out of the car.”

Still there, all right. But now, having taken the time to shift his aim to the much closer Maitland squad car, I thought he’d have a tougher time readjusting and zeroing in on us.

“You know,” I said to Volont, “he really can’t hit shit. You want to try for my car?”

“You mean the local can’t hit shit, or the sniper can’t hit shit?”

I grinned. “Neither one.”

“Well, let’s go,” he said. “Just get your car keys in your hand before you go through the door.”

“Okay … it’s unlocked, and the engine is already running. Just get in and stay low…”

Volont and I went flying out the door, and down the steps three or four at a time. I nearly lost my balance, on the last four, and ended up scraping my hand on the sidewalk. I almost fell again, as I stopped suddenly at my car door. Running bent over, my back started to act up, and I hollered, “Shit!” as the pain flew up and over my right hip as I jumped into the car.

“You hit?”

“No, no…” As soon as Volont has his legs in the car, I put it in reverse and stepped on the gas. We shot backward so fast I was afraid I’d sprung the open passenger door. I slammed on the brakes, and spun the wheel to the left, sliding us around on the drive. Into drive, and we shot out of the parking lot, bottoming out at the end of the driveway. Volont got his door shut, I hit the flashing lights and siren, and we were off.

“Not bad,” said Volont. “Not bad…”

“We’re out of his line of sight,” I said, turning left at the bottom of the long hill toward the courthouse, “until we come around that next corner.”

“So we won’t do that, will we?” said Volont.

I grinned. “No, we won’t.” I cut the siren, and we came to a smooth stop at the point of the curve leading to the elevator. “Let’s go between those houses,” I said, “and we should have a good view of the side of the elevator with the ladder.”

I got my AR-15 out of the trunk, inserted one thirty-round magazine, and put a second one in my back pocket. I contacted dispatch on my walkie-talkie, and told them where we were.

“Uh, Comm, let’s see if we can get some more people around this thing, the … uh … elevator. Stay low, but we need to see all four sides…”

“Ten-four, Three.”

“And you might want to page the fire chief. We need people to be warned to stay off the street. And call the school, and tell them to keep everybody in, even after school, if they have to. Explain it to ’em.” The school was about as far from the elevator as the Sheriff’s Department.

“Ten-four.”

“How’s Twenty-five?” I asked her.

“I’m just swell…” came a squeaky reply. “But he’s shot my car four or five times now. I’m behind the co-op garage over near the river.”

“Stay there, Twenty-five,” I said. “We can always fix the car.”

I put on my green stocking cap. This was going to take a while. Volont had already gone between two of the houses. I moved in behind him.

As I reached the area where the backyards began, I could see his hand go up. “Careful,” he said. “I can see him.” He had his handgun out, but it was down by his side.

I looked up, way up. There, at the top of the elevator, to the left side, was a bump that might have been a head, with a long stick out in front. Rifle. The base of the elevator was about 150 feet from us. With him up in the air, say 90 to 100 feet … Geometry class, years ago, had addressed this very issue. Pythagoras. I remembered the name. I remembered it was a theorem. A squared plus B squared equals C squared. And I realized I’d have to do a square root in my head to be sure. Right. I started to adjust the sights on my rifle.

“How far away would you say he is?” I asked Volont, casually.

“Oh, about a hundred and fifty to a hundred and seventy-five feet.”

“Thanks.” I backed my sights all the way down to the 100 yard combat setting. At this distance, a bullet from my rifle, even going uphill, would only drop about a quarter of an inch below my aim point. If that.

Volont glanced back over his shoulder. “Can you hit him from here?”

“Yep.” I looked up as a loud
crack
sounded above us. He seemed to be still shooting toward the jail. “If I can see enough of him, and there isn’t much wind.”

Just as I said that, the sniper stood, and changed position. He disappeared from our view. All I had been able to catch was that he was wearing a mustard-colored hooded coat, with tan gloves. And that his rifle had a scope. A split second, and he was gone.