Lying in wait

28

When Paul switched off the helicopter engine, a sudden eerie quiet surrounded us. Gradually, the airfoil blades slowed and stopped rotating. As they did so, the pilot-side door swung open, and Paul Brendle jumped out. Carrying a first-aid kit and a pair of space-age, tinfoil-looking survival blankets, he hurried toward us.

He stopped first beside Kari and covered her with one of the blankets. Then, leaving the first-aid kit on the ground beside her, he came to where the rest of us stood. He wrapped the blanket around Else's shoulders and eased her down onto the sand as well.

"I just heard from Roger," Paul said. "The SWAT team's on its way, but they're still at least twenty minutes out. The San Juan Sheriff's Department police boat should be here about that time as well."

From out on the water, I heard the sharp report of gunfire-a single shot that sounded like a cannon. Ducking reflexively, I quickly scanned the narrow strip of sandy beach for some cover. There wasn't any. Not a scrap. Without cover, and without our knowing what caliber of weapons were on board One Day at a Time, twenty minutes could be damned eternity.

"We've got to get out of here," I said.

Else scrambled to her feet. "My mother!" she breathed frantically. "My mother's out there. What if they've shot her?"

Paul Brendle's eyes caught mine. He must have been reading my mind.

"You're right," he said. "Let's get these ladies on the helicopter right away," he said. "At least I can move them out of range."

While Paul led Else to the waiting helicopter, Sue and I supported the injured Kari between us.

"How did this happen?"

Kari shook her head. Each limping step caused a little gasp of pain. "I don't know," she said between steps. "They were there in the house waiting when I brought Granny home from the beauty shop. They were there with Mother and Mr. Torvoldsen. They had guns."

"What kind of guns?" Sue asked.

Kari shook her head. "The woman, Denise. She has one hidden in her purse. The man, the one who says he's my grandfather, has a big one."

"What kind of big one?" Sue persisted. "A rifle? An automatic? A shotgun?"

"I can't help you. I don't know anything at all about guns," Kari Gebhardt answered. "I'm sorry."

There was another report of gunfire out on the water, followed immediately by a woman's piercing shriek. Fortunately, Paul had already helped Else into the backseat of the helicopter. The leather interior may have muffled the sound enough so she didn't hear it. Kari, however, was still outside the helicopter. When she heard the scream, she stiffened but said nothing.

Paul came around behind us just as Sue and I finished boosting Kari into the seat. He closed the door. "Once I drop them off, do you want me to come back?" he asked.

I nodded. "Keep out of range, but stay close enough to guide the cavalry in to the rescue if we need it."

"Sure thing. What about you?" he asked.

I turned to Sue. "Feel like going for a little wade?"

"Not exactly," she replied, "but with two against one, he'll never hold out for another fifteen minutes. Vests on or off?"

Unlike airline seat cushions, Kevlar vests aren't recommended as flotation devices. The water didn't seem that deep, but who could tell whether or not it was shallow all the way out to the boat? If it turned out to be deep, that left us with a hell of a choice. Wear the vest and risk drowning, or don't wear the vest and risk being shot. Heads, you win; tails, I lose.

"That all depends on how good a swimmer you are," I said. "The water doesn't look all that deep. Suit yourself, but I'm leaving mine on."

We stripped off our shoes at the water's edge. As Sue and I stepped into the frigid water, the helicopter's turbine engine roared to life behind us. When it rose overhead, I had the small satisfaction of knowing that Kari and Else were safe, but from the scream we had heard, I was afraid we were already far too late to save Inge.

Wintertime water temperatures in Puget Sound are about forty-five degrees. Stepping into the water was like plunging our feet into a bucket of ice. The water was so cold, it took our breath away. As we splashed along, we had to keep our eyes lowered enough to watch our footing. We also needed to keep an eye on the boat for fear of being shot to death.

The distance between the sand and the stranded boat couldn't have been more than fifty yards. Out in the open like that, fully exposed to anyone who wanted to take a potshot, it felt like fifty miles.

Suddenly, Sue stopped in her tracks. "Look at that!" she exclaimed. "Something's on fire."

I squinted and looked where she was pointing. A thin wisp of smoke rose up over the afterdeck of One Day at a Time. It seemed to be coming from a stovepipe on top of the galley. "That's from the stove," I said.

"How do you know that?" Sue wanted to know.

"I've been on fishing boats before. I'm from Ballard, remember?"

"Why would somebody start a fire in the stove at a time like this?"

I wanted to say maybe they're as dumb as we are, standing here arguing about it. I said, "Most likely it's been lit the whole time, and this just happens to be the first time we've noticed the smoke. Come on."

As we started forward again, I noticed that my teeth were chattering. I wondered how long it would take for hypothermia to set in. My feet were already so numb, I could barely walk. Not very long, I thought grimly. Not long at all.

Sue and I covered the remaining distance out to One Day at a Time without incident-without seeing anyone move on deck, and without anyone taking a shot at us, either. Once we were standing beside the barnacle-encrusted hull, I realized, with dismay, that the deck of the beached boat was a whole lot higher out of the water than it had appeared to be from shore.

Fortunately, it was low tide. The water we were standing in was little more than waist-deep. I was about to suggest boosting Sue onto my shoulders in hopes of lifting her high enough to clamber aboard when, suddenly, a rope with a life ring attached sailed over the rail. It came whistling through the air so close to my ears that the life ring almost beaned me.

"Get up here, BoBo," an invisible Alan Torvoldsen ordered from above. "What the hell took you so long? I've been bluffing for hours. I didn't think anybody was ever going to come looking for us."

It probably was only a matter of seconds, but it seemed to take forever for Sue and me to scramble aboard. Using the rope, we struggled hand-over-hand, up and over the side. Shivering with cold and gasping for breath, we landed on the slippery, tilting deck.

Alan Torvoldsen knelt in a wary crouch in the narrow walkway between the pilothouse and the rail, using the wall of the pilothouse as cover. A huge. 44 revolver-a cocked, single-action antique-lay on the deck beside him. As soon as Sue and I were safely aboard, Alan picked up the Colt and held it aimed aft, in the general direction of the galley.

"Help me," a woman's voice mumbled plaintively from somewhere nearby. "Please help me. I can't move."

"Who's that?" I demanded.

"The old man's girlfriend," Alan responded. "I think her name's Denise Something. She wanted to get away. She tried to make a run for the rail, but he shot her in the back. Nice guy."

"And Inge Didricksen?" I asked. "What about her?"

"Last time I saw Inge, he was using her as a human shield," Alan answered. "He's holed up with her inside the galley. If I could have gotten off a clear shot a little earlier, I'd have plugged the sorry son of a bitch."

"Did he say what he wants?" Sue asked. "We've got hostage negotiators coming. An Emergency Response Team is en route."

I looked down at my waterproof watch. I thought at first maybe it had stopped, but when I held it up to my ear, it was still ticking. I couldn't believe that barely ten minutes had passed.

"Reinforcements should be here within minutes," I said.

"Oh, my God," Denise moaned. "I'm so cold. I can't move at all, and I'm bleeding. There's blood everywhere. Someone please help me."

Alan Torvoldsen looked at me and shook his head. "The girl may not have minutes," he said. "We should do something now."

I racked my brain. "Are there portholes on the sides of the galley?" I asked finally.

Alan nodded. "Two on either side."

Without waiting for me to suggest it, Sue sidled backward along the side of the pilothouse. "I'm on the way," she said. "Cover me when I need it."

"I know something about first aid," Alan offered. "If you can keep him occupied, maybe I can drag the girl around here and out of the line of fire."

It was both a brave and foolhardy suggestion. As plans went, it wasn't much, but it was marginally better than no plan at all. Peeking around the corner of the pilothouse, I could see that the door to the galley stood slightly ajar.

"Hans!" I shouted. "Hans Gebhardt. Can you hear me? This is Detective Beaumont with the Seattle Police Department. Give it up. Let the woman go, then come out with your hands up."

"She will die, and I will die," Hans Gebhardt asserted calmly. "I have chosen not to die alone."

That's when I realized that no matter what he had done, Hans Gebhardt-noted Nazi war criminal-was nothing but a coward. He might have idly stood by and watched, unmoved, while thousands of innocent victims were marched to their deaths. He might have coldly plundered their naked corpses afterward. But Hans Gebhardt himself wasn't nearly as brave as his victims. He was afraid to face death without the comfort of taking someone else along with him. Because he wanted company.

"There's no reason for either one of you to die," I called back. "Let Inge go. We'll give you whatever you want."

"What I want is my innocence back," Hans returned. "And that's not in your power to give. It's fifty years too late."

"Don't make it any worse than it already is," I argued. "Don't take the life of another innocent victim."

Hans Gebhardt laughed aloud. "You hear that, Inge? This dumkopf thinks you're a poor innocent, that you don't deserve to die right along with me. He doesn't know that you and your precious Henrik were in on it from the beginning, does he? He doesn't know you two were willing to barter your own daughter for a chance at a share of my gold."

"Gunter was as good a husband as Else deserved," Inge said.

"What?" Alan said. It was half question/half exclamation. As though he couldn't trust his ears with the words he was hearing.

"…just wasn't supposed to take thirty years for me to get it out, now, was it?" Hans Gebhardt continued, unaware of Alan's involuntary reaction to what was being said.

Inge Didricksen was equally unaware. "Shut up!" she rasped. "Just shut up!"

"Why should I shut up? You don't want me to tell this man the truth about you, do you? You don't want him to know how, with both the Jews and the Nazis looking for me, with both sets of hunters after my gold, I needed all the help I could get right after the war. You don't want him to know about Henrik Didricksen's greedy cousin back in Norway who took in my wife and my son. For a share of the gold, of course. Not out of the kindness of his heart. For enough gold, that stupid jerk was even willing to overlook bigamy.

"You don't want me to tell him how you and your husband agreed to help me as well-for another share. Except I think you thought you'd get the use of two shares-yours and Gunter's both."

"Don't listen to this stupid man," Inge shrilled. "He doesn't know what he's talking about."

"Don't I, now. Now, I'm stupid. But you were glad enough to talk to me when you were afraid Erika Weber Schmidt would come looking for you next. And she would have, too, if I hadn't been smart enough to take care of her myself."

"If you were so smart," Inge said fiercely, "we wouldn't be here now."

"Better here than in Israel, don't you think?"

"The Jews don't want me," Inge retorted angrily. "I never killed anybody."

Stunned beyond words by what I was hearing, for a moment I said nothing, then the silence was broken by the first faint thumps of arriving helicopters. Somewhere in the distance I thought I also heard the crash of waves against a fast-moving hull.

The helicopters were coming. So was the San Juan County police boat. It didn't matter now if, in the process of keeping them talking, Inge Didricksen and Hans Gebhardt had revealed fifty years' worth of terrible secrets I never wanted to hear. In terms of doing my job, I had kept the two of them talking long enough for reinforcements to arrive. Within minutes I'd be able to pass the negotiations over into the capable hands of a trained hostage negotiator, although by then, I have to admit, I didn't much care how those negotiations turned out.

"Do you hear those helicopters?" I asked. "You could just as well give up. Stop this now-before it's too late, before anyone else gets hurt."

I didn't know it, but even as I spoke the cautioning words, it was already too late. With a groan of outrage that grew out of thirty years of shattered dreams, with an anger fueled and made fierce by Else Didricksen's lifetime of betrayal at the hands of both her husband and her parents, Alan Torvoldsen surged to his feet.

Before I could stop him, he charged across the few feet of open deck between the pilothouse and the galley. Gun in hand and finger on the trigger, he crashed through the half-open door of the galley. Belching smoke, the ancient Colt revolver roared to life.

As I recalled the incident later, I believe there were three distinctly separate shots in all. Two of them were almost simultaneous. The third came a second or so later.

The smell of burned cordite was still thick in the air when Alan Torvoldsen reappeared in the doorway. Emerging through a haze of swirling smoke, he leaned against the door casing for a moment, then staggered forward, the gun trailing loosely in his hand. When he doubled over in front of me, I thought sure he'd been shot.

Instead, he straightened up and stood gazing at me. When I looked down, I realized he'd placed the still-smoking Colt on the deck at my feet.

"I tried to hit him, but I guess my aim was bad," Alan said. "I think I must have hit them both."

Sue Danielson, with her semiautomatic in hand, came screeching around the far side of the galley.

"What the hell happened?" she demanded. "There are curtains on all those portholes. I couldn't see a damn thing!"

Alan's steady gaze held mine, his clear blue eyes never straying from my face. His look was resigned, his whole manner surprisingly calm.

"Go ahead and arrest me if you have to, BoBo," he said quietly. "I understand, but I'm warning you right now. If this case ever goes to court, I'm pleading self-defense. Either that, or temporary insanity."

For a moment, the three of us stood there in stricken silence, without any of us knowing what to say or do. Then a voice broke in on our paralyzed stupor.

"Help me," Denise Whitney whimpered.

I stepped out onto the deck far enough to see her. Gravely wounded, she lay directly between the pilothouse and the galley. Because of the steep slope of the slanted deck, her feet were higher than her head. A pool of bright red blood had dammed up briefly under her flattened cheek. Now a thin stream of it trickled away across the metal deck.

"Please help me," she said again, her voice diminished to a mere whisper. "I'm so cold. I think I'm dying."

And it turned out she was.