Sorrow's Anthem

CHAPTER 26

The rain was still pouring down, turning Joe’s blood from crimson to pink as it flowed over my arm and slid down his jacket. His heels plowed furrows through the mud as I pulled him toward the river. Behind us, a burst of gunfire opened up, shredding the Taurus. The sound was tremendous, so loud I wanted to drop Joe and cover my ears. There was nothing discreet about this hit; the men on the hill cared about nothing other than the efficiency of their murder attempt.

The muddy bank was slippery, and the river shallow close to it, maybe three feet deep at best. The only deep water here would be in the pool out in the center, where the current was strongest, but any attempt to hide in the river was going to be suicide. They’d stand at the top of the bridge and fire down on us. Our best chance—only chance—was to use the bridge against them, get directly beneath it and force them to come down to the bank to have a shot at us.

I lowered Joe onto the bank, dropped to one knee, and turned to face the bridge. Then I fired six shots as quickly as I could get them off, shooting up at the car. I couldn’t see the gunmen, so I had little hope of hitting them, but I wanted them to hesitate as long as possible before crossing to the other side of the bridge where they’d have a clear shot at us. We needed every precious second if we were going to stay alive.

As soon as I got the shots off, I dropped to the ground beside Joe, pressing my cheek against the mud. It was a good decision. Hardly had I gotten prone before another burst of automatic gunfire, long and sustained, tore through the trees above us, blasting bark loose and shredding the leaves. When it was done, I counted off five seconds of silence before I sat up again. I put the Glock back in the holster but didn’t fasten it, then turned and lifted Joe in both arms. His face was ashen, but he grimaced and hissed between clenched teeth when I lifted him. It was as good a sign as I could hope for. You have to be alive to feel agony.

“I’m sorry,” I told him. “But I don’t know another way to do this.”

That said, I used my heels to push us both off the bank and into the river. It was a clumsy way to enter the water, but we needed to stay low. I moved in a sort of backward shuffle, crablike, holding Joe with one arm and using my heels and free hand to push down the river bottom, staying in the shallow end close to the bank. I’d gone only ten feet when I sank into a pool, the water rising dramatically without warning, and Joe floated free from my grasp. I tried to kick my way back to the surface, but by the time I made it, he was several feet away, out in the deeper water, and sinking. I floundered toward him, going with the current, my soaked clothing and shoes dragging me down. My hand found his jacket. I heaved him upward and rolled onto my back, using my legs to kick against the soft bottom, and one arm to pull. I rolled Joe so he was on his back, too, his mouth and nose clear, and then I concentrated only on keeping him above water as I struggled for the bridge.

The torrential rain had the river rushing faster than normal, but it was still wide and sluggish here, the current lazy, and that meant it took a hell of a lot of effort just to get us under the bridge. We passed under the shadow of it just as gunfire riddled the trees where we’d been before. Joe wasn’t even attempting to kick or use his arms. He simply floated along, kept above water only by my efforts. That troubled me, and not just because his dead weight was making my struggle more difficult. Faced with disaster, instinct forces you to respond. You fight to stay alive, to the absolute limits of your physical ability. Joe’s complete lack of effort told me he was close to dead.

Gunfire again. This time I could hear only the reports, no sounds of impact. That meant they were shooting into the water. I’d pulled us back to the same side as we’d started from, and now I regretted that. When they realized we’d gone under the bridge, they’d make their way down the bank, and this side offered an easier approach. The opposite bank was much steeper, lined with trees and heavy underbrush, and coming down it would be difficult. After a moment of hesitation, I decided I had to try to get us across while they were still up on the bridge.

I pushed my heels hard off the river bottom and sent us back into the current, using my free arm in long, sweeping strokes. Halfway across, the water deepened so that I could no longer touch the bottom, and the strength of the current took me by surprise. What had seemed like such a sluggish water flow had some real power, and with Joe limiting my mobility, I was having trouble fighting it. If we got swept out from under the bridge and into the open on the other side, the decision to move for the other bank would become fatal.

I sucked in a breath of wet air and swept harder with my right arm, the muscles in my shoulder screaming, pulling us back against the current and toward the other bank with everything I had. Several weeks without much rain were all that saved us. Had the water been deeper, I wouldn’t have been able to pull us across before the current swept us into the open, but because it was shallow, I was able to cross the deep part of the pool and find footing on the bottom again. Once I could plant my feet, we were fine. I slogged us through the shallows until we reached the other side of the bridge, leaned against the cold stone, and gasped for breath.

Above us all was silent. I wrapped my left hand in Joe’s shirt and tugged him through the water, edging out a bit so I could get a look up at the bridge.

I saw them through the steady, shimmering rain—two men in black jackets, ski masks over their heads, weapons in their hands. They’d come down from the bridge and were standing behind the wrecked Taurus, searching the nearby trees. The only thing keeping us alive right now was the storm. It was always dimmer down here in the bottom of the valley, and with the heavy black clouds, it was especially dark. They couldn’t stand on the bridge and see the tree-lined banks well enough, so they’d been forced to come down to shoot accurately, and they’d started with the side where we’d wrecked, as I’d expected. Once they cleared that bank, though, they’d be coming this way.

Colored lights danced across the dark water around us. I rolled to my left slightly, and for a moment Joe’s face dipped beneath the water. That was enough to let me see the source of the lights, though. A Crown Victoria with an overhead light bar had pulled off the Valley Parkway and crossed the bridge, heading toward the wrecked cars. I got a glimpse of the side of the car as it passed and saw the MetroParks Ranger logo on the door. MetroParks rangers weren’t naturalists or park security—they were cops. They went through the state academy just like the city police, worked assaults and drug cases and the occasional murder like any other cops, but their jurisdiction was limited to the thousands of acres of parks in the system. He’d have a gun, and a radio.

Coming out from under the bridge was a gamble, but this was the time to take it. I braced my hand against the rough edges of the stone wall that bordered the bank, then pulled my body upright. I slid my right hand under Joe’s arm and pulled him toward me, clearing him from the water and dropping him on the muddy bank.

Now I had a good vantage point to see across the river, but the gunmen were gone. A crackling, rushing noise from the trees told me someone was on the move. I squinted and peered through the rain. One of them was running away from the bridge, stumbling through the trees. I couldn’t see the other. Maybe they’d both fled.

The ranger was out of his vehicle now, trudging across the bridge toward us. His head was down, his full-brimmed hat shedding rain. Water splashed with each step he took. I looked away from him and scanned the opposite bank again, searching for the shooter who hadn’t been running away. I didn’t see him. The rain fell harder, stinging my face, rivulets of water running into my mouth as I took gasping breaths. Fighting the current and Joe’s clumsy bulk had taken a toll.

The ranger was close now, halfway across the bridge. He was searching the water and talking into a radio. By now he’d seen the wrecked cars and found them empty. But had he heard the gunfire before he’d arrived? It had been so loud, I couldn’t imagine him not hearing it, though if he had heard it and had made the decision to walk out in the open like this, he was either a courageous son of a bitch or a damn fool.

Closer still he came, and now I could see that he held a gun in his right hand, down against his leg. He’d heard the shots, all right. And he was no fool, either, just brave. He hadn’t waited for backup, because he’d known someone might be in the river. Maybe close to dying.

I waited until he came to our end of the bridge before I stood up and shouted.

“Hey! We need help down here!”

I waved my hands, but even so it took him a few seconds to locate the source of the shouting. All my back muscles were tight, braced for a shot that might come from the opposite bank. When the ranger saw us, he moved forward at a jog, around the edge of the bridge and down to the stone wall that shored up the bank. I left Joe and struggled around the wall and up the muddy slope, trying to get high enough to talk to the ranger. That was when I saw the gunman who hadn’t fled through the trees.

He’d taken off his ski mask and climbed back onto the bridge. He was running up it now, closing fast. His footsteps slapped loudly off the wet concrete. The ranger turned at the sound of his approach and raised his gun.

“Stop! Put your hands in the air and get on the ground!”

The man kept coming, but he lifted one arm. Something glistened in his hand, and then I saw that it was a badge.

“Cleveland Police Department!” he shouted in response. “Relax, I’m a cop. Now stand down.”

It was Jack Padgett, and in the hand that didn’t have the badge was a gun.

The ranger lowered his weapon slightly, his shoulders relaxing.

“Don’t listen to him!” I shouted. The ranger turned his head a fraction to the left, looked at my face. “He shot my partner,” I said. “He’s going to kill us.”

The ranger’s eyes snapped back to Padgett, who was still running toward him.

“Get on the ground!” the ranger yelled. “Now!”

“Cleveland Police!” Padgett said again, still running.

“I don’t give a shit. Get . . . on . . . the . . . ground!”

Padgett kept running. The ranger’s eyes slipped back to us, took in Joe’s ashen face, my desperation. I dropped back down from the bank, knelt over Joe, and reached around for my gun. My fingers found the holster, empty. I’d lost the Glock in the river.

Padgett was ten yards away. The gun was still in his hand.

“Shoot him!” I screamed at the ranger.

“Cleveland Police!” Padgett yelled for the third time. The hand with the gun was coming up, the barrel moving toward the ranger.

I reached inside Joe’s jacket, hoping his gun was still in the shoulder holster, but even as I did it, I knew it was too late. We were dead. The ranger wouldn’t shoot a cop, and Padgett was going to kill us all.

The ranger shot Padgett.

He fired once and caught him in the thigh. Padgett’s right leg spun away from his body, and he hit the pavement in a whirling tumble, banging against one of the iron bridge supports. For a moment he stayed down. Then he rolled over onto his shoulder and lifted his gun, aiming at the ranger. The ranger fired again. Padgett dropped and stayed down.

The ranger keyed his radio microphone and shouted into it, “Shots fired on the bridge at Rocky River. Repeat, shots fired, need backup immediately, and paramedics.” Then he turned to us. He dropped to his knees and stretched out his arms. Rain cascaded off the brim of his wide hat.

“Let’s get him up here,” he said.

It wasn’t easy. A sheer wall of at least ten feet was in front of me, and I couldn’t shove Joe up to the ranger against that. Instead we had to move upstream, into the thickets and small trees that lined the riverbank. The ranger fought down through the brush until he reached me, then hooked his hands under Joe’s arms and lifted him clear, dragged him back up the hill and set him on the grass. I clambered up the bank after them, using small trees for handholds, thorns tearing at my skin. My entire body was shaking. Sirens were wailing somewhere up above the valley, playing sorrow’s anthem, this time for my partner.

The ranger left us there, walked back to the bridge, and crossed to Padgett. He knelt beside him and stayed there for a while. Then he returned to stand in front of me. His wet face was drawn and grave.

“Mister,” he said, “I hope you’re an honest man. Because I believe I just killed a police officer.”