Code 61 - Donald Harstad [178]
I called Sally. “Comm, Three?”
“Three, go.”
“Subject say whether or not the bad guys were still there?”
“Negative, not there. Repeating, the caller says the suspects have fled the immediate scene. He thinks they went southbound from near his residence, but he didn't get a vehicle description … just heard it leave, as it apparently was around the curve from his place, and out of his line of sight.”
Great. “Give what you got to Battenberg PD … ” The town of Battenberg was about five miles south of the Heinman boys' farm, and their officer could at least say who came into town from the north. Assuming that the suspects continued that way.
“He's already on the phone.” Sally sounded a bit irritated. I wisely decided to stop interfering and let her do her job.
It had taken us about three minutes to cover the four miles to the cluster of three blue silos, and I braked hard to slow enough to make the right turn onto the gravel. I anticipated because I knew the road. Hester, who didn't, just about ended up in my trunk.
“Could we use our turn signals?” came crackling over the radio.
“10-4, I-388,” I said to her. “Sorry 'bout that.”
We were having a pretty mild winter so far, and there was no snow at all on the roadway. Just loose gravel. Almost as bad as ice and snow, if you oversped it. Without snow cover, though, there was much better traction. There was also a lot of dust from 216. Another reason I was unhappy he was ahead of me. Hester, behind both of us, had to back off quite a distance just to be able to see.
At that point, I heard “216 is 10-23” come calmly over the radio as the sergeant told Comm that he had arrived at the scene. After a beat, he said, “The scene is secure.”
That meant that there was no suspect at the scene who was not in custody. Good to know, as it tended to affect how you got out of your car. Hester and I both shut down the sirens as soon as he said that.
I almost missed the next right due to the dust. It was just over the crest of a hill, and judging from the deep parallel furrows in the gravel, 216 had almost missed it, too. I was in an increasingly thick dust cloud for almost a minute, and when it tapered off suddenly I knew I was at the point where 216 had slowed. Seconds later, I rounded a downhill curve and saw the Trooper's car about fifty yards ahead, parked in the center of the roadway, top lights flashing. Excellent choice, as he was completely protecting the scene. Nobody could get by him on an eighteen-foot road with a bluff on one side and a deep ditch on the other. I stopped near the right-hand ditch, and waited until I saw Hester in my rearview mirror.
“You go on up,” I said on the radio, “I'll make sure nobody hits us,” and then carefully backed up around the curve until I was sure somebody cresting the hill could see the flashing lights in my rear window before they got into the curve. This was no time to get run over by an ambulance. Or the Sheriff. “Comm, Three and
I-388 are 10-23.” I hung up the mike, grabbed my walkie-talkie, and opened my car door.
Sally's acknowledging “10-4, Three” just about blew me out of the car. I'd forgotten about cranking up the volume in order to hear over the sirens. I took a second to turn it way down, and then got out of the car, locked it up, and headed toward the scene. You always leave the engine running in the winter so radio traffic doesn't run down your battery. It's also a good idea to have at least three sets of keys.
The Heinman farm sat well below road level, about fifty yards to my left. On my right, a steeply sloped, heavily wooded hill rose maybe a hundred feet above the roadbed. The farm lane came uphill toward the mailbox at a slant, with bare-limbed maple trees between it and the road. As an added measure, between the road and those trees was an old woven wire fence, covered with thick, entangled brush and weeds. Done, I