Taking Liberty (16 page)

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Cops are trained to react. Our reflexes aren’t any quicker, but our life-or-death decision-making is generally better informed.

I had a fraction of a second to assess the situation before Engel blasted my insides all over the plasma TV.

From Engel’s’ point of view, he’d stumbled in on somebody invading his private lair. Out here, in the back end of nowhere, it would have come as a huge surprise – and one he wouldn’t take lightly. Who would? The fortifying of his home attested to the fact he’d protect his personal domain tooth and nail. I was silhouetted in the bluish light flickering from the big TV. No way Engel could see who I was properly. No way he could see my face. I was just a human-shaped shadow blotting out his beloved S & M.

And I was intruding.

The god-awful trance music was too loud to verbally confirm my identity. That left me with only one choice: I raised the flashlight, intending to switch it on and illuminate my embarrassment.

And that was my mistake.

No amount of police training can account for stupidity.

Engel must have thought it was a handgun.

I couldn’t blame him; so would I, in the same circumstances.

Still in that split second, I saw his fist tighten around the shotgun’s trigger and knew that if I stayed still, I’d die. I threw myself sideways – in the exact same moment blinding light erupted from the business end of the 12-gauge. The big plasma TV exploded, spewing out sparks and glass and plunging the room into total darkness. Both booms lost amid the thunderous drum rhythm raining from above. I rolled across the bear rug and hit the end of a sofa, came into a crouch. Heart pumping. Flashlight suddenly igniting in my hands and giving me the willies. I snatched a suicidal peep over the arm.

Engel was nowhere to be seen.

I ran the flashlight beam across the room.

Still nothing.

Looked like Engel had unloaded the 12-gauge and then took flight.

Insanely, I flew after him.

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Everyone knows how I feel about foot chases. I’m leery, to say the least. Dark alleyways are bad. The insides of abandoned buildings are worse. In comparison, running after someone through a brightly-lit house should be a jog in the park. Wrong. They are all dangerous. There’s no way to predict where those being chased might suddenly decide to stand their ground and fight it out. No way to tell what traps might lie in wait. Every corner has the potential to be fatal. Every turn bringing you one step closer to a deadly confrontation or a lethal obstacle.

Cops are trained to expect the unexpected. We are programmed to protect, to err on the side of caution. I hadn’t been a cop in ages.

I flew straight out into the corridor and caught sight of work boots disappearing up the staircase at the far end. I launched myself after them. Reached the foot of the stairs in time to see Engel’s naked posterior disappearing down the second floor landing.

I dug in and leapt up the stairs three at a time.

I had no idea what I was going to do if Engel turned around and came at me with the shotgun. Maybe I was hoping he’d see my face this time and come to his senses. Maybe, at his age, Engel’s eyes weren’t what they used to be. Could I take the chance?

I hit the landing on a roll. Incredibly, the mind-numbing music was even louder up here. Walls vibrating. Jackhammer drumbeats drilling into my chest cavity, turning my ribcage into a glockenspiel. I couldn’t even hear myself think. It was as if I had my head pressed against an amplifier at a rock concert, loosening teeth.

I was in a long hallway of plain plaster walls. One closed door after another – each locked with a 12-inch surface bolt. Another staircase leading up on an angle at the far end. A glimpse of Engel’s legs disappearing up those very stairs. I had long since given up trying to answer why those being chased invariably head to loftier heights. Maybe it’s the illusion of freedom the higher we are away from the earth. Maybe it’s sheer stupidity.

I fell into a sprint. Reached the stairs and bounded up to the third floor landing. Fewer rooms up here. Same plain walls. Same bolted doors. About three-quarter the way down the hall: a pull-down aluminum attic ladder ascending into a hole in the ceiling. I went for it. Gazed up into the dark hole, then clamped teeth around the flashlight and pulled myself up. If the metal creaked, I didn’t hear it. I paused before the top and poked my head into the darkened attic space. Felt cold air push at my face. I switched on the flashlight and scanned it across a layer of foot-deep insulation. Fine fibers danced in its beam. No signs of Engel. But there was an open skylight, up near the apex.

Engel had gone out onto the roof!

I climbed inside the attic and made my way over, careful to stay on the thick joists. Came to the hatch and peeped through. Freezing air poked tears from my eyes. There was a slope of thick snow on the roof, its top surface hardened with ice. Beyond, a nighttime view across Deadman Bay and down to the jetty where Locklear waited. I wondered if he’d seen Engel come out onto the roof and was wondering what the heck was going on.

I know I was.

Engel had inched away from the skylight, out along the snowy peak. He was stooped forward, his back to me, using the shotgun for balance like a tightrope walker. Work boots fighting for grip.

Where did he think he was going?

I clambered halfway out of the skylight and clung to the window frame. Snow and bits of ice skittered down the rooftop and rained to the ground. I shouted his name, but my throat was still raw from all the howling I’d done.

Besides, Engel wasn’t for stopping. There was ice underfoot and we were thirty foot up. No way I was going out after him. Believe it or not, there is a limit to my madness. I trained the flashlight on the back of his head and, one last time, yelled out his name.

Unbelievably, Engel stopped. Balancing on the apex of the roof like something out of the Cirque de Soleil. Ice particles whirling around him.

I didn’t know if he’d heard me above the din of the music or if he’d gone as far as he could go. Either way, he began to shuffle around on the icy angle, boots slipping and slithering as he stabilized his balance with the shotgun.

He was going for a standoff, I realized with a start. And I was a sitting duck, stuck halfway through the window.

I saw the shotgun come round to point my way. Saw his ruddy Santa Claus face light up in the beam of the flashlight. I moved it out of his eyes, but the damage had already been done. Light-blinded, he hunkered forward and brought the muzzle up to bear. No way I could move out of the way this time. The muzzle came up. I wished myself small. But the sudden movement had affected his balance. He was trying to correct it. The muzzle kept going up. I saw one of his boots slip off the apex. Saw his knee bend and his shoulders sag. The shotgun pointed skyward. Lightning flashed from the end of the barrel. Then Engel was sliding backward down the slant of roof, gouging out twin furrows in the snow. His arms wheeled, trying to right his balance. Boots scrabbling for purchase as he slid, uncontrollably, toward the abrupt edge and the thirty-foot drop to certain death.

Nothing I could do.

I watched, numbed by cold and shock, as Engel tilted backward over the edge and seemed to hang in the air for a moment – like Wile E Coyote in the cartoon – before plummeting from sight, a swirl of snow following after him.

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At first I didn’t move. Disbelief had me glued to the spot. Then reality kicked me up the rump and I dropped clumsily back through the skylight. I rushed down through the house. Through the sea of earsplitting music. My mind was spinning, harassed by the hellish noise and the thought that Engel had met with an untimely end.

My fault.

I’d wanted answers, and now my bullheadedness had gotten a man killed.

No way Engel could have survived.

But I had to see for myself. Call it morbid confirmation.

I didn’t slow until I was in the carpenter’s workshop at the back of the house. Then I eased off as I approached the opened shutter, eyes frantically searching the snowy backyard for signs of Engel’s broken body. Nothing immediately visible. I ducked outside. Still no signs of a fatal fall. I panned the flashlight across mounds of shoveled snow, over icy ruts, up across the sheds and the power cables. Still nothing. I came out from beneath the canopy, and that’s when the sky fell in on top of me.

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Everything falls to earth at the same rate. Engel wasn’t the exception to the rule. It should have taken him less than two seconds to hit the ground and crack like an egg. He should have been lying out here in the snow, staring skyward with dilated eyes. That was almost a minute ago. No way he could have defied the laws of gravity and waited to drop his two hundred pounds on my head, all in the right moment.

It was only as his boots connected with my shoulders and his weight flung me face-first into the floor that I realized what had probably happened:

Engel had hit the power lines on his way down. The tangle of cables had partially broken his fall. But the real lifesaver had been the metal canopy. He’d dropped onto the smaller roof and come to a full stop. Probably shaken and bruised but no worse than that. Then he’d waited for me to venture blindly out before resuming his fall.

And I’d walked straight into it – or under it.

Engel was determined to dispatch his intruder, one way or another.

His full weight slammed me into the snowy dirt, flat on my stomach. Air whooshing from squashed lungs. Freezing slush squelched up my nose and into my eyes. Instinctively, I tried to raise my head and breathe, but Engel had other plans. I felt the hard, ridged sole of his work boot press firmly into the back of my neck and pin me down like a bug on a board.

I was face down, eating snow. No way Engel could see who I was. In the red-and-black hooded shirt I must have looked like a trespassing hunter. One of those very people Engel had secured his home against. I felt something firm dig into my back between the shoulder blades. Realized it was the muzzle of the 12-gauge.

Engel was going to blast buckshot right through me!

In the eyes of the law, he had every right. I was on his property, uninvited. It was dark. I’d given chase. No court in Alaska would condemn him for taking out a home invader.

But I wasn’t finished yet.

I slammed my hands against the deck and pushed with all my might. But Engel had most of his weight on the one foot pinning me down, and the other was suddenly stamping on my lower back. Pain exploded through my spine, sending electric fire coursing down my legs. My body flinched and bucked automatically. But Engel’s weight against my neck kept me from moving an inch.

This was it.

Yet another backyard brawl.

Another unglamorous moment where my life could end in a heartbeat, face-down in the dirt on a cold and starry night.

And I was powerless to prevent it.

I felt the muzzle dig even deeper.

Nothing I could do.

Felt my lungs scream for air.

No way out.

Felt a judder as the trigger went
click
.