Time Expired (2 page)

“Smith, he could be in San Francisco now, ordering dinner at the St. Francis,” Bates called.

Ignoring Bates, I counted down the seconds. After everything was over we’d front up a press officer; that was the agreement, and reporters knew it.

“Hey, Smith, the guy’s suckered you,” Bates yelled just as my count got to sixty.

Picking up the loudspeaker, I strode angrily into the inner perimeter to the edge of the canyon. “This is the police. Turn on your flashlight and leave the beam on.”

Nothing.

I gave him two minutes, then repeated the call. We give the perp every chance to come out freely. A successful hostage operation is one where no one—neither hostage, cop, nor perp—is injured. He hadn’t been using his flashlight; the battery wouldn’t have gone dead. Still I gave him an alternative. “Yell as loud as you can. Yell ‘Hello.’ ”

No light; no sound.

“Murakawa, find Doyle; tell him we’re getting nothing here. Time for Plan B.”

He nodded and walked up toward the street. I kept my gaze on the path down to the stream, but I had role-played breakdown of negotiations enough times to know that Doyle would be stepping into the van to call the operations commander. The O.P. would huddle with Chief Larkin. Maybe Larkin would give the okay to go with Plan B. Probably not.

Nothing in Berkeley wasn’t political. Of the 120,000 residents probably 110,000 of them had opinions on every move we made. Most of those opinions weren’t positive. We had a top-notch force, but the aura of the sixties still surrounded us. And decisions like this one were rarely decided by the operations commander or even the chief, much less the primary negotiator. There was too much flak potential. Probably the city manager would decide.

When the word came down, Doyle would tell Grayson. Grayson would alert the Tac Team. As often as I’d practiced coaxing the hostage taker to come out for a sandwich or a talk with his wife, they had practiced storming a house, setting off diversionary flares, breaking through all the doors and windows simultaneously, making instantaneous threat assessment, and if the perp was not doing what they told him—if he was heading to endanger the hostages, moving fast—they opened fire. And they kept firing till the threat was gone, till the perp was down. All that in less than a minute.

Doyle strode toward me. “Too soon. C.M. says to wait.”

“Too soon!” I snapped. “We’ve got an injured hostage down there. She’s probably old, terrified, fragile. She could be bleeding to death.”

“Tell that to the city manager’s office.”

“City manager’s not going to call and tell her family she died because he couldn’t get off his ass.”

“Smith, run for mayor and you can make the rules.” He smacked his fist against the van. “No hotdogging, the C.M. says. Too dark, too dangerous, too many people around. Can’t have half the force tramping around in there with guns out. Could be kids down there. Or anyone. Could endanger the victim. C.M.’s got to think of the bigger picture. You know that, Smith.” The loose skin on his cheeks twitched with anger. He’d picked up the loudspeaker and was squeezing the handle like it was the C.M.’s neck. Or the perp’s. Or mine.

“Here’s the bigger real picture, Inspector. How much longer can we keep the contain? We’ve got kids coming home; they’re going to take it as a challenge to sneak past our lines. We’ve got half the neighborhood out here behind us, watching us do nothing but keep them from dinner. You can bet they’ll be on the horn to the city manager first thing tomorrow. Tell him that!”

Doyle glared at me, then at the canyon. “What’s that light?” he growled to one of his team who’d just walked up.

“Nursing home, sir. They couldn’t evacuate.”

“What?” he growled. “A building the size of a nursing home hanging off the edge of the canyon?”

“Private place. Converted house. Just a few patients, sir.”

I turned to Doyle. Sweat coated my forehead; it ran down my back. But my voice sounded dead calm. “Perfect spot for a hostage taker to commandeer.”

Doyle nodded and grabbed the phone. He wouldn’t remind the operations commander of the potential flak; the O.P. wouldn’t think of reminding the chief or the C.M., but we could all see the headlines if that happened.

The canyon was black as a well now. Fog cloaked the trees. The wind rustled oak leaves and scraped branches of bay trees against each other. It had been nearly half an hour since I’d seen the light flash down there. The hostage taker could be gone by now. And the hostage dead.

Doyle put down the phone and motioned Grayson over. “Tac Team’ll set up a diversion and go in.”

“No! Not with a perp we know nothing about and a victim who … we can’t take that chance.”

Doyle stared at me. “Smith, you’re the one—”

“Sir,” I said, lowering my voice. The press was too far away to hear, but still I didn’t want to take the chance. “There’s only one kind of diversion that’ll work.”

Doyle’s eyes narrowed. He knew what I was going to say. He didn’t like it, but he didn’t object.

“The only thing we can count on to hold his attention and not spook him is what he’s used to: the negotiation. From here we don’t know how much he can hear down there. We need to be down there to be sure.” I waited till he gave his nod of reluctant agreement. “I’ll take the loudspeaker and go down there.”

I
T WAS AGAINST ALL
our procedure. The rule is the negotiator makes sure that when the perp surrenders, he gives up to weaponry. He emerges not face-to-face with the negotiator, but face-to-barrel with the Tac Team’s guns. The negotiator never gives up her gun, never gives up herself, never puts herself in the immediate danger zone.

But when you’re dealing with an armed perp and a hostage in as bad shape as our victim could be, you don’t have the luxury of following regulations. Besides, breaking the rule
is
the rule in the city of Berkeley.

The level footing of the canyon rim fell off by the live oaks above the streambed. From there it would be a matter of my hanging on to branches and bracing on rocks, maneuvering down the crevice.

Berkeley is striped with streams, but most have been covered over. This one, Cerrito Creek, runs under the Arlington and out for a while before it goes back underground at the other end of the canyon. In November there isn’t much water down there. Just enough to make the rocks slippery. The local kids didn’t call this the chute for nothing.

An icy Pacific wind was blowing up the canyon, rustling live oak leaves and teasing us all with the homey smell of bay leaves. End-of-the-weekend traffic had subsided; the Arlington had shifted back from main thoroughfare to mere hillside conduit. Cars still squealed to halts spewing out off-duty sworn officers, crisis groupies, and a Super Bowl’s worth of camcorders, toted by a passel of news photographers and three or four passels’ worth of civilians. My descent into the canyon would be better documented than The Catch that gave the 49ers the 1981 championship. By midnight I’d be a star in living rooms, family rooms, entertainment centers, and bedrooms all over Berkeley.

Doyle and Murakawa came up behind me. I glanced at Murakawa. He was one of the patrol officers I felt most at ease with, a tall, thin guy, with a spray of brown hair that fell boyishly over his wide forehead. With minimal provocation he’d tell you he was just doing police work till he applied to chiropractic school. But we’d all heard that tale for five years; now Murakawa was the only one left who believed it. In Berkeley few of us want to admit that whatever we’re doing is our ultimate job; most of us secretly believe there’s something more on the horizon, for when we grow up. So we can’t afford not to be gentle with the chimeras of our friends. Whatever Murakawa’s future, now he was thorough and almost compulsively reliable—just the guy I wanted to back me up in the canyon. As primary negotiator I’d do the talking, bond with the hostage taker. As my secondary, he’d be in my ear every moment, listening to that bond form, and making sure that when the transference linked us, it pulled the hostage taker into me, not the other way around. The intimacy between the negotiator and the hostage taker can overwhelm everything we’ve learned. It can turn on you, and draw you in too deep. Negotiators have trusted too much, and they’ve died. It would be Murakawa’s job to see that I stayed out of the line of fire.

“You ready, Smith?” Inspector Doyle asked.

“Ready, sir.”

“Smith—”

I had the feeling he’d been about to pat me on the butt and tell me the whole game was riding on my throwing arm. And that he’d thought better of the pat. “Get him to talk, Smith. We don’t want half the team going in there blind.”

I started down the creek crevice, hanging on to a live oak branch, bracing my feet against the rocks. I wanted to move silently. I’d clipped the loudspeaker to my belt. But I couldn’t keep it from banging sharply into my thigh and loudly against the rock. The flashlight next to it rattled. I sounded like the entire offensive line rushing down the cement hall to the dressing room. Murakawa, behind me, sounded like the rest of the team. I just hoped the perp wasn’t near enough to hear.

All around the canyon the Tac Team would be inching their way down, eyeing the dark terrain around them for signs that the perp had been there, trying to discern drag marks of the victim.

The stream gurgled anemically. In the distance I could hear a rubbing noise. The perp? Or a deer? There was supposed to be a herd of deer in the canyon, fat, happy deer who moved from garden to garden devouring rosebuds. Deer, and raccoons, possums, and skunks. And snakes. Critters a city cop shouldn’t have to deal with.

Above, the cars still had to be idling in first gear waiting to move to the upper level of the Arlington, the radios still spraying calls, brakes still screeching. But I couldn’t hear any of it. It was as if I were in a swimming pool and someone had pulled the canvas cover over it.

Murakawa eased down onto the rock behind him. I started forward, pushing a branch out of the way, holding it till I could feel Murakawa take it. In the dark I could make out a narrow path, but I couldn’t see more than a yard on either side. And that nursing home light that might have been a landmark wasn’t visible at all.

The cold nipped at my face, but under the black coverall I was sweating. The ground was mushy. Down here the pungent aromas of bay and eucalyptus leaves were muffled by the smell of mud. I stopped, listening. There was no sound but indistinguishable rustling. Wind in the leaves?

The Tac Team would stop halfway down the hill. They didn’t want to spook the perp. They couldn’t take him out before they knew the status of the hostage.

I moved forward slowly, making a visual sweep of the area on either side with every few steps. The fog was sinking into the canyon like sludge. If the perp wasn’t moving, he could be a yard away and I wouldn’t spot him. But he wouldn’t be on this entry path, not unless he’d abandoned the hostage, and one of the things I’d learned was that hostage takers understand the value of their hostages; they know that without them they’re dead.

I almost fell over the lean-to—the kids’ clubhouse. Lean-to was too grand a word for this rotting door propped on cement bricks. One side backed in toward the canyon wall. I crouched down under the door and looked around at a stash of soda cans, a clutter of magazines—I couldn’t read the print but I could make out the naked female bodies. Some things never changed. Stuffed in the back was a blanket. The stench of wet wool battled the smell of mold. Even skunks wouldn’t have bedded down on it. And just beyond the far edge of the roof was a small three-legged pot, probably about a quart. I pointed it out to Murakawa. “A caldron. Maybe we’ve got a community center here, horny adolescents Tuesdays, witches Wednesdays.”

Moving carefully on the slippery ground, Murakawa edged around me to look at the caldron. I squatted down and unhooked the loudspeaker from my belt. The lean-to wasn’t much but it was as good a setup spot as we were likely to find for the moment.

Still bending over, Murakawa turned back to me. He was holding a black running shoe. A woman’s shoe with mud caked on the back of the heel. He squatted and eyed the ground. “Looks like drag marks.”

“There’s supposed to be a quarry office, or remains of one, farther into the canyon.”

“How far?”

“Thirty yards, maybe. Grayson was trying to round up a kid who’d been down here recently.” We both knew we couldn’t wait to see whether Grayson succeeded.

The perp could be in the quarry office remains, or not. But I had to play it as if he were in spitting range. I clicked on the speaker. “This is the police. We’ve got you surrounded. Give us your location. Call out, and flash your flashlight.”

No answer.

Murakawa had his hand on my shoulder. “You see anything?” he whispered.

“Nothing. We wait.” I had a palm on the ground for balance. We squatted, stone still. The wind rasped the leaves. The stream sounded like Niagara Falls. I could have sworn I heard the thump of feet, but I knew that adrenaline had magnified everything, and those feet, if they even were feet, belonged to nothing larger than a squirrel.

“This is the police …” I repeated the instructions. “Can you make out any movement, Murakawa?”

“Nothing.”

I lowered the speaker. “We’ll give John another minute.”

We called the perp John, the most innocuous name. He hadn’t given us a name, and we knew not to make up another one, one to which we’d unconsciously attach attributes. No tough guy we’d overestimate or weenie we’d take too lightly. I’d heard a tale about guys who’d labeled their perp Twinkie, flubbed and called him that on the line, and blew the whole scene.

Behind me I could hear Murakawa talking softly into his mike.

“Anything from up top?” I asked, even though I knew he’d tell me if there were.

“
Nada.
Doyle’s checking back with the city manager.”

I lifted the speaker. “This is the police. Signal us, now. Flash a light. Make noise. We want to work
with
you. Give us a sign.”

The sudden silence told me Murakawa was holding his breath. When he started breathing it sounded like someone turned on the air-conditioner.