“Sir, are you still there?”
“Gods! I think it’s a kidnapping!” I exclaimed aloud, making the statement to myself as much as to the 9-1-1 operator.
The attacker had been pre-occupied with the struggling woman and only now noticed Ben barreling around the corner. He ducked quickly into the driver’s seat, audibly wrenching the vehicle into gear and gunning the engine even before closing the door.
Tires squealed as the car sped forward, climbing up the incline toward the level above us. Ben slipped out of view behind a support pylon then reappeared on the opposite side, pistol stiff-armed before him and taking aim at the vehicle. I saw him snap his head in disgust as he realized it was too dangerous to take a shot with the victim in the trunk. He followed the tail of the car with his eyes as it screeched into the turn then whipped his gaze around and darted to his right toward the downward corkscrew of the exit lane on the corner of the building.
“Sir?!” I heard the faint but frantic voice issue from the cell phone and realized that I had allowed my hand to drop away from my ear.
I brought the device back up and began speaking, “He just shoved her into the trunk and sped off. Ben is chasing after them.”
“Are you still in the parking garage, sir?”
“Yeah,” I responded, realizing suddenly that I had to be her eyes. “Yeah, he was heading up, so Ben took off for the exit spiral. He’s on foot.”
“Sir, we are on the line with dispatch, and they have units responding to your location. I need you to stay with me.”
I could hear the roar of the vehicle crossing above me on the next level, revving up then fading as it passed. My view of Ben was obscured by a row of cars occupying the spaces near the center of the level, so I began running up the incline. I was moving slowly at first then began increasing my pace as I tried to get in a better position to see the exit ramp. There was a squeal, another roar, and then the crunch of metal against concrete. Following that, there was nothing.
I broke past the line of cars and stumbled to a halt, directing my gaze through an empty parking space. In the distance, I could see Ben’s form in a three-quarter silhouette as he stood at that level’s opening to the exit, weapon at the ready.
I started to wonder if the vehicle above had crashed into one of the dividing walls, but then the relative silence was punctuated by the protests of its overtaxed engine as it started down the spiraling ramp.
The car suddenly came into view at the opening, and the tortured wail of scraping metal filled my ears. A pair of bursts from Ben’s pistol abruptly punctuated the grating noise as he fired into the windshield of the vehicle.
I watched in horror as the front fender clipped my friend and sent him flying backward. The scrape of sheet metal against concrete began to fade as the vehicle continued down the ramp.
“He’s been hit!” I shouted into the cell phone as I began moving once again, breaking into a run toward my downed friend. “Ben’s been hit!”
I knew the operator was asking me something because I heard her voice issuing from the speaker, but I no longer had the device to my ear. I pumped my legs and arms as hard as I could, pushing myself up the incline and hooked around the parked vehicles at the end of the row. I had a lot of distance to cover, and I wasn’t going to be setting any records for sprinting. By the time I was within forty or so feet of the arc, the exit came once again into view.
Not knowing how hard he had been struck or the extent of his injuries, I was fully expecting to see my friend in a crumpled heap. Instead, I was greeted by the sight of him on his feet, fully upright and very pissed off.
“Fuck ME!” he shouted across the lot as he limped forward. “Sonofabitch!”
“Ben!?” I barely managed to call out against my rapidly shortening breath.
He looked up and saw me running toward him. “Backup, Row. Fuckin’ tell me I’ve got backup comin’!”
I waved the cell phone in the air then sucked in a quick breath and called out to my friend as I continued toward him. “The operator said units have been dispatched.”
Below us, the fading sound of the scraping metal had now transformed into the clamor of squealing tires, and out on the streets, angry horns were beginning to blare.
The wail of emergency sirens in the distance was so faint they may as well have been a lifetime away.
CHAPTER 5:
“No, I don’t wanna go to the freakin’ hospital,” Ben’s voice carried across the lot as he shouted. He continued walking away from the paramedic but looked back, pointing his finger as he added, “How many times do I hafta tell ya? Now leave me alone and let me do my job.”
My friend was disheveled and still moving about with a limp, but other than that, he didn’t appear to be seriously injured. But then, this was Ben Storm we were talking about. I’d seen him lie through his teeth to avoid going to a hospital, all because he had a phobia about needles, go figure.
Even though he had relayed a description of the vehicle to the 9-1-1 operator, it had all come down to placement and timing, neither of which factored in our favor. The car was gone before the first police cruiser even arrived on the scene. Between Ben, the parking attendant from the booth downstairs, and me, we had been able to provide miscellaneous details about the sedan as well as a license plate number. Since the car had Illinois tags, officials from that state’s patrol division were already in the loop.
I was keeping my ears open for lack of anything else to do. Thus far, from what I had been able to pick up from the various conversations I overheard, there was presently an alert out on both sides of the river but still no sign of the vehicle.
I felt like I should be doing something. I’m not sure what, but that wasn’t the point. I hated the idea of being useless with regard to everything that had transpired. But, I suppose being ordered to ‘wait over there until we need you’ can tend to do that to a person. All in all, I was starting to feel like an extra in a B-movie but without the paycheck or catered buffet lunch.
At the moment, I was watching from the stairwell, sitting on the third step up from the bottom and trying my best to stay out of the way. So far, I had been managing to do so but not without some shifting and shuffling to allow the occasional cop to pass. From what I could see going on in front of me, this was probably the only spot where I was going to have any success whatsoever in the endeavor.
I looked away from the scene long enough to glance at my watch. Somewhere around an hour and a half had slipped past us since this all began: ninety minutes disappearing into history only to be relived by eyewitness accounts, repeated over and over to the point of tediousness. And then repeated again.
Still, even though I had only been asked to tell my accounting a half-dozen times so far, it felt as if I had been in this parking garage just shy of forever. On the other hand, it seemed like the span of interconnected moments had gone by in a sudden blur. I suppose it was yet another of those peculiar stress-induced dichotomies that blindsides you following an unexpected adrenalin rush.
As I watched, I took particular note of the fact that the number of warm bodies occupying the parking garage had increased several fold over what it had been just thirty minutes ago. Now, while I was no expert, unfortunately, I was also not a stranger to crime scenes. The ratio of cops to the singularity of the crime seemed to me like it was already moving beyond overkill. On top of that, something told me there would be even more by the time it was all said and done. There was something more to this than met the eye; even the eye of a witness, or so it seemed.
For the time being, it looked like I was stuck here. Ben was still limping around angrily, but now he was heading in my direction. He had been barking at anyone in a uniform and even some who weren’t. This was far from the first time I had ever seen him agitated, but there was something different this go around. It wasn’t that this scene felt any more tense than any other I’d been on, just different. There was an overtone of urgency that went beyond any I’d felt before. To me at least, there was even a palpable sense of personal fear coming from the cops on the scene. Not just for the victim but for themselves as well. That was something I had never before experienced at a crime scene, and it bothered me.