“This is Sheriff Walt Longmire of Absaroka County, Wyoming. I’ve got a 10-32 at the southwest corner of Filbert and 11th. I am tailing a homicide suspect who just killed Assistant District Attorney Vince Osgood at the Academy of Fine Arts, and I need assistance.”
There was a pause, but not much of one. “Sheriff, that was Filbert and 11th?”
“Roger that. A black male, tall, with a gray, hooded sweatshirt and a long, black rain slicker, headed east at a quick walking pace. The subject is armed with a tactical shotgun.”
“Roger that. Can you stay on the line?”
I laughed a short laugh with very little humor in it. “I’d really rather not have this cell phone in my hands when I catch up with him.” I started closing the phone as I crossed the street; the man was only about ninety feet ahead and slightly to the left. It was the guy from the crack house, Shanker DuVall.
“Sheriff…?”
I closed the phone and stuffed it back in my suit jacket, and silently cursed as he took a left at the next block and disappeared north up 10th. I picked up the pace and saw him slip across a parking lot behind the Greyhound Bus Terminal. I cut across the street at a diagonal, again hoping to gain a little distance.
There were rows of buses, most of them running, and I walked alongside one. DuVall was in front of another row on the opposite side of the lot; he was talking on the cell phone again.
There was a DMZ of about twenty yards that I wouldn’t be able to cross without him seeing me. I stopped and started to pull the phone from my pocket when I heard a thumping noise and looked up to see an angry bus driver yelling at me. Even through the windshield and the noise of the diesel, I could hear him plainly. “Hey buddy! You can’t be out here!” I motioned for him to keep quiet, but he honked the air horn, and the noise was tremendous. “Buddy, you’re not allowed out here!”
There wasn’t much choice, so I crossed the lot in the direction that I had last seen DuVall, but he was gone. I glanced between the parked buses and tried not to think about the last time I’d seen most of Vince Osgood.
When I got to the area where the shooter had been standing, I peered around the parked bus and saw nothing but a concrete wall and some weeds. I stooped down, checking to see if I could see any feet, but it was so dark there wasn’t any way to tell. I slid along the corrugated side of the big vehicle and wished I had my sidearm.
There was a pole at the end of the row nearest me, but it shed only scattered blocks of light through the bus windows. I wiped the rain off my face again, stepped around a large puddle, turned sideways, and started sliding between the concrete wall and the back of the bus; I figured it was the only direction DuVall could have gone. There was just enough room for me to squeeze after him. Evidently, he hadn’t had any trouble, but then he hadn’t had any trouble squeezing between two buildings and shooting Osgood either. It was possible that he’d left and that I was alone, playing Greyhound limbo for my own amusement. I tried not to think about the alternative.
I stopped for a second and listened, thinking I heard talking. I listened again, but there was nothing. The driver revved the engine of the bus I was pressed against a few times to get the big motor cleared out; I closed my eyes and held my breath until the cloud of exhaust and soot dissipated. The noise was all-encompassing, and I could see the access doors to the engine rattling as I turned my head and looked down the barrel of an Ithaca Mag-10 Roadblocker shotgun.
I could see only part of his face in the dark and within the shadows of the hood, but I could see his lips moving as his finger tightened around the trigger mechanism.
“What?” Here I was, trapped between a bus and a hard spot, and I couldn’t hear the last words I would ever listen to. He paused and then spoke again. His voice was much louder, but I still couldn’t make out the words. “What?”
“I said, I was gonna let you live!”
I yelled back. “Thank you.”
“But…” And he pulled the trigger.
The Ithaca Mag-10 Roadblocker was introduced a few decades back as a tactical 10-gauge designed to stop cars; hence the name Roadblocker. It was expensive, heavy, and carried only three rounds, the idea being that three two-ounce helpings of lead served at just over the sound barrier were enough. However, it had problems that could only be corrected with a longer forcing tube; without the modification, it had a propensity to jam.
And it did.
His eyes widened, and I saw him continue to pull the trigger as I slapped the barrel up; just because it hadn’t gone off didn’t mean that it still wouldn’t.
And it did.
The sound of the buses was bad enough, but the blast from the business end of the 10-gauge shotgun made me hear a high-pitched squeal that felt like a band saw cutting through my brain. I held the barrel above me as the back glass and parts of the bus’s aluminum skin skittered down on my face. He tugged at the heated metal of the shotgun, but I yanked, and the weapon came loose, skimmed over me, and clattered onto the ground.
I turned my head, but he was gone. I sidestepped and looked down; he had fallen, and his arm was lodged between the dual wheels of the Greyhound-center shot to the head. I looked up, and Gowder stood about ten yards away in a two-handed stance with his. 40 still pointed at the now-dead man.
He looked up at me and said something, but all I could hear was the ringing and all I could do was look back, breathe as deeply as my ribs would allow, and try to stop shaking.
It was a source of great interest to the Philadelphia Police Department and the District Attorney’s Office of Southeastern Pennsylvania that Shankar DuVall was leaking onto a stainless-steel table at the city morgue. Gowder said that he got a ride to my call, started walking, and when he saw someone trying to shoot somebody behind the bus, he had taken appropriate, if deadly, action. I was glad that he had, and I reflected that opinion in my formal statement and recorded interview for the investigators.
I looked at the battered tactical shotgun lying on the table between us; it hadn’t had an easy life, and I was starting to think that I hadn’t, either. Gowder was sitting across from me without his gun or his badge. Both of us periodically glanced at the large mirror on the wall under the military clock and wondered who was on the other side. It was 2:33 A.M. I smiled at him and listened to my voice; it sounded as if I were underwater. I could talk, but I still couldn’t hear that well. “I’m glad you shot a bad guy, or we’d be here all night.”
He smiled and said something.
“What?” He smiled some more and pointed to his own ears. “They say it isn’t permanent, that it should get progressively better in the next seventy-two hours, half of which I intend to be asleep.” He looked at the surface of the table and probably was seeing all sorts of things that were not there. After a while, I placed a hand out and got his attention, the dark eyes slowly rising to mine. “If you hadn’t shot him, I wouldn’t be sitting here.”
He nodded. After a while, he nodded some more.
They turned us loose; they were through with me, but Gowder would have to sit through another battery of interviews in the morning. By the time we got to the main hallway of the third floor, there was a group waiting for us.
Asa Katz leaned against the wall, and I almost didn’t recognize him in tennis shoes, jeans, and a blue windbreaker. Every time I’d seen him, he’d looked like a print ad for GQ, but right now he just looked like one tired cop. Vic was also there, still in her clothes from the reception. She looked great and was the only one of us who didn’t look exhausted.
Katz spoke to Gowder and then said something to me.
“What?”
They spoke among themselves, and then Vic smiled up at me, slipping her arm through mine and leading me down the hallway and into the elevator. She took Cady’s cell and called someone as we left the Roundhouse.