"Don't make it any worse than it already is," I argued. "Don't take the life of another innocent victim."
Hans Gebhardt laughed aloud. "You hear that, Inge? This dumkopf thinks you're a poor innocent, that you don't deserve to die right along with me. He doesn't know that you and your precious Henrik were in on it from the beginning, does he? He doesn't know you two were willing to barter your own daughter for a chance at a share of my gold."
"Gunter was as good a husband as Else deserved," Inge said.
"What?" Alan said. It was half question/half exclamation. As though he couldn't trust his ears with the words he was hearing.
"…just wasn't supposed to take thirty years for me to get it out, now, was it?" Hans Gebhardt continued, unaware of Alan's involuntary reaction to what was being said.
Inge Didricksen was equally unaware. "Shut up!" she rasped. "Just shut up!"
"Why should I shut up? You don't want me to tell this man the truth about you, do you? You don't want him to know how, with both the Jews and the Nazis looking for me, with both sets of hunters after my gold, I needed all the help I could get right after the war. You don't want him to know about Henrik Didricksen's greedy cousin back in Norway who took in my wife and my son. For a share of the gold, of course. Not out of the kindness of his heart. For enough gold, that stupid jerk was even willing to overlook bigamy.
"You don't want me to tell him how you and your husband agreed to help me as well-for another share. Except I think you thought you'd get the use of two shares-yours and Gunter's both."
"Don't listen to this stupid man," Inge shrilled. "He doesn't know what he's talking about."
"Don't I, now. Now, I'm stupid. But you were glad enough to talk to me when you were afraid Erika Weber Schmidt would come looking for you next. And she would have, too, if I hadn't been smart enough to take care of her myself."
"If you were so smart," Inge said fiercely, "we wouldn't be here now."
"Better here than in Israel, don't you think?"
"The Jews don't want me," Inge retorted angrily. "I never killed anybody."
Stunned beyond words by what I was hearing, for a moment I said nothing, then the silence was broken by the first faint thumps of arriving helicopters. Somewhere in the distance I thought I also heard the crash of waves against a fast-moving hull.
The helicopters were coming. So was the San Juan County police boat. It didn't matter now if, in the process of keeping them talking, Inge Didricksen and Hans Gebhardt had revealed fifty years' worth of terrible secrets I never wanted to hear. In terms of doing my job, I had kept the two of them talking long enough for reinforcements to arrive. Within minutes I'd be able to pass the negotiations over into the capable hands of a trained hostage negotiator, although by then, I have to admit, I didn't much care how those negotiations turned out.
"Do you hear those helicopters?" I asked. "You could just as well give up. Stop this now-before it's too late, before anyone else gets hurt."
I didn't know it, but even as I spoke the cautioning words, it was already too late. With a groan of outrage that grew out of thirty years of shattered dreams, with an anger fueled and made fierce by Else Didricksen's lifetime of betrayal at the hands of both her husband and her parents, Alan Torvoldsen surged to his feet.
Before I could stop him, he charged across the few feet of open deck between the pilothouse and the galley. Gun in hand and finger on the trigger, he crashed through the half-open door of the galley. Belching smoke, the ancient Colt revolver roared to life.
As I recalled the incident later, I believe there were three distinctly separate shots in all. Two of them were almost simultaneous. The third came a second or so later.
The smell of burned cordite was still thick in the air when Alan Torvoldsen reappeared in the doorway. Emerging through a haze of swirling smoke, he leaned against the door casing for a moment, then staggered forward, the gun trailing loosely in his hand. When he doubled over in front of me, I thought sure he'd been shot.
Instead, he straightened up and stood gazing at me. When I looked down, I realized he'd placed the still-smoking Colt on the deck at my feet.
"I tried to hit him, but I guess my aim was bad," Alan said. "I think I must have hit them both."
Sue Danielson, with her semiautomatic in hand, came screeching around the far side of the galley.
"What the hell happened?" she demanded. "There are curtains on all those portholes. I couldn't see a damn thing!"
Alan's steady gaze held mine, his clear blue eyes never straying from my face. His look was resigned, his whole manner surprisingly calm.
"Go ahead and arrest me if you have to, BoBo," he said quietly. "I understand, but I'm warning you right now. If this case ever goes to court, I'm pleading self-defense. Either that, or temporary insanity."
For a moment, the three of us stood there in stricken silence, without any of us knowing what to say or do. Then a voice broke in on our paralyzed stupor.
"Help me," Denise Whitney whimpered.
I stepped out onto the deck far enough to see her. Gravely wounded, she lay directly between the pilothouse and the galley. Because of the steep slope of the slanted deck, her feet were higher than her head. A pool of bright red blood had dammed up briefly under her flattened cheek. Now a thin stream of it trickled away across the metal deck.
"Please help me," she said again, her voice diminished to a mere whisper. "I'm so cold. I think I'm dying."
And it turned out she was.
29
There wasn't all that much to be done for Denise Whitney. While helicopters circled overhead, Alan brought some blankets. Sue and I used those to cover her as best we could, but we couldn't staunch the bleeding.
"…tell my parents I'm sorry…" were the last words she murmured. At least those were the last ones we were able to understand. Sue promised she would.
One of the problems with training is that you get caught up in an incident and you go on automatic pilot. Sometimes you keep on going much longer than you ought to.
It wasn't until Alan showed up with a second armload of blankets and ordered Sue and me to use them on ourselves that we realized just how cold we were. Not frostbitten, but cold enough that it took a hell of a long time to warm back up.
By the time we made it back to Seattle, finished up the worst of the paper, and headed home it was close to midnight-Sunday night and Monday morning. The lights were all off in my apartment, but I knew Ralph Ames had arrived safely. I found a note from him posted on my bedroom door. He said Alexis Downey had called, wondering why I had stood her up for dinner. Ralph's note also mentioned that he, Ralph, had taken my grandmother out to dinner-to the King's Table in Ballard-obviously not his usual choice. That man is nothing if not a gentleman.
I slept around the clock. What finally woke me up, around midnight Tuesday, was a severe case of chills, followed immediately by the cold sweats.
"You're coming down with pneumonia," Ralph said the next morning, when I tried to take a sip of coffee. My chattering teeth kept clicking on the side of the cup.
Ralph was right, of course, as he usually is. His instant diagnosis was confirmed later that afternoon by a chest X ray. Before I had a chance to object, someone had slapped me into a bed in Swedish Hospital for a three-day stay. I don't remember much about it. I think I must have slept most of the time.
When Thanksgiving weekend rolled around a week and a half later, I had recuperated enough to sit up and take nourishment, as they say. As soon as Jeremy and Kelly had heard I was sick, they had tried to waffle out of their proposed Turkey Day visit. I wouldn't let them off the hook. The doctor had assured me that I couldn't possibly still be contagious by then. Besides, as I told them during that last begging phone call-the one that finally turned the tide-I wanted to see my granddaughter, Kayla, at least once more before she was ready to graduate from junior high.