Lamar was on the phone to the people who ran the elevator, telling them they had a sniper on the roof, some 100 feet over their heads. It took him a minute to convince them. They couldn't hear the shots.
I was on my walkie-talkie, getting the Maitland squad car down to the elevator, to make sure there was nobody getting away. If the suspect hadn't gone up the interior elevator shaft, and then to the roof, he'd had to climb a long ladder.
"Want to try for a car?" asked Volont.
"Not just yet…"
I got on my walkie-talkie to the Maitland car again. "Hey, Twenty-five, you see anything down there?"
"I can't see nothin' here…" came the stressed voice. "But somebody just made a hole in my roof! I'm out of the car."
Still there, all right. But now, having taken the time to shift his aim to the much closer Maitland squad car, I thought he'd have a tougher time readjusting and zeroing in on us.
"You know," I said to Volont, "he really can't hit shit. You want to try for my car?"
"You mean the local can't hit shit, or the sniper can't hit shit?"
I grinned. "Neither one."
"Well, let's go," he said. "Just get your car keys in your hand before you go through the door."
"Okay… it's unlocked, and the engine is already running. Just get in and stay low…"
Volont and I went flying out the door, and down the steps three or four at a time. I nearly lost my balance, on the last four, and ended up scraping my hand on the sidewalk. I almost fell again, as I stopped suddenly at my car door. Running bent over, my back started to act up, and I hollered, "Shit!" as the pain flew up and over my right hip as I jumped into the car.
"You hit?"
"No, no…" As soon as Volont has his legs in the car, I put it in reverse and stepped on the gas. We shot backward so fast I was afraid I'd sprung the open passenger door. I slammed on the brakes, and spun the wheel to the left, sliding us around on the drive. Into drive, and we shot out of the parking lot, bottoming out at the end of the driveway. Volont got his door shut, I hit the flashing lights and siren, and we were off.
"Not bad," said Volont. "Not bad…"
"We're out of his line of sight," I said, turning left at the bottom of the long hill toward the courthouse, "until we come around that next corner."
"So we won't do that, will we?" said Volont.
I grinned. "No, we won't." I cut the siren, and we came to a smooth stop at the point of the curve leading to the elevator. "Let's go between those houses," I said, "and we should have a good view of the side of the elevator with the ladder."
I got my AR-15 out of the trunk, inserted one thirty-round magazine, and put a second one in my back pocket. I contacted dispatch on my walkie-talkie, and told them where we were.
"Uh, Comm, let's see if we can get some more people around this thing, the… uh… elevator. Stay low, but we need to see all four sides…"
"Ten-four, Three."
"And you might want to page the fire chief. We need people to be warned to stay off the street. And call the school, and tell them to keep everybody in, even after school, if they have to. Explain it to 'em." The school was about as far from the elevator as the Sheriffs Department.
"Ten-four."
"How's Twenty-five?" I asked her.
"I'm just swell…" came a squeaky reply. "But he's shot my car four or five times now. I'm behind the co-op garage over near the river."
"Stay there, Twenty-five," I said. "We can always fix the car."
I put on my green stocking cap. This was going to take a while. Volont had already gone between two of the houses. I moved in behind him.
As I reached the area where the backyards began, I could see his hand go up. "Careful," he said. "I can see him." He had his handgun out, but it was down by his side.
I looked up, way up. There, at the top of the elevator, to the left side, was a bump that might have been a head, with a long stick out in front. Rifle. The base of the elevator was about 150 feet from us. With him up in the air, say 90 to 100 feet… Geometry class, years ago, had addressed this very issue. Pythagoras. I remembered the name. I remembered it was a theorem. A squared plus B squared equals C squared. And I realized I'd have to do a square root in my head to be sure. Right. I started to adjust the sights on my rifle.
"How far away would you say he is?" I asked Volont, casually.
"Oh, about a hundred and fifty to a hundred and seventy-five feet."
"Thanks." I backed my sights all the way down to the 100 yard combat setting. At this distance, a bullet from my rifle, even going uphill, would only drop about a quarter of an inch below my aim point. If that.
Volont glanced back over his shoulder. "Can you hit him from here?"
"Yep." I looked up as a loud crack sounded above us. He seemed to be still shooting toward the jail. "If I can see enough of him, and there isn't much wind."
Just as I said that, the sniper stood, and changed position. He disappeared from our view. All I had been able to catch was that he was wearing a mustard-colored hooded coat, with tan gloves. And that his rifle had a scope. A split second, and he was gone.
"Moot," said Volont. "You happen to have a bullhorn in your trunk?"
"Nope. Fire Department has one, though." I handed him my walkie-talkie mike.
While we waited for an intrepid volunteer fireman to go to the station, get the bullhorn, and bring it to us, we sketched out a plan of attack.
"I'll talk to him, and see if I can get him to give it up," said Volont. "If he starts shooting at anything but the jail or police vehicles, we take him out." He looked at me. "If that's all right. I really don't have much jurisdiction here. Your call."
"Sounds good," I said. "Problem one… we're in about the only location that can engage him. If you shoot from the other sides, the missed rounds are going to fall in town."
He looked at the target area. "Right."
"So if he does something really stupid, it better be on this side of the building."
"If not," said Volont, "we go up and get him."
"What's this 'we' shit? I don't do heights."
"How long," he asked, "will it take to get a TAC team in here?"
"About two hours," I said. "Maybe a bit longer. They're state troopers, and they have to come from all over."
"Helicopter?"
"I doubt it."
He sighed, audibly. "You people do need resources, don't you?"
I almost held out my hand:
The volunteer fireman got to us. There seemed to be some problem with the bullhorn, and he'd brought extra batteries. It was one of those items that was hardly ever used.
While Volont checked out the bullhorn, I looked very closely at that concrete grain elevator. The only way up, from the outside, was via that caged ladder. I remembered the first time, as a kid, I had thought about climbing it. I couldn't reach the ladder. I double-checked, and saw that the bottom rung was about seven or eight feet off the ground. Still, apparently. There was an aluminum stepladder, erected but on its side, under the cage. Obviously how our man had gotten up. Kicked it over, probably on purpose. That told me that he'd at least thought about somebody trying to climb up after him. All he'd have to do is lean over the edge, and shoot down into the circular cage. Anybody climbing up was not only going to get hit, they were going to get hit by plunging fire, along their longitudinal axis. In other words, the bullet wouldn't go through your shoulder and out. It would go in between, for example, your neck and your collarbone, and come out somewhere near the bottom of your pelvis.
Ugly concept.
There were three landings, each about twenty to twenty-five feet up the ladder. Open platforms, they had rails about four feet high. From the last platform on, anybody on that ladder was a dead man. At night, maybe, you could get as high as two platforms up, without getting shot. But by the third…