“Yeah,” I said. “Better cut your lights and park. We’ll walk back.”
Frank pulled over on the shoulder and flipped the light switch. I lifted the radio microphone from its bracket and said, “Unit One-K-Eight-Oh to KMA-Three-Six-Seven, Control One.”
A voice from the speaker said, “Go ahead, One-K-Eight-Oh.”
I said, “Suspect parked without lights at stakeout point eleven. Four Adam.”
“Roger, One-K-Eight-Oh.”
Hanging up the mike, I fished a flashlight from the glove compartment and stepped from the car. Frank climbed from the other side, reached into the back seat and lifted out a riot gun. I drew my pistol as we crossed the road and started to walk back toward the parked car.
Visibility was no more than ten feet. We were almost on the car when it suddenly appeared out of the haze. It was a Buick coupe, and the engine was idling. Frank stepped to the window on the driver’s side at the same instant I reached the opposite window. I shone my light into the front seat.
The car was empty.
Flicking off the light, I said to Frank in a low tone, “Looks like it, huh?”
“Yeah,” he said.
Then the night silence was split by a sharp crack I recognized as the distinctive sound of the sawed-off carbine. It was immediately followed by the sound of shattering glass. A whole series of pistol shots answered the carbine.
The gunfire came from about a hundred yards ahead, where Marty Wynn and Vance Brasher were parked. As Frank started to run forward, I called, “Hold it, Frank!”
He stopped and said, “Huh?”
“If Wynn and Brasher didn’t hit him, he’ll head back here at a dead run. We might miss him in the fog if we get too far from the car.”
“Yeah,” Frank said. “Be smarter, I guess.” He moved back alongside of me.
The bend in the road beyond which Wynn and Brasher were parked was about fifty yards off, and their car was another fifty yards beyond that. As we listened, we heard feet pounding the road toward us. I waited until they neared to ten yards, then flicked on my flashlight and pinpointed the running figure.
“Hold it right there, mister!” I snapped.
He skidded to a halt, dropped sidewise, brought up his short-barreled carbine, and fired, all in one incredibly swift motion. The bullet struck the lens of my flashlight dead center, sweeping it from my hand and stinging my palm, without doing any real damage.
Frank’s riot gun roared, and I pumped three rapid pistol shots at the point from which the carbine had fired. The range was almost point-blank, but we were also firing blind. He must have started to roll the instant he hit the ground, for the sounds we heard during the next few seconds indicated neither of us had hit him. First there was a scrambling noise suggesting he was scurrying to one side on hands and knees, then the sound of feet running to the opposite side of the road.
There wasn’t any point in firing blindly into the fog. Frank and I stood still, straining our ears in an attempt to figure out where he was. The rattle of loose dirt and stones sliding downward told us he was attempting to climb the steep incline across the road.
From off to our left, Vance Brasher’s voice called, “Get him, Joe?”
“Not yet,” I called back. “We’re over here.”
Vance and Marty Wynn appeared out of the fog. Vance had a pistol in his hand, and Wynn carried a riot gun. Wynn said, “The joker smashed the windshield right in my face. Gave me a free shave. Where is he?”
“Over there somewhere,” I said, gesturing toward the opposite side of the road. “Sounds like he’s trying to climb the mountain. In this pea soup we’re going to have trouble finding him.”
Wynn said, “I radioed in. There’ll be roadblocks both sides of here within a couple of minutes. There’s nowhere he can go. A mountain goat couldn’t get out of this area any way except along the road.”
He was probably right. The road here wound along the side of a mountain, so that there was a drop-off behind us and a steep incline a hundred yards high on the side where the suspect was. At some time in the dim past, the ridge of the mountain had broken away, so that the top twenty-five yards was an almost sheer cliff. It didn’t seem likely that the suspect could scale it and get away by crossing the mountain.
I reached through the Buick’s front window, cut the idling engine, and dropped the ignition key in my pocket. “Let’s get some light on the subject,” I said. “Bring your car up, Marty. And switch on our headlights, Frank.”
Marty Wynn said, “Roger,” and started back toward his car. Frank moved off in the opposite direction.
A few moments later Wynn drove his car around the bend and halted in the center of the road. He turned up his highway lights. Frank’s came up, too.
This didn’t help much. We could now see the other side of the road, but the mountainside was lighted only about a dozen feet up. Wynn switched on a spotlight and methodically began to sweep it back and forth over the incline.
From above us the carbine cracked, and the spotlight abruptly winked out.
Vance Brasher and I both fired at the gun flash. An instant later Marty Wynn’s riot gun boomed. His car door slammed, and he walked over to us.
“What the devil’s he think he’s doing up there?” Wynn asked disgustedly. “He must know he can’t go anywhere.”
“Yeah,” I said. Then I thought of something. “Wait a minute. The road Frank and I have been using to turn around leads to one of the Outpost Estates. It must be right above us somewhere. He may be heading for it to make a stand.”
The Outpost Estates are private homes perched along the mountainside. They are beautiful places for the most part, if you like a drop of fifty to a couple of hundred feet at the edge of your front yard.
Wynn said, “Where is this road? Maybe we’d better try reaching the place before he does.”
“We’d never make it in time,” I said. “It probably winds back and forth for a half mile or more to get up a hundred yards.” Cupping my palms in front of my mouth. I shouted, “Whiteman! You hear me?”
The carbine cracked in reply, and we all hit the dirt as the slug slammed into the concrete in front of us and ricocheted off with a whine. Apparently Frank had been waiting alongside our car for another gun flash, for in the wake of the shot a riot gun sounded from that direction.
The three of us near the Buick crowded behind it. I called again, “Whiteman! Why don’t you give it up? You haven’t got a chance.”
This time there was no reply.
From behind Wynn and Brasher’s car, a flashing red light appeared as the first of the reinforcements arrived. A moment later another radio unit arrived from the opposite direction. Within another two minutes squad cars lined the road for fifty yards in both directions.
I sent Frank one way to brief the new arrivals on the situation, and I went the other way. A few moments later a dozen spotlights began to sweep the mountainside. They weren’t very effective because of the fog.
I returned to the Buick, and a moment later was joined by Frank, who still carried the riot gun. He said, “Breeze just started, Joe.”
“What?” I said, wondering why he picked a time like this to make a comment about the weather.
“Gonna blow away the fog. Be clear moonlight around here in ten minutes.”
Glancing at the mountainside, I realized he was right. Already patches of nearly transparent haze were appearing in the thick fog.
Frank’s estimate was wrong. The breeze quickened and swept away the last remnants of the fog within five minutes. Bright moonlight bathed the mountainside, lighting it so clearly that the spotlights were almost unnecessary.
I searched the side of the mountain, but couldn’t see any sign of the suspect. Then Vance Brasher said, “There he is,” and pointed upward.