The Big Thaw Part 26

He tried again, this time adding that the suspect should surrender.

I was looking up at the top of the elevator, my rifle at my shoulder and aimed where I'd last seen the shooter, when he came popping back up at the other end of the tower. As I brought my rifle to bear, he cracked off two rounds and disappeared.

"Son of a b.i.t.c.h!" hollered Volont.

"Sorry," I said, "but I almost had him that time ..."

I turned, half expecting him to yell again. Close.

There was a neat, round hole in the rim of his bullhorn, and he was scrambling back behind some concrete steps leading into the side of one of the houses.

He put the bullhorn back to his face, and I turned toward the elevator. This time, I had my rifle pointed at where our sniper had popped up moments ago.

"YOU MIGHT AS WELL GIVE UP. YOU'RE SURROUNDED, AND CANNOT ESCAPE."

Succinct, you gotta admit.

Nothing. I was all set to light him up, and nothing.

I lowered my rifle, and joined Volont behind the steps. Quickly.

"Now what?"

"You looking for suggestions?" he asked.

"Yah."

"Wait him out."

"Okay," I said. "It's gonna get awfully cold up there tonight. He could well freeze to death."

"You got a problem with that?"

"Not in the least."

We were both looking up when the sniper's head bobbed up. Arms extended into the air. No sign of his rifle.

"s.h.i.t," I muttered, "I think I could hit him now ..."

Volont gave me a withering look, and picked up his bullhorn. "ARE YOU SURRENDERING?"

Faintly, we could hear a voice, but we couldn't make out the words.

"WE CAN'T UNDERSTAND WHAT YOU'RE SAYING!"

"... I kill him?" wafted down from the top of the elevator.

"DID YOU KILL HIM? IS THAT THE QUESTION?"

"... yes ..." came back. Along with something else we lost.

"I DON'T KNOW WHO YOU MEAN. YOU DIDN'T, I REPEAT, DID NOT KILL ANYONE!"

That should have been good news to a man who was about to surrender. If you're under fifty, the difference between twenty years and life can be a long time.

With that, the sniper simply stood up, and began climbing over the top rail. Apparently, it wasn't good news to him.

"s.h.i.t," I said. "He's gonna jump ..."

He extended both arms in a cruciform, like he was going to do a swan dive or something.

"DON'T DO IT ..."

He teetered there for a second. Composing himself for the jump. He just needed to screw his courage up a little bit more.

Then, unexpectedly, he slipped. His feet just went out from under him, his b.u.t.t smacked into the rail, his arms flailed, and, instinctively, he caught himself.

Our suicidal sniper was now hanging by his hands about 100 feet over our heads. Instinct having taken over when he slipped, it looked like he had lost his resolve. He looked to be hanging on for, as they say, dear life.

Two volunteer firemen thundered past me, followed by an ambulance EMT and Volont. They rushed the fallen stepladder into position, and began climbing frantically toward the top of the elevator.

The fire chief came up beside me. "We ain't got a ladder that will make it more than seventy-five feet," he said, simply. "They better hurry."

"Yeah."

"Funny, isn't it, I mean the way they want to jump, and then they don't?"

"Sure is," I said. "I wonder why he just didn't shoot himself."

It took, oh, probably a minute, for them to get to the top. It seemed like an hour to me, and I was just an observer. They had to go over the rail, and then about twenty feet to my left, before they could get to him. I could hear them hollering to him to hang on.

It was very close. Too close for me.

The two firemen each grabbed at him over the edge, and then the EMT reached way down, and caught the back of his coat in her hands. I could just see the top of Volont's head, and supposed he was pulling on her waist. They all seemed to freeze that way for an instant, and they all sort of heaved together, and the dangling sniper slid back up, over the rail, and they all disappeared from view.

"Know who he is?" asked the fire chief.

"Not yet," I breathed. "But we will..."

By the time they got back down, there was a little crowd of us waiting for them at the bottom of the ladder. Lamar and me, Art, the two troopers from the parking lot, several firemen, and a couple of EMTs.

Volont suggested the troopers handcuff the sniper. As they did so, I got my first clear look at him. I was flabbergasted.

Our trembling, nearly collapsing sniper was none other than Horace Blitek, the screwy member of the Borglan defense team.

You could have, as they say, knocked me over with a feather.

We hauled him up to the hospital in an ambulance, to be checked out.

We were met by my old friend Dr. Henry Zimmer at the entrance to the emergency room of our thirty-bed hospital. As soon as Henry had heard there was a sniper, he had prudently called in two extra nurses, a couple of lab and X-ray techs, and his junior partner, Dr. Paul Kline. Consequently, as soon as Horace Blitek was out of the ambulance on his stretcher, he was nearly mobbed by attention.

"So, this is the guy everybody's making such a fuss about?" said Henry.

"Yep. In the flesh," I said. "He did try to jump, Henry. You might want to know that."

"Depressed," asked Henry, "or just in a hurry?" He chuckled, and started in to the ER, where Horace Blitek could just barely be seen through the little bevy of nurses and ambulance personnel. "We'll see if we can't cheer him up ..."

While they attended to Blitek, I got a chance to talk to Volont and Art.

"All he had was an SKS. The pauses were to reload. Just had loose ammo in boxes. No clips." Volont shook his head. "He had to reload by hand after every few rounds."

The SKS doesn't have a detachable magazine, but it was a favorite of some survivalist types, for some reason. Semiauto rifle, 7.62 mm. Chinese manufacture of an old Soviet design. They cost about $75.00, which may have gone a long way toward their popularity.

"So, why didn't he shoot himself?" I asked.

Volont grinned. "Out of ammunition. Not even proficient enough to save one for himself."

"So," said Art, "now we just have to find out why he was so p.i.s.sed off."

Henry p.r.o.nounced Blitek fit a few minutes later. "Just some bruises on his forearms, and on his b.u.t.t. Otherwise, he's just a picture of physical health."

"Thanks, Henry. We just needed to be sure."

"You might want to have a psychiatrist check him out, though. He's really upset. Told me that he's let Gabriel down, and that Gabriel is going to 'get' him." He clapped me on the shoulder. "You do get some strange ones for us, Houseman. But a personal feud with an archangel ..."

"Yeah ..."

Volont and I conferred. Based on what Henry had just said, we really needed to talk with Blitek. Even in his possibly mentally disturbed state.

"We won't be able to use anything we get against him ..."

Volont shrugged. "Then we don't use it against him him... but we use it to get Gabriel."

We took Blitek to the office, and began making the arrangements for an emergency committal to a mental health inst.i.tute, for evaluation. He had, after all, attempted suicide. But we'd have at least two hours before the arrival of the mental health referee, who would examine him.

While we had been at the hospital with Blitek, two state troopers, and Art and George, had been to the top of the elevator. Lots of sh.e.l.l casings. 7.62 mm. The rifle. Some brown cardboard ammo boxes. Nothing else, though. Courtesy Maitland PD, chains and padlocks had been installed on the caged, exterior access ladder, in three layers, where a cop in a car could see them. A potential sniper could still climb to the top, but it was hoped that he'd at least be more obvious. The area was p.r.o.nounced secure.

p.r.o.nouncement be d.a.m.ned, I noticed that almost everybody was suddenly using the back door to the office.

Twenty.

Friday, January 16, 1998, 1717 We sat Blitek in a chair in the reception area, while we tried to find a room without bystanders where we could interview him. "Cletus and his attorney are in the interview room," said Lamar. He indicated Blitek, sitting bedraggled in the corner. "s.h.i.t," he said, "he looks like somethin' the cat dragged in."

He did. At the hospital, they had pretty well undressed him, looking at what turned out to be minor injuries, and prodding and probing to make certain there was no internal damage. Typically for those under emotional duress, and on the downside of a suicide high to boot, he had then replaced his clothing in a rather haphazard manner, not tucking in his long John top, or b.u.t.toning his plaid shirt. His fly was unzipped. His boots were untied, with the laces dragging on the floor. He was sitting in a small wooden chair, with his head in his hands, and his elbows on his knees; his disheveled gray and brown hair sticking straight out between his fingers. The only bright element in the picture was the touch of silver provided by the handcuffs.

We decided the best place for him was the kitchen. Available coffee, rest room, and no phones. We kicked everybody else out, including the troopers and Maitland officers who were regaling a small crowd of late arrivers with lurid descriptions of the monster sniper. They looked a bit silly as we brought Blitek in and shooed them out.

We sat him down, and I went out a different door on my way to get note tablets and pens for the interview. As I did, I had to excuse my pa.s.sage though the interview room containing Cletus Borglan and Attorney Gunston.

Cletus looked kind of bad, and Gunston was being all protective. "Did you manage to get whoever it was? Is this area secure now?"

"Oh, yeah," I said. Just pa.s.sing through. I was on my way back with the tablets before it occurred to me. I excused my way through the interview room again, and hit the kitchen with a plan.

"I think," I said, "we'd be better off doing this interview in your office, Lamar." Way back on the other side of the building.

As he started to protest, I motioned him over by the sink. "I just came through the interview room," I said, in a low voice. "Cletus and his attorney are in there, and they don't know who the shooter was."

I could almost see the cartoon lightbulb come on over Lamar's head. To arrive at his office, we would have to transit the interview room occupied by Cletus and company.

"Let's take him back to my office," said Lamar, in a loud, clear voice.

We paraded past Cletus and Gunston. Lamar, Volont, Blitek, and me. Slowly, of course, so that Blitek wouldn't trip on his shoelaces. Blitek's head was down, and in his state, I don't think he even noticed who we were pa.s.sing by. None of us said a word. Except for Lamar, who simply said, "Excuse us, please," as he led the way through.

I glanced at Cletus, who had the now familiar pre-heave glaze in his eyes.

It was much more crowded in Lamar's office, but it had been worth the trip.

Blitek, in a mumbling sort of way, told us some interesting things. Gabriel had, in fact, told him to "take out" Cletus. Blitek had been a.s.signed what he called a "co-sniper," a fellow named Rollings. He never showed. Blitek was just sufficiently frightened of Gabriel that he undertook the "mission" alone. He thought that might have been a mistake. In retrospect, sort of.

"Well," said Lamar, kindly, "you gotta do what you gotta do."

Blitek had told Gabriel, as it turned out, everything that had been said by Cletus at the interviews. Including the fact that we knew about the phone call from the Cletus Borglan residence to the Cletus Borglan residence, so to speak.

s.h.i.t.

He also told us that Gabriel was still planning some sort of major operation for Sunday. Something to do with cash, and banks, but probably not what Cletus had described.

"You mean, 'had been planning,' don't you?" I was fairly certain by then that we had just lost Gabriel again.

It was the only time that a spark of life showed in Blitek's eyes that day. He had almost a religious fervor about him. "Gabriel says that there's no way you Zionist puppets can interfere. You can't stop him. It's a military operation, and you don't have a chance." He kind of giggled, like a kid. "There's going to be no betrayal this time!"

We decided the best way to find out was to talk to Cletus. By now, both Davies and Attorney Gunston were at the jail. Gunston said we could talk to Cletus, but that he was making arrangements for a doctor to attend his client and perhaps give him a sedative.

"No sedative," said Davies. "We wouldn't want you to say that we'd talked to him under the influence of drugs, would we."

I stood on the front porch of the jail with Volont, Davies, Art, and George. It was the best place for a fast private meeting. n.o.body else seemed to want to hang around in view of the grain elevator.

"So, how do we proceed?" George kept glancing at the elevator in the distance. "Well, he's seen Blitek. He's got to be aware that everything he's said has already been given to Gabriel." Volont looked around. "I'd say he's just about ripe, if we can protect him."

"We can't," said Art. He'd been a deputy in Nation County long enough to know what our resources were. Now that he was a state officer, he knew what they had available. He was right.

"We can," said Volont.