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“Vetter? Can you hear me?” Rich’s voice boomed out through the bullhorn.
Sweat rolled down my sides. The last pages in 7th Heaven depicted a shootout with cops. I recalled the images: bloody bodies on the ground, Pidge and Hawk getting away. They had shielded themselves with a hostage.
Conklin and I conferred with the SWAT captain, a sandy-haired pro and former U.S. Marine named Pete Bailey, and we worked out a plan. Conklin and I moved quickly to the Vetter house and flanked the front door, prepared to grab Vetter when he opened it. SWAT was positioned to take the kid out if anything went wrong.
As I neared the house, I caught a whiff of smoke.
“Is that fire?” I asked Rich. “Do you smell it?”
“Yeah. Is that stupid fuck burning his house down?”
I could still hear the sound of the TV inside the Vetter house. The news announcer was getting a feed from the chopper overhead and was keeping up with the action on the ground. It made sense that Vetter was watching the television coverage. And if Rich and I were in the camera’s-eye view, Vetter knew where Conklin and I were standing.
Captain Bailey called to me on our Nextels, “Sergeant, we’re going in.” But before he could give the order, a woman’s voice cried out from behind the front door.
“Don’t shoot. I’m coming out.”
“Hold your fire,” I shouted to Bailey. “Hostage coming out.”
The knob turned.
The door opened and gray smoke swirled out into the dull, overcast day. There was the sound of a well-oiled motor, and under the shifting plume of pale gray smoke, I saw the leading edge of a power chair bump and maneuver, then stall on the threshold.
The woman in the chair was small and frail, maybe palsied. She wore a long yellow shawl draped over her head, fanning out over her shoulders, bunched loosely across her bony knees. Her face looked pinched, and diamonds sparkled on the fingers of her hand.
She turned her frightened blue eyes on me.
“Don’t shoot,” she pleaded. “Please don’t shoot my son!”
Chapter 117
I STARED INTO Mrs. Vetter’s ice-blue eyes until she broke the spell. She turned her head to the side and cried out, “Hans, do what they tell you!” As she turned her head, the yellow shawl dropped away. My heart bucked as I realized that there were two people sitting in that wheelchair.
Mrs. Vetter was sitting in her son’s lap.
“Hans, do what they tell you,” Vetter mimicked.
The chair rolled forward onto the lawn. I saw clearly now. Vetter’s huge right hand was on the chair’s power controls. His left arm crossed his mother’s body, and he held the muzzle of a sawed-off, double-barreled, twelve-gauge shotgun hard against the soft underside of his mother’s jaw.
I lowered my Glock 9 and forced a level of calm into my voice that I didn’t remotely feel.
“Hans, I’m Sergeant Boxer, SFPD. We don’t want anyone to get hurt. So just throw that gun down, okay? There’s a safe way out of this situation, and I want to get there. I won’t shoot if you put down that gun.”
“Yeah, right,” Vetter said, laughing. “Now listen to me, both of you,” he said, pointing his chin at me and then at Conklin. “Stand between my mom and the cops. Now, drop your guns, or people are going to die.”
I wasn’t afraid. I was terrified.
I tossed my gun to the ground, and Conklin did the same. We stepped in front of the wheelchair, shielding Mrs. Vetter and her wretched son from the SWAT team at the edge of the lawn. My skin prickled. I felt cold and hot at the same time. We stood locked in this horrifying vignette as the smoke around us thickened.
With a muted boom, flames broke through the windows at the front of the house as the living room flashed over. Shards of glass exploded into the front yard, and sparks rained down on our heads. Conklin held his hands out so that Vetter could see them.
He shouted, “Vetter, we’ve done what you said. Now, drop your damned gun, man. I’ll take care of you. We’ll surround you all the way in, make sure you’re okay. Just put down the gun.”
There was the roar of the backdraft and then the whine of sirens as fire trucks neared the scene. Vetter wasn’t giving up. Not if I was right that the wild glint in his eye was defiance.
But Pidge had given himself no exit.
What the hell would he do?
