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At first, Greta focused on putting one foot in front of the other. Repeat, she kept telling herself. The mantra kept her moving and prevented her from wondering if she was dying. The steps became automatic. Faintness and the enveloping fog brought up images of being carried off to the next life, if there was one. She kept going, not conscious of stepping but merely focused on moving along the beach. She passed oblivious seagulls, endless waves breaking, scattered sand dollars whose shells had washed ashore, occasional clumps of seaweed, driftwood and stumps, and finally . . . a person?
She didn’t register the first human to see her: a seven-year-old boy running with the family dog.
He stared, startled, and then dashed away, afraid of the apparition that appeared out of the fog—a tall woman with long, dark hair blowing in the wind, stumbling, holding herself together, blood covering one side of her head and soaking her yellow sweat clothes. Greta didn’t see the boy run off.
What she finally saw were the man and the woman who helped her lie down on the sand—the frightened boy’s parents.
“Oh my God, Neil, oh my God, look at her!”
“Quiet, Mary! What’s your name? What happened to you?”
Greta tried to speak, but nothing came out. Her throat felt like parchment, dry and crinkly. She coughed, then swallowed.
“I’m Greta Havorsford. Tillamook deputy sheriff. A man attacked me. He ran back this way.”
“Jesus!” said Neil. “Mary, he might have ran right by us in this fog!”
Greta faded in and out. “Call nine one one. Call nine one one. Ambulance. Doctor. I’m hurt. Balfour. Josiah Balfour attacked me. All-points bulletin. Armed and dangerous.”
Those were all the details she remembered telling them. Neil, Mary, and Bobby, then more people, a number of other figures surrounded her. She couldn’t tell how many but vaguely heard them talking and shouting. How much time had passed? She lay on the wet sand and wished she could sleep.
I thought you weren’t supposed to sleep in these situations? her mind curiously told her. In the movies, they always tell people badly hurt not to go to sleep for fear they won’t wake up. I want to sleep. No, that’s bad! No sleeping, Greta!
She remained awake . . . sort of. Later, they told her that she talked constantly but didn’t make much sense. The first clear memory she later recalled was being lifted onto a gurney and then into an ambulance that had driven out onto the sand. As they loaded her, Alex Boylan appeared at her side.
“Greta, can you hear me!” he shouted.
She shook her head to clear it. “Goddamn it, Alex, quit yellin’ in my ear.”
Boylan turned to someone and said with relief, “She’s okay.” He leaned over her and said in a quieter voice, “Who was it, Greta? Can you describe them?”
“It was Josiah Balfour. Noble and beloved pastor of the Church of God Arising. That’s the fucker who came after me!”
“Who?” said Boylan. Being from Lincoln County, he didn’t recognize the names of Tillamook County pastors and knew nothing of the evidence on Balfour.
Such was not the case with an unknown person standing nearby. “Pastor Balfour! That’s impossible!”
“It’s fuckin’ possible if I say it is! That prick Balfour did it. I think I might have hit him with my thirty-two.” Greta focused, as much as she could, on Boylan. “Alex . . . call James Plummer. He knows about Balfour. Tell him what happened and what I said. Balfour will be on the run. They need to put out a bulletin for him. Armed and dangerous. He’ll try to get out of the area, and if he does, we may never
catch him.”
The exertion and focus made her dizzy, and she started fading out again.
“That’s enough,” interrupted one of the EMTs. “We have to get her to the nearest hospital. Lincoln City is the closest.”
“No!” shouted Greta, rising back up. “Tillamook. I need to go to Tillamook.”
The shout drained her last energy, and she drifted away.
Boylan and the two EMTs conferred briefly and decided there wasn’t much difference between Tillamook City and Lincoln City, so they headed for Tillamook City, sirens on full, with Boylan running interference. Greta didn’t see them pick up two Oregon State Police, three Tillamook Sheriff’s Department members, and a Tillamook City Police escort. By the time they got to the Tillamook Regional Medical Center on the northwest side of Tillamook City, more police and sheriff staff waited for their arrival, including Sheriff Wallace and James Plummer. Greta later vaguely thought she saw Alice Blankenship, Tillamook City’s mayor.
By now, her head had cleared more, and she seemed to hurt everywhere. A thorough examination by a crew of doctors and nurses was followed by a trip to an operating room and general anesthetic. She knew nothing else until she woke the following morning—or, more precisely, when a nurse deliberately woke her to see if she was still alive.
They took blood and fed her something resembling cream of mystery, along with tea. At eight o’clock, a doctor gave her a prognosis, all good. The arm and head wounds together required twenty-five stitches and had bled like crazy but were not life threatening. Although the stab wound above her hipbone was more serious, the exploratory surgery had found no serious damage. The doctor speculated that her abdominal muscles clamped on the blade and slowed it from going deeper. He expected her to be standing and walking to the toilet the next day and to go home for bed rest in three days.
She grew testy when doctors and nurses deflected questions about Balfour. It was mid-morning when the doctors allowed her first visitor, James.
“Well, Greta, I knew you were seriously into this case, but you’ll make all the rest of us look bad if this keeps up.”
