Following his pointing finger, I saw the man just as he stepped onto the porch of the house perched on the side of the mountain a hundred yards above us. Apparently the gun battle had aroused the household, for every light in the place seemed to be on, including the porch light.
Before anyone could fire, the suspect disappeared from view by moving back on the porch until its floor concealed him from below. Then we heard a crash of glass as he broke either a window or a door, probably with the butt of his carbine.
“Now we’ve got real trouble,” Frank said. “How we going to smoke him out of there without hurting the people who live there?”
I studied the house above us without answering. The mountain rose only about another twenty-five yards beyond it, but the final distance was an almost sheer cliff. If the suspect tried to scale it, he could easily be picked off by rifle.
I called to the drivers of the two radio units nearest us. “Point your spots above the house. We want that area kept lighted, in case he tries some more climbing.”
Marty Wynn said, “Would simplify things if he does.” I glanced at him and saw that he had traded his riot gun for a carbine.
Turning to Frank, I said, “Want to get on the radio and have them send out a sound amplifier?”
“Sure, Joe,” Frank said, and moved off toward 1K80.
I studied the scene above us some more. “Know what’s the other side of the mountain?” I asked Marty Wynn.
“Another mountain.”
“No road?”
He shook his head. “Not for a couple of miles.”
I said, “Then I guess we can’t come down on him from above by trying to cross the mountain from the other side.” Another car pulled up, and Captain Hertel got out of it. He came over to me and asked, “What’s the situation?”
“He’s broken into that house up there,” I said. “Probably holding the family at gunpoint. We’re calling for a sound amplifier to try to talk him out. Meantime, we’re trying to figure a way to get above the house and come down on the roof.”
Captain Hertel ran his gaze over the steep cliff above the house. “Be kind of a rough climb. You’d have to go up off to one side, out of his range of vision, then work your way along that cliff till you got above the house. If he happened to look out a side window and spotted you hanging on the cliff, you’d be a sitting duck.”
“Yeah,” I said. “But I don’t see any other way.”
“We’ll try to talk him out first,” the captain decided. “If that doesn’t work, we’ll try it the hard way.”
There was nothing more we could do at the moment except wait for the public-address system to arrive.
Chapter XXIV
12:02 a.m. The sound equipment arrived and was set up. Captain Hertel picked up the amplifier and said, “George Whiteman!”
The words boomed out against the mountainside and echoed back eerily. There was a note of inexorability in the way Hertel called out the name. I wondered how the cornered man felt, looking down into glaring lights and hearing his name reverberate across the countryside. It must have sounded to him like the final calling to judgment.
“You’re completely hemmed in,” the captain’s magnified voice rolled on. “Why drag it out, when you can’t beat it in the long run? You have five minutes to come out with your hands up. If you don’t, we’re coming in after you. How about it?”
Nothing but silence came from above. A full minute ticked by.
“Four minutes, Whiteman,” the amplified voice said.
A figure appeared at the edge of the porch, waving a white handkerchief.
I said, “That’s not Whiteman.”
Over the amplifier Captain Hertel said, “All officers, hold your fire.”
We waited as the man carrying the handkerchief stepped off the porch and started down the narrow road that led from Mulholland Drive up to the house. The road led off at a gradual angle along the side of the mountain for a hundred yards, reversed itself in a hairpin turn, ran for another hundred yards in the opposite direction, reversed itself again, and finally came out at the point Frank and I had Used to turn around our car.
Captain Hertel, Marty Wynn, Vance Brasher, Frank, and I all moved up the road to the point where the descending figure would come out. All the time he was descending, he continued to wave the handkerchief violently, as though afraid the police might shoot. It took him some time to descend, for though the vertical distance was only about a hundred yards, the road distance was three times that. When he finally reached the bottom, we saw that he was a short, plump man of about fifty with sagging jowls that were trembling with fright. He must have just returned from a party and been starting to undress when the suspect broke into his house, for he wore tuxedo trousers, a collarless white shirt with a pleated front, black patent-leather pumps, and a purple smoking jacket.
He stopped a dozen feet off and said, “For God’s sake, don’t shoot.”
“We won’t,” Hertel assured him. “Just keep coming.”
The man traversed the rest of the distance, wiped his brow with the handkerchief he had been waving, and put it away.
“He sent me,” he said. “He said he’d shoot me if I didn’t come down and tell you. My God, it’s the Courteous Killer up there. I recognized him the minute he broke in. You’ve got to listen to me.”
“We’re listening,” the captain said. “Who are you?”
The plump man looked at him in surprise, as though he were used to instant recognition. “David Grommick,” he said. “Grommick Productions.”
I hadn’t recognized his face, but I knew the name. David Grommick was currently the most talked-about independent movie producer in Hollywood. A relative newcomer, he had made only three movies to date, all smashing box-office successes.
“Uh-huh,” Hertel said. “That your house up there?”
“Yes. My God, I thought moving way out here, it would be quiet. Couldn’t stand the noise of the city, Janie said. Noise, she objected to. Three years we lived in the city. Right on Wilshire Boulevard. Sure, there was noise. All that traffic right outside our door. But did we have criminals breaking in the house in the middle of the night? Not once, we didn’t. You’ve got to do something. He’s got my wife and son up there.”
“Yes, sir,” Hertel said. “We’re doing everything we can. Why’d he send you down?”
David Grommick brought out his handkerchief and wiped his brow again. “To give you a message. He says he’ll kill Janie and Pete if you don’t let him go.”
We all just stood looking at him.
“You’ve got to do it,” Grommick said on a high note. “You can’t let him kill Janie and Pete.”
After a moment of silence, Hertel asked, “What’s he mean, let him go? He doesn’t expect assurance that he won’t be prosecuted for his crimes, does he?”
“He’s going to take one of my cars,” Grommick said. “I got two cars up there. See?” He pointed toward the house.
At the right-hand edge of the house was a built-in double garage. It was set too far back from the edge of the yard for us to be able to see into it, but we could see the upper portion of open double doors.
Grommick said, “He’s going to make Pete drive, and make Janie go along in the back seat. He says if you don’t let him pass through, he’ll kill them.”
Hertel looked at me. I ran my eyes over the sheer cliff above the house and said, “Stall him, Skipper. Give us a half hour.”
“Yeah,” he said. “Guess we’ll have to try it the hard way after all.”
Unit 1K80, the car Frank and I had, was a call car. Call cars are equipped with everything you conceivably could need in an emergency, from assorted weapons to battle lanterns. I walked over to the car, drew out a coil of rope, and looped it over my shoulder.