Third Watch by Robert Dugoni

Author:Robert Dugoni
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Tags: Series, Short-Stories, Legal-Crts-Police-Thriller, Prequel-Sequel
Published: 2015-01-01T05:00:00+00:00

Chapter Four

The headline in the morning edition of the Seattle Times streamed above an article and a photograph of Tracy leading Alexey Gorshkov to the patrol car.

Tracy cringed when she read the headline.

Hero Cop Uses Woman’s Touch

to End Hostage Siege

By TEVIA CUSHMAN

Special to the Times

What started as a routine night of patrol for veteran Seattle Police Officer Tracy Crosswhite quickly became anything but routine when Crosswhite responded to a call of a disturbance at an apartment building in Seattle’s Interbay District.

When Crosswhite arrived she found one of the apartment complex residents frantically flagging down her vehicle. The resident, Anita Schwartz, delivered a chilling message. An estranged husband, Alexey Gorshkov, had kicked in the door to his wife and two girls’ apartment. “I heard yelling in Russian,” Schwartz said. “Glass shattering and banging like someone was tearing apart the apartment. Then silence. I was so afraid. So afraid something had happened to Helene and those two babies.”

Schwartz called 911, the third time she’d reported a disturbance in the Gorshkov apartment in a month.

Crosswhite responded. But there was a problem. Because of a near riot outside Key Arena by fans of local grunge bands, all available units were otherwise occupied. Crosswhite was on her own.

When she knocked on the apartment door with her nightstick, shielding her body behind the stucco exterior, Crosswhite was greeted by the retort of a 12-gauge shotgun blast. Inside the apartment, Alexey Gorshkov had taken his wife and two daughters hostage and was threatening to kill them and himself. With no imminent backup, Crosswhite had to make a split-second decision. She was going in. “I wasn’t about to let anyone, especially those two little girls, die,” she said.

Alexey and his wife, Helene, had recently separated. Alexey, overcome with grief and intoxicated after a night of heavy drinking, told Crosswhite he was not about to let his estranged wife take his children from him.

This is when Crosswhite went to work. Using a soothing voice, Crosswhite first worked to calm Gorshkov. Then she sought to relate to him. Crosswhite recounted the days following the abduction of her sister, Sarah, in 1993 near Crosswhite’s hometown of Cedar Grove, Washington. Sarah Crosswhite’s body was never found. A year after she disappeared, Edmund House, a paroled rapist living near the town, was convicted of her murder. Crosswhite convinced Alexey Gorshkov she knew what it felt like to lose someone she loved and told him she would help him if he allowed her to enter the apartment.

She did so alone.

With everything Crosswhite said being broadcast over an open police frequency, Crosswhite found Alexey in his daughters’ bedroom at the back of the apartment. He was kneeling with the shotgun barrel beneath his chin and his finger on the trigger. On one of two twin beds, Helene cradled their two daughters, shielding their eyes with her hands.

After nearly 25 minutes, Crosswhite persuaded Alexey to lower the shotgun and give himself up.

Crosswhite’s sergeant, Peter Velasquez, greeted her as she emerged from the apartment with Gorshkov handcuffed. Velasquez called Crosswhite’s actions “incredibly selfless.

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