Empty Promises

explained, as he stuck a pistol in her face. She handed over the twenty-five dollars in the cash register, but that wasn’t all he wanted. She looked desperately around for someone she could cry out to for help, but the parking lot was quiet and the people in the units that spread out from the office had long since gone to sleep. The man with the gun raped her, but he apologized, saying, “I’m sorry to force you to do this … but I haven’t had a woman in two years.”
    When he left, she called the police. She was upset, but she gave a good description of her attacker and she remembered his explanation for raping her. Hearing that, they knew where to look; there is only one place, short of a desert island, where a man is forced to go two years without a woman, and that is prison. Detectives checked descriptions of recently released inmates at the Oregon State pen and came up with a balding, horse-faced man with tattoos on his arms: Norbert Tilford Waitts.
    They didn’t know where Waitts was, but they didn’t have to wonder for long because he surfaced again at 1:40 P.M. the next day. Two men held up the 42nd Street Branch of the First National Bank in Portland. The man holding the shotgun was handsome, in a baby-faced way, and looked to be in his early twenties; the man who actually collected the stacks of money while he held a pistol was older and taller and far less attractive. He hadn’t bothered to put a hat over his bald head or a mask over a face that was a study in misalignment. When he reached for the money, his shirtsleeves slid up and the tellers noted his tattoos. He picked up $15,514 in cash and beckoned to his partner to move out of the bank.
    The two bank robbers slipped out into the street and disappeared into the crowds in downtown Portland before the first police arrived.
    Waitts’s description was becoming familiar, and it wasn’t hard to find out whom he had buddied with in the penitentiary: Carl Cletus Bowles. They certainly made an unlikely pair, but prison officials said they had been good friends—who had, incidentally, been released within a month of each other.
    The bank employees picked out Waitts and Bowles from the lay-downs—the glossy sheets that showed photographs of six other men mixed in with the true suspects. Witnesses were positive that this was the pair who had robbed the bank. Within hours, a two-state search was under way for Waitts and Bowles. Both were charged with bank robbery, and Waitts faced an additional charge of rape.
    It was 11:15 that night in Springfield, Oregon, some 110 miles south of Portland, when Lane County Deputy Carlton E. Smith patrolled on his first night shift. He was in a one-man car, something departments try to avoid but are sometimes forced to resort to due to a shortage of manpower.
    Smith was thirty-three years old. He had a wife, four children, and a stepchild to support, and he’d chosen police work because it gave him an income while he studied to become a teacher. He had served two years on the Eugene, Oregon, Police Department, and then had resigned to drive a dairy route because the money was better. But Smith couldn’t get all the credits he needed to be accredited as a teacher in night school. He’d already taken a number of night courses in education at the University of Oregon, and now he needed to attend day classes in order to get his degree. So he’d gone back to police work, working 8:00 P.M. to 4:00 A.M. and attending classes during the day. Somehow he would find time to study.
    The Lane County sheriff’s dispatcher heard Smith’s voice on the police radio: “This is fifteen at Goodpasture and the Delta Interchange. I have a 1959 Triumph, license 9F 6773. 2-10.” It was a routine call. Something about the sports car had alerted Smith; maybe the driver was speeding or had a headlight out. The next communication would normally be his request for a wants-and-warrants check. Instead, Smith’s voice said, “Fifteen to thirty-three. Can you come?” He was asking for backup.
    Thirty-three was Watch Commander Sergeant Howard Kershner. Kershner was not alarmed when he heard the call. Smith sounded calm, and it was standard operating procedure to request a watch sergeant in certain situations. Only later would Kershner wonder if Smith had some inkling of the danger he was in and had really been calling for help. Before Kershner could respond to Smith, he heard the most dreaded words any policeman can hear “Oh, my