Empty Promises

surprise as they tumbled out of the room and ran screaming down the hall. “Run! Run!” they cried out to the other three dozen residents on the floor. “He has a bomb!”
    It was chaos as frightened coeds raced down the hall, most of them so intent on getting away that they didn’t even see the tall blond man in the parka. The fifth floor was soon deserted. The only person left was John Stickney. He hadn’t tried to stop the fleeing women. He had watched them run, his face as calm as if everything was completely normal. He hadn’t tried to follow them. Oddly, he didn’t even reach out for his beloved Leigh one last time.
    Anyone who thinks a campus cop has an easy job might consider the task facing the Washington State campus officers who raced to the fifth floor of Perham Hall, as the coeds fled. Lieutenant Mike Kenny, age thirty-five, and Officer David Trimble, twenty-six, reached the floor first, followed by Officer Roger Irwin.
    They stopped when they saw John Stickney, standing almost motionless in the hallway. He had a bomb all right; he must have carried it in the innocuous-looking book bag. Now they could see that it was a metallic cylinder three or four inches in diameter and a foot long—just the right size to hold sticks of dynamite. He held two wires that led to a battery. If it was like most simple bombs, that battery would detonate blasting caps and dynamite. Kenny and Trimble held their hands in the air as John ordered; they were desperately fighting for time, and they didn’t want to irritate the tall blond youth. They knew that other officers were frantically trying to clear the dormitory of the hundreds of students who occupied all the other floors. The crisis could have been worse; it was two in the afternoon by now and many of the residents were in class. But this was bad enough.
    All working police officers take a class in dealing with bombs, and all of them fervently hope they will never come in contact with one. Compared to seeing a bomb in the hands of a deranged subject, facing a .357 Magnum is a picnic.
    The two officers moved toward Stickney, talking quietly, fighting to keep the tremor from their voices. “Come on, John … we can talk,” Mike Kenny said. “This isn’t the answer. Think about what you’re doing. Let’s put the bomb down. Let’s talk about it. Things aren’t as bad as you think.”
    Stickney shook his head.
    “Put it down, John. Put it down. You don’t really want to hurt anyone. You’re mixed up.” Moving so slowly that the inches they covered were almost imperceptible, the two officers advanced down the hall toward John, their hands still high over their heads. From the end of the hall, Officer Roger Irwin watched, barely breathing.
    “We’ll help you work it out,” Officer Trimble said. “You can talk to Leigh. She’ll understand. What are you? Eighteen? Nineteen? Hell, there’s a whole life ahead of you. Put [the bomb] down, and we’ll see that you get some help. You don’t want to hurt anybody. We don’t want you to get hurt.” Trimble was close enough to touch Stickney now. The bomb was within arm’s reach. It looked deadly. It looked as if it could level the whole dorm. Trimble no longer thought about himself; he prayed that all the students had made it safely outside. “Come on, John. Give it to me … gently,” Trimble said in as calm a voice as he could manage. “Just hand it over, and you won’t be sorry. I promise you, you won’t be sorry.”
    Trimble and Kenny felt as if they were moving through quicksand. The whole scene had a psychedelic quality. They were caught in a slow-motion horror film, red and green and silver Christmas decorations sliding past them in their peripheral vision.
    One step.
    Two steps.
    Trimble reached out. And suddenly he had the bomb in his two hands. He concentrated on standing upright and maintaining minimum movement. But then suddenly John Stickney fought back. He and Trimble fell to the floor, wrestling, the bomb between them. A few steps down the hall, Roger Irwin held his breath. Surely it was going to blow now and take all of them with it.
    But no. Stickney and Trimble were back on their feet, but now John Stickney was holding the bomb again. Suddenly, he turned away from the two officers and moved down the hallway, the bomb held tight against his stomach. David Trimble and Mike Kenny could see only his back.
    And then there was a roar the likes of which Irwin had never heard in his life.