Renz spoke into his lapel yet again, saying exactly what he'd said the last time and apparently getting an identical answer. Was this one for real, or was it for the media?
Quinn looked across the street and saw that the SWAT team and most of the uniformed cops had disappeared, and one of the unmarked vans was gone. Cindy Sellers had disappeared, too.
After a few minutes, Mulanphy backpedaled smoothly in her high heels to where she'd started from, stepped deftly aside, and nodded to Renz. "We're still taping." Quinn noticed she was the only one who didn't have perspiration stains on her clothes. She in no way seemed bothered by the sun's glare or the heat radiating from the summer-baked concrete.
"Traffic has just been interdicted up the block from the hotel," Renz said loudly and with crisp enunciation, looking directly at a somewhat surprised Quinn. "We have all possible escape routes blocked. It's time to start the operation. Main investigators will be accompanied by uniformed officers Shults and Weaver." Quinn, Pearl, and Fedderman glanced at one another. Renz said, "I want everyone to please be careful. I don't want anyone hurt." He looked toward the camera, pretending to notice it for the first time, and raised a palm toward it, shaking his head. "We don't have time for that now." Loudly, back to Quinn: "This is a go."
Quinn motioned for his team to follow, then walked toward the corner. By the time he'd turned it, Pearl and Fedderman were on either side of him. Shults and Weaver, in their bulky flak jackets, Weaver with her shotgun, brought up the rear.
Almost the rear. Actually, Mary Mulanphy and her camera crew brought up the rear, about fifty feet behind the others. Renz had stayed back at the rendezvous point to issue executive orders.
Pearl's throat was dry. She felt like an actor in some kind of eerie movie as they approached the hotel's marquee. The uniformed doorman who sometimes stood outside was nowhere in sight. All traffic, vehicular and pedestrian, had disappeared from the block. She hoped Jeb, up in his room, wouldn't notice the sudden absence of traffic noise from directly below. Then she remembered his room didn't face the street. They could catch him unawares.
They had to.
Without hesitating, they turned and entered the hotel lobby.
It wasn't much cooler inside.
"You okay, Pearl?"
Quinn's voice. He sounded farther away from her than just a few feet.
She nodded.
The lobby was deserted except for a guy in a gray business suit who'd been undercover but now had his shield displayed dangling in its leather case from his breast pocket. He unbuttoned his suit coat, like an Old West gunfighter getting ready to quick draw. There was no one behind the desk. Another plainclothes cop stood stone-faced and unmoving in the archway to the coffee shop.
The elevators were dead so the assault force rapidly took the carpeted stairs to the fourth floor, where Jeb Jones was registered.
"Goddamnit!" Pearl heard the blonde anchorwoman whose name she couldn't remember say behind them, and there was a muffled noise like somebody tripping up the steps. Pearl figured that would be cut out of the tape. Maybe the poor guy who had to lug the camera up the stairs and keep it aimed and focused had tripped. She didn't look back to see what had happened. At the third-floor landing, where there were two SWAT guys with automatic rifles, Pearl drew her nine-millimeter Glock from its belt holster and started concentrating hard.
The fourth floor was unnaturally quiet except for their footfalls on the soft carpet.
As they approached Jeb's room, Pearl said, "I'll knock. If he looks through the peephole and sees me, he'll open the door."
"Don't be a fool, Pearl," Quinn told her. "Let these guys earn their money."
She glanced back where he was motioning and was surprised to see that the two SWAT team members from the third-floor landing had followed them up.
"This is a media show for Renz!" she whispered angrily to Quinn.
"Tell no one," he said to her softly, maybe smiling.
"If they shoot Jeb-"
The two SWAT guys moved out ahead of her and she shut up. They looked back at Quinn, who nodded.
The SWAT guys went in hard. One of them had a weighted battering ram slung by straps over his shoulder and crashed the door open, and the other tossed in a flash-bang grenade. There was a deafening sharp explosion that Pearl knew would do no damage but was meant to temporarily freeze whoever was in the room. Using those precious first few seconds, the grenade tosser charged inside. The door rammer followed. They were shouting over and over that they were police, making all the noise they could to maximize the element of surprise, and because they were revved. Behind Pearl, the blond anchorwoman was speaking frantically. And beyond her, tiny Cindy Sellers had rematerialized and was yammering into her recorder.
Jesus! Pearl thought.
Gotta get in there!
Time was on fast-forward and might leave her behind.
Her heart hammering like a machine gun in her rib cage, she passed Quinn and Fedderman on their way into the hotel room. Weaver somehow squeezed ahead of her, flak jacket and all, smelling of stale sweat and cheap perfume, shotgun leveled.
Don't you shoot him, bitch!
Pearl held her Glock pressed tight against her thigh as she entered and glanced around.
At first she thought the room had been unoccupied, and she felt a great surge of relief.
Then a hand appeared above the narrow space between the bed and the wall, fingers spread wide.
Another hand.
The smoke-fogged room suddenly became silent.
Jeb stood up slowly, surprise and fear on his face, but not panic. When he saw Pearl, his lips parted as if he were about to say something, and his expression of surprise turned to one of disappointment. Pearl felt for a moment as if she might begin to sob.
Damn it, hold on to yourself!
She swallowed, not liking how loud a sound it made.
Pearl knew Quinn had decided to put on a show for Renz. It was, after all, part of the deal. He held his old. 38 police special revolver in both hands, pointed in Jeb's direction but low enough so that if he fired, a bullet would go into the bed.
"Sherman Kraft, we have a warrant for your arrest for the murder of Marilyn Nelson. You have the right…"
At the mention of the name Sherman Kraft, Jeb suddenly looked stunned, and Pearl knew in heart as well as mind that they had the right man. Her wrong man.
Again.
But they'd solved the case. They'd stopped the killing. And she'd been part of it.
She had her emotions tightly tied and knotted as she listened to Quinn finish reading Jeb-or Sherman-his rights.
Fedderman gripped one of Jeb's raised arms and led him out from behind the bed, then turned him around and yanked both his arms down behind his back.
Pearl stepped forward and handcuffed him.
She had on her cop's face when he was led away and they exchanged glances. She wasn't sure if he knew she was the one who'd cuffed him.
"Have you anything to say?" the blond anchorwoman asked Jeb, dancing nimbly alongside and trying to keep up.
He stared straight ahead. "Only to my attorney."
Pearl thought, Bastard!
49
Sherman Kraft sat at a small oak table bolted to the floor in a precinct interrogation room. Behind him stood a uniformed officer with his arms crossed in a way that displayed bulging biceps. Shavers was his name, Quinn remembered. He was a lean-waisted black man who'd won a weightlifting championship while in the academy. Quinn figured he had to be well into his fifties by now, but he didn't look it.