Savich nodded.
“Do you have any ideas yet who they might be, why this is all aimed at you?”
Savich could only shake his head. Mr. Dykes was the only one who’d seen them, and there hadn’t been time to work with their forensic artist, not that Savich was holding out much hope since Dykes’s descriptions were both too general and, frankly, lame. Surely he could have come up with something distinctive, if he’d tried. It made Savich uneasy, made him feel there was something wrong about Dykes. On the other hand, if everything went as planned, Savich would be seeing Moses Grace and Claudia for himself real soon now.
In the cold dark night, Savich knew that none of this made a lick of sense. There was no way Moses Grace was going to do what Rolly had overheard him say he’d do, namely take off early with Pinky stuffed in the back of that old Chevy van. And take him where? Something was seriously not right. Maybe Rolly had fed Connie what Moses Grace wanted them to hear.
At ten after four, Agent Connie Ashley appeared from behind Savich, dressed in black, as were the rest of her team, her face nearly completely covered with a black stretch hat and wool scarf. “I just got a call from Rolly. He wanted to talk to Ruth, but I told him she was still out of town, and besides, I was the one with the phone, and the blood now. Rolly told me he remembered something else this old guy said, about leaving with Pinky before dawn so they had plenty of time to get to Arlington National Cemetery.”
“Rolly remembered this now? In the middle of the night?”
“Rolly said something woke him out of a dead sleep and wham—he suddenly remembered.”
“How much more blood did he want for the information?”
“Two more pints.”
Savich said, “I wonder why Arlington National Cemetery? To do what?”
“Rolly didn’t know, said that’s all the old man said. It sounds like Rolly is having us on, Dillon. It makes me itchy. I wish Ruth were here; she’d know if he was telling the truth or not.” She paused for a moment, looked up at the last room on the second floor. The light still burned. “With those thick shades, it’s impossible to tell if anybody’s in there.”
Dane whispered to her, “At least we can hear whatever they say. I think it’s pretty cool that all Ruth’s snitches have cell phones.”
“She gave them all cell phones, told me it paid off big time in the Jefferson case to have her snitch get to her right away, not in an hour or twenty-four. She laughed when she said Rolly really liked it, told her it was the new century and you had to move forward with the times. She enrolled him and all her snitches in a family plan. Anything at all out of those two up there?”
Savich said, “Not in the last couple of hours. But there’s no way out except through the front door or the back window, which you guys are covering, so they’re in there. Even if Rolly was shining you on about their leaving early to go to Arlington National Cemetery, they’ll leave soon. We just have to stay ready.”
Connie nodded and silently blended back into the trees that surrounded this end of the motel to make a wide circle back to the other agents and the local cops.
“I agree with Connie,” Savich whispered. “This isn’t right.”
Dane was rubbing his gloved hands together. “But what else can we do?”
Not a thing, Savich thought, except wait. Why would Moses Grace want to take Pinky to Arlington National Cemetery? Savich frowned down at his hands, flexed his fingers to get the blood going. Nothing made any sense, and that scared him. He’d meant to ask Connie if Sherlock was okay, but of course she was. He hoped Ruth, at least, was having a better time than he was on her caving trip. He frowned as he thought again of Raymond Dykes, owner of Hooter’s. He’d been very cooperative at first, perhaps too cooperative, Savich thought now, only a bare minimum of complaining and general pissiness. Naturally they had told him he would be recompensed by the taxpayers for any loss of income, but still, he should have protested more. Savich suddenly remembered the small chipped red bowl on the end of the green-painted counter in the motel reception room. It held at least half a dozen chewed-up balls of gum, and wasn’t that the oddest thing? Dykes hadn’t chewed gum while they spoke to him to set things up. Were those chewed-up gum balls out of Claudia’s mouth?
Savich looked at his Mickey Mouse watch. It was exactly three minutes later than when he’d last looked. He shivered as an angry slice of bitter wind cut through the wool scarf wrapped around his neck. He pictured his son, Sean, sleeping with his bear Gus wrapped in his arms, a soft blanket up around his ears, all toasty warm, dreaming about tomato soup with popcorn on top, his new favorite meal. He looked over at Dane, hunkered down behind a trash can some six feet away, close to the thick black woods, and wondered what he was thinking after so many hours into this freezing stakeout. Dane wasn’t moving a muscle. He was being a pro, taking no chances that if Moses or Claudia happened to look out the window they would see a flash of movement and Pinky Womack would be dead. Moses Grace and Claudia had to move soon, before dawn. The FBI sharpshooters’ orders were straightforward—kill the old man and the female before they could kill Pinky. Savich knew this was Pinky’s best chance to ever giggle out more blonde jokes at Ms. Lilly’s Bonhomie Club.
A single, unsilenced gunshot popped, obscenely loud, in the night. Both Savich and Dane had their SIG-Sauers in their hands in an instant. But they heard no voices, no sound of a reaction or an argument from the directional receiver, only silence. Not even a whimper from Pinky. Was that single gunshot a bullet in Pinky’s heart?
Savich knew the unexpected shot had instantly chased away the deadening cold and snapped everyone to hyper alert. But it was a surprise. Unless they’d killed Pinky and were now ready to head out. Savich and Dane heard a low rumble of voices from the other side of the motel. No doubt Sherlock and Connie were having trouble with Police Chief Tumi and his men wanting to rush in, guns blazing. Savich said clearly into his wrist radio, “No one move. Is that clear? We can hear you. Stay put, no one talk.”
Police Chief Tumi’s voice returned through the speaker band. “You heard the shot, Agent Savich. They must have killed Pinky Womack. Let’s get the bastards now!”
Savich said again, “Stay put, Chief. Agent Carver and I have it covered from here. I’ll tell you when we move.”
Chief Tumi was pissed, Savich could hear it in the manic breathing pouring out of his radio. “Give us a moment, Chief. A man’s life is on the line here.”
He looked at Dane, whose eyebrows appeared to be dusted with ice chips above the wool scarf tied over his face.
Another gunshot broke the silence, and then the sound of a groan through his directional receiver. Savich whispered, “That’s it, Dane. We’re moving.” He added into his radio, “Chief Tumi, stay put. Agent Carver and I are going in.”
They ran toward the motel together, their pluming breaths hidden behind black wool scarves tied over their faces, bent over nearly double to the ancient paint-pimpled green stairs that led to the second level of the motel. If they were spotted by either of the kidnappers right now, they were dead. Savich kept his eyes on the thick blinds that hadn’t moved since they’d arrived. A trap, he thought, they were probably running right into a damned trap. Now here they were, in the open.
There was no movement from within room 212. Dane, his SIG in one hand and his ancient and beloved Colt .45 in the other, ran crablike under the single draped window. Savich knew the room plan—fourteen by fourteen with a mattress-sagging double bed against the far wall, a small nightstand beside it, a thirty-year-old black-and-white TV on top of a three-drawer fake-wood dresser just to the right of the front window. There was another window along the back wall, looking onto the skinny back parking lot that touched the edge of the woods where Sherlock, three other FBI agents, and Chief Tumi and his deputies were hidden. There was a five-foot-square bathroom to the left, and since this was an end unit, there was a single high window off it that a three-year-old couldn’t squeeze through.