“So you’ve seen him? You know what he looks like?”
“Yeah, he’s come in and paid for the room a couple times at night.”
“How old is he?”
“I don’t know. Twenties, I’d say. Young. I’m not good at that stuff.”
“Big or small?”
“I’d say on the big side. Looks like he works out.”
“Tell me about the free Wi-Fi.”
“What can I tell you? It’s free. That’s it.”
“Does every room have a router, or is there a main router for the whole place?”
“We got the setup in the back here.”
He hooked a thumb over his shoulder toward the room behind him. Ballard knew that the router’s history could be examined for proof that Nettles had attempted to make purchases online with Leslie Anne Lantana’s credit card, but that would require a warrant and a commitment of time and money from the department’s Commercial Crimes Division that outweighed the importance of the case. It would never happen unless Ballard or someone working the daytime burglary unit did it.
“What about phones? Are there phone lines in the rooms?”
“Yes, we have phones. Except for a couple rooms where they got stolen. We haven’t replaced them.”
“But eighteen has a phone?”
“Yes, there’s a phone.”
Ballard nodded as she considered a plan for getting Nettles out of his room so she could question and possibly arrest him.
“Can you turn the light off in that alcove with the Coke machine?”
“Uh, yeah. I have a switch here. But it turns out the light on the second floor alcove too.”
“That’s okay, turn them both off. Then I need you to call his room and get him to come to the office.”
“How do I do that? It’s almost three o’clock in the morning.”
He pointed over his shoulder toward the wall of clocks to underline that it was too late for him to call Nettles’s room. As if on cue, her rover squawked and she heard her call code. She brought the rover up to respond.
“Six-William-twenty-six, you guys in position?”
“That’s a roger.”
She recognized the voice. It was Smith. She knew she had a solid cop and a gung-ho boot as backup.
“Okay, hold there. When I call you in, drive in the main entrance and don’t let anyone out. Suspect has a 1990s Ford one-fifty, silver in color.”
“Roger that. Weapons?”
“No known weapons.”
Smith clicked twice on the radio to acknowledge.
“Okay, five minutes,” Ballard said. “I’ll give you a standby pop, followed by a go sign.”
The counterman was looking wide-eyed at her when Ballard turned her attention back to him.
“Okay, so now I need you to call room eighteen and tell Nettles that the police were just here asking about him,” she said.
“Why would I do that?” the clerk said.
“Because it’s what just happened. And because you want to continue to cooperate with the LAPD.”
The counterman didn’t say anything. He looked very concerned about being pulled into something.
“Look,” Ballard said. “You’re not lying to the guy. You are telling him exactly what just happened. Keep it simple. Say something like ‘Sorry to wake you up but a police detective was just here asking about you.’ He’ll then ask you if the police are still here and you say you think they left. That’s it. If he asks anything else, tell him you’ve got another call and have to go. Short and simple.”
“But how come you want him to know you were here?” the clerk asked.
“I’m just trying to spook him and get him to come out of that room and make it safer to approach him. Now give me three minutes and make the call. You good?”
“I guess so.”
“Good. Your cooperation is greatly appreciated by your police department.”
Ballard left the office and followed the walkway in front of the rooms until she got to room 18. She walked by and entered the alcove to the right of its window. The overhead light in the alcove was now off but the plastic front of the Coke machine was brightly lit, and Ballard needed cover, not illumination. She reached behind the machine and pulled the plug, plunging the recessed area into full darkness. She stood back in the shadow and waited, checking her watch to see when three minutes had passed.
Just as she did so, she heard the ringing of a phone through the wall between the alcove and room 18. Four rings went by before it was answered with a muffled but gruff response. She keyed the mic on her rover twice, sending the standby alert to the backup team waiting in the street.
She continued to hear a muffled voice through the wall as she assumed Nettles was asking questions of the counterman. She moved up to the edge of the alcove so she had an angle on the pickup. Just as she did so, she heard the door to the room open. Before looking, she shrank back into the shadow for a moment, opened the mic on the rover, and whispered, “Go. We are go.”
When Ballard edged back to the corner of the alcove, she saw a man wearing blue jeans and nothing else pushing a cardboard box into the rear of the truck’s crew cab. His back was to her and she could see the grip of a black handgun tucked into the rear belt line of the jeans.
That changed things. She quickly pulled her weapon out of her hip holster and stepped out of the alcove. The man, who was struggling with the heavy box, did not see her as she approached from behind. She held her weapon up and brought the rover to her mouth.
“Suspect is armed, suspect is armed.”
She then dropped the rover to the ground and moved into a combat stance with both hands on her weapon, pointing it at the suspect. In that moment she realized her tactical mistake. She could not cover the man at the door of the pickup and the door to room 18 at the same time. If there was someone else in the room, they had the drop on her. She started moving sideways to close the angle between the two possible danger points.
“Police!” she yelled. “Let me see your hands!”
The man froze but did not comply. His hands remained on the box.
“Put your hands on the roof of the truck!” Ballard yelled.
“I can’t,” the man yelled back. “If I do, the box will drop. I have to—”
A patrol car came rushing into the lot off the street. Ballard kept her eyes on the man at the truck but had the cruiser in her peripheral vision. A flood of relief started moving through her. But she knew she wasn’t clear yet.
She waited for the car to stop, the officers to get out, and there to be three guns on the suspect.
“Get down!” Smith yelled.
“On the ground,” yelled Taylor.
“Which is it?” the man at the truck yelled. “She said hands on top. You say get on the ground.”
“Get on the fucking ground, asshole, or we’ll put you there,” Smith yelled.
There was enough tension in Smith’s voice to make it clear that his patience had run out, and the man at the truck was smart enough to read it.
“Okay, okay, I’m getting down,” he yelled. “Easy now, easy. I’m getting down.”
The man took a step back from the truck and let the box fall to the ground. Something made of glass inside it broke. The man turned toward Ballard with his hands up. She lost sight of the gun but held her eyes on his hands.
“You assholes,” he said. “You made me break my stuff.”
“On your knees,” Smith yelled. “Now.”
The suspect went down one knee at a time and then pitched forward to lie flat on the asphalt. He locked his hands behind his head. He knew the routine.
“Ballard, take him,” Smith yelled.
Ballard moved in, holstering her weapon and pulling her cuffs free. She put one hand on the man’s back to hold him down and yanked the gun out of his belt line with the other. She slid the weapon across the asphalt in the direction of the unies. She then moved up, put one knee on the small of the man’s back, and pulled his hands down one at a time to cuff them behind him. The moment the second cuff clicked, she yelled to the other officers.