Raymond Dykes, the owner of the motel, had told Savich the girl signed both their names, with the same loopy handwriting. He couldn’t describe her well since she never took off the oversized dark glasses that covered half her face, but she was white, real pale white, and he knew she was pretty, with all that blond hair, wild and blowy, and a blue fake fur over jeans and a top.
They’d come strutting into his lobby during the evening, he didn’t remember the exact time. Maybe eight or nine, even ten o’clock, who knew? They were carrying bags of McDonald’s takeout under their arms, and they told him they had a sick brother moaning in the back of the van. Mr. Dykes gave them aspirin for the brother. Moses Grace called him Pinky, a funny name, which was why he remembered it. He watched them haul Pinky and the Mc-Donald’s bags up the stairs between them to their room. He thought about the french fries and Big Mac and hoped Pinky wouldn’t puke in the room.
When Savich, along with Sherlock and agents Dane Carver and Connie Ashley, had met up with Chief Tumi and half a dozen of his deputies, and given them instructions, Moses Grace and Claudia were already ensconced in their room with Pinky. By 12:15 a.m., agents had evacuated the motel’s other three occupants.
At one a.m. Savich’s directional receiver crackled, and he heard Moses Grace say in an old scratchy voice, “We ain’t heard a single lame joke from the little loser, just look at him, sleeping like a baby.” Claudia, sounding like a teenager, added casually, “I could wake him up with a little kiss of my knife in his ear, you know, dig it in a little bit, rouse him real fast.” The old man laughed, and then he wheezed and coughed, phlegm rumbling low in his chest, and then there was nothing more.
Savich looked down at his receiver, as if willing the unit to come to life, but there was only silence again.
He heard a couple of yawns, a snort or two in the minutes that followed. There were the sounds of sleep, but could he trust them? A lone light still shone at the window, but he saw no movement of any kind.
At three o’clock, Savich heard Moses Grace say clearly in his aged, juicy voice, “You know, Pinky, I’m thinking I’m gonna stick my fingernail through your left cheek, poke it in deep, twirl it around in your sinuses.” Nothing from Pinky, which meant, Savich hoped, that he was gagged.
Claudia giggled. “I wish we took your brother, too, Pinky. He’s like a cute fat little pig. I could stuff him in the ground and roast him, pretend we’re in Hawaii at a luau.” She giggled again.
They wouldn’t rush the motel room, not with just verbal threats. They had to wait, and Savich knew it was driving everyone nuts.
Agent Dane Carver whispered, “The old man sounds tired and sick. Claudia sounds hyper, talked so fast I could practically see spit flying out of her mouth. She’s young, Savich, real young. What’s she doing with that old man? What is she to him? They’re mad, no doubt in my mind, like Rolly told Connie.”
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 f
emale 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.
Savich prayed they wouldn’t find Pinky lying on the cracked linoleum floor, his head blown apart. What were they doing? There were two of them, they’d killed Pinky, no doubt in Savich’s mind about that, and yet there was dead silence. Not a single muted breath, not a whisper, no old man’s cackling voice.
He held the radio to his mouth and whispered, “Dane and I are going in. When you hear us break down the door, turn on the floodlights. Chief, use your bullhorn to order them to come out, the more noise the better. We know they’re here. They’ve got no place to go.”
Savich hoped the Pumis City police chief would do what he was supposed to and not hotdog it. He nodded to Dane, rose, and bashed his right foot against the doorknob. The door flew inward, slamming against the inside wall.
Dane was behind his left shoulder. He stayed high, Savich went in low.
They quickly canvassed the empty room.
Dane shouted, “Come out of the bathroom. Now!”
“There’s no one here,” Savich said. “No one is here,” he said again more slowly. “I don’t understand—how did they get out?” Then he knew, knew even before he saw the small red light on top of the night table, pointed directly toward the front door. He yelled into his wristband, “There’s a bomb in here! Get down!” He and Dane were out the open door and leaping over the rickety second-floor railing when they felt a tremendous jolt and the whole building shuddered with the force of it.
CHAPTER 3
SAVICH AND DANE landed ten feet away on the cracked concrete parking lot, rolled, and ran all out. A huge ball of flame erupted behind them, bursting outward from the room and through the roof like a volcano blowing. Suddenly the air was hot, a heavy pounding heat, and a noise like hell itself bursting apart. For a second the entire motel seemed to lift off its concrete foundation.
They heard the top floor crashing into the rooms below as they ran, trying to protect themselves from the exploded debris flying outward with the force of missiles. Huge pieces of wood and jagged chunks of glass speared high into the air away from the gushing flames and rained down around them. Savich saw a television set hurtle down to the parking lot and smash into bits on the concrete in front of them.
The heat was so intense Savich felt it searing the back of his thick wool coat, and wondered if he was smoking. Dane looked all right, so maybe not. He wondered if the Kevlar vests they were wearing had made the difference. When they’d dived into an ice-coated ditch some twenty feet beyond the parking lot, Savich yelled into his wristband, “Sherlock, are you all right?”
One second passed—too long—and then her voice came over, panting, “We’re all okay, but it was close, Dillon. The main explosion was in your direction, not ours. We’ve got lots of flying debris—I’m looking at most of a bed, with the sheets still on it—but we’re hunkered down behind an oak tree. Dillon—” He heard the fear in her voice when she swallowed. “You’re okay? Dane?”
“Yes, we’re fine, I promise. We jumped over the second-floor railing, managed to land soft, and rolled. All the padding we’re wearing kept us from breaking anything.”
She gave a shaky laugh. “What happened, do you know?”
“When Dane and I went in, the room was empty. I knew in my gut it was a setup even before I saw the device—sitting on the side table, red light blinking right at us—and we got out of there.”
“Which means,” Sherlock said slowly, “that Moses Grace and Claudia got out of that room without us seeing them, somehow hauling Pinky with them. They would have had a remote detonator, a timer, or some kind of trip device.”
Connie said, “They had it all planned out. I’ll bet you anything they used Ruth’s primo snitch to set us up. She’ll rip out his pointed canines.”
Savich said, “That sounds right. We need to find Rolly, Connie, really get in his face. Put out an APB for him. We need to nail him as soon as possible.”
Connie said as she jerked out her cell, “I’ll track him down as quick as I can. They must have gotten out before we ever got here, Dillon. They could have cut through the bathroom wall, since the building is so cheaply built, or maybe they just slipped out the back window in the dark and Dykes didn’t see them. No way they slipped out after we got here.”
Savich said, “Have Police Chief Tumi and his men spread out through the woods and see what they can find. They obviously stashed another car or van somewhere. There’s an access road that runs behind the woods to the east.” But he knew it was too late. They were long gone, enjoying themselves, probably thinking that the cops outside the motel were dead or injured. That he was dead. Savich looked over at the old Chevy van. It was flattened under smoking debris. “Sherlock, we need everyone out here looking for Moses Grace and Claudia. See who you can roust. Dane called nine-one-one, so the fire department should be here soon.”
“Yes, I’m on it. Connie called nine-one-one, too, and probably every other deputy here. You swear to me you’re all right, Dillon?”
He couldn’t believe it, but he grinned into his wrist unit. He had been more
scared for Sherlock than for himself. She was okay. “When this is over, I’ll take you dancing.”
He turned to Dane. “At least we’re not freezing to death anymore.”
Dane grinned, his face black with ashes, showing white teeth. “Wasn’t that a kick. A well-thought-out plan, except for that small timing glitch. They wanted you, Savich. I wonder if they saw us jump or if they think you’re dead.”
Twenty minutes later, Savich stood in front of what was left of Hooter’s Motel, watching the fire hoses douse the last of the flames. The smoldering carcass was puffing out black smoke, sending up little spurts of flame, the heat still too intense to get very close. The old building had gone up quickly. He’d had Chief Tumi send two deputies to find the owner, and at that moment he saw Raymond Dykes walking toward him, shoulders slumped, looking white and dazed. Savich wanted to kick the man into the frozen ditch where he and Dane had sheltered after the explosion. He heard Dykes say to himself, “Those bastards. Jesus, Mary, and Joseph, this wasn’t supposed to happen. I’m a dead man walking when Marlene finds out.”
The final piece slid into place. Moses Grace had double-crossed Raymond Dykes. It was all a setup, to kill him and as many cops as they could manage.
Dane walked up and stood behind Dykes. In a voice as nonthreatening as a nun’s at vespers, he said, “I can see how you’d be shocked that they blew up your motel, Mr. Dykes.”
“I’ve lost my livelihood here, my whole life.”
“They lied to you and showed you some money and you decided to believe them, right?”
Dykes looked at the smoking bones of his motel. “Only information,” he said, “that’s all they wanted—information. They gave me five hundred dollars, that fast, all smiles—five hundred dollars for a phone call.” He snapped his fingers and moaned, now holding his belly. “Nothing about an explosion. I’m a dead man. You don’t know Marlene.”
The FBI Thrillers Collection Page 126
