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.
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 me
n 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.”
“Your wife?”
“No, my sister.”
“So they paid you to tell them if the cops showed up? That was all?”
Dykes nodded, then as if suddenly realizing he was talking to an FBI agent, and saying things he shouldn’
t, he gulped and shut his mouth.
Dane said, a bit of threat in his voice, “Too late, Mr. Dykes. If you don’t tell me everything now, we’ll make it real hard for you. You phoned their room when we were getting into position outside?”
Dykes began to rock, his arms collapsed over his chest. He nodded.
“What else? What were you expecting to happen?”
“Nothing. They said they’d go out the back,” Dykes said. “I’d let the phone ring three times, that’s all I had to do, just warn them. Nothing more. I heard them laughing later about firecrackers. When I asked them what they meant, the old guy, Mr. Grace, he laughed some more, said he’d like to scare the bejesus out of the cops, if he could, said the lot of you weren’t worth spit. If he only had one firecracker, that’s all he needed, he said. But he didn’t have one, did he?” He looked at the burnt heap of rubble that was, up until an hour before, his main support, then raised smoke-reddened eyes to Dane’s face. Dane wanted to smack him upside the head for being so greedy, so stupid. “He didn’t lie. He didn’t have a firecracker, what he had was a bomb.”
Dykes whispered, “Why did they lie to me, Agent Carver? Why? I did what they asked, called their room when you showed up, let the phone ring three times. This was crazy, mean and crazy. They ruined me.”
Savich said, “No, Mr. Dykes, you did this yourself.” He was still trying to get his brain around what this man had done, for five hundred dollars.
“It was the girl with all that beautiful hair; she paid me to let them know if you guys showed up. But I wasn’t born yesterday, people are always trying to stiff me because they figure the rooms are cheap, the name of the hotel is a joke, but look, I believed them. And she was so pretty, and she liked me. Her stomach was so white and—I guess I didn’t call this one right at all, did I? I’m an idiot.”
Dane said, “Yes, I’d say tonight you were.”
Dykes, skinny as a nail, wrapped up in a coat two sizes too large for him, thick mousse glistening on the half dozen long gray hairs plastered down over the top of his skull, realized fully now that he was in deep trouble. “No, I—I—I’m not an idiot, and it isn’t nice of you to agree with me like that. I didn’t mean for anything bad to happen, Agent Carver, you’ve got to believe me. I didn’t have a clue what they were planning. Oh Jesus, Mary, and Joseph, Marlene is going to kill me.”
“You took five hundred dollars knowing that our lives were on the line.” There was no rage in Dane’s calm voice, but it was there, clear as could be, in his eyes, if Dykes had looked up at him. But he kept his eyes on his shoes, and shook his head.
Savich asked him, “They requested room two-twelve?”
Dykes nodded. “Yeah, that’s a prime room since it’s on the end and there’s a window in the bathroom.”
Dane said, “You realize now that they either cut through that thin back bathroom wall or they went out the back window and were gone by the time we walked into your office. They meant to kill as many of us as they could. The bomb was powerful enough. Do you have a family, Mr. Dykes, or are you only at the mercy of your sister Marlene?”
“No, Joyce left me two years past for a trucker whose eighteen-wheeler smoked up every state he traveled through. I’ll bet he told her he’d show her all the sights and the dip believed him.”
Savich said, “Then you can think of Joyce enjoying the Grand Canyon while you’re nice and snug in jail.”
Dane said, “Maybe Marlene will visit you in your cell.”
Dane accepted a pair of handcuffs from one of Police Chief Tumi’s deputies, clicked them around Dykes
’s bony wrists, and handed him over to a deputy, who stared at Dykes like he couldn’t believe what he’d done. The deputy hauled him off, none too gently, to a cruiser. Chief Tumi called out, “Read him his rights, Deputy Wiggins. It’s a right shame that stupidity isn’t a felony.” He turned to Savich. “So the two gunshots we heard—they really were gunshots, weren’t they?”
“They were well timed, whatever they were,” Dane said. “Maybe the arson investigators will find the remains of a tape recorder in the wreckage. Maybe the conversation we heard, as well as the gunshots, was recorded to play at a specific time.”
Chief Tumi nodded, looked over at his deputy, who was stuffing Dykes into the backseat. “Roy, don’t leave that yahoo alone. I’ll be with you in a moment.”
Savich said to Dane, “One thing we can bank on—they were long gone out of that room, with Pinky, before we heard the gunshots. They might have been watching.”
Connie said, “You can fry Rolly when I reel the little bugger in.” She shook her head. “This will sure shake Ruth’s belief in her snitches. Do you know the little geek reminded me about his extra pint because he’s throwing a goth party?”
Chief Tumi said to Savich, “My deputies are reporting no sign of them yet, but we’ll find them. I’ve called the State Police, given them descriptions, told them about Pinky. We’ve done what we can.”
Savich knew there was a lot more to do but mostly for the forensic t
eam. Connie said, “That old Chevy van over there—it was bait, the lure to keep us here. I wonder if they really are heading for Arlington National Cemetery.”
“Or is it more misdirection?” Sherlock wondered aloud.
But Savich knew they had no choice but to run another complicated operation, and they only had about four hours to get everything nailed down. He couldn’t imagine how much manpower they’d need to cover that huge expanse of land, with its thousands of white markers and monuments and rest areas. “I hate to say this, I really do, but I have a feeling they’ll actually be there. Find Rolly, Connie.”
“Dillon, do you want to call Ruth, bring her back in?”
Savich started to nod, then thought of how excited she’d been about the trip, about going into a cave this time, and just wait until he saw what she brought back. “No, let her have her time off. There are enough of us here. She’ll be back on Monday.”
They looked up to see an older woman striding toward them, boots to her knees, a head scarf tied tight around her face, a thick wool coat flapping around her calves. She stopped at the cruiser, leaned in, and screamed, “What did you do, Raymond?”
Savich cocked an eyebrow. “Marlene, I presume.”
CHAPTER 4
MAESTRO, VIRGINIAFRIDAY EVENING
SHERIFF DIXON NOBLE shrugged into his leather jacket, pulled on his gloves, and left his office at Number One High Street just before five o’clock. It was colder than Brewster’s nose against the back of his knee in the dead of winter. Snow was coming, forecasted to dump a good one and a half to two feet. He really didn’t want to think about the phone calls it would bring, from downed power lines to car pileups, older citizens with no heat, sick folks without a way to get to the hospital—the list was endless. He’d learned a long time ago to have a solid number of what he called “disaster deputies” he himself had trained to handle the worst that bad luck and nature could throw at them. It had been a slow February anyway, he thought, except for Valentine’s Day. Will Garber had brought his wife, Darlene, a three-pound box of Valentine chocolates as an apology, but Darlene wasn’t buying it. She grabbed up a handful of chocolates and rubbed them in his face, at which point he slugged her, slammed out of the house, got drunk at Calhoun’s Bar, broke Jamie Calhoun’s nose, and ended up in jail.
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