Middle of Nowhere (35 page)

Bobbie toweled off and wrapped up. As Samway made for the door, Bobbie caught up. She had never done anything like this—had no idea how to approach it, but felt convinced it was just the trick she needed.

As they pushed though the door nearly side by side, Samway, clearly uncomfortable, said, “Nice meeting you,” trying to be rid of Gaynes.

“I, ah—” Bobbie wanted to stall until onto the elevator. “Nice meeting you too,” she said. “Same here.” She was more uncomfortable to the point of nausea. “Do you think—” she said, hurrying to keep up with the nervous Samway. “Do you really think I’d look okay in one of those suits?”

They stepped into the elevator. Samway clearly felt trapped. Bobbie had mentioned the second floor—she had to push 2. Samway pushed 3, and it lit behind her touch.

The doors shut. The elevator rattled as it lifted.

Bobbie pulled off the towel to display herself to the other woman. She turned once as if on a runway, intentionally awkward. She blushed. She knew if ever there was a body not to wear a thong, it was hers. But she wanted to convey more as well. When she came fully around and faced Samway again, she spoke before the other could. “I think you’re beautiful,” she said in a creamy voice. She took a slight step forward, just enough to invade Samway’s space. She whispered hoarsely, “I realize this is a little sudden—” purposely nervous, “I mean I don’t even know your name. But if you’re not doing anything tonight. . . . I mean . . . you want to hit some clubs or something?”

“Listen, you’re sweet,” Samway said warmly, calming considerably, “and if you want to try the suit, I think you should. But I’m a dancer. Men’s clubs? And a lot of my girlfriends are into other girls, you know? That’s fine. But not me. And besides, I gotta work tonight anyway.”

“Where?” Bobbie said, trying to look crushed.

“Pleasure Palace.”

“I mean the suit,” Bobbie said.

Samway parted the blanket and pointed to the logo sewn into the waistband. She couldn’t resist showing her tiny waist and perfect legs one last time. As she did so, the key dangled in her left hand, the room number facing Bobbie. 312.

Bobbie felt her heart skip a beat.

“Nike,” Samway said. “Got it over in the mall. A sports shop.”

The elevator stopped.

“Thanks,” Bobbie said. “And sorry if I made you uncomfortable.” She said privately, “You’re
very
beautiful. Your body too.” She felt herself blush again, and figured that was okay. She stepped off the elevator, her knees like water.

“No problem,” Samway called after her. “Have a good one.” The elevator doors slid shut.

Bobbie pulled the cellular phone out of her rolled-up towel and made the call. “Room three twelve.” She felt ready to faint. What if Samway had accepted her proposition?

When the sniper on the back side of the motel confirmed the presence of two adults in room 312, he erroneously mistook Samway and her own reflection in a mirror as the movement of two adults. It was this officer’s confirmation that Patrick Mulwright used to make a raid, and therefore, ultimately, the chaos that ensued.

Moving Special Ops or ERT officers through any public area presented great risk to civilians and enhanced the possibility of operational compromise. People tended to either panic or follow when they spotted black-clad figures bearing assault rifles.

Boldt could have assigned any of the detectives to talk to reception, but reserved the job for himself, his weapon double-checked beforehand. He approached the registration desk and asked to see the manager, revealing his identity only by passing a business card, never showing his shield or speaking his rank. He wore a radio earpiece in his left ear, familiar with the floor plan supplied by Gaynes. The existence of that earpiece bothered him, no matter how subtle its look, but he saw no way around being connected to Mulwright’s communication network. He simply had to monitor radio traffic in case of developments. Because of this, he kept one hand up to his ear, scratching, shielding the earpiece from view as best as possible.

The woman behind the desk looked up. Boldt repeated softly, “The manager. You’re coming with me.” There was no telling who Flek might have bribed.

The receptionist nodded nervously and indicated a door to the right. Boldt stepped through a moment later. The manager, a woman in her mid-forties, had reddish hair and carried a slightly frightened and disapproving look once Boldt was introduced. He waited for the receptionist sit down.

“We have a situation,” he said to the manager. “Room three twelve may be harboring a fugitive. We’d like to empty several surrounding rooms as quickly as possible before conducting our raid.”

“I’ll have to contact the owners.”

Boldt said, “I’m not here to win your approval. I don’t need your approval, only your cooperation. My counterpart simply wanted to kick the room, and we already would have if I had not intervened. But since we believe the individual in question may be in possession of tactical weapons, I prevailed. I want to empty those neighboring rooms, now. Right now!”

“How?”

“Telephone,” Boldt answered. “You call up to each of the rooms and tell them that the smoke alarm system is malfunctioning and that the city safety code requires you to empty everyone from the room. They’re to come down the stairs, not the elevator, quietly and orderly. You say you don’t expect it will take more than ten minutes or so to clear up.”

“All of the rooms on the third floor?”

Boldt spotted a diagram on the wall and approached it. “These four rooms on the third,” he said, drawing the area surrounding 312. “These above and below.” He added, “First, I need to confirm the registration on three twelve.”

The manager typed furiously, her troubled eyes more on Boldt than the screen. “Robert Grek.”

Boldt nodded as if this made sense. “And Mr. Grek has no other rooms in the motel?”

The manager checked the computer. “Only the one. King bed. Smoking.”

“Very well.” Boldt picked up the phone receiver from the cradle and handed it to the manager. “Sound as natural as possible. Calm. Confident. The problem’s going to be resolved shortly. You’re not at all concerned by this.”

She nodded.

The receptionist stood.

“Sit down,” Boldt said, distrusting her, not wanting her out of his sight.

“We have a customer.” She pointed through a rectangle of one-way glass that looked out on the desk.

“The customer will wait,” Boldt announced. To the manager he said, “Can you put anyone else on the front desk?”

She nodded, her fear more apparent.

“Do it.”

The manager summoned an employee named Doug to the front desk using the public address system. A moment later, the man stepped in behind the reception desk.

“Call,” Boldt said sternly, indicating the phone. “Please,” he added, somewhat sarcastically. Mulwright was out there preparing his team. He didn’t trust him to wait. “We need to do this quickly.”

Two heavily armed ERT operatives entered the motel’s north fire stairs exactly five minutes after the last of the manager’s phone calls. Two others ascended the building’s south stairs at the exact same moment. Wearing protective vests, Boldt, Lee, Hu, and Bobbie Gaynes entered the lobby, passing the gathering of evacuated families who, until that moment, had believed their rooms’ smoke detectors were malfunctioning. With the stairwells covered, the Boldt team split up, Lee guarding the lobby, Boldt, Gaynes, and Hu dividing up to ride the two elevators so that Flek could not slip past.

Boldt had in his possession a master key. One of the ERT guys carried the steel ram, to be used to take out the door jamb’s interior security hoop. Boldt’s pulse hovered around a hundred and twenty.

Mulwright, acting as CO—command officer—choreographed each team’s movements to coordinate perfectly, so that as Boldt stepped off the elevator on the third floor, one member of each stairwell team was already silently running toward him and room 312.

In a flurry of hand signals, Boldt indicated he would clear 312’s lock, to be followed by the ram. The order of entry was the two ERT men, then Hu and Gaynes, and finally Boldt.

The door’s lock mechanism made a noise as Boldt turned the key, any element of surprise lost. The second or two that it took the ram to explode the interior hardware felt fatally long to Boldt.

The two black-clad ERT men lobbed both a stun grenade—”a dumb bomb”—and a phosphorus charge— “white lightning”—a fraction of a second before rushing the room, weapons ready in the familiar leapfrog dance of advance and cover. They arrived to find Courtney Samway lying on the bed in underwear and bra, her nose and ears both bleeding from the dumb bomb, her hands frantically waving behind her blindness due to the white lightning, her screams penetrating even the cement block wall so that they echoed not only down the stairs, but out onto the street. The TV was tuned to a pay-per-view movie where a police gunfight raged. Within seconds, the room was crowded with all but Boldt, as the team searched under both beds, through the room’s only closet, and its small bathroom.

Boldt was first to notice the communicating door that connected with the adjacent room. He pointed it out, picked up the ram from the hallway floor and signaled for his team to divide, all the while his mind grinding through the reality of the situation: If Flek had taken the adjacent room, then the manager, on Boldt’s orders, had just asked him to come down to the lobby because of a smoke alarm problem. Flek would have fled the room immediately, either remaining inside the motel, or disguising himself and slipping out unseen.

The team raided the communicating room from both sides simultaneously. They found an oily pizza box and the recently opened package that Samway had delivered. Empty. SID would later find the fingerprints to confirm it. Bryce Abbott Flek had escaped. And Boldt had helped him to do so.

“T
he minute he got the phone call from the manager, he pulled on a pair of boxer shorts, threw a towel over his arm, and headed down to the pool,” Samway said from the other side of the cigarette-scarred interrogation table in the box. Mulwright, Boldt and Gaynes occupied the other side of the table.

Samway wore an extra-large black police wind-breaker to cover herself. The effects of the stun grenade had required a visit to the emergency room, costing Boldt precious time. She had punctured an eardrum and wore some foam padding over her left ear, but other than that was medically sound.

“The rifle?” Boldt asked.

“I ain’t saying nothing about no rifle,” she replied. “Not until I see me a lawyer.”

“Young lady,” Boldt addressed her, “you are in legal quicksand. The more you move, the deeper you sink. Do you understand? We’ve been through this attorney thing before. One has been assigned to you and is on the way, just like last time. But just like last time, you are far better off to cooperate now and save yourself some heartache.”

“In a backpack. He carried it with him.”

Samway continually glared angrily at Gaynes, recognizing her from their pool encounter. After a long stare she complained, “Dyke bitch.” She told Boldt, “She hit on me!”

Boldt wondered if Flek had walked right past the front desk, right past that one-way glass in the office. It seemed unlikely. He said, “I would have seen him in the lobby.”